Interview of Curtis Scaggs
Transcript Number 042

AUGUST 2, 2000

INTERVIEWER: Where were you when you entered the service?

SCAGGS: I was ordered to report for a physical. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee and I came to Louisville, Kentucky and was examined and from there, I went back to my home to be drafted. Eight months later, they called me into the service.

INTERVIEWER: What date was that?

SCAGGS: I'd have to look at the papers before I could give you the date.

INTERVIEWER: What year was it?

SCAGGS: '43 I believe.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, when you got drafted, well what were you doing on December 7, 1941? Do you remember?

SCAGGS: Yes, I was working for ______ Fence Company, a division of U.S. Steel as an erection foreman and I was traveling from town to town. Probably wouldn't stay over a week in one place and that is one reason I had trouble with the draft board. They wanted me exempt from draft and they'd send them a letter and send me a letter and would say why I shouldn't be taken and finally I just told them that I had come to be called. They were bothering me from going from one place to another, you see, all the time so I come ready to report in.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, what branch of service did you enter?

SCAGGS: Well I went to Fort Bliss, Washington in the MPEG. They called in escort guards and I finished my basic training there and sometime later, I went to right out of Jackson, Mississippi, a little prisoner of war camp and stayed there for approximately a year. Then they called all able bodied men to combat outfits and I went to Fort Bliss, Washington and took medical training, basic training there.

They got what they needed for the Pacific and they sent me back to Camp Borden, Georgia, to take infantry training. I took the training there and from there I went overseas.

INTERVIEWER: What outfit did you go overseas with?

SCAGGS: I went over as a replacement and I went into the 78th infantry division when I got overseas, 310th battalion.

INTERVIEWER: Where did you go, to England?

SCAGGS: No, I went to LeHavre, landed in LeHavre. We got on a truck. We stayed there, I think, one night in LeHavre and we went on to Achen, Germany.

INTERVIEWER: What month, or rather what month and what year did you get to LeHavre? If I recall from the book, it was October 1944.

SCAGGS: Yeah, I can't remember. On my separation papers, it's got all that. Date of arrival, it says March 18, '45.

INTERVIEWER: In LeHavre?

SCAGGS: That's the date of arrival. Of course I stayed there until I think it was April of '46 before I was discharged. I went into combat in the rural pocket, that's where I did what combat I did, was in...when they cleaned that pocket out right after the Battle of the Bulge. I went over into _____Siechburg across the _____Sieke River, stayed in a holding position there.

Our company commander came around and says...about a week later, "Would you like to go back to Belgium to a rest camp?" I said, "Captain, I have only been here about a week and I'm ashamed to even leave now." He said, "Don't be ashamed, I'm going". And two or three days later as we got there, we jumped off in the rural pocket. That was our objective, part of our objective, and the first shell came in and killed my company commander, Captain Bonnard, it's in the book there. That's where we went through there until we wound up in ???, Germany. We finished up combat.

Then we guarded prisoners and done different things until May 8, the war was over, you see. I was in, I got two battle stars. 

INTERVIEWER: Okay, what happened after the war ended in Europe?

SCAGGS: Well I stayed in the Army of occupation, I stayed about four or five months just around the countryside in Germany. Then they sent me to Berlin and I stayed there about six months. That's where I left from whenever I was discharged. Was from Berlin.

INTERVIEWER: So we're talking about sometime in 1946 then, right?

SCAGGS: Right, in April of '46. 

INTERVIEWER: Then what happened to you after that, after you got out of Berlin?

SCAGGS: Well they mustered me out and sent me to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, is where I was discharged from. And from there, they gave me enough money to ride a bus home and that was the end of my service.

INTERVIEWER: What did you do after the war, Curtis?

SCAGGS: I went back to my old job. I was working for A.C. March Leather Company in Ashland, Kentucky, and I went back there and worked until I got in about 13 years before I quit that job and went and got me another job. I worked for General American Transportation Company out of Chicago, East Chicago, Indiana, for about 18 years.

INTERVIEWER: Did you take advantage of the GI Bill at all?

SCAGGS: The only thing I did, I started out and tried to do some electronic studies and the job I had was so hard, I just wasn't able to keep up with it. I started it and just dropped it, you know. The only thing, the only benefit I have had from the GI thing was now I am getting some medication from the VA Hospital. I've got a lot of medical problems and they're furnishing a little medication.

INTERVIEWER: Did they take care of all of it?

SCAGGS: Well what they have. They don't have all of the medicines. It cost me $2.00 for a prescription for the medicines for 30 days. 

INTERVIEWER: Tell us about your family.

SCAGGS: Well I'm the oldest of 10 children and we all survived up until about 20-25 years ago. My father and mother, all of us were living and I had two brothers in the service at that time. One was in the Marines and one was in the Army in the medical corps. I think he was attached to an infantry regiment and he did some time in Germany. After they got through the war over there, they sent him to Japan, but we all survived the war, all three of us. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any children?

SCAGGS: I don't have any.

INTERVIEWER: And so where did you retire, how long has it been since you retired?

SCAGGS: Well I've been retired about 18 years. I retired when I was 65 years old and I'll be 83 this fall. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you have anything else to add to this?

SCAGGS: Well the only thing that I've got to add about the war, I had no fears of going and I didn't refuse to go. The company tried to keep me back you know, but I didn't refuse to go. You know, no one wants to go to war, but I thought it took...I didn't worry about being killed or anything like that until I got over there. Then I had some doubts because I was right up on the front on foot you see. We had quite a bit of losses for the short time I was with them. This book shows you a lot of losses of lives that we had. But I was married and I wanted to get home and start my life.

INTERVIEWER: Did you always live in Kentucky after that?

SCAGGS: No, I lived in Kentucky 20 years after that and the company I was working for transferred me to Pennsylvania and I stayed there 15 years.

INTERVIEWER: Whereabouts in Pennsylvania?

SCAGGS: Sharon, about 18 miles on east of Ohio, 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. 

INTERVIEWER: I guess one of the questions that's apropos to what's going on in the world today and what advice would you give to future young Americans considering what you've seen in this country and what you've lived through?

SCAGGS: Well I think it's worthwhile. It gives you a sense of pride that you have served your country even though it's hard. I think today that young people are going to be a lot safer in a conflict that we were if they don't go into an atomic thing. As far as the technology and everything they have now, I think that they'll, it'll be a lot easier and quicker to get over with than what we had. We had about three or four years of nothing but war there you see.

At times, it looked like we might even lose. If I remember the news, they tried to kind of cover it up a little bit, you know, but there were times there that we were in bad shape. I don't think that the soldiers ever lost faith. I think that they did what they thought they were supposed to. And I think every young person should, if he's called on to serve his country and take the chance on surviving and coming back to a better place because if you don't protect it, you're not going to have it someday. 

INTERVIEWER: In your service in Europe after you got over there, do you have any stories or any tales that you remember more than anything else about what happened to you?

SCAGGS: Well in combat, I had some, a couple of things that stayed with me all these years. I didn't have any friends. It was very lonely for me because I went over as a replacement. I didn't know anyone you see. Well when I went back to that rest camp, they called it Jayhawk Rest Camp in Belgium, I met a young man and we spent time together while I was over there just sightseeing. And he was the only man that I really knew. And we come into a situation one evening and we run into opposition. They sent a squad down to a roadblock and the mortar came in and killed some of them and wounded several.

I carried one back with both feet, legs shot off. Gave him some morphine in his stomach and sent him back and I never did know what happened to him. Put him on a jeep and sent him back to the rear and that's one instance I remember and on that night, we was on guard and they wake me up about 2:00 in the morning and I had misplaced my weapon. It was dark and all the excitement of people getting hit, you know, and I couldn't find anything but an old 45 pistol.

They put me out on guard. Well I laid down by the side of the road and 30 minutes later, I heard the hard shoes that the Germans wore hit the blacktop and I heard a voice challenging which he shouldn't have done. I recognized the voice and they opened fire. I didn't know they were there and when they opened fire, they killed the boy that I knew and they shot the other one in the shoulder and then they surrendered. I was about 20 foot from them and I didn't know they were here. It was dark, real dark. So that's one instance that I remember.

And I remember times when I was in the rear, I was with the mortar squad and I was carrying ammunition for them. I was right on the back end of the squad. I would catch all of the fire that we bypassed, small arms. They'd start shooting at me on the back end as we'd pass them up. And I can remember hearing the bullets passing me sniffing like they were going through a piece of paper, you know, machine guns and they never touched me you see. 

Another time we were walking. That was before this time when the squad got hit. We were walking down the road. We'd run off the map. Our lieutenant that took over for Captain Bonnard that got killed, he was bad to drink and he was looking for booze all the time. And we run clear off the map and had to come back. We went through machine gun fire to get there and then had to come back through it and we walked all the way, quarter mile, with them firing right out in the open with machine guns and I think they hit one man in the leg and I could see the mud flying off the bank where the machine gun must have hit. We just kept walking. 

And I asked the company commander, I said, "Why don't we knock that machine gun out", well we just let them go, we'd pass them by. Well they're the ones that killed a guy that night. They started in that direction that night.

There's a lot of things. We got pushed back one time and we run into a tiger tank had an artillery fix on it and before that we had come in contact with the enemy two or three times. We went up there and they opened up point blank with that artillery on us you see. There's an open field we had to go across to get away from it or they thought we had to go across. Some of them went over there and I'd seen shells. The other one had just went up in a puff of smoke, disappeared when it hit you see. 

Well our company commander, lieutenant, said "Come on, let's get out of here, let's go". I said, "I'm not going across there. You see what happened to those people. I'm not going back the way I come". And I went all the way around, but I was so weak I could hardly walk. I had to walk about a mile to get around. I took care of myself. I didn't listen to the people. I used my own judgments when I was in combat you see. And I think that's the best thing to do.

He tried to send me over a hill with a bunch of people that same day and those people didn't come back. I refused to go. Those people didn't come back you see. In the book there, they don't know what happened to them.

INTERVIEWER: Apparently this lieutenant of yours left a lot to be desired.

SCAGGS: Yeah, he was no good. I was a T5. I was rated T5 in the States, a permanent rating and they couldn't take it away from me unless I did something to be punished for. So I decided when the situations come up, I evaluated it and I did what I thought was safe for me you see. 

INTERVIEWER: Interesting story, Curtis. Is there anything else you'd like to add to this?

SCAGGS: I can't think of anything right off. I know I was awful anxious to get home for about a year after that war was over because I had a wife back there and we got along good and everything you know. She did a lot for me. I know we went up to Berlin and the 82nd Airborne had been up there and somebody said that they had black marketed up there and sent thousands of dollars back home. You know they'd get that currency, occupation currency.

And we went up there, the only thing you could send home was what you drew over the pay table. Well I sent mine home to my wife and when I got home, she had saved up enough money for us to make a down payment on a house you see. And you know things like that makes it worthwhile, what we did you know. That's about the only thing I have I think. 

INTERVIEWER: Alright Curtis, it's been a pleasure to be your interviewer.

SCAGGS: I hope it'll make some of the young people realize that we have to stand up for our country. We might not like to do some of the things, but somebody's got to do it. They're going to get the benefit of it if they refuse to do it the same as anybody else is. Those people that died for it, their families will never forget them you see. 

INTERVIEWER: It's been a pleasure.