Interview of Bill Dunn
Transcript Number 028

This is Joe DeGenaro and today is Saturday, June 3, 2000. We are at the Barbee Branch Library in Oak Island, North Carolina and we are interviewing World War II veteran Bill Dunn. He served in the Armed Forces from December 1942 through March of 1946. This interview is part of the Brunswick County World War II Veterans Oral History Preservation Project.

INTERVIEWER: Good morning Mr. Dunn.

DUNN: Good morning sir. 

INTERVIEWER: Will you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you were born and raised and where you were at the time of Pearl Harbor and then we'll kind of take the story from there and move forward.

DUNN: Well I was born in East Herkimer, New York. My parents lived for many years in Big Moose, New York, which is in the same county, Herkimer County. Of course, I was born in East Herkimer in a small maternity hospital that was there. My grandparents lived in Herkimer at the time. I was just a few weeks old, probably five or six weeks old, my parents took me back to a place called, in the Adirondacks, called Big Moose, New York, where I was raised and lived there until inducted into the U.S. Army.

I was supposed to be inducted in December of '42, but I had to be reinducted in January of '43 due to some mix up. 

INTERVIEWER: You were working, you said, as a meter reader?

DUNN: Yes, in the fall I graduated from high school in Old Forge, New York June of '42, worked for my father who had a small construction and camp caretaking business in Big Moose and worked during that summer. Then in the fall of 1942, when the summer season ended in the Adirondacks, I went to live with my grandmother in Herkimer, New York, and obtained a job with at the time was the Central New York Power Company which is now Niagara Mohawk, as a meter reader reading gas meters in Herkimer and electric meters in the rural area south of Herkimer and Mohawk.

I was still in high school during, at the time of December 7, 1941, the Pearl Harbor event and of course at that time I knew I was a prime candidate for service in the U.S. military. I could not enlist in the Air Force. I had very poor eyesight, a congenital problem of deformed lenses in both of my eyes in the cornea of both of my eyes and I was not eligible for service in the U.S. Army Air Corps or the U.S. Navy so I just waited to be inducted into the U.S. Army which as I said occurred actually in January of 1943.

I went on active duty at the end of January of '43, went to Camp Upton which is on Long Island, stayed there for a few weeks, then was sent to a small Army camp about 40 or 50 miles out of Washington, D.C. by the name of Vint Hill Farms. It was a signal corps installation. I took my basic training at Vint Hill Farms. Vint Hill Farms was a pretty highly classified security installation and I was sent there for permanent guard duty, permanent M.P.'s, working the main gate and guarding the facilities. They have some highly classified schools there at Vint Hill Farms and highly classified communications intercept facilities.

I stayed at Vint Hill Farms. It was rather mundane type of duty. So doing security work, we were exempt for most of the time I was at Vint Hill Farms from any kitchen police duty or any other duties and stayed there until I think about the summer of 1944. In '44, there was a group of us that were sent to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where we went to school, communications construction school where we learned pole climbing and communication tower construction putting up the steel towers for communication facilities at air fields.

Stayed in Philadelphia until I guess probably about October of '44, I'm not exactly sure of the date, the month now. I was sent to Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, stayed there for a few weeks, then was sent to Newport News, Virginia, where we shipped out overseas. We got on a troop ship to go overseas. We were on a very fast troop ship. We were not in convoy. We went alone and we arrived in Naples, Italy, 11 days later.

INTERVIEWER: How long was the trip on the ship over?

DUNN: Eleven days. We were at sea 11 days. I was seasick the whole time as most of us were (laughter).

INTERVIEWER: Was that your first time that you were on the open sea?

DUNN: I had never been on a ship (laughter). We arrived in Naples, Italy. We were sent a few miles out of Naples. By that time, it was pretty cold. It was getting into the winter I think, probably around December I believe. Yes, it was the first part of December of 1944. We stayed in the _____ which was just a series of tents, cold. It was raining the whole time we were there, raining, the tents were leaking. I remember one of the fellows in our outfit, he got down in his sleeping bag, we only had sleeping bags, and he got down in his sleeping bag. He woke up in the middle of the night and got scared and we had to get him out of his sleeping bag (laughter). He got tangled up in his sleeping bag.

Then we went, from there we were sent to our outfit. It was the 3358th signal service battalion. It was a single construction outfit. Our duty was to put up, rebuild the communication facilities at air fields, World War II air fields that had been bombed out or had been destroyed by the Germans when they were evacuating these air fields in Italy, Sicily and Greece. That was the sum total of our work.

I spent quite a bit of time in Naples at the headquarters facility. They had a warehouse in a little suburb of Naples, a little town called Bagnolia and sent to the warehouse, put in charge of one of the warehouse sections. Our duties were to send the equipment, whatever it be, the steel towers which were in pieces, the cables, radio equipment, whatever they needed, out to the crews working at the air fields.

Then quite often, I would go out on duty at the various air fields. I was sent to Sicily for about six or seven months working at that air field that had been built by the Germans during World War II and of course had been bombed out or destroyed. All of the facilities had been destroyed when the Germans evacuated. We were sent there to rebuild the communication facilities there.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, my first Christmas overseas, we spent on the Isle of Capri (laughter). That was the Christmas of 1944. In Naples, we lived in a, when we were in the city of Naples, we lived in an old university that the U.S. Army had taken over and had some very nice living quarters. We had it pretty nice, ate there. When we were sent out to Bagnolia at the warehouse, we had our own facilities, our own living quarters right at the warehouse on the second story.

We were a small outfit, the 3358th signal service battalion. We were a small outfit. We never had our own mess facilities. We always had to eat with some other outfit in the area. For a while we ate with the quartermaster outfit down the street, a quartermaster bakery outfit down the street had some mighty fine baked goods. Some of the rest of the food wasn't too good (laughter). Had some mighty fine baked goods. For a while, we ate with an ordnance outfit just a little farther down the street. That outfit didn't seem to have too good of mess facilities and I learned to eat _____(kantong) three times a day. It the morning, it was fried like bacon, noon it was ground up in kind of a salad and at night, it was baked. But we had _____(kantong) three times a day. I haven't eaten much since.

INTERVIEWER: While you were overseas, did you get a chance to meet with any of the civilian people and taste some of the local food, even if it were a little bit?

DUNN: Oh yes. As a matter of fact, at that time the U.S. Army was trying to help bring back the Italian economy so all our laborers were local Italian citizens, natives, and we worked with them all the time. At the warehouse, we had the Italian citizens working with us, helping us, sent out the orders and what-not out to the fields. In Sicily, we had to put in all the building construction; we had to rebuild all the buildings at the airfield.

The airfield was Tripani which some of you may remember. When the U.S. Air Force, an Egyptian airliner to capture two, what were they, two terrorists that had killed an American on that ship. They forced the airplane down, the Egyptian airliner down at Tripani. It's in Sicily, not far from Palermo, which is in the northwest corner of Sicily. Not far from a little town called Marsala where very famous wine is made. If you're a wine drinker, you've probably heard of Marsala wines.

INTERVIEWER: Did you get a chance to taste any of the wines?

DUNN: (Laughter) Yes. I'm not much of a wine drinker today, but we drank and ate quite a lot of the native foods. We'd go out to the local restaurants and eat. 

INTERVIEWER: So you did quite a bit of moving around within the area of Italy where you were to rebuild and so you got to get a taste of different cultures in the local region where you were.

DUNN: Oh yes, we went to Rome. We had to take truckloads of equipment to Rome, to Florence, to Foggia which was the headquarters of I can't remember which Air Force it was, I think it was the 5th or the 8th, I'm not sure. Different all over. I never went to Greece although we did have a team in Greece.

My trip from Naples to Palermo, we flew in an old U.S. Army Air Corps, C46. We could not land at Palermo that day because Palermo was a difficult field to get into. It was too cloudy to land so the pilot had to take us on to North Africa. We got to Bizerte and there wasn't a plane going back to Palermo for about four days so we asked, there was just a small air transport command facility at Bizerte and we asked the sergeant in charge what we could do for four days and he said the only thing he could tell us was there wasn't much around there anymore. It was big during the North Africa campaign, but there wasn't much left anymore.

There was a Navy base a few miles down the road if we wanted to go down there, to the PX or whatever or the canteen. So we went down there and as I was walking out the canteen door, I ran into an old high school chum of mine (laughter). I didn't even know he was in North Africa. So we spent a couple of days together, talked about the good old days and of course went back, caught a plane to Palermo. I enjoyed the stay in Sicily. The weather was beautiful. It was good weather.

The work was easy. All the difficult work was done by local natives. We laid a two mile teletype cable line from the communications facility where the towers and the antennas were to the air field itself and all the difficult work was done by the local natives, digging the holes and that type of thing. We had to lay the cable and put in the facilities. 

As I say, my work there was pretty easy. It was enjoyable, it was not difficult. Saw no combat duty, didn't even get into the combat area. When we landed in Naples in the fall of 1944, the fighting area was just north of Rome and we didn't even get up to that area. So I never received any battle scars or anything like that. Can't think of anymore to say.

INTERVIEWER: Well some of the training that you did, that you got in the service and the work that you did while you were in the service, did you apply any of it when you got out?

DUNN: No, no.

INTERVIEWER: So you weren't able to use, except for the experience of being in the service, the actual signal corps experience never came to be at all after you left the service?

DUNN: No.

INTERVIEWER: The gentleman that you met while you were overseas who you were high school buddies with, did you see him when you came back at all?

DUNN: Oh yes, many, many times (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER: While you were in the overseas units, you strictly did the signal corps work, no other duties that you had and the areas that you were in were mostly secure in terms of fighting?

DUNN: Oh yes, they had already been secured, yeah, the fighting was way north. As I say, when we landed in Naples in the fall of '44, the front, the Italian front was north of Rome. Naples is quite a bit south of Rome so we never even....

INTERVIEWER: You did a lot of rebuilding of areas that were damaged?

DUNN: We were rebuilding air fields, the communication facilities at air fields that had been either bombed out during World War II or had been destroyed by the Germans when they evacuated these air fields. 

INTERVIEWER: Were you able to get fairly recent news of what was going on in the war while you were overseas in terms of radio broadcasts?

DUNN: Yes, as a matter of fact, our favorite radio program over there was listening to Axis Sally when she would sing "Lily Marlene". Of course the Germans would broadcast that into the Naples area. We listened to that. She was a very beautiful singer.

INTERVIEWER: Did you get mail on a regular basis or was it ...

DUNN: Oh, mail came in on a regular basis, no problems at all, yeah. 

INTERVIEWER: And you were able to get your mail back home to family?

DUNN: Yeah, usually highly censored (laughter). One incident I can remember in Sicily, we got pineapple three times a day, breakfast, dinner and supper, and I'd write this back to my mother. That was her favorite dessert, canned pineapple, and she would write back and say "Oh I wish I could get some". She couldn't get it in the States (laughter) and here we were eating it three times a day.

INTERVIEWER: Was that because of the rationing?

DUNN: Yeah, rationing in the States.

INTERVIEWER: So you actually were able to have food that she couldn't get in the States even though you were in Italy in the middle of the war?

DUNN: That's right. Had no trouble getting U.S. beer over there. As a matter of fact, when we were in Sicily, the only beer we got was, I can't think of the name of it now, it was a very poor beer. It was made in Pittsburgh, Steel City or something like that (laughter). Of course all the beer you could get overseas back in those days was 3.2. It was a very low alcoholic content.

INTERVIEWER: And all the food, well you said before that you would attach yourselves to other units for food because your unit was so small. Was there a wide variation in the quality in terms of one unit and another unit?

DUNN: I would say the best food we had was probably when we ate with the quartermaster bakery outfit. The worst we had was when we ate with the artillery outfit that served us kantung three times a day.

INTERVIEWER: Were you having C-rations at all while you were there?

DUNN: Yes, we had C-rations, but it was not, we didn't mind them because we didn't get them that often. C-rations, K-rations, the whole smear. We had them available. We always had them in the warehouse. I worked in a big warehouse when I was in Bagnolia and we always had them in the warehouse to send out to the outfits that needed them.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of weapons did you carry with you when you were at your duties?

DUNN: When I was on guard duty, when I did MP and guard duty at Vint Hills Farm Station, we carried pistols and Thompson machine guns and it's for that reason, we always had to go to the range for pistoling. At Vint Hill, they had a small pistol range and we had to go to the pistol range about once a month. Back in those days, they never thought of ear protection and firing those 45 caliber revolvers, Colt revolvers, that's the reason I'm wearing hearing aides today. We didn't even think of ear protection.

INTERVIEWER: Did it bother you while you were there or was it later?

DUNN: Oh it was later, much, much later. If I had had some record when I was discharged about the damage that was done, why I could get hearing aides through the V.A., but there's no record, no medical record that I had hearing problems until much, much later. The damage was done, but it wasn't, the damage to my ears wasn't all military cause I lived in the Adirondacks where we used to do a lot of hunting and we always fired rifles, never had used ear protection at all. So it's a combination of shooting a lot when I was a kid and when I was a boy and then in the military being on the range. Forty-Five Colt revolvers are very noisy guns I'll tell you.

INTERVIEWER: But you were already familiar with weapons to some degree when you went into the military service.

DUNN: Yeah, we had Tommy guns. We carried those Thompson submachine guns. We carried those on guard duty too. 

INTERVIEWER: Now were you overseas when the war actually ended and if so, when did you get the news that the war was over?

DUNN: Well let's see. We got, well I think the first big news we got overseas was when President Roosevelt died. That was April of '45. Then, yes, I was overseas when in Naples, or in Bagnolia, when the European war ended in '45. May of '45? I was there when the Japanese war ended in August of '45. I didn't come home until, of course back then, you were sent home on a point system according to how many points you earned. It's been so many years ago, I don't remember how the point system worked, but I didn't have too many points. I had no combat duty and that entered into the picture.

So I wasn't sent home until March of '46, I guess actually the end of February of 1946 and I was due, they were sending us to Switzerland on what we called rest and relaxation tours and I was due to go to Switzerland on one of these tours and the captain of our outfit called us in. He said, "Dunn, your turn has come up for the Swiss tour. It's also your turn, you've earned enough points to go back to the States. Which do you want?" And naturally I took the States. I made a mistake. I wished I'd gone to Switzerland now (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER: So you didn't get the tour.

DUNN: I didn't get the trip. I had the opportunity to take the trip, but I didn't take the trip. I wished I had taken it now. I'd love to go. I never did have the opportunity to go back.

INTERVIEWER: So you didn't really have a break per se while you were overseas?

DUNN: No, not at all. The only chance was the R&R trips to Switzerland, but they came after the war ended in August of '45.

INTERVIEWER: After the war ended and after you received the news that the war had ended, both your area and in Japan, did it get a little bit more relaxing for you? It was still hard work, but at least you knew....

DUNN: Yes, much more relaxed atmosphere. All the time I was in the States, I never got to buck private. When I went overseas, I went up rather rapidly and was discharged as a technician third grade which is the same as a staff sergeant. I had staff sergeant stripes with the T inside.

INTERVIEWER: Did you get the stripes right when you were getting ready to leave and come back home?

DUNN: Oh no, I had them.

INTERVIEWER: So you were able to enjoy the rank a little bit for a little while?

DUNN: (Laughter) Yeah, that's right. They call it T3, that was my grade.

INTERVIEWER: Now when you were let out and came back, were you able to take advantage of the GI bill and things of that nature?

DUNN: Absolutely, yeah, I came back to the States. As I say, I believe it was the end of February of 1946. I was sent to Camp Kilmer, came back by troop ship again. It was the same type of ship, but not the same ship as I had gone overseas on, sick all the way, seasick the whole way back. Landed in Staten Island and then we were sent, taken by bus to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey and from there, we went to Fort Dix, New Jersey, which was my point of discharge. 

Took the train back to the Adirondacks to Utica, New York and then to my hometown and arrived in March of 1946. I worked a little bit around my hometown and decided to take advantage of the GI Bill and enrolled in the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University starting in the fall of 1946, graduated in June of 1950. 

INTERVIEWER: And what sort of work did you do after you graduated? Did you stay in that area?

DUNN: Well I tried that, but the Adirondacks was as I discovered was an area when my father and mother lived there, were young and lived there, it was quite a resort area and attracted some very wealthy people, but after the war, the tourism changed in the Adirondacks. It wasn't attracting the wealthy people and I could see that there was not much future for me there so I applied for and received an appointment, having graduated with a degree in forestry, applied and accepted a job with the U.S. Forest Service in Alexandria, Virginia.

I started my career then with the U.S. government and stayed with the government, but not with the forest service. I worked with the forest service for about four or five years and then transferred to different agencies and retired in June of 1974.

INTERVIEWER: Is that when you were in this area here?

DUNN: I moved here. I retired and we were living in Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. We stayed there a year after retirement and then moved here to Boiling Springs Lake in June of 1975 and been here ever since.

INTERVIEWER: Were you able to, other than the gentleman you went to high school with who you saw on a regular basis, were you able to stay in touch with anyone else that you served with in the service?

DUNN: Very few. There was a fellow from New York. I stayed in touch with him for a while and one from just outside of Syracuse that I stayed in touch with for a while. I would say that's the sum total of the ones I was in service with. And I do hear from time to time from a boy who now lives in Mohawk, New York and occasionally he'll give me a call or I'll give him a call.

INTERVIEWER: Well that's good that you still stay in touch.

DUNN: Not too often, maybe once or twice a year.

INTERVIEWER: Well generally speaking, your time in the service both here and overseas was a good experience?

DUNN: To me, it was a very good experience. It was just easy duty. The duty at Vint Hills Farm Station was, we'd be on duty for six hours and then we had the rest of the day off to do whatever we want. Of course, it was shift work. You'd work, one week you'd work the morning shift and then the next week you'd work the afternoon shift and the next week, you'd work an evening shift. 

The shift that everybody hated was the night shift, but it was 24 hour duty, but we only had to work six hours, then we were off. Then when I went overseas, all the hard work was done by the local natives and we just did the technical work. 

INTERVIEWER: Mr. Dunn, you had a couple of incidents that occurred while you were in your military service. Was this overseas? This was in the States and what I'd like you to do is just recount the incidents to us to the best of your recollection.

DUNN: Okay, I think probably the most, well the most humorous incident that I got involved with was a double incident really. It was when I was stationed at Vint Hill Farms. I was on, we had a post, a guard post at one of the gates. It was way out in the woods at the very far end of the post. We used to have to man it 24 hours a day. At this guard post, at this gate, were two of the old houses from when Vint Hills Farms was actually a working farm before World War II, before the Army had taken it over.

There were two buildings there, two houses there. They had been tenant houses for the farm workers. After the Army turned it over, these two houses were refurbished by the Army and were turned over to housing for the noncommissioned officers and their families. We got to know they were both top sergeants, master sergeants, we got to know them very well as our guard post was right there at the houses. We got to know them very well.

It was decided someplace along the line, I don't remember just when, not to leave this gate open 24 hours a day. After the civilian workers left the home, we had a number of civilian workers at Vint Hills Farm Station. Those that used the back gate after the work day stopped at about 6:00 in the evening, 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, we would close that gate and not man it all night, all 24 hours. 

What we did not know was that the reason that the gate was closed, the colonel, the post colonel, we had gotten a WAC detachment, a fairly large WAC detachment at Vint Hills Farms and the colonel had taken up with the captain in charge of this WAC detachment. So he decided he was going to have a rather close relationship with this captain and the most convenient place for him to do so was at one of these houses at the back gate. It was very secluded. It was away from everything else on the post.

But we didn't know this of course. It was kept under quiet. But we were happy. We didn't have to man this gate 24 hours a day. It was secluded and at nighttime there, there was a light there, and at nighttime, the only activity we had was watching the bats trying to capture the insects that were attracted by the light at the gate. So one evening a good friend of mine, he had bought himself an old model T which had to be restored. It was in pretty bad shape and he had gotten up with one of the farmers near the back gate and got permission to use one of his outbuildings as a place to store and to work on his Model T.

So one night we went out the back gate which was still being manned, one evening, to work on the Model T and of course when we came back, the gate was closed which we knew. We thought that the sergeants were still living in those houses not knowing they had been moved out. So when we came back after working on the Model T, it was dark and so we just climbed over the gate.

Well all of a sudden, we heard voices on the porch of one of the buildings who we thought was one of the sergeants, called out "Who goes there" and of course we knew him very well so we were joshing with him and we gave him some offhanded answer and pretty soon, one of these what we thought were sergeants came off the porch, running off the porch and came down on the sidewalk and it was lo and behold, it was not the sergeant at all, it was the colonel in charge of the whole camp (laughter). 

That's when we found out that the sergeants were no longer living there, but the colonel was living there with his...he was actually shacking up with the WAC captain. So he took our names of course and we thought oh boy, we were really in trouble. But fortunately, the colonel was pretty well inebriated and he couldn't remember our names (laughter). So the next day, the order came out, that gate will be manned again 24 hours which made the other guards very, very unhappy, but they never found out who the two culprits were that came over the gate (laughter). And we never received, very fortunately, we never received any disciplinary action.

But this is not the end of the story. One night, I was working the main gate at the camp and in comes the WAC captain. She had been, of course, I guess one of the sergeants that had the house, had been living at this back gate, became rather unhappy that he had lost his really ideal house, right on the post, he could walk to work. And he complained to our headquarters over in the office which was located near Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Virginia, and they became aware of what the colonel was doing so they, the WAC captain was moved to Arlington, Virginia, for duty instead of staying at Vint Hill Farms.

So one night she came storming into the main gate to see the colonel and expected to go right on and of course we were a highly secure post. I happened to be on duty at the main gate and I said, "I'm sorry Captain, but I'll have to get...", she didn't have an official badge for our post anymore from Vint Hill Farms, "I'll have to get permission from the provost marshal". Well she became very, very incensed and very, very unhappy, but I didn't let her in until the officer of the guard came down and identified her and said I could let her go on in.

Well the next day, the word came down to the guard force, whenever Captain so and so, and I don't remember her name now of course, ever comes to the main gate, she is to be automatically let in (laughter). So end of story.

INTERVIEWER: How much time did you actually spend in the States before you were assigned to go overseas?

DUNN: I spent from well January of 1943 to October of...the fall of '44. I don't remember exactly.

INTERVIEWER: And all that time you were, all of you I suspect were keeping very, keeping good track of what was going on overseas.

DUNN: Oh yes, we knew what was going on. We had the news there and the local newspapers and we knew what was going on. No problem with keeping informed. Vint Hill Farms, well it was just a nice post to be at. It was a small, very informal, it was not spit and polished military at all. It was a signal corps, more technical people than military type people.

INTERVIEWER: Well Mr. Dunn, I want to thank you very much for sharing your experiences with us while you served in World War II and we are very appreciative of the effort.

DUNN: Thank you very much.