Interview of Clifton (Smoke) Wayne
Transcript Number 051

INTERVIEWER: Today's date is May 1, 2001. Today we're interviewing Clifton Pierce Wayne, who is much better known as Smoke Wayne. He was born and raised in Lake Waccamaw and now is a resident of Whiteville.

SMOKE: That's Wannanish. I was born in Wannanish, the capital of Lake Waccamaw.

INTERVIEWER: I beg your pardon. Wannanish, which is no longer here but has a post office. But, he's certainly well known to the county, he doesn't have to tell people where he was raised, they know where he was raised. Smoke is going to tell us something about his days in the army.

SMOKE: Well, I was drafted on December 19, 1944. I was sent to Fort Bragg and immediately they did all this processing and stuff. One of the interesting things 
was they lined you up. You know, it was just a building full of completely nude men everywhere and then about the time they finished that, they run you into a room for your first shots. They were popping you, one on each arm. I was pretty well scared. But I wasn't half as scared as the guy ahead of me. I remember, his name was Reynoldson of Brunswick County and drafted the same day. When they popped that needle in him, he fainted. He went over the table and the needles and the nurses, and there he was. They had to take five minutes to get him straight. 

In the meantime, I was the next standing there nude with all the rest of the people around us nude. Finally, they got to me and popped me in both arms and I survived that. But that was one of my introductions to the army. We stayed there a couple of days, again, this was December the 19th I was drafted. 

They said, don't worry boys, you'll be home for Christmas. Well, about December 23rd a train rolled up in Fort Bragg and we were on it and Christmas Day we were in Camp Blanding, Florida. So, we didn't get home for Christmas that day. We were there for 13 weeks of intensive, combat infantry training. I was an old farm boy and it was tough on me, but those boys from the city and New York, it about killed them. We had to do 25 mile marches and stuff like that. We stayed there for about thirteen weeks and that puts us at about April of '45, March or April, and we came home for a 14 day leave with orders to go to Germany. While I was home on leave, Germany surrendered or maybe it was after we got to the replacement program. But, I was home 14 days and then George Carroll and I, who was a friend of mine from Bolton, who you know who ended up being a North Carolina Highway patrolman, George is now deceased, unfortunately, for several years. But, anyhow, we got on the train and went to Washington a whole day too early because I thought Washington was another country away. But, we had an extra day in Washington to prowl around and then we went to Fort Meade, Maryland. 

I guess somewhere in this process is when the war ended. They changed our orders from Germany from the European theatre to send us to the Pacific. So, we got on a troop train and rode about seven days. Things on that troop train, that was good living because they fed us pretty good and all you had to do was wave at the people as you went through the towns. I remember one of the prettiest things was the Rocky Mountains. We went through them, I don't know which route it was, but we finally ended up in, I believe, Denver, Colorado and then Salt Lake City. 

That was beautiful, beautiful scenery because you follow those rivers. The rocks were different colors and then we got to, I believe, it was Camp Stockton. It was the depot place in California on the bay of San Francisco. Then, they put us on a troop ship and played the usual Going To Take A Sentimental Journey. I think it was a Red Cross girl and that was the only girl we saw and we boarded that ship and went under the Golden Gate Bridge. I think that took about two weeks, a 14-day trip. The first stop, I think it was Guam, it was one of those little islands out there in the Pacific and you've never seen as many ships in your life. We got supplies there. Everywhere you looked were ships and on this little bit of sand was just stacked with ammunition and food and everything else. 

INTERVIEWER: Were you in a convoy or a single?

SMOKE: I believe we were a single?

INTERVIEWER: And, black out at night?

SMOKE: Yes, yes, yes. When you went down, we were about four or five flights down and on those troop ships, they had these cots that were canvas roped in pipe. There was about five deep, okay and you just had room enough to walk and that was where you bunked. It got so hot down in there that sometimes we'd go up on deck and actually sleep up on deck. If you had a nightmare and jumped over, they'd never know you were gone until they got to the Philippines. But, we'd sleep right on that steel deck, it was so hot. Then, when they would have, I remember distinctly, when they would have an alarm, like they thought there was a sub or something out there, the sailors would go dashing through and slamming the doors and locking them. There you were, locked down on the fifth deck and if a torpedo came, you knew what happened. That was that, you and that many men around you. One of the interesting things on that troop ship, our time is not limited is it? Okay. I remember you got to go through the chow hall and there was no seconds and you were always hungry and there were no canteens and cocoas or what have you and somewhere down there, they didn't think we would bother and they stashed some iced potatoes that we could get to. And, would you believe that raw iced potatoes are very tasty if that's the only snack you can get to? One day, one of the boys got KP and he came back and said look what I've got. He came back with one of these tin cans of ham, tasted just as good there; that was one of the few things that tasted like it did here. That night we had raw iced potatoes and ham. 

Then, we got to the Philippines, landed in Manila and we went a replacement depot. While we were there, the whole city was bombed out you know. We were up on the hill. 

INTERVIEWER: What month was that Smoke, do you remember?

SMOKE: This was May of 1945. In fact, it was during one of the worst battles. We didn't know it at that time, which was Okinawa. This was when the Battle of Okinawa was going on. While we were there, something got in the chow line and we all got dysentery. The latrines were just a big hole in the ground with a frame on them and then the stools were oil drums with the hole cut out of them and that was your facilities. Well, with all of us having diarrhea, probably 16 holes there, all of us were on it and as soon as you got off of it, somebody would grunt and say get off of that and let me on. There were three lines, luckily I was on the outside line, and the middle line, well, all of the sudden we heard something snap and that thing started settling. Well, you'd never see such a scrambling of a bunch of troops with their britches down around their legs. They thought it was going all the way down in that bush. But, it didn't go that far, it settled down about three or four feet. Those of us on the edge, made it to the back, sort to speak, but those in the middle were still trapped, they thought they were going under. But, it didn't go that far. 

Then I was assigned to the 25th infantry division, which had just come off of combat. They were in New Guinea and they were in the invasion forces. They invaded Manila and liberated Luzon. They landed at Lingayen Gulf? They came up and took that island and we joined them right at that time. We were called replacements. So we were up in the mountains of Luzon, a beautiful plane, it was kind of a buried valley in the middle of the mountains there, nice and flat. We were up there training doing PT. Well, actually, not doing much at that time before they moved all of us over there. A lot of the troops were moving from Europe at that time to the Pacific. We were getting ready to invade Japan. We were up there and did PT. We got out there in the mornings and I remember they were feeding us Atebrin. We would line up every morning.

INTERVIEWER: Excuse me, tell them what Atabrine is.

SMOKE: Atabrine is a pill that's yellow and it turns you just as yellow as that pad there. A lot of the guys didn't like it. A lot of them, when they gave us a command to swallow it, the orders was to throw it in their mouths and they'd throw it over their shoulders. So, when we lined up we were just as yellow as that pad.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you have to take it?

SMOKE: We thought for malaria control. But, since then, and this is an aside, one of my friends here who Ray knows had gotten very sick and this was 20 years after the war. Everybody thought he had cancer and he was just wasting away and losing weight and all like that. He went to Duke and they finally found out what was wrong with him. It was a little parasite. He had gone to Hawaii and taken one drink of water up in the mountains, over a nice cool spring and he got this parasite or something. They get in your intestines and they produce in the millions and use all your food and eventually, I guess they would destroy you. But the treatment when he came back, and he came back yellow, we thought it was jaundice. I said what is it you're taken? He said Atabrine. I said, Atabrine? My God, that's what we took all during the war in the Pacific and they were giving us that for malaria control. And, they may not have known it, but it also prevented us from having those parasites. 

We'd bathe and take our baths in that little stream that surrounded that camp and I'm sure it was full of the same stuff. It was nice, cool water. I don't particularly remember drinking it, but I'm sure we did. They had those little bags and they were full of chlorine which tasted awful. But, Atabrine was not only to control malaria, but it killed that particular parasite. You had to take it for a long, long time. You would know what who I'm talking about, I reckon. He got his from one drink of water in the high water out of a spring. 

Then we didn't do too much training there. We just kind of did PT and stayed in shape. Then they moved us down to Lingayen Gulf which was the invasion where the 25th came in. It was a nice, flat beach that they could land on and they moved us there and we bivouacked there after the surrender. 

I remember when they surrendered. We were watching a movie. They would put these big films out in the opening. We sat on the ground, even if the ground was wet. We went to the movie, they broke in and said the Japanese had surrendered. Harry Truman had given orders to drop the atomic bomb and he saved millions of Americans and other Australians and all the rest of the people prepared to invade Japan. He also saved millions of Japanese because they would have fought until the bitter end. When this was over, they moved us to Lingayen Gulf and we boarded troop ships to go to Japan, to occupy Japan.

INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about the reaction of the crowd when they interrupted the movie to say that Japan had surrendered?

SMOKE: Well we hoot and hollered and I don't know if we ever finished that movie. We weren't as elated as they were in New York because the boys in New York had the girls to hug and had a few drinks of beer over there. 

While we were there I remember, occasionally, they would issue beer and you would have to drink it hot. You'd get maybe two or three cans. We learned that if you take that and put it in a helmet with water and put one of these sprays, I guess we used it for a mosquito repellent, but I don't know if you knew it or not, but it's iced cold. It wouldn't make the beer iced cold, but it would cool it down. Then we boarded the ships, now we went in convoys from there. As you know at this particular same time is when the Indianapolis was sunk. They had taken some of its parts to Okinawa or somewhere up in there that was necessary, maybe it was Guam, I don't know where. But, it was super secret. As you know, the Indianapolis and they had taken some of the parts for the atomic bomb. Nobody knew that they got torpedoed, but that's another story. About a thousand of those people drowned and they stayed floating in the ocean about seven days because nobody knew where they were. It was a super secret. They had no radio contact, no nothing. 

But, we got on that to go to Japan okay, and supposed to be about a seven-day trip. As I recall, we were on there at least two weeks. One day, we would be going north and the next day south. It was typhoon season and we were in convoy and that water was so rough that when you went down to trough, you couldn't see those other ships, when you came up, you would see them. Then the water at ship, it was different water, the bow and the stern and on both sides. I mean, you know, it was just a miracle that it didn't sink. That was a rough ride, but I didn't know how much danger it was. 

We still stayed in convoy and when you came up and rising on those waves, you'd see another ship, but then all the sudden you were down there and all you could see was water. That was some rough ocean. 

So it took us about 14 days and then we landed in Nagoya and our first mission is we bulwarked on this airport, a Japanese military airport. Our first mission was to destroy all the guns and all the planes at that place. We didn't have all this heavy equipment to tear them apart. They really didn't try to dismantle them, but they would take one of these magnesium grenades and sit it on top of that engine and it would burn a hole right through it. It would never fly again. So, that was one of our first missions. By then, we were getting up into November and we just left the tropics and man, that was some cold weather. 

We were camped in tents on top of that airport which was kind of up in the mountains, and, of course, it was high. That wind would come through there and in that tent, all we had was a little potbelly stove and you had about four blankets. You had to use two under you and two over you and then you snuck down into a sleeping bag. I remember, I got so bad, they put up a tent out there and put some shower heads in there. I got to smelling so bad I decided one day I was going to go out there in the dead of winter and the wind just flapping through there and take me a shower. I was going to take me a shower. But, it was so cold I'd run under it and soap up and then I'd run under it and wash off, but I got me one good bath there. 

Then, they moved us from Nagoya to Osaka which was the second largest city in Japan. There, we took over this, it was actually a Japanese war college campus and for some reason, it was not burned or bombed it was so well camouflaged. It was kind of off by itself. The whole city was burned because they dropped those fire bombs and I can remember we have pictures as far as you can see, there was nothing standing. You would see an occasional concrete building and then you'd see some of these high chimneys that went with factories that did not burn. Other than that, it was totally burned out. There's no telling how many Japanese burned, because they really bombed them more with these incendiaries, because they were little, kind of bamboo houses and it was completely burned down. 

Now, I did not go to Hiroshima where the bomb was, but they tell me that it was even more devastated than the other cities. Now, where we were, you had a few concrete buildings and occasionally some sections didn't catch fire. Maybe it was kind of isolated but they tell me Hiroshima, where they dropped the bomb, there was absolutely nothing standing. So, we occupied as I said Nagoya first, the airport at Nagoya and then we went into Osaka. 

Now one of the things I noticed when we first got there, we could not find anything but little children and old people, mostly old men. We had found out they had propagandized those people or scared them so bad that they would fight to the bitter end if we didn't have an atomic bomb. But, young men or young boys and children were up in the hills or under a bed or anywhere they could hide because they thought we were going to take them up and throw them up in the air put an end to them. 

Instead, we went through there hollering GI Joe, and of course, this was standard talk in the Philippines, GI Joe, chocoleto, chocoleto. In about a week, all of the sudden you'd see the women come out and the old ladies and the young children and the real old men. One of the nice things, I got on KP when we first landed and somehow through the army command, they had assigned some Japanese to work for us. They had sent about three out there to work in the kitchen with us. You know, KP, this was in a tent. 

Back along then you took great pride in what state you were from. They'd call you Carolina or Reb or you'd call them Yankee or something. But, we were there that morning and this Japanese had been sent over there to work there with the department to work with us in the kitchen. He came in and he was bowed, you know, we was scared we were going to kill him or something. He was saying, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. This guy from Ohio said look at that, look at that, said he knows about my state, he knows about my state. But, Ohio in Japanese means good morning. He was saying good morning and this guy thought he was talking about his state. 

But, also while I was on that KP, I ended up got permanent KP there for a while which I liked because you got all you wanted to eat, we got choice pieces. But, Thanksgiving of 1945, we got sent a turkey, we had turkey and dressing and all the works. We cooked it, I don't know for how many in that place, but we had to stay up all night. By that time, we had plenty of beer so we had us a good party going on. We'd take a beer and drink a beer and then we'd take a beer for the turkey and we'd baste the turkey with a beer. But, that was absolutely some of the best turkey you've ever seen. It was a beer-basted turkey. 

Then we left Nagoya and went to Osaka. By then, when we first went there they let us wear side arms because they didn't know most everybody had a shoulder arm or a .45 and that's one reason that people were so scared of us. But, Dugout Doug, we called him, pretty soon found out that the Japanese weren't going to bother us so they disarmed us. But, we wore side arms for maybe two or three months because we didn't know what was going to happen at that time. 

I never saw anybody harm the Japanese except I remember hearing some tales. It didn't take them long to get a night club put up and get some geisha girls in there to get that Yankee dollar, that yen. One guy over there, killed one of the Japanese and he got court marshaled and I don't know how many years he got, but they just wouldn't allow that, couldn't allow that. I didn't know him, but I knew of that situation. 

Anyhow, by then, as I said we were out to disarm the country and after my tour in KP, I fortunately ended up with a pretty good job, a cream puff job as a jeep driver which was a lot of fun. For several weeks, and maybe months, we'd patrol the countryside looking and checking for things. Usually we would go out and we went up this road and down that road in another jeep. I remember me and the sergeant, and at that time we still had our side arms, but we had gone way up this pretty country. We'd ride along narrow roads in this jeep and all these rice paddies and stuff around there, but we'd gone way up in there, up almost on the top of this mountain and we came on this temple. 

And, to the extent possible, and you have to say this it's so great about the United States, they did not bomb the Buddhist temples. They did not bomb the Kyoto which is a Buddhist capital, a religious capital of Japan. It's one of the original places you could go that you could see the old original Japan. I remember somehow or another, they'd pinpoint it, but most of these buildings were built out of stone so they did not burn and they did not burn the temple, the Buddhist temples in downtown Osaka. I remember seeing them. 

But anyhow we were way up at the top of that mountain. Like I said, it was just me and one sergeant and I think we had a carbine and a .45 and we went into this court yard of this Buddhist temple and you've never seen so darn many bombs and artillery shells and stuff in your life that they had stored up there because they knew we were going to bomb them. They had camouflage over the top of it and we said, my God man, do you see what I see, they'd say yeah, and said let's get the hell out of here. Of course, they just left. They'd abandoned it. But, we didn't know where they were going to go into insurrection but we said, let's get the hell out of here and we went down that mountain as fast as we could. Of course, they went back up there and destroyed it. 

But that temple was completely stockpiled with mostly artillery and airplane bombs and all sorts of stuff like that. Then, another time, I was lucky enough to get the jeep and we went back to Kyoto which was not too far from Osaka. This was back before everything was off-limits and I got a picture somewhere. I took that jeep and backed it up a step so that the Buddhist temple was all the way at the top with me up there. Later on, you'd have gotten court marshaled for that. At that particular time, we were kind of in charge and we did pretty much what we wanted to do. 

We stayed there and then we guarded this arsenal, I guess you'd call it, there in Osaka. And, standing guard, it was cold weather. Boy, you can go and put on all the socks and everything you can get. This is in December of '45 and there was snow. Osaka is about the same latitude as Washington and Baltimore and it was cold for us, especially if you were coming from the Philippines. But we guarded that. And, I remember, I woke I guess it was 4 in the morning to 8 shift. We came in and the officer that brought us in, he came by and picked us up in a jeep, an armored truck you know. He takes us to the kitchen and says, feed these boys all the eggs they want. Up until then we had powdered eggs. I think I ate six eggs. We kept ordering eggs. 

So then I stayed there a year. All the rest had come home, people in combat. When I joined the 25th there was one or two, most of those fellows had been in combat and they had jumped from New Guinea; they had several campaigns. They were battle hard. They were tough. I remember one fellow there was from Pennsylvania, I can't remember his name, but that man was battle hard. I believe he would have shot his own grandma, you know, she had talked back to him. So we left him alone. For some reason, they sent him back home by the number of months they were on the front line and stuff. 

Also while I was up in the hills in the Philippines, they put me on guard one night in the dead of dark, way down to the edge of camp where the ford of the river, we were guarding I think it was a border town. I don't know, I guess it's where they took the water out of that stream and brought it up and put it in chlorine and we drank it. But, anyhow, I was on guard down there and all of the sudden in the dead of dark, you were scared to death anyway because you knew there were Japanese loose in those hills and as you know, they'd still find you. 

We knew they hadn't captured them all. So, all of the sudden I was in the dark scared to death, an American soldier with no combat experience and I heard this plunk, plunk, in that water and I said, halt, who goes there? I said who goes there twice and I opened up with that guy with carbine and all of the sudden the officer of the guard comes down there. I was scared to death and he said what in the hell is going on? I said I think I just killed a Japanese over there in the stream. He went over there and I didn't kill the Japanese, but I killed a water buffalo. So, when I told him halt, who goes there, he didn't speak English. 

But then, after about a year of that, we got so we could go downtown by ourselves and use pigeon Japanese. You know, it's amazing how fast you learn how to communicate with those people. One of the things that I remember and it's a miracle that I'm still alive, the town was so bombed out, they were scared of parasites and they were scared of hair lice and things like that which spread disease. They put us out with 10% DDT dust, and we went all over. They divided a section up and you went there and you went in the houses and people were glad to see you because they were eaten up with this lice too. We'd go in and dust, we had this pump gun and it was just dust and of course, we didn't have a mask or nothing you know. For several weeks, we did what we called disease control or health control with that DDT. 

Then while we were doing that, I remember one afternoon, the mayor of the town, by that time they got so if they wanted to be on the good side with the occupied forces, but they also wanted us to bring them some food. We worked up a little deal with our pigeon Japanese and we were going to have some sukiyaki. They took us in their home and you take the shoes off and they'd cook right there in front of you. They'd have a little geisha girl right at your elbow and every time you'd take a drink of Japanese beer, and Japanese beer is strong, it's addictive, she'd pour it back full. So we had to procure the beef from the kitchen so one guy, you might say we requisitioned the beef and we had some sugar and stuff like that. We had a good sukiyaki party and I remember I got so high. I had a bunch of little Japanese children. By then, they would follow us because they thought we had some chocolate or something. But, I remember I had a bunch of them singing, sukiyaki okay, beer no. Sukiyaki was okay but too much beer wasn't. We had a good party with that. He was kind of the mayor, officially charged with that particular section. 

Then I came back and while I was at Wake Forest, I came home and got employment here with the health department, got out on the road putting out DDT, ten percent liquid DDT in Brunswick County for mosquito control. Of course, we'd go down there and spray all the houses and of course the crystals were formed. A mosquito would hit it for three months, it would kill them now, but anyhow, we went down there and sprayed at the fish Factory in Southport. 

One man in there was smart enough, he said son, don't you want to have any children? I said, I don't know, why do you ask? He said that damn stuff that you've been working with will kill you. This was the first word that it was dangerous. Now it's deadly outlawed and you know it had prevented one of the things. The boy I worked with in that, unfortunately, he died of cancer. Bruce Oferclark, he worked with me with the state, and he's been gone fifteen years. I was one of the lucky ones, but I worked in DDT in Japan in the army and also over here, under the auspices of the government. Of course, they didn't know any better. If we had kept using it, you wouldn't have any birds and you wouldn't have anything.

PAUL: We used to pour it down the front of our uniform.

SMOKE: Oh yeah, yeah, you would. Anyhow, then the time came and we got there about November, October or November of '45 and I stayed there almost a year until '46. And then our time came up and they put us on a troop ship. I remember they put us on a train from Osaka and we boarded a ship at Yokohama, which is right next to Tokyo. After about two weeks, we got back on the Seattle and they gave us a steak. I remember that steak. That was a steak about that thick and as much as you wanted, you could go back and get some more. Then we got on that troop train again and went to sleep in Montana and that train run all night at 70 miles an hour and woke up and we're still in Montana. That's a darn, big country out there (laughter). Then we came on back and I was discharged at the same place at Fort Bragg that we went in the army at. Then, Ray, I'm sure you did too, fortunately that was some of the best time I put in because I came out with the GI Bill. I went to four-year college on the GI Bill. That's about the end of my service story.

INTERVIEWER: Smoke, let me ask you this. When you were on occupation duty in Japan, in the army what we used to call chicken, did you have to wear a necktie and stand formations a lot?

SMOKE: Well now, when we first got there, everything was informal. We didn't wear neckties or dress clothes or anything. And like you said, we were pretty bad guys on the block. We had those 45's on us, but nobody abused anybody. They were giving kids chocolates and cigarettes. You could take a pack of cigarettes and buy anything in the world you wanted including the prettiest girl on the block with one pack of cigarettes. What was your question?

INTERVIEWER: In the army, did you have to stand formation for retreats or revelries?

SMOKE: Well, I remember, brother Dwight Eisenhower left the theatre over here and he was with the Army Plans and all that, he visited the Orient. Of course, the main thing he was Douglas McArthur's boss at that time. He came over there and looking back, I know what he was doing. He was running for president right at that time. But, he came over there and we had that whole division. I don't exactly remember, but I remember it was a big field, a big area, it must have been an airport or something. We had to get in formation and do a review and march by for Dwight Eisenhower. I guess I was no further from, well, you could see him real well. But, everybody loved Ike you know. He came over to visit the troops and thanked us. He made a nice little talk. Looking back at it now, he was looking for the White House. He was a good man. 

Doug McArthur was an exceptional man because he knew how to handle the Japanese. He let them keep the Emperor and if hadn't, it would have been something awful. But, if Harry Truman had not dropped that atomic bomb, and now there's been some people restructuring saying it shouldn't have been done, there was no place to invade Japan. But, we were going to invade it. Now in Lingayen Gulf, you had these nice, smooth places and of course, Okinawa, not Okinawa, but Iwo Jima, had nice beaches too. But there, most of the places were mountainous and all you had was a little, old beach maybe no wider from here to that highway over there to get on. 

And see those Japanese had drilled out caves up in those rocks in those hills and one machine gun would kill a whole division. The only way you could have got to them was to climb and scale that wall with a grenade or a flame-thrower or something. There would have been people floating all over, just millions of us. Nobody in that first wave, I don't think anybody would have survived. They would have put another one right behind us. There were at that time 12 million people in the army and they moved about two- third's of them over there. That was something. 

But I remember in Guam and those places, as far as you could look, there was just ship after ship. But, anyhow, I'm thankful I survived it. Going back to one more aspect, the cycle. They called them cycles, the trainees. We took the bomb kit from Camp Blandon and we were in for replacements. They finished theirs in December and of course. They got their two week vacation, or two week furlough and they went straight to Europe. Some flew, some few they flew. They didn't have enough planes to fly them. But I just missed all that by three months, the cycle before that. The people that were in the month before, they ended up in Europe in the Battle of the Bulge. They tell me that those boys would march up 200 in a company today and maybe tomorrow or two days later be fifteen. They'd all be wounded or dead. That was at the last thrust of the Germans and they were looking straight at these German 88's, they'd move those tanks up. When those tanks exploded, they went everywhere. 

There were a lot of our dear friends didn't make it. Now, one aspect of it is, if I would have gotten killed, I would have had the Lord give you the knowledge. My birthday was wrong on the records. I was born in 1926, but somehow or another, the doctor or somebody put it down as 1927. So, I could have stayed out another year, but I chose to go ahead anyhow because everybody back then wanted to go and you didn't want to be back here and be called a 4F or something. It took me, I never did get that straight until I got to the social security age and I was going to have to work until 66 before I got social security. So, we finally got the records out of Raleigh or got some affidavits and got it straight. My original thing by putting down 1927, somebody made an error somewhere. I'm sure I knew, because all of my brothers and sisters knew and told me how old I was. But, I was sure put down a year wrong. Okay, that's about all I can tell you about World War II.

INTERVIEWER: Ask you a favor. Look right in the camera. You're now going to talk to your great grandchildren. Tell them what you learned about being in war-time.

SMOKE: Well, I learned being in war time that we have millions and millions of people that cherish freedom so much that they risk their lives gladly to protect this country. Not only in World War II, but prior to that, the other wars. But, in World War II, unlike the Vietnam situation, people were proud to go. Just like in my case, I could have stayed out another year, but I chose to leave. We have a country here to cherish and our generation and Tom Brokaw wrote a book, The Greatest Generation, they were a bunch of brave, young men that were willing to go and do what had to be done. I'm thankful to be a part of it.