INTERVIEWER:   Tell me, how did you go into the military, where did you go into the military and when did you go into the military?

FLOWERS:  I joined the Marines, enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1940 right out of high school in June. 

INTERVIEWER:   Right out of high school where, where were you living?

FLOWERS: Allentown, Pennsylvania.  I guess one of the reasons why it was more or less the end of the Depression and there wasn’t very much available in the way of jobs so the Marine Corps seemed to be an ideal place to get fed and clothed and taken care of.  We got on a train out of Philadelphia, went down to Parris Island where we had boot camp.

Of course boot camp was a lot different than it is now.  At that point in time we lived in tents.  A section of two old wooden barracks from World War I was where some of the fellows slept.  We went through our regular routine of boot camp.

INTERVIEWER:   How long was boot in those days?

FLOWERS:   I don’t remember very honestly exactly how long it was.  We had the basic training right there in a sand covered parade ground.  No macadam or anything fancy like they have today.  As I said, we slept in tents.  Then we went out two weeks on the rifle range.  Once again there was nothing but tents.  At that point one rifle range and one pistol range.

INTERVIEWER:   What were you firing as a rifle?

FLOWERS:   We were firing the 03.

INTERVIEWER:   Springfield 03, bold action.

FLOWERS:   As I mentioned earlier just about all of our equipment was vintage.  Even when we opened up the ammo boxes out on the line, the ammo was all marked 1917.  But it still fired.

INTERVIEWER:   What was the chow line like?  Did they feed you well?

FLOWERS:   Oh yes, you got fed very well.  Naturally you had a mess hall, which we went to eat in.  Back at the base, it was an old wooden building.  At the rifle range, it was very unique.  They had a brick building where you could eat.  It was the only brick building out there. 

After boot camp I was assigned along with most of the others just up the street to an outfit called the 4th defense battalion.  Fourth defense battalion originated right there at Parris Island.  But then, in about December, they split off.  They shipped to the west coast and eventually ended up in Hawaii where they spent the entire war guarding Hawaii.  So I missed the boat on that one.

INTERVIEWER:   This is December…

FLOWERS:   This is December 1940.  Then they formed with the leftovers what was known as the 55th battalion.  I think a little explanation if you want for history, going back the 1930’s, United States and other countries signed a non-aggression pact meaning they would not take aggressive action, but they could defend what they had.  Of course the United States was very well aware at this time that war was on the horizon and coming.

INTERVIEWER:   So this was a multinational treaty, is that right?

FLOWERS:   That’s correct.  Japan was naturally the only one that didn't sign it.  We became aware that we had a lot of exposed area out in the Pacific and some Marines that were headquartered in Washington, D.C. came up with the idea of combining the units of the Marine Corps into what’s known as a defense battalion.  By calling them defense battalions, we could go out there and not be aggressive. 

The composition of them was very acute.  In fact each battalion had three batteries of antiaircraft, three batteries of 30 caliber machine guns, three batteries of 155 Howitzer’s, a searchlight unit and of course supporting units.  The reason there were three of them was the idea that we were a small unit and could be activated and put out into any area where it was required.

INTERVIEWER:   Roughly how many men in that unit?

FLOWERS:   392 men roughly.

INTERVIEWER:   Would handle all of the ordinance and the support?

FLOWERS:   Everything, well the defense of Wake Island was one unit of the 1st defense battalion and that was 392 men.  Of course they had supported old aircraft at the time and the defense of Midway was a unit of the 6th defense battalion.  Shortly after we organized up there and started our training and so forth, another interesting sideline.

Our firing range was Hilton Head where we went to to fire antiaircraft guns and 155’s and so forth.  Of course the only way you could get to Hilton Head was by boat in 1940-41.  The only thing out in Hilton Head was a two story Marine barracks.  Everything else was swamp and squatters rights.  No bridge or anything else.  Everything had to be taken over.

We had a little Navy boat called the yippee boat which towed the barge with our equipment and us over to get to Hilton Head Island.  So going back there now, people don’t believe the pictures I have of Hilton Head with six foot rattlesnakes and alligators.

INTERVIEWER:   What kind of targets were you firing at?

FLOWERS:   Well it depended on what you were firing.  Antiaircraft we’d fire at towed sleeves.  But the 155’s, we had set targets on in the ocean.

INTERVIEWER:   For the record, what is a towed sleeve?

FLOWERS:   That’s a sock, actually what it is and it’s towed on a line behind an airplane.

INTERVIEWER:   And you’re supposed to hit the sleeve, not the airplane.

FLOWERS:   Right, not the airplane.  Then in 1941 in early spring, we got the word that we were being deployed to Iceland.  The unit of the 6th Marines from the west coast came down through the canal and joined us at Charleston Navy Yard where we loaded and went up to Iceland, helped defend the country against possible German invasion.  The British had manned the defense of the island all during the war because whoever controlled Iceland could control all the North Atlantic shipping ways.

INTERVIEWER:   But we were not at war with Germany.

FLOWERS:   No, we were not at war.  So on our way up, little diplomatic problems came up as we were putting the Marines in there.  We sat off Newfoundland for about three days until the politicians got it straightened out and the government of Iceland invited us to come. 

During the time we were there we set up all our defenses and so forth; however the only possible action we saw was one time a German recon plane flew over and of course we manned the guns, but we couldn’t shoot because we weren’t at war and by the time the British Spitfire got up, the Germans were long gone.

But anyway while we were in Iceland, all of a sudden we heard about Pearl Harbor one night and I remember a British fellow coming up to me and saying, “Well you guys are in it now”.  In the spring again of ’42, we loaded up again back to the States.  We met and unloaded at New York.  Some of these people went on down to help unload the equipment.  Others went on a 13-day furlough.

We got back down to Parris Island where we re-equipped.  The old guns that we had in Iceland were all 3 inch antiaircraft from World War I, which we left there for the Army.  We got equipped with the new 90mm antiaircraft instead of the 03’s that we had.  Once again three months later we got orders again to move out, destination unknown.  We shipped out of Norfolk, Virginia, spent quite a few months at sea, going down through the canal and headed up to Wellington, New Zealand.

INTERVIEWER:   The date is that and what is your rank at that time?

FLOWERS:   Corporal. 

INTERVIEWER:   And what year was that?

FLOWERS:   That was in ’42.  They reloaded all the ships into three individual units, which I described in the beginning.  We loaded up then and we went up, we didn't know where we were going, went to Espirito Santos, did some practice landings up there in that area.  Got chased out of there twice by reports of Jap convoys on the way down.  Eventually we made it up in the Guadalcanal area and Tarawa.

From there while we were at Tarawa, another situation came up which they considered very vital.  That was the Japs were coming down from the Gilbert and Marshalls and they were marching southward towards Australia and also it was indicated that one of their next targets was going to be American Samoa where we had a Navy base.  Halfway in between Tarawa and the Naval base was a group of islands called the Ellice Islands.

So we went in there and landed there.  We had a full convoy, cruisers, destroyers and everything else to go in and secure that island and prevent the Japanese from advancing down further and making us their next stop on the way down to Samoa.

INTERVIEWER:   Specifically what was your job assignment?

FLOWERS:   At that time they found out that the outfit had a big crate of photographic supplies, but they didn't have a photographer.  They asked if anybody knew anything about photography and I thought well that’s a hell of a lot better than getting shot at so I volunteered and became the battalion photographer.  I ended up in the same place anyway. 

When we were in the Ellice Islands we were under complete security, no radios could be used, nothing at all because we didn't want the Japs to realize what was there.  We had a unit of Seabees with us.  They built a big new airstrip on the island.  Initially we had two old Navy float planes in our air force and then we got dive-bombers, F4S and so forth, formed a fighter group.

The Japs came down a couple times in recon planes.  We managed to down both of them with our fighter crew.  An interesting story if I can digress a little bit – Captain Bolen was one of the fighter pilots, they got this Jap Betty and he shot it down.  Out at the airfield when he landed, he got out of the plane and of course he was walking on clouds.  His first Jap kill and so forth and he described it to everybody about how he came on them and so forth.

His crew chief walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey Captain, I want to show you something”.  He took him over to the plane and there were a whole bunch of bullet holes all over the plane.  The captain looked up and said, “Why that SOB was shooting at me” (laughter) which we found hilarious. 

Anyway we set up an advance base there.  While we were there, there was a report out that Eddie Rickenbacher was missing and he took off from Hawaii presumably down to Australia to deliver some important information to the Army general.

INTERVIEWER:   Again for the sake of the tape, who was Eddie Rickenbacher?

FLOWERS:   Eddie Rickenbacher was a World War I ace, the only one we had from World War I.  He had the title after the war; he was very famous in the country.  I think it was American Airlines, his actual title was colonel, but he preferred to be called captain.  They reported he was missing and of course they didn't know where to look.  He was going from Hawaii to Australia.

Then one evening we got a call from one of our outposts.  We furnished radios to the natives on the outer islands to alert us on anything that they saw in the way of Jap planes or Navy coming down.  They wired us that a fellow had washed ashore that evening and identified himself as Captain Cherry who had been part of the Rickenbacher _____.  They had three little life rafts and they had just tied together and they had just gotten apart the day before. 

We sent a plane or a PT boat out, verified it.  The next day we started an all out search and we found Rickenbacher.  One man died out of the crew.  The colonel broke all the rules of warfare.  He wired headquarters that Rickenbacher was found.  When they found him, the planes couldn’t get him out of the water so one of the planes had the guy sitting on the pontoon and the wings and he was taxiing trying to taxi all the way back to the Ellice Islands.

They put up the searchlights and everything else.  They couldn’t get him in.  Anyway Rickenbacher was rescued with his entire crew.  There was just a big write up and so forth.  Then the Marine Corps magazine wrote about it.

INTERVIEWER:   Well, as a photographer, were you called down to take photographs?

FLOWERS:   Some of it, yeah.  But the thing is, during the war, it was only at the end of the war that we started to get recognition.  See down at Guadalcanal and all through those islands, the only photographers around were AP and UP and so forth, press people.  We didn't have anything else.  And the other interesting thing is like this Rickenbacher story; it had to get back right away so you didn't have time to process it or the means to process your film in the field.

So you had a caption sheet and you wrote down what each was and the film pack and it went back to Pearl Harbor where it was processed.  Then they decided what they were going to release to the various news media.  A good example of that system is Joe Rosenthal’s picture of …( the raising of the American flag over Mount Suribachi). he never knew what picture he took.  It was all processed and released.

Anyway shortly after we had everything up and running, they started the softening up process of Tarawa, Gilbert and Marshalls.  Part of that was the Navy and the other part of it was the 7th Air Force out of Hawaii.  The 7th Air Force had sent, brought a flight down to us in the Ellice Islands.  We would load them up with gas and bombs.  They would take off, go up and bomb Tarawa and the other islands up there, come back, grab their duffel bags, throw them in their planes and run like hell back to Hawaii.  Then we’d see a picture of them and they were pinning medals on each other.

On the other end, a day or so later at nighttime the Japs came down, knew where we were and bombed the hell out of us trying to get a hold of those bombers.  They were long gone.

INTERVIEWER:   Were they like bombers, twin-engine?

FLOWERS:   They were various twin-engine bombers.  I think we ran through seven bombings down there during that period of time.  Then just before the Tarawa invasion, everything was being set up, they decided they were going to completely soften it up so the 7th Air Force went in and bombed just about around the clock.  At daylight the Navy moved in with a carrier task force and bombed and dive bombed Tarawa.

They reported back because the island was sunk.  There was nothing left of it.  I had made friends with quite a few of the pilots because they all wanted pictures of their planes.  So I had made a deal with one of them, next time you come down you bring a bottle of good whiskey and your pictures will be ready.

Anyway I got one of the pilots there and I said, “I’d like to go for an airplane ride”.  He said after this big bombing, they were going to have a photo recon mission three days afterwards.  It’s what they call a milk run, no opposition or anything else.  He asked if I wanted to go along and I said I’d be right there.  So I got on board the plane and it was dark, it couldn’t be seen.

We took off and they asked me if I knew how to operate a 50-caliber.  I showed them I could operate a 50 loaded and so forth.  They said okay you can take the radioman’s gun and they said I wasn’t going to need it anyway.  Something in the Air Force rules, when they go in flights of three, if one turns back, the other two wingmen turn back also.  So we started with nine planes, only three of us made it up to Tarawa.  As we dropped down…

INTERVIEWER:   So this is Air Corps or this is Marines?

FLOWERS:   Army Air Force.

INTERVIEWER:   Army Air Corps in those days.

FLOWERS:   Yeah and as we dropped down and started on bombing run, I looked out and said, “Jesus Christ, there’s10 zeros over there” and there they were circling up.  The guy on the other side said, “Hell, there’s nine over here”.  So we made our bombing run and they were after us.  I had one ___ zero coming right dead at me and just laid on the triggers and all of a sudden; the zero had a big puff of black smoke, shuttered and fell down.

I started yelling, “I got him”.  The radioman was staying back and said, “No, just he just fired his 37mm at you”.  Anyway a short time later, seconds, the top turret gunner said he had one at 11:00 and between the two of us we caught him in the crossfire and he went down.  When I landed back at base, what saved us and our three planes was the Japs called them back because of another flight of Air Force planes from Christmas Island were coming in on a bombing run so the Japs called them back to meet them and saved us I guess.

When I got back to the base and landed, I had two MP’s waiting for me and they escorted me down to the colonel’s office and he asked what in the hell I thought I was doing.  I said there wasn’t supposed to be a battle.  So he told me to go back to my quarters until he decided what to do with me.  On the way I stopped and the pilot of the plane wrote me up a confirmation of an assist on shooting down a Jap plane.

A couple of days later down in the colonel’s office, I gave him the letter, showing an assist on a Jap plane and so forth.  It was Colonel Gordon, he said, “Flowers, I can’t let you get away with this.  If I do, every damn Marine on this island is going to be taking off”. 

INTERVIEWER:   What was the punishment? 

FLOWERS:   I lost a stripe. 

INTERVIEWER:   You went back to corporal?

FLOWERS:   Yeah, then after that I came back to the States for a short period of time.  Then I went over to Guam and get a pictorial story over there, where they were trying to get the Japs to surrender.  The island was in Marines’ hands and secure, but there were a lot of Japs holed up in the caves and so forth.  We had a report that Japs were in the cave and we had a team that went out.  One of them was an interpreter speaking Japanese, a rifle squad, demolition squad and a PA squad.  We set up the PA in front of the cave and asked the Japs to come out and surrender.  If they did, they didn't ever, but if they didn't the demolition people would shut the cave.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me take you back a minute.  You said that you had gone to the United States on a leave, on a furlough?

FLOWERS:   No, I got rotated back.  They let some of us come back. But usually once you’re out there, you never get back.  Johnny Basil____, the one who got the Medal of Honor, he came back shortly and went back out and was killed in Iwo Jima.  Most of the guys, once you’re out there, they’re not going to pay for you to go back to the States.

INTERVIEWER:   How long were you in the States at that time?

FLOWERS:   About four months. 

INTERVIEWER:   Did you get home?

FLOWERS:   Home and back out again. 

INTERVIEWER:   There was no further training involved?

FLOWERS:   No, I was a photographer at that point.

INTERVIEWER:   So we’re going to take you back.

FLOWERS:   I went over to Guam and I spent the rest of that part of time helping train some of the photographers.  We just got the new guys at Pearl.  At that point in time, we were able to send out teams of photographers instead of individuals.  When an operation came up that was to be covered, they’d send so many still men out, so many cameramen out.  It was a team and everything came back deferral for process.

We still did some individual jobs once in a while.  But combat, it was a team effort from then on.  I was in Pearl at the time when Japan surrendered.

INTERVIEWER:   This would be 1945.

FLOWERS:   Yes, they were getting ready to go in for the surrender ceremony and so forth so once again public affairs was getting a team together to go out and cover that.  I happened to be in the colonel’s office and mentioned that I’d like to go with that.  He said, “No, you’ve got your time and you’ll be getting out of here so you don’t have to go out”.  So I finally convinced him of the fact that there were going to be a lot of very important film that had to get back right away and it should be a photographer who goes along and brings all the stuff back to make sure it gets back alright.

He bought my story and we took a plane out to Okinawa where we boarded ship and went on up to Tokyo Bay. 

INTERVIEWER:   What kind of ship?

FLOWERS:   Well a destroyer initially, but we had transports there.  We landed with 22nd Marines who landed Yokosuka Naval base, which is the entrance to Tokyo Bay.  We were the first Marines who landed at Japan.  We landed there, secured it, checked all the shore guns and all that to make sure nothing would fire.

I can’t remember names, but anyway they rattled off the Jap admiral who was in charge of the naval base to come down and surrender the base to us.  He arrived in a Buick, on old Buick, but he walked home after surrendering the base.  We were the first ones in that area to land in Japan.  That just about sums it up unless you can think of any more questions.

INTERVIEWER:   Of all the experiences that you’ve had in the Marines, what did you learn from all of that?  What has it left you with?

FLOWERS:   Oh I don’t know.  I guess you learn to be self-sufficient, dependent on yourself, you know, get things done.  The Marine Corps itself naturally is a premier service and I always got the feeling the Marine Corps would do one of two things for you, it’ll make a man out of you or make a bum out of you.  It’s your decision, which way you’re going to go.

We had a few oddballs.  I guess every service has, but they either straightened up or else.  I’ve got some stories that I could tell you off the record about some of the experiences out there.

INTERVIEWER:   Like to hear them.

FLOWERS:   The one I’m thinking of I can’t really because it’s racial and I don’t want to get into any racial problems.  The Marine Corps up until World War II was an exclusive outfit.  Nobody could get in except white boys.  It was only during the war that they took colored into the Marine Corps.  This was through an act of Congress.  However, that was 1940.  It’s an entirely different world today. 

INTERVIEWER:   Well one of the beauties of this video tape is years and years from now somebody is going to be listening to this tape and hear you say that, which is going to have a greater impact than reading it in a textbook.  That’s the way it was in those days.

FLOWERS:   That’s the way it was in those days.  The colored were merely cooks, truck drivers, what have you.  There was an incident, when we were relieved out in the Ellice Islands, we were relieved by a colored battalion.  All of the enlisted people, the sergeant below were colored.  The officers were all white.  I don’t think it’s even in the records because they expunged it.  They relieved us and it was back area at that point in the war.  The colored troops objected, they wanted some of their own people to be in higher ranks and they did a sit-down strike.  As I say, it was way in the rear areas.  They wanted to be recognized for equality.  And it turned into a riot actually, military wise.  It didn't work out.

INTERVIEWER:   What year was that, sir?

FLOWERS:   That was ’43 or ’44.

INTERVIEWER:   You know, supporting what you’re saying, President Roosevelt’s biggest words, one of them, was that World War II would end up being a racial war with white versus Asians and the blacks what have you.  Those were sensitive times not always handled well, but that’s the way it was in those days.

FLOWERS:   That’s the way it was.  I remember going up to one of our supply depot areas where we had Negro troops who were doing stevedore work unloading ships and so forth.  It was a supply area getting ready for the Gilbert-Marshall campaigns.  I went up there to pick up some photographic material and a white corporal brought a colored private in and told the colonel that he was refused to work, he was sitting down.

The colonel took one look at us and said, “Well five days bread and water.  You’ll either be a Marine or you’ll be a dead Marine.  That’s it”.  That was the way things were in those days.

INTERVIEWER:   I’ll tell you what, if you’re going to fight a war, iron discipline is required.  You cannot have a long discussion with somebody about would you please go over there and do such and such.  You’re told go do it and you better do it.  By the way, tell me about a polar bear patch.

FLOWERS:   Well, when we arrived up in Iceland to help defend it.   The British had occupied Iceland for years all the time they’d been at war for the simple reason Iceland controlled the whole North Atlantic shipping lanes.  So the British had been stationed there for years and each of these British units had a polar bear on their insignia just like the Army had theirs and so forth.

When we arrived up there for duty, the British general in charge of British troops told our general that if the Marines would like to wear the polar bear, he would be glad to supply a polar bear for us to wear.  He accepted the offer and they issued polar bear patches from a British 79th division because each one of them had a different designed polar bear, each unit.

We were issued them, one for each shoulder.  General Markson wrote back to the commandant in Washington, D.C. telling him that the British had very generously offered the use of a polar bear and so forth the same as their troops and that he had accepted him.  Holcum was the commandant at that time.  He wrote back and said in effect the Marines do not wear patches on their soldiers, but since Markson had accepted them, he couldn’t do anything about it at this time, but when he got back to the States, he had to take them off.

So we all wore these polar bear patches while we were up there.  There were only about 2000 troops that ever had these polar bear patches.

INTERVIEWER:   I was going to say I never thought of the Marines as wearing a shoulder patch.

FLOWERS:   No, we never wore – believe it or not; we were the first ones since World War I to wear a patch.  In World War I they wore an Army patch where they were attached to, but we were the only ones that wore a patch then.  Then it caught on after the war started and then they started to have division patches and so forth, but there were only about 2000 of us that ever wore the polar bear patch.

INTERVIEWER:   Do you have one of those?

FLOWERS:   I have my originals, yes, but we are running, I don’t know what you really want to call it, a battle, but there’s all kinds of fakes, repros and so forth showing up on eBay.  None of them are original.  In the original Marine Corps publication, called Marines in Iceland, Northern Frontier, which shows the polar bear and it shows pictures of us wearing the polar bear, how we got it and everything else, full history of it.  None of these things that are being sold on eBay are real.

INTERVIEWER:   They’re all counterfeit.

FLOWERS:   They’re all counterfeit entirely.

INTERVIEWER:   I’ve got to check my geography.  As I remember the capital city of Iceland is Reykjavik.  Were you stationed in town or were you spread out?

FLOWERS:   We were spread out all around the area.  We were probably five miles out of town with an antiaircraft unit.

INTERVIEWER:   Were you sleeping under canvas?

FLOWERS:   No, the British had given us Quonset huts.  They were the ones that originated that idea of the Quonset hut.  They put some more up for us and that’s what we slept in.

INTERVIEWER:   And the Brits moved out, is that correct?

FLOWERS:   Well they kept a small detail there.  On Sunday morning, they used to have an after church parade in town and I went down to it and the British were there.  The remnants of the black watch, what was left of the Dunkirk evacuation.

INTERVIEWER:   How did the Icelanders treat you?

FLOWERS:   Fine, there was no problem.  As a matter of fact, I think all of us fell in love with an Icelandic blonde one time or another while we were there.  As a matter of fact, I had a steady girlfriend there.  I still remember ________ daughter.  The Icelandic names, they have one main name and then if you’re a daughter, it’s Sigreson’s daughter, that’s her name.  Now if it’s a son, it’s Sigreson’s son.  They use the same name for generations, just passed on down.

INTERVIEWER:   Were you ever ordered to do something that you thought was against your personal belief or ethic, morality?

FLOWERS:   In the Marine Corps, you didn't refuse, you did what you were told to do.  You may not like it, but you did it.  There was no such thing as questioning an order.

INTERVIEWER:   Off camera you were talking about Bill Rankin.  Tell us about that.

FLOWERS:   Well Bill Rankin and I went through boot camp at the same time at Parris Island.  When we went up to Iceland, Bill had a job working the PX and we had no PX except at the back of a truck.  Bill was one of the guys that used to come around in the truck selling shaving lotion and whatever he had in the PX… supplies… off his truck to the individual units because we were spread all over the island.

When we got back from Iceland, as a matter of fact, I have a picture of Bill on the back of a truck selling shaving lotion or something.  When we got back from Iceland, we were given 14 days leave or an opportunity to take some aptitude tests.  The majority of us, including myself, to get home was more important.  Bill was an orphan raised by his aunt in Pittsburgh and he didn't have anyplace to go so he went back to the base and took the test and so forth.

As I mentioned earlier we reorganized and went to the South Pacific.  All of a sudden while we were out there up in the Ellice Islands, an order came through promoting William H. Rankin to 1st lieutenant.  Bill at that point was a sergeant running the PX.  They sent back an inquiry about this William H. Rankin, his name being the same and had to take a test and it turned out Bill had been commissioned but never notified.  He went from PX sergeant to 1st lieutenant. 

Bill and I of course were very good friends all through it.  Then when I got out of the service, Bill was a captain stationed in Camp LeJeune in charge of a bunch of B-12 students.  We talked for a while and I was headed for the bus to go out and Bill told me he had applied for flight training even though he was a captain.  The next thing I really heard from Bill or about Bill was he wrote a book called I Rode the Thunder.

What had happened Bill was stationed here at Cherry Point and he was on flight training with one of his other pilots up to Rhode Island and back.  On the way back they were caught up in a big thunderstorm at Virginia Beach area.  Bill’s jet flamed out and he bailed out.  He bailed out in the eye of the storm.  His parachute opened and the thermo draft would take him up, float down, suck him back in and I think I forget it was two hours he went up and down in that updraft before he finally got on the ground pretty well beat up, but alive.

Then a couple of years later, I saw where Johnny Carson was in New York and he was having world record holders as guests and it so happened that Bill’s parachute jump is still in Guinness’ Book of World Records.

INTERVIEWER:   For the longest time (laughter).

FLOWERS:   For the longest time in parachute jumps.  I called up the station, they gave me his phone number, the hotel where he was staying.  Of course Bill called me up.  I was an advertising director of DeJour _____ Corporation at that time.  He called me up at the office and we chatted for a long time.  He never did get on the show, for some reason he got bumped.

The next time I heard about Bill was he was stationed near Cherry Point again.  He was a lieutenant colonel by that point.  He was making his pilots in his group get up before breakfast and do a two hour run every morning.  They didn't like it and they went to the general and told the general that this was against rules and regulations, they didn't have to do this and they didn't like it. 

When the general called Bill in and told him about it, Bill said, “The only reason I’m alive today is the physical fitness that I do”.  On the islands, he had barbells he used to work out with.  He said that was what kept him alive and he said, “I want my men to have a fighting chance to be alive so that’s why I’m making them do extra physical fitness”.  Bill said, “I’m going to continue to do it”.  So Bill got passed over twice for advancement commission and automatically retired.  Still trying to find him.

INTERVIEWER:   Jim, have you got children?

FLOWERS:   Yes, four.

INTERVIEWER:   Grandchildren?

FLOWERS:   Yes, about five now.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, look right into the camera.  I’d like you to talk to your grandchildren.  Would you leave them a message?  This is March 12 in the year 2003 and internationally things are very unstable.  You’ve been in a war.  You’ve lived an interesting life.  Tell your grandchildren what would you say about going to war.

FLOWERS:   Well going to war, actually when I enlisted I didn't expect to go to war.  War happened while I was there, but once it happens you don’t have much choice except to do what you have to do.  I feel that America has always been on the right side and pursued the right side to make things right with everybody. 

But to be perfectly honest with you, I really have questions in my mind on what’s going on right now with Iraq.  Even though you read about all of it, pros and cons and so forth, it still raises the big question, are we doing what we should be doing or are there other means to isolate those people or whatever you want to do rather than go for an all out war.

In my mind, it’s not going to be much of a war for the simple reason that the Iraqi’s do not have the training, knowledge and equipment to put up against the United States.  With our equipment, what should I say, if we had the equipment back in World War II than the Marines and so forth have now, the war would have been over in a couple of months, not years like it was fighting it the old way. 

I’m a little leery really of the position right now of the United States, do it, but do it and get it over with.  I don’t know if there will ever be an end to wars of some kind. 

INTERVIEWER:   Thank you Sergeant Flowers.