INTERVIEW NEIL H. MCNEILL
Transcript Number 053

Today the UNCW Library is interviewing Hector McNeill of Whiteville March 7, 2001. My name is Ray Wyche with Paul Zarbock. Hector served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Navy corpsman. He saw action on Iwo Jima and Okinawa during World War II in the Pacific. 

MCNEILL: Well I went in the service in 1943. I was 17 years old. I would have been 18 on the 3rd of September so I went in a few months early. Had to have the permission of my mother and father to go in the service. I already had two brothers in service overseas. I went to Raleigh to join the Marine Corps and I was turned down by the Marine Corps because my left eye was a little weak. Didn't wear glasses, but they said I would have problems qualifying on the rifle range so they told me to come back home, take some vitamins and this kind of thing and come back and they would examine me again.

Well being young and not too smart, I just walked across the hall and joined the Navy which ended up with the Marines anyway, qualified at Camp LeJeune with all the weapons except the BAR. We trained there for field medical training and advanced infantry training. 

From there I went to Camp Pendleton, California which is right up above San Diego. Camp Pendleton and Oceanside, California and we did more training there with the medical part and with the training with the Marines. We were sent up to San Luis Obispo for a few weeks to train with the Army and then we went...from there we went to San Francisco. Went across the country on a train. Went to board a ship in San Francisco, I think it was Wilmington, California, a new transport. From there we went over to Hawaii and trained, more training in amphibious operations in Maui. 

PAUL: What year was this?

MCNEILL: 1943 and the first part of '44. And we left Hawaii and from there we went to Saipan. They were about to secure Saipan on the land and we went from there, I think it was a four day trip up to Iwo Jima. Like I said we did a lot of training either in Hawaii, mainly in Maui which is not too far off. By that time, we were pretty well trained. I'd have to say they gave us a lot of good training. 

We made operations going down cargo nets, APA's, getting in the landing craft, going ashore, coming back, get wet in the meantime every day. But we perfected that pretty good, as good as you can do it. So I had good training. And then of course we went into combat at Iwo Jima.

I went ashore on an LCBP which is a Higgins boat, the advanc first couple of waves were amtracs, LBTs so we, they left the first wave or two get in. The general that was in charge of operations at Iwo Jima did not believe in wasting a lot of people. He said let them get on the beach and then annihilate them there. And he tried that.

PAUL: What time of day did the attack take place?

MCNEILL: Right at 9:00, maybe a few minutes, 9:00 in the morning.

PAUL: But they got you up, fed you chow.

MCNEILL: They got us before day and fed us, what we think of later, as the last meal because they gave us steak and eggs for breakfast and they never did that before. And of course, we made all these practice landings for months and the only time I really realized this was the real thing whenever the P.A. system on the ship, Captain came on and said when all the landing craft had departed or embarked, prepare to take on casualties. That's when I knew it was the real thing. Of course, there was a lot of praying going on in that landing craft and I distinctly remember one guy from Arkansas started singing some kind of country song. The Captain said it was not singing time, it was praying time. Knock it off. 

PAUL: How many men on a boat? 

MCNEILL: I believe it was about 20 if I remember right. About 20, there was a coxswain on the boat that ran the boat and there was a machinist mate and a couple more guys to handle the ramp you know and they also had machine guns on there and they were plywood landing craft. 

PAUL: Were you the only medic on board that particular boat?

MCNEILL: Probably not. I don't recall, I think there was another one.

PAUL: And you were carrying a weapon?

RAY: What did you have Hector, a 45 or carbine.

MCNEILL: Carbine there, I had a 45 at Okinawa. We were trained in all of them except the automatic rifles, we were not trained in that.

RAY: And you had your, you did not have your brassard and your crosses?

MCNEILL: I never saw one, I was never issued one and never saw one. At the first of the war, in Guadalcanal, they may have tried that and the Japanese thought that was a prime target. They wanted to get the corpsmen, they wanted to get the radio operator and they wanted to get the platoon leader or squad leader. Preferably get the corpsmen and break the morale down and they would rather wound the corpsman than to kill him because if they wounded him, they're going to have to get out there to take care of him and they could get a few more. They had it all planned out. They paid no attention to the Geneva Convention. They never even signed the Geneva Convention. Of course, in Germany they did, but I don't know how much protection they gave the medics, the combat medics. 

RAY: How deep was the water when you came off down that ramp?

MCNEILL: Well he got us up on the beach pretty good. I suspect there was enough water, at that time, the sea was calm, reasonably calm that particular day. It got rough later, but it was you know, enough it would make it on the bank with the LCBP, to get the LSTs and that type of thing up on the beach and get them back off. But the big thing was there wasn't a lot of flat beach so it went for a few feet, and then it went maybe up 8, 9 feet. I guess you could call it like a terrace row or something like that, but anyway it was where the sea had washed out the bank there so you had some degree of protection right behind that. And so I wanted to stay there frankly. 

The first person I saw, that I thought had been hit, was the Navy frogmen. We call them UDTs, the Seals you know. He was laying there with his bathing trunks on and that was all. I thought, he was backed up against that wall and I thought he had been hit and blew his clothes off or something. I wanted to stay there with him (laughter). I ran over there and asked him where he was hit, he told me to get out of there, he was a Navy frogman and he didn't need any help, was nothing wrong with him. By that time, they started hollering to go over that ridge. I didn't want to go over there at all. But you know, everybody was pretty scared you know. Some people more than others. I think it totaled in that operation about 2000 combat fatigue cases that had to be evacuated. Some of them sent back two to three days later, some of them still haven't gotten over it. 

RAY: That was 2000 wounded men?

MCNEILL: Well 2000 that were taken out of action, right. We had the 5th division and the 3rd and 4th division and the 5th and the 4th division went ashore the first day. The 3rd division came into the reserve, but they got in some of the worst part of it because if you went down there on the north end of the island, it got worse. But the 5th division and the regiment I was attached to was right at the base of the volcano, right at the base of it, green beach 1. 

So the beach was under fire, not, I mean I wasn't at Normandy, but from what I read about Normandy, it was like after the first day, the beach was fairly secured. They were still firing on that beach up there for 5-6 days, especially at night, artillery. They had naval guns up there, 8" guns, plus they could shoot down at you. And when it took the volcano, I thought it was all over with, but it just really got started good. And so we had, I don't know how many men they put ashore...they put over 30,000 men I believe ashore the first day. And they put the 3rd division in, I don't know, two, three days it started raining the second day we were there and I think it rained pretty much for the next 2-3 days. I don't really remember. A lot of things I don't remember about it. But I know it was raining cold, I remember that.

We were told when we started to go in that it was a three day operation, 72 hours we'd be back on that ship. I never really decided whether they told us that on purpose or didn't know any better or just told us that not to keep us anymore afraid, but whatever, they were wrong. General Smith thought that was stupid to say that to begin with because he said it's not going to be that easy. He was overall marine, he was the highest marine officer around there, H. M. Smith. You probably heard of him. He knew more about it than anybody.

Incidentally, they bombed Iwo Jima, I hope my numbers are about right, about 72 days from Saipan and Tinian with bombing around the clock. At the end of that bombing, they were dug in. They were not only on the island, they were in it. And there were more physicians there later than there was to start with when they first started the bombing. Then the Navy moved up there in about 72 hours and I think it was maybe three to four battleships and we ended up with seven battleships and they pounded it with rockets and of course big 16 inch shells and there was virtually no way to penetrate all that stuff unless it made a direct hit. 

So we only had three days of bombardment from the battleships and General Smith wanted more than that, he wanted like five or six days, but General McArthur would not release the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Incidentally, that operation was put off, and there again I'm not sure of the exact dates, that operation was supposed to be in November of '44. They moved it up to a later date and then they moved it to January of '45 and then to February of '45. All that time it was put off because he wouldn't release the fleet down there. Just gave them that much more time to prepare because Iwo Jima was a sulphur island and he had caves all over the place. I mean there was like 19 miles of caves up there. Of course, we didn't know about all that. Most of that I read about since then.

Some of those caves were three tiers, three high so they were just like ants in there. They could move around and you'd tear up one position and they'd just fall back to another one. Had to burn them, Marines just had to use flame-throwers, whatever they could use. But they would not give up. They just would not surrender. There were approximately 22,000 Japanese, part of the army, part of them navy. The naval guns were manned by naval people. Out of 22,000, you'll see figures of 800 prisoners or 600 or 1000, 169 prisoners is all I think was accurate. That's my opinion and they were all wounded. They just wouldn't give up.

PAUL: How did you get the wounded off the field back to the beach and on to a ship?

MCNEILL: Well once the corpsman got to them, he did what he could do which was if he was on the line, he would, if they had a head wound, he would give them some morphine if he was hurt bad enough. Because I can give him morphine if he had a head wound and they would try to stop the bleeding and usually give him a little, about a 3 ounce bottle of brandy and that was, stimulated him some. They would call immediately for litter bearers. 

Incidentally in most cases the litter bearers were marine bandsmen who were converted into litter bearers. That was a very dangerous job. You get them back down to the company aid station and then they'd send them down to battalion, back off via transport converted to a hospital ship or a hospital ship.

RAY: Who was the nearest doctor position that you would send them to? Was that a battalion?

MCNEILL: No that was a company.

RAY: A company had a physician.

MCNEILL: Some of the moderate wounds, they would send right back to the line. I had a friend who was hit the first day up there and they sent them out. They spent two nights on the hospital ship, send him back in and got hit the next day. Injured twice. The first day each time, he would keep getting hit.

PAUL: A lot of people have asked, if you got a slight wound, would you get a purple heart?

MCNEILL: Well I don't know what you mean by slight wound. That could be cutting your hand on a K-ration.

PAUL: (Laughter) That's right. But who would, where in this process, who said this is a wounded person and therefore should be awarded the purple heart? Who did that?

MCNEILL: I was kidding about the cutting the finger on a can, but if you were wounded with shrapnel and most of our wounds were from shrapnel as opposed to gunshot wounds. A lot of people with gunshot wounds or machine gun or what we called second chest wounds where the chest was blown up, you see when you got back to the aid station, they started giving plasma and at one time I was at the company aid station and we gave plasma and there was whole blood used up there, which was the first during World War II that I know of in the Pacific. But they were evacuating and the bad part is that for about the 2nd and 3rd day, it got real rough, I think the 3rd day. We couldn't even use the beach. So they were just down there on the beach on stretchers and they were still firing. Well many, many people were killed, wounded people were killed down there. I think that was one of the hardest things I saw because you couldn't get them off the beach. You couldn't get them off. 

And then the dead that were killed there, there were so many the first day, 2500 casualties the first day and a total of 6,821 killed during the operation. The operation lasted what? 32 - 34, well they declared it secure and we still lost people after that. I don't know where they got the secure part from, but anyway.

That way, we lost so many men, we couldn't even get a place to bury them there for days. That was the terrible part of it. No where to go, no where to take them. I guess all and all, I was a mighty lucky man. Well anybody came home from there was mighty lucky. 

Very, very lucky because we had some companies up there with like 240-247 people, come off of there with 30, 30 people walked off and the rest of them were casualties, killed. The statistics were not very good particularly with the 28th Marines and the 26th Marines and then of course later on the 3rd and 4th division, some of them suffered terrible casualties, just terrible. Percentage wise, we had, I think if I'm correct, we had 28 battalion commanders, 3 divisions and each division had 3 regiments, I think out of 27 battalion commanders, 17 of them got taken out, either wounded or killed. That's really high, lieutenant colonel or above.

RAY: These three divisions that went in, 3rd, 4th and 5th, were they ever reinforced?

MCNEILL: The 3rd division was reinforced. General Smith held them back hoping he would never have to use them. There were companies up there in the 3rd and 4th that had over 100% casualties because of the replacements you know. Send in replacements and they were the first ones that got hit because they were the most inexperienced. I felt like I was really fortunate to be in a group that had so many experienced, about 40% were experienced combat people. They had been with the Marine Raiders and some of the men were marine paratroopers and some of them had been with the 3rd and 4th division whatever. We had a lot of experienced people. They were the ones I tried to listen to. 

I was surprised that there was that much resistance because after all that bombing, you think there can't be much left, but there was. I don't think that you can destroy a whole lot up there and I'm not sure if it was the Air Force or the Navy, but they were doing what they had to do. It just was not effective. That general up there, he didn't believe in sacrificing his men. He wanted them to, well he had a standing rule up there that they were not supposed to die until they had taken 10 American lives.

PAUL: You mean the Japanese general?

MCNEILL: Yes. To surrender was the worst thing you could ever do and that was out, there was no question about that. You were supposed to just not do that and they pretty well stuck to it. I don't think particularly because they wanted to, it's just the way it was. There were no rules and they also used white phosphorus which was supposed to be against the Geneva Convention.

This picture was given to me by Major General Oscar Peatros who died a few years back and it was a copy off of the original negative and it has a number on it, an official Marine Corps photograph signed by a lot of people, some of which I knew and I was just looking at it a while ago. I think I recognize and many more I'm sure are still living, but I only know about three that are still living. General Peatros died a few years back. This was signed back in Hilo at (Camp ?)at Hilo, Hawaii after that battle, most of these were officers. The main thing is I would like to make a point of the fact that there's been so many misstatements and misunderstandings about the picture. It really irritates me. The first flag that went up there came off of the ship I went up there on, U.S.S. Missoula and all these guys that put the flag up were on that same ship, the 28th Marine, 2nd Battalion. Well they put the flag up there. Colonel Johnson ordered that flag to be put up there when they took that hill and that mountain was 551 or 2 feet high and they put it up and took a picture of it and you couldn't see it. He wanted everybody out there on the ships and on the whole island to see it so he ordered another flag. This flag came off an LST that incidentally came off of a ship at Pearl Harbor and it's in the Marine Museum. Both flags are in the Marine Corps Museum in Washington. 

Whenever Joe Rosenthal, who was with the Associated Press, the photographer, went up, he was not up there at the first picture. He went up, he really accidentally took this picture and then later on, nobody thought the picture would be famous and later on he was asked if the picture was posed. Well he did take a picture right after that which was sort of a victory pose and he says yes. Well he thought they were talking about that picture. He didn't even know about this picture. 

He hadn't even seen this picture at the time and so they took off with the posed picture and Time Magazine came out and reported it as a posed picture. Well General Roosevelt could never get it straight. They made a retraction on it later, but they didn't talk to the people that knew. They just talked to somebody that thought they knew about it and it's always been sort of a thing again that I have about this thing because it was such a misunderstanding. It was not a posed picture. Had it been a posed, he would have known who was in that picture. 

General Peatros is the man who identified most of them and they even made one mistake and had to come back to correct it. But you don't see but one man's face there and that's John Bradley who was a corpsman and the one that they wrote the book about recently, Flags of our Fathers. He would have identified those people. They didn't know who they were for a long time. Like I said, they made one mistake and had to go back and correct it, but that's always been sort of a thorn in my side because even today some people say, oh yeah, it was a posed picture. Well it was not a posed picture. In fact, nobody that saw it thought there would be anything historical about it. It was just really letting us know that we had taken that hill. But you know how things get turned around the wrong way sometimes. I personally resent people calling it a posed picture because I know for a fact it wasn't. Colonel Johnson, he wanted that first flag and he sent one of these guys on that picture there, Rene Gagdon, he sent him up there to bring it back, but it's in the museum like I say.

PAUL: What was the name of the mountain or the hill?

MCNEILL: Suribachi.

PAUL: And where were you when they were raising this flag?

MCNEILL: Right down at the base of the thing. I could barely see it. All I could see was the top of the flag really. I could see a little bit. I mean there was nothing particular exciting about it because all it meant to us was that we had taken that hill, you know. I never thought it would be a famous picture.

PAUL: Was that hill honeycombed with caves?

MCNEILL: It was just surrounded, the whole thing was. Well that's the way, they were firing on us for three days. We were more or less caught between that and the other hill on the other end which is not that high and they were firing and we were sort of in the middle.

RAY: When you were at the base of Suribachi and they were raising the flag, were you just on duty? Were you treating anybody?

MCNEILL: Oh yeah, we were with casualties the whole time up there. Never a day went by, but like I say, it was just totally underestimated what it would take to do it and had we not been able to get some supplies in there on about the 4th day, the 3rd or 4th day, it got too rough and we would have just been without any food or ammunition or anything or medical supplies. Until the anesthesia started getting in there, we got a lot of supplies.

RAY: So you were short of medical supplies and ammo.

MCNEILL: We never did run out of medical supplies. We had to go back down there and get them a lot, but I never remember, but as far as food, I don't recall...we had K-rations to start with and we had some C-rations later on and then we had some 10 in 1 rations. That was like going after Sunday dinner (laughter), but I don't recall any of that.

RAY: How long did you go without a hot meal?

MCNEILL: The Army came in there later and had a field kitchen, but that was on the other end of the island later on. I don't think the Marine Corps ever owned a field kitchen. If it did, I never saw one (laughter).

RAY: How many days did you spend on the island?

MCNEILL: Nine days, nine nights. Now we....

RAY: And you never got a hot meal in those times?

MCNEILL: No. You had little cans of sterno you could heat some of that stuff, but like I say, I was so tired, exhausted most of us were. Just don't remember things like that, incidental things. I don't ever remember even leaving, but anyway it was a different operation that Okinawa. Okinawa is what I call Big Land operation. It was like many more men involved and much more land and inland type fighting, bad, real bad. Then you had so many men involved. Iwo Jima was only 8 square miles and I have been told by somebody, I forgot who, that it would be about half the size or less of Lake Waccamaw. Eight square miles is not very much and on the end we were on, next to the volcano, was about 800 yards or something like that across there is all it was. The Third Battalion went across there the first day. Boy from over here in Fair Bluff, a friend of mine was in that and he went across there and they let him go over there and they just opened up on him.

The rumor got out, I think it was the second night up there that we had fired so many shells into that volcano that it was going to erupt and anybody that's ever been around a situation like that knows how the rumors would fly. Mike Byrd, he's still looking for the guy that started that rumor (laughter). He lasted all through that and he was going to get killed with molten lava. We had no way of knowing, we knew it was a volcano, but nobody ever told us whether it was active or not. They don't tell you a whole lot you know. They want to keep you guessing.

RAY: Okinawa is the one where they would let you get on the beach with no problem.

MCNEILL: They moved in and built the defenses inland. I'm not taking anything away from Okinawa. They lost more people there than they did in Iwo Jima, but there were a lot more people involved and a lot more land. We lost, killed at Iwo Jima 6,821 men and about 20,000 very seriously wounded.

RAY: When did you go ashore at Okinawa?

MCNEILL: I think it was D plus 3 or 4, I don't really remember. This has been over 50 some years ago you know.

PAUL: As if life weren't tough enough, along comes a typhoon, is that right?

MCNEILL: That was later. There was a typhoon at sea and one on land and the sea is definitely where you don't want to be. I'll take one of the crypts that we stayed in 3 to 1 over that. We just stayed at the side of the mountain and we didn't have enough sense to know if there had been a mud slide, it would bury us all right there. There were 171 mile an hour winds up there and then a tidal wave. We were in the mountains.

RAY: In Okinawa?

MCNEILL: Yeah.

RAY: So you were in the mountains when it hit?

MCNEILL: Yeah and I was at sea for the one before that.

RAY: What size ship were you on?

MCNEILL: Was on an APA assault transport, about 450 foot ship. Washed all the anticraft overboard. We got to Okinawa and back down to the Philippines, met my brother John at Ulithi. Spent the night with him. He was a naval officer and they had an air raid while I was over there watching a movie. Then I went down, we had gone from Iwo Jima back down to Guam. The ship I went on got hit the night, got on it one morning and it got hit that night. But it wasn't real bad. Nobody got hurt, but it knocked out one of the evaporators on the ship that evaporated fresh water from salt water. And it was kind of a rough trip across the Equator on that ship. 

Went down to the Philippines. Anyway went down to practice for the homeland invasion.

RAY: In the Philippines.

MCNEILL: Yeah, we were down there and worked with the Army a lot and if I remember correctly, the first cavalry division, the Americal division and there was one more I don't remember, the 70th or something, but we were going to the Homeland and when they dropped the bomb, oh boy, needless to say we were very happy. I thought Harry Truman must have been the greatest president we ever had because of that because he had nerve enough to do it. 

People even today criticize him for that, but I can tell people that if it hadn't been for dropping that bomb, I probably wouldn't be here talking to you. Plus many many soldiers that had been to Europe were heading that way and I have read some things about it and they were a long ways from being defeated. They were going to sink that fleet going up there. We were supposed to go to Kyushu which was a lower island and they estimated later that the casualties there were half a million. There were a lot of people involved.

RAY: So it was even playing out exactly where you were going ashore.

MCNEILL: Oh we knew where we were going. The only time we really knew in advance where we were going and they had the beaches named, but dropping the bomb saved more Japanese lives that it saved American lives because they were just going to fight until the very end. That's all there was to it. That's just the way their teaching is from childhood I guess back then. To die for the emperor was to live forever. I did know the Japanese word for that, but I forgot it. 

But that's about it, I went back to Okinawa and stayed there and I came home from Okinawa later on.

RAY: When did you get home?

MCNEILL: Well I didn't get home when I should have because I had enough points, but I was not married. Of course the married guys got some extra points and then I got stuck down there in Okinawa on independent duty at a radar station and I couldn't get relieved. I'd go down there and finally get on an aircraft carrier to come home, 7 or 8 days back to the States and by the time I got on there, the guy says we got too many, 100 or 200 too many. I had to get off, wait another 2-3 weeks. Got on a cargo ship and it took 31 days. We saw land about 15 minutes in 31 days. On the transports, we were just crammed in there, you know. Never sat down for a meal the whole time I was on the ship, never sat down, had to stand up.

You asked me one time about coming through Whiteville on a troop train. I came through Whiteville on a troop train, I don't remember what month it was. It was in the spring, I guess of '44, yeah. We got to Wilmington, saw this beautiful Pullman sitting up there and well we were going to ride in style. They backed out there and backed cattle cars in there, nothing but box cars with bunks in them and you could walk in between the cars and we had a cook car on there. I think 6 or 7 of those and they bunked 3 or 4 high, maybe one or two windows on each side. Most times they kept the doors open. It was just a regular box car. 

On the back end of the passenger train, we came through Hallsboro, then we came through Lake Waccamaw and I saw a girl that I knew in high school, Elizabeth High, and she was putting a letter off and I said, "Call my momma and daddy and tell them I'm coming through town". My daddy's drug store was only half a block away. So I stopped in Hallsboro and saw Mr. Cook who worked at the Pearson Co. and hollered at him and said, "Call my momma and daddy". You really weren't supposed to do that, but I did. When I got to Whiteville, my mother and daddy were standing over there by the railroad depot, which thankfully they're going to restore because it brings back a lot of memories to me. There was my mother and daddy over there and so I asked the sergeant if I could get off and speak to my mother and daddy and he said yeah, yes boy you can get right off. He said "where do you live, how far from here". I said it was about five blocks. He said well go on and eat supper with your mother and daddy. I said I can't do that, the train will be leaving. He said oh we'll hold the train. And I didn't believe it at the time, but when I got to California I believed they would have done that.

Anyway I said I might as well go and get it over with you know so I'm going to have to leave anyway so I said I'm going to tell them goodbye. He said you go over there son and you tell them goodbye because you're never going to see them again and they're never going to see you again. Really encouraging. For some reason, it didn't bother me a bit as far as....I was young. I guess it just didn't affect me like it would later on. 

So it took us nine days to go to California. I got one shower. I don't recommend cattle cars for travel. So that's the most I guess, you never can remember all these things, but you do the best you can.

RAY: Well Hector were you ever wounded?

MCNEILL: No, I was not wounded. I lost the hearing in my left ear from a concussion. I lost my hearing in both ears, but it came back and the left ear never has been how it should be, but I was might lucky to come out like that. And somebody asked me later on, did you report this to the Corps and I said I was the corps (laughter), and they said why didn't you report it to the doctor, I said look when that hearing come back up, I said I walk up to the doctor and said look I can't hear, you know you got people laying around with arms and legs blown off and I'm telling him I can't hear (laughter). I can't tell you what they probably tell me. Anyway not too many people, nobody came off completely unscathed you might say. 

Lost an awful lot of friends up there. Some of them I really believe had a premonition of what was going to happen. One fella from outside Kansas City told me the night before, he said, "I'll never come off of there". He was the first man I saw get killed. But I don't know. My friend Jack Lucas. He got jumped on with two hand grenades. The doctor said he could never figure out why he lived, just wasn't his time to go and the doctor said he was too young and too mean (laughter) to die. He's a good friend of mine. He's a Medal of Honor recipient. He's a very good friend of mine.

You have any questions, I'll try to answer them the best I can. I've about run out of memories here.

RAY: Hector you said most of the people you treated were wounded by shrapnel, but there were gunshot...

MCNEILL: Oh yeah, there was some of everything.

RAY: You don't remember the first man you treated, do you in combat?

MCNEILL: No, just all over the place.

RAY: It was very hectic. 

MCNEILL: If we gave them morphine, we put an "M", had a little marker so they wouldn't give it to them again. It was just fast and furious and total confusion. Well I tell people, there's no way to describe that situation unless you've been there. One thing I notice and I've talked to a lot of other people that have been in combat, they pretty well agree with me. You cannot train a man, you can't look at him physically and he's big and tough and strong and mean, whatever; that don't necessarily mean he's going to hold up in combat. That doesn't mean one thing when it comes to that. And then a guy that looks like he can't get out of a wet paper bag will make the best infantryman. Always wondered why they made the BAR man the smallest man in the bunch and it was because he was he smallest target (laughter), try to figure that out . No you can't figure that. 

The main thing I want to emphasize to get over the public is that the fact that as you know, most World War II veterans, we're losing over 1000 a day, and that the young people, it's not their fault, they haven't been taught history. They'll teach history up to the War between the States, or the Civil War, but they stop about then and they don't go into World War II, even much of World War I. I just want the young people to know that every privilege they have today, everything they have, not just the young ones, but t he other people, was paid for by some boy's blood. The heroes are the ones that died. They gave their future so people today could have a future. That's my main point.