William E. Roberts Jr.
San Antonio , TX
October 30 and 31 2007
Jonathan Truesdell
Palo Alto College
History 1302 - Fall 2007
INTRODUCTION
William E. Roberts Jr. was born on November 16, 1923 to
William Sr. and Mildred Roberts in
TRANSCRIPTION
What was the nations mindset during World War II?
"When
Then they had people that sold bonds that went toward, movie stars traveled
around selling war bonds, of course you know heroes come home too later as the
war went on, some of the returned soldiers went around sold war bonds and
um I don’t know if we could ever get
that feeling again we’d ugh everybody felt that the attack on Pearl Harbor was attacked on them. It just really united the
whole country."
What was going through your mind when you were filling out the paper work
for your enlistment into the military?
"My attitude was if I didn’t go back to school I was gonna go down
and enlist you know I had to serve my country. Yeah I weighed everything out
and I just had to serve my country. Everybody felt they had to go, go
fight."
Where were you when the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred?
"I was a freshman in college when Pearl Harbor happened. And I was sittin, we were sittin by, I was at Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina, and I was studying and a guy upstairs had a little FM player that I could, I could tune my radio and listen to his FM player. And I was listening to his music when they interrupted and told that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. And everything sort of came to a screaming halt for the rest of that day as far as the school, or studying or anything went. Then I finished up my freshman year, then I came home, my father was with US Steel and I came home to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and I had several years in engineering drawings so I went to work for National Tube Company and sending the machinery to process gun barrels and they wanted me at the end of summer, they wanted me to ask for an exemption to stay and work with them in the defense industry and I said no, if I didn't go back to college I'm going down to enlist. So I went down and enlisted in the Army Air Core. When I walked in the door at the post office all the recruiters there when I said, I told 'em I wanted to enlist in the flying branch and the guy sais, 'Navy!', and the other guy sais, 'Army!' and I said well I can probably walk further than I can swim so I better go with the Army. I didn't really know at the time that how prophetic that was, because, anyhow went on off and in our training I went through phase training and I was an aerial gunner on a B-17. And was in Africa and Italy with 463rd Bomb Group heavies, B-17's, I participated in forty-five missions, then I got shot down on my fourty-fifth mission. You had to do fifty so I was about ready to come home. But anyhow after I was shot down I was evaded, was flying out of Italy towards Bleckheimer, Germany and we got jumped by fighters over Czechoslovakia. And we got knocked out of formation and attacked and I got down two, I shot down two fighters that day and but anyhow we had to bail out about twenty thousand feet and when we got to the ground I evaded for a while but as we were spread out across the countryside, as we bailed out of the bomber you could see them gettin units out to follow us down and capture us. Czeckoslovakia was an occupied country by Germany and the Czech people were friendly but the Germans weren't. So anyhow I was shot up and I evaded for a while but they caught up to me. One Gustapo officer and six conscripts and a German police dog and then they marched us back to the town, down to the nearest town. There they took me to see the mayor, the mayor was friendly. And he had apologized for what was going on and then they took me to the German headquarters and just looked like the movies the two story building, the big banners hangin down, the swastikas on machine gun in front of it, controlled who came and went. Then the others in the crew went to Guyer and we were imprisoned there for about two or three days. Then they took us by train up to Frankfurt which is the big interrogation center in Germany. Then after I got there the only thing I told them was name, rank and serial number, thats all we were ever told and thats not what they wanted to hear and I spent seven days in solitary confinement for just giving them name, rank and serial number. Then we got out, when I got out of there then I was transfered up to Poland, they took us by train up to Poland and Stalick Lofour at Keith Heiding was a little town. In January the Russians were driving towards the west and the British were coming from the other way to meet them. And Hitler had ordered all those camps, there was about four prison camps scattered out through that part of northern Poland, he ordered them to be exterminated and the troops to form a defense line against the Russians. Our camp Comodant was a World War I Prussian officer who was recalled in the war. And he didn't believe that ration, so he later marched us out and we marched til May, livin off the land and fields where they, in Germany they have a lot of like crop in their farms, and they'll have like four big barns and he'd go from one big group of barns to another group of barns. We lived on whatever we had to eat, could scrounge and that became known as the Black March out of Poland. On February 14, Valentines Day, you know you get candy and flowers, they marched us twenty-eight miles that day and got us in a field right near Stateen which is a port city, they had on up on the North Sea they had, got us to field but in, its riddled with just barbwire and so forth, and we scrounged some wood and was building a fire so we could have a little fire and heat some water and the British had an air raid, they came and bombed Stateen that night, so we had to put all the fires out and we traveled, two of us would travel like buddied up cause we each had a blanket. We'd sleep on one blanket and put the other blanket over us. And Gerard and I were layin there huddled under this blanket and Gerard said, 'Well this can't get any worse' cause guns was going off and I said oh yes it can and it started to rain. And Gerard said, 'What do you think about all this' and I said I think I'm gonna get to go home and these people got to live here in this desolation and grief they brought on themselves. And that was my spirit, I just thought I'm gonna get to go home and these people got to stay here and live. So that was February and it was May before we got liberated. We were in a barnyard, and a British tank came by and said your liberated, but there was still fighting going on around us. We could've taken the guards over at any time but then we would become combatants in the middle of a war zone and hell we were starved and no weapons or anything you know so we stayed with the guards. And they said go down this road two and a half clicks and there will be an aid station, you can get some bread and milk and we did that and then they gave us directions on another road to follow. We got back to a little town and there they de-loused us and gave us new uniforms and everything and set up an air lift and flew us on in to Lahar, camp lucky strike was the port of embarcation to come back home. Then they loaded us up on hospital ships and got out of there. One sad thing there was, we had been eating our boiled potatoes and grass soup and air satched bread which was got more sawdust than flour in it and so we got we had a guy crawl in the GI cook tent and ate a bunch of fried donuts, we hadn't eaten anything fried for you know almost eighteen months and he just, his stomach couldn't take it and he died, they found him dead there. But anyhow we finally, a lot of us came down with jaundice when we first started to eat again and I held off I didn't have, then all of a sudden it hit me man and I turned yellow but that was the day our ship was leaving and they said, 'No, you stay hear and we'll send you to England to the hospital'. And I said no, if that boats going home, I'm going home. So I got my war friend, hey you pull and the other guy push me and I got up. Up the side of the ship there and the gang plank and the, and the Navy guy tellin everybody where to go he looked at me and he said, 'You go to the ship's hospital bay'. So they put me in the sick bay. I spent my whole time there gettin back to the states on an old Liberty ship. Wasn't a speedy trip back but I had a chance to recoup a lil bit, then we got back to Florida and they checked us over and gave us all sixty days recouperation leave so I came home for sixty days. Thats when I found out a lot about what was going on with the rest of the war cause you know we didn't know and while I was home on leave, VE Day happened they surrendered while I was home on that leave and later the atom bomb was dropped so that we knew that was gonna be the end of the war. But I was just glad to be home, I weighed about a hundred and thirty-five pounds then and I looked more like a skeleton than my old self and the bit that had been in POW camp together we went out every evening at dusk and we'd sit around and drink beer and then til daylight, and then we'd go back home. We didn't want to talk to people you know theres nobody to talk to, we could talk to each other but the rest of the world was sort of out of touch, and after about thirty days of that I decided they made that beer faster than I could drink it, so I went down to the University of Pittsburgh and enrolled as a sophomore down there. So then I came back and decided to go to Pharmacy school and get a profession that I could follow."
Whenever you and your comrades were in that prison camp did all of you bond
or cause strife?
"The whole time I was there, I saw there was one fight. One fight.
One arguement that got to a point where they felt they had to fight so they
went out between the barracks and ugh they took a couple swings at each other
and then they were, they were weakened and they just sort of fell together and
hugged each other and that ended it."
Did you ever conversate with any German soldiers in your time at that prison
camp?
"The one, my one guard ugh on this march, ugh he was a retired
college professor. And he had been recalled even at that age and he, he was
supposed to, he came to guard the prisoners. And he and I talked quite a bit.
His thinking, I kept askin him about ya know how come, how can Nazi's take
over, how did it happen, you know, and he explained the mechanics of that a lil
bit. And um he said that people were disarmed. In Germany you couldn't own a
gun period. And then the Nazi party ugh started getting organized and they
formed ugh shooting clubs for target shooting and ugh got permission to do that
and then they, they started arming themselves with, theoretically with target pistols
and things but they just armed themselves and he said then when it got down to,
when push came to shove, he said ugh, 'Bill you can't fight guns with broom
sticks'. He was right. The citizens had broom sticks and the Nazi party had the
guns. Thats why I'm against any type of gun control. Here in that, when you
disarm the citizens they're subject to whoever, whatever nut takes over. And
then on this march every now and then he would ugh, he'd say, 'Bill carry my
rifle', and I said carry your own damn rifle, (laughs) you know thats what he
said, but we could have taken over the guards but then there was panther units
over here, Germans and British tanks over there, they were fighting the war
still all around us even though we were on this little road the war wasnt right
there, but they were over there. And then in May ugh March the weather broke
and this P-51 recon, we figured later it was a recon, came flyin down that road
and saw us and everybody ran and jumped in the ditch and so we thought hey thats
dumb he didnt fire that day ugh so the next day he came back we decided that
we'd all stay in the road we were marching about four abreast you know, there
was probably nine hundred of us left at that time and he would ugh, so we'd all
just stand with our hands up like that when he flew over, so he flew over, all
the Germans ran and jumped in the ditch and then he fired and he did straight
for the ditch that day (laughs). Just to keep 'em under control you know
(laughs). So thats how they found out, thats where the title Black March came
from, and then they kept track of us in March, April, and May. They knew where
we were and what was going on you know they couldnt contact us or anything but
that sort of gave us a little bit of feeling to know to know that our allies
knew who we were and what we were you know so that sort of saved us I guess
from being just overrunned by the fighting units."
What were some of your experiences previous to entering the prison camp?
"When the train got to the prison camp the prison camp was probably
a mile and a half to two miles up this road. And the German that was in charge
of the train talked to our people that we'd elect to sort of be leaders or our
spokesman. And he said, 'We'll march you up to the camp otherwise the camp will
come down and get you'. And he didnt say anymore than that but by then we had
learned that these people couldn't talk about themselves but they would try and
lead you on a bit so we collected some cigarrettes. Cigarrettes were just like
money. Money didnt mean beans over there you know so we collected some
cigarrettes and they marched us up to camp. When we got up there this, this
German Captain ugh just threw a fit cause he'd like to go down to the train
with his dogs and then he ran the prisoners up that road and if you fell like
you got bayonetted or dog bit. That was his big thing. It softened the
prisoners up. He got real angry when we got up there that day because then ugh
after we got in camp we found out what he was so mad about and then a couple
days later another train came in and he did and they ran them up there and I
went out and helped three or so with bayonett wounds, stabbed in the back and
dog bites. Ugh then in the camp we had a guy called Big Stoop. We called him
Big Stoop cause like in, there was used to be cartoons ugh called Cherries and
the Pirates and they had this big, ugly guy that would beat everybody up, he
did, when he'd come in a room he was this giant of a guy and ugh he'd just walk
up to ya and pick ya up and slam ya against the wall and if the German goon
that was with him didn't laugh he'd pick him up and slam him against the wall,
he picked on the other guys too. Everybody was scared of him. And ugh that was
there mentality ugh his mentality anyhow. And we had one POW said, 'I'm gonna
take his head home with me'. And later when we were on this march after we got
liberated ugh they found ugh, a body in a ditch with no head on it. But you
could tell from the size of his hands, them hands, his hands were giant you
know and they said thats 'ol big stoop and sure enough somebody cut his head
off. We never found his head, we don't know who had it, we figured somebody put
it in his duffle bag and brought it back with him we don't know. But he got
beheaded and left in a ditch there. So that was the fate of him and, but he had
a, he had a pretty good run for a couple years beatin people up. He was a
German guard. He was just brutal, he was brutal, mean and brutal. It was just
whatever he decided to do that day you know. They were ugh, the brutality, the
people were prisoners in the far east, they were, they were prisoners of the
oriental philosophy which is different and their value of life is different but
here we had blue eyed, blonde haired guys ugh that looked much like you that spoke
a different language but you didn't expect the brutality out of them that was
there, some of 'um were just brutal period. Yeah like big stoop. You know they
were just brutal. It was hard to take from someone that looks like you, you
know. And the oriental philosophy was different and you knew that there value
of life was different there. Thinking life was different than ours, but it was
hard to take from someone. Fritz ugh the my German professor he was different
he didn't aspouse that type of thinking at all it made him angry and sad too
that that was going on but he couldn't do anything about it. No, no, there's
nothing easy about it I mean you never knew from daylight to dark whether you
was gonna make another day or not. You didn't know whether you'd they would,
the Germans would kill ya or you'd starve to death. And thats just the way life
was. And that's ugh something that until you live through it you can't
appreciate it."
When you were on your missions and being overseas were you involved at all
politically, did you have your own views?
"Oh no, no you got up, flew your mission, then you come home. You
didn't worry, your only thought was I got to win the war. You know, I got to
fly a mission, we got to drop bombs, you didn't, no, no you didn't need to know
what was going on back in the states, there was no politics involved with it
over there. But there was no pure, your only thought was survival, there was no
politics involved it, just survival."
Were you ever presumed dead or MIA?
"Well I was MIA, yeah. I was shot down and my mother received a
telegram that I was missing in action. I guess maybe it was ugh, oh four or
five months before I got caught up in the ugh, system over there where they,
where the, where the Swiss Red Cross came around every so often and took names
and then sent the names back that they were prisoners of war. So then I got the
telegram where I was MIA, then I still have my mother's telegram where they,
they, I was a prisoner of war. I kept, she kept 'em all folded in a little box,
I didn't even know she had 'em for years and years and years. Yeah one day she
showed 'em all to me."
Did you ever walk through any of the holocaust camps?
"Two of the, the camps there and it was just revolting I mean you just
couldn't just you know finally found some people who were treated worse than I
was. That was tough it did happen and they were there."
Is there anything else you would like to add to this interview?
"I'm just glad that the next generation is taking the time and effort to find out what went on in my generation. Otherwise everything might have just been in vain you know."
ANALYSIS
While conducting this interview, I learned a lot in a short time about one man's story of bravery and survival. While recording these questions and answers I was just sitting there listening to stories that Mr. Roberts lived out and has a very vivid picture in his head of that time. Most of all I realized freedom isn't free. Men like Mr. Roberts made it possible for us to still have all of our rights and to keep our freedoms for the next generation even if that meant with their lives. I honestly don't believe our generation gets that concept. We don't have a good understanding of what duty or joining together for one cause is. After September 11 we as a country were united for about a couple years but how quickly we've forgotten. Back in World War II those people didn't forget and made the necessary sacrifices for all of us to have the freedom's that we enjoy. I honestly don't think that you can choose the most important points because the whole interview is important for people to read. However I would say if I had to choose it would be the questions about his time in prison camp over in Germany. World War II to me was a time when young people and old fought for what was right and throughout this interview it felt like Mr. Roberts walked me through everywhere he had been. You could tell in the way Mr. Roberts spoke that he had a great deal of passion and emotion for the subject, but how could he not for going through all that he has been through. These stories taught me that real individuals that were going to college and had families and the same feelings we do, who went on to foreign soil to fight. I firmly believe that there are no drawbacks to learning about the past with the hope that history will not repeat it self as such in the case of World War II and the atrocities committed overseas. In my opinion this is a very effective way of learning about the past because not only do we get the information from the person that lived through it but we get it in there exact words. I would like to say a special thank you to Mr. Roberts for not only being my interviewee but for the bravery he showed in the midst of a war and the willingness to serve his country.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Prange, Gordon William Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of
History is a book which looks at the ways the attack
on Pearl Harbor was made possible.
Smith, Major General Dale O.
Smith . Screaming Eagle: Memoirs of a B-17 Group
Commander a story of how one man turned a bomb group that was in bad shape into
a group that would become a top bomb group in the Army Air Core's arsenal.
Flights of Passage:
Reflections of a World War II Aviator Hynes,
Samuel.The story of a Marine Bomber Pilot who writes down his experiences of
going from a rookie to a veteran pilot.
Our Lives in a World on the Edge: 1941.
Klingaman, William K. This book gives you a look at not only the significant
events of war but the other bits of information of culture from the year 1941.
American POWs of World War
II: Forgotten Men Tell Their Stories Bird, Tom.
This is ten interviews of POW's from the World War II era and they tell each of
there stories from their experiences of being captured overseas.
Hitler's Blitzkrieg
Campaigns: The Invasion and Defense of Western Europe, 1939-1940
Kaufmann, J. E. and H. W. An in depth view of the strategies used by Hitler to
conquer nation's in the year previous to the United Stated entering.
·
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. An encyclopedia containing articles, film, photographs,
artifacts, and survivor testimonies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#World_War_II
This is another online encyclopedia that looks at POW's and the circumstances
they had during their time in prison camps.
Photographs and/or documents on this website were provided by William E. Roberts Jr. and Jonathan Truesdell.
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