Trinidad L. Macias

San Antonio, TX

March 20, 2003

Jennifer Macias

Palo Alto College

History 1302 - Spring 2003

I know you were a child when the Great Depression was going on, but do you remember anything from that time period?
It was called the relief. They would give you a little bag of flour, sugar, coffee, and all that. That was when the depression was. That was like food stamps today.

That was instead of food stamps?
Yeah, instead of food stamps they would give you a little bags. But they didn't give you enough, they just gave a little bit to everybody. Just like you see on T.V. where they go overseas to the poor people and give sacks of this and sacks of that.

Like the reserves?
Yeah. Because there was no work, no money. It was bad. I'm in heaven right now.

So, can you tell me what home life was like as a child? Like going to school, what your daily routine was?
It was bad. I used to walk from where San Pedro is all the way to West Avenue. It was kinda bad.

And that was just going to school?
That was just going to school.

And when you'd get home, what would you do? Homework and chores?
Homework. You see I dropped out at ninth and Mrs. Moore was the principal at Edison. When I dropped out she looked for me. I went with my daddy to Arizona to pick cotton. It was in '49. When I came back she said, "You're gonna graduate." So, I graduated. I think it was in '49.

Drafted? Oh, you were drafted? You didn't voluntarily go?
No, I didn't want to cause I had already seem my brother when he went, he was drafted too, and the way they treated him there. So I went to, what is that place called?

Oh, okay.
After that, I was going to the last one, they put them in rows, and I was just getting to the end to finish my training and when I stepped on it, it exploded and got me all black. I went straight to my sergeant and said, "I don't like this job no more." (laughs) I was scared. So I got out. They put me on radio section.

Radio?
I was the radio operator. I was in between two squat teams. Machine guns. It was too hard on my ears. So they put me on the dot and dashes, what do you call that?

Telegraph?
Yeah, that telegraph. But since my ears were already hurting me, I said I don't like this. So they sent me to school for message sender. Send messages and receive messages. I had my own driver, my own jeep, and my own office.

Sweet deal.
Yes, it was. I never had it so good. I stayed there until they sent us to Korea. That's were everything stopped.

So when you were drafted in, you said it was October 6, 1950. That's when you enlisted. The Korean War had already started.
Oh, yeah.

Did you ever think you were gonna go to Korea?
No, never think that they were gonna put me there. Never. And when they took us over there to Korea, first we rode on bus, then it was train. Then they put us on these Army trucks. I don't even remember the place that we landed on. We landed there and you couldn't see your hands in front of your face cause it was that dark. We finally got to this place where there was only tents. And I used to see these helicopters. I said, "What the hell is this?" I went over there and asked one of these guys, "Hey, what are these planes coming and going?" He said, "You don't know?" I said, "I just got here, I don't know what's going on." He said "I'm gonna tell you what it is. You're here on the fighting zone. And these planes bring people. They're dead. And go get more."

So, you didn't know you were on the front line until you got there?
No. So, me and another guy, we got our little tents...and that's where we sleep. Then it got so hard that I couldn't keep my message sender job. They said, "No, we need you on the line." So they put me on the wire section. They put me in charge of 10 other guys. So they put us in a fox hole. It was 11 guys in that fox hole. We had that little wire for the phones all around us, except the fox hole gate. And every morning go out and fix the wires they busted with the bombs, they shoot at them. So I stayed in wire section. And I volunteered to the real front line over there.

Oh you volunteered to go?
Yeah, the reason I did that was because in the front line, you were getting nine points, and you step back and get eight points, and another back 7, 5, 4, 3 way back there. So I said, "I'll take my chance. I wanna get the hell out of here." Nine points a month, so I stayed there nine months and I completed my 36-point rotation. And I moved out of there. But when I was in the wire section, the snow was two feet deep and the wires was underneath it. You could find them on the trees and you would follow them and they go underneath and you had to be pulling it until you find the break. My sergeant always put me in the front. Pole climbing.

So, you would climb up the poles to fix the wires?
Yeah.

Were you ever shot at?
Yes. (laughs) Most of the time we were down. This was the funny thing, we were up on one of the poles, and they were bombing us and we didn't know. And the sergeant came out of the hole, "Get off of there you stupid [blah, blah, blah]."
We didn't know. Once while I was there, they started shooting at us. Over there, there are rocks as big as this wall and they fall and break them. That's where we got in, until it finally cleared. Then one day we were in our fox hole and they gave us the word not to go out cause they were bombing us. All of a sudden, a company was about 500 yards away in front of us and they gave the word to go out, and you could see them on the hill where they were walking and the last guy, (makes plane sounds), all of them things started coming. Boom, Boom. One time we were eating, and all of a sudden they said, "Fox hole!" cause they were bombing.
When you were pulling wires in the snow, they'd break them and put a hand grenade. I always had a feeling, I don't know why. It took us three and a half hours to climb that hill. We were sitting down on top and were looking down...you know what it was?

What?
Hand to hand combat. And we were on top watching. (laughs)

So, did you know a lot of men that died?
No, I only lost my first sergeant and a 17-year-old guy.

Seventeen?
Yep. His mother wanted him to bring back a souvenir. And he died. He stayed cause he liked it. Sergeant told him "Go out there to no man's land and take all them things cause we're gonna go over there tonight." And I told him, "Tell him no." He said, "I gotta go." So he went. The last little thing, and he missed it, and blew him out.

Oh, man.
And when I called the switch guard, he said, "You know what happened?"
"No."
"Mangmam got killed."
"How did it happen?"
They said a boobie trap he was working on, the last one, he got it.

(By this time in the interview, we had been talking for over an hour. At this point, things started coming to a close as he made some finishing statements.)

But, that's how it goes. You got the good things and you got the bad things. You just gotta forget about it and keep on going. I never did think that I was going to get killed. The only thing was my daddy and mommy, cause I wasn't married then.

So, when you came out, did you learn or gain anything from that. Like were you changed?
I learned one thing, that I don't let nobody step on me. That's what I learned.

Budlong, Richard Jr. The Korean War Project. The Korean War Project online. Jan. 15, 1994. This is an online source of photographs from the war, actual stories from the men who were there, a list of those lost, and a link where people can attempt to find MIA or KIA soldiers.

United States of America-Korea War Commemoration June 25, 2002. This is an excellent site which gives you the history of the war, including maps, bibliographies, Medals of Honor, and veteran's experiences. There is practically a day by day timeline of the events that took place and calendar of upcoming events to honor the vets of the war.

Thurston, Thomas.x New Deal Network A Thomas Thurston Project. Dec 28, 2002. This online source lets people read short stories, poems, articles, graphics, and other documentation from high school students during the Great Depression. It also gives an insight on how people lived and how everyday tasks were effected by the depression. This site is also sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute , the Institute for Learning Technologies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Knox, Donald.The Korean War-An Oral History 1950-1953. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers. San Diego, New York, London. 1985. This book gives accounts of the war as told in the words by people who interviewed the soldiers who fought during the Korean War.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of the Korean War. William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York. 1988. This book gives the brief events of what happened in Korea. It gives an overview without going into extreme depth or details of the war.

MacDonald, Callum A. Korea: The War Before Vietnam. The Free Press-A division of Macmillan, Inc. New York. 1986. This book explains the events that led up to Vietnam and Korea. MacDolland might led you to believe that Vietnam did not really start in Vietnam, rather it all began in Korea and ended in Vietnam.