START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

     Rob Vest:  This is May 29, 2000.  My name is Rob Vest.  I’m interviewing my grandfather,    Robert Vest Sr, for the Floyd County Oral History Project.
     RV:  When did you hear about Pearl Harbor?
    Robert Vest Sr:  When I first heard about it, was when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
     RV:  What did you think about that?
     Sr:  Well, I didn’t think they shoulda done it.  I mean, they were steppin’ on my toes.  Just like, when you’re out in a beer joint drinkin’ beer and somebody wants to come along and pick on ya a little bit, ya bust ‘im one!
     RV:  Were you drafted or did you volunteer?
     Sr:  My friends and neighbors sent me a greetings letter that I had been selected to go in the armed forces, and they gave me a certain date to be there, and by damn I had to go.
     RV:  So you were drafted, then?
     Sr:  I imagine.  Come to think about it, they gave me an all-expense tour of the South Pacific, includin’ the boat.
     RV:  So, about what time was this?
     Sr:  Forty-three, I guess.
     RV:  And where were you living at the time?
     Sr:  I was livin’ in Louisville, KY at the time.
     RV:  Did you have any family?  Were you married at the time?
     Sr:  Yeah.
     RV:  How did your wife feel?
     Sr:  My marriage wasn’t too good.
     RV:  Where’d you got to boot camp?
     Sr:  I was inducted in the Army.  I went to Fort Benjamin Harrison (IN).  That’s where I learnt to drive a truck.  They come out an’ asked for volunteers, an’ I volunteered.  Boy, I never was that stupid again.  They put me on a wheel barrow.  We left Fort Benjamin Harrison and went to Camp Davis, North Carolina.  We went down there trainin’ on anti-aircraft guns.  We left there and went to Camp Picket, Virginia, and we done a lot’ve trainin’ up there.  But we done all the big gun-shootin’ in North Carolina.  We left Camp Picket, Virginia, and went to Norfolk, Virginia, and that’s where we done boot camp.  In boot camp, we drove trucks out in the water - I mean drove ‘em all the way out into the water.  Course now, they had rubber hoses stickin’ up to get air to the carburetor and to the gas tank.  All of it was waterproofed.  And drive ‘em out in there, and then back ‘em out.  We learnt how to swim, and all that kinda stuff in boot camp.  When we got through there, we left and went to Fort Dix, New Jersey.  When we left there, we went to Seattle, Washington, to a camp out there.  It was right out the edge of Seattle.  It could’ve been Fort Lewis.  It wasn’t but about a thirty minute ride from Seattle to the camp.  Then we packed up there and we went to Hawaii.  In Hawaii, we done lots of trainin’.  Ocean trainin’.  They had a tank that you could open up the end of it and drive a truck in it.  Or a jeep, or whatever.  Or you could haul supplies from a ship on to land with it.  The tracks was really what pulled it in the water, but it also had a propeller.  And we used that thing in Hawaii, trainin’.  And we also trained on the vehicle they called a “duck.”  It was a two-and-a-half ton truck, wheels and all, attached to a damn boat.  And there ain’t no tellin’ how many soldiers could ride that thing from a ship, in.  We left Seattle on a–we didn’t use a Navy vessel–we left there on a merchant marine ship and went to Hawaii.  When we landed in Hawaii, then we got into these full-track vehicles.  When we left there, and we got our trainin’ in there–I don’t know how long I was there–we got on a ship and headed for the Philippines.  We stopped at Eniwetok over one day, maybe a day and night.  We went to shore one time while we was there, and kindly had a little party out on a little sand island.  It wasn’t too awful big.  We went back to the ship, done a little swimin’ and so on and so forth.  You know we wasn’t allowed to dive offa the ship?
     RV:  Oh yeah?
     Sr:  The sailors could dive offa the ship, but we couldn’t!  But I got to thinkin’, “now how in the devil are they gonna know me from a sailor?  With no clothes on?”  I just walked out there on the dag-burned deck, climbed up on the rail, and dove off in the dag-burned ocean, and that was the end of that!  Where was I at from there?
     RV:  You were at the party on the sand island.
     Sr:  Well, that was where I went swimmin’ at.  That is when I saw the walkways under the ocean at Eniwetok.  The walkways were walled up, a regular walkway.  Lookin’ in the water, you’d just run out there and you couldn’t tell where it went to.  It was down in the water, I couldn’t tell how deep it was or anything else because there’s a big ship there that I was on, and lookin’ right down at them dadburn walkways.  On that one little island there, from just lookin’ at it, somebody at some time or other, had built a wall, and it always amazed me.  This wall wasn’t too high, but I guess I coulda climbed it in no time, if I coulda got to it.  These rocks that was in it, they was approximately two foot thick from where I was lookin’ at ‘em, four foot wide, at least, and I’d say about twenty foot long.  They was pretty good rocks.  I’da had a helluva time pickin’ one of ‘em up.  When we got back on the ship off that little island where we had our party, we headed on into the Philippines.  We unloaded in the Philippines.  Of course, infantry and marines probably went in before we did.  We was trained for hand-to-hand combat.  We were trained to anything that the infantry done, but we were on big guns.  I wasn’t because I was in Headquarters outfit. We had five batteries–four guns to the battery–except headquarters.  Headquarters was a supply battery, and I was in the supply business.  The big guns got ammunition when they called for it--food, if they needed a truck or a dadburn shovel or a hammer or whatever it was–then they’d requisition it to Headquarter Battery.  I mean, A, B, C, or D battery would requisition it to Headquarters battery, then Headquarters had to go and dig it up and deliver it.  What else do you wanna know?
     RV: Since you were in supplies, I guess you ate pretty good?
     Sr:  No better than the rest of ‘em.
     RV:  Did you see any combat when you were over there?
     Sr:    Well, combat can come in several different forms.  I didn’t see no hand-to-hand combat.  I wasn’t in that kind of outfit.  I was in an outfit where if a plane came over, we were supposed to shoot at it, if it was an enemy plane.  I can’t get down and tell ya what you really wanna know, the good ol’ gory stuff about what I did or where I was at and all that kinda stuff, because we was supposed to shoot at airplanes.  We wasn’t supposed to go out there and shoot at grandpa and grandson.
     RV:  Did you shoot any planes, then?
     Sr:  I did not know.  A, B, C, and D battery–did.  A, B, and C battery also shot field artillery.  Right along about that time, when we were in boot trainin’, we had shells, ninety millimeter shells.  They were hard-nosed shells.  They had to hit, or the timer be cut on’em before they were shot.  They’d cut ‘em up in twenty-eight seconds . . . make it thirty seconds.  It had a round nose on it, and you put in this outfit and turn it, and it’d cut it to the seconds that you set on it.  When you shot it, at that end of that thirty seconds--or fifteen seconds whatever you might’ve cut it at--that shell would go off.  Along about in there somewhere, they got to puttin’ out a magnetic shell.  This magnetic shell, you didn’t have to cut the timer on it.  You shot it at the plane, radar zeroed in on the plane.  Radar had a clock on the dadburned gun.  We had two dials.  One of ‘em was operated by radar, and it was runnin’ around there and when it got on the plane it’d stop.  The other one, you operated it to set the gun to bring the gun up and matched it with this other one.  When you that, you could fire the gun.  If you was lucky, you hit your target.  But those magnetic shells–if they got within twenty-five foot of an airplane, they went off.  It was automatically a hit.  If they went all the way up and all the way back down, and come within twenty-five foot of the ground, they went off.  Now, you just kindly imagine what it would be like if you were the enemy and you had me back there shootin’ at ya a mile or a mile an’ a half up there.  If those boys on them guns was good, and they shot the shells that mile or mile an’ a half and let ‘em come down by the way and bust over the top of ya, put a lot of shrapnel in the air.  I think they said there was a captain in the Japanese army that wanted to see that automatic gun that fired those shells that would bust in the air over the top of ‘em. This is what I heard, now.  I didn’t see it, I didn’t even see him.  When we pulled into Okinawa he said, with the equipment that we brought in there, what in the world did we stop at Okinawa for, we could have went on to Japan and took Japan.  What else do you wanna know?
     RV:  I heard you lost part of your hearing in the war.  How did that happen?
     Sr:  I can’t even pronounce the name of it, that bomb that they had over there.  Actually, I saw three of ‘em on Okinawa.  They used ‘em on Leyte, what is it?  It wasn’t a buzz bomb.  Suicide bomb.  They used two thousand-some of those in Leyte Bay . . . on ships.
     RV:  Was that the kamikazes?
     SR:  I guess it was.  Now this suicide bomb, when the piolet crawled in that damn plane, that was his last trip.  I saw three of ‘em on Okinawa, but they wasn’t armed, and they were rockets.  They towed this plane to within three hundred mile of the target, and they set off the rockets on it.  And I did know how thick the steel plate was between the rockets and the piolet.  The rockets carried it three hundred mile to its target.  I’m not sure, but I’ll always think it was one of those suicide planes that fell on the beach on Leyte.  It was after dark.  For some reason or other, there was a bulldozer in there that day.  And [the bulldozer] covered my foxhole up.  Everything I had: clothes, gun, and everything.  We were tired when we got in from work that night.  Instead of diggin’ me another foxhole--my friend, he was from West Virginia.  His name might’ve been Woods.  It wasn’t Stump.  It wasn’t Trunk, I don’t believe.  I believe it was Woods.  We had all three of ‘em in there, in my outfit.  When this bomb hit, it destroyed a radar trailer.  A radar trailer was maybe thirty foot long, thirty-five foot long.  It was a semi trailer set up with all radar in it.  But anyway, gettin’ back to where I was at, it was just over from where my foxhole was that I stayed all night with this friend of mine.  A hell of a night, too.  We layed there all night long listenin’ to shells goin’ off.  Bombs started a fire where the ammunition was stacked and destroyed that semi trailer.  There was a couple of jeeps there that it destroyed.  It destroyed a couple of two-fifty . . . I guess it was two-fifty, but bigger than a two ton truck.  And a couple of three-quarter tons.  They pushed every bit of that into that crater and covered it up.  See, that sand, when that bomb hit, as heavy as it was, it went so damn far down, if it’d hit or something on top of the ground, it’d took me with it plus everybody in headquarters outfit, ‘cause we was all right there.  After we moved from there, I saw two or three fellers that had their eardrums busted.  My ears for two or three years after that–as a matter of fact, I’ve got a ringin’ in my ears right now–had a ringin’ in ‘em, I mean a bad ringin’.  That hole, when I was layin’ there lookin’ up, I could see everything goin’ up.  Nothin’ but just a ring of smoke.  (               ) round like that and it just kept rollin’ like that, inside and out like that.  With fire in the middle of it, and then a little lighter, and just plain black, where that smoke was takin’ it up.  Oh it was a bad baby, whatever it was, whether it was an airplane, or what.  The next mornin’ my friend and I got outta that foxhole, and shells were still goin’ off where the ammunition dumps was burnin’.  Needless to say, we had to move later in the day.  Moved right up from it.  That’s why I don’t like the damn swamp.  I dug a damn foxhole up there and water seeped in.  I was sittin’ there and I’d wake up–‘cause I didn’t know where in the hell the enemy was at–take my helmet and dip the damn water outta my foxhole, and it wouldn’t be long until it’d be full again.  Done that all night long.  A Japanese fighter came over the next mornin’ strafin’.  Boy, he was puttin’ some bullets down.  We had moved a little bit and was diggin’ some more foxholes.  My friend, the one that I stayed all night with in the foxhole, we run and got under a . . . I think it was a two an’ a half-ton . . . and layed there while the plane went over and made a circle and come back and done it again.  And all of a sudden, he just drawed up in a dadburned knot and green foam started comin’ out’ve his mouth.  I called the medics and they got him and took him on out.  I saw him later on, but he went to come back to the States.  He was shell shocked,, but I didn’t know what was wrong with him.  But that’s what was wrong with him, found out later.  He came back to the States and it wasn’t too awful long . . .

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A
 

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

     RV:  So you said it wasn’t long after. . . .
     Sr:  We loaded up and took off for Okinawa.  We run into a whole lotta resistance in Okinawa, but I wasn’t in any of the hand-fighting.
     RV: How old were ya during this time?
     Sr:  Well, I was born in 1924, and that was I think 1944.
     RV:  How did you feel the first time you saw planes comin’ over shootin’ at ya?  What ran through your mind?
     Sr:  Run through my mind to get in a damn hidin’ place quick.  Couldn’t see them bullets.  Get where they couldn’t hit ya.
     RV:  After that big bomb hit and you lost part of your hearing, did you go to the hospital or anything?
     Sr:  No.  I didn’t even know that I’d lost any of my hearin’.
     RV:  Were you ever hit by any shrapnel?
     Sr:  No.  Nothin’ but just a scratch on my neck one time.  Just a little scratch.  Wasn’t even enough to go to the medics over.
     RV:  When you felt that, did you think you’d been shot?
     Sr:  No.
     RV:  What was the weather like over there?  Did it rain a lot?
     Sr:  Anytime you go in combat and you’re shootin’ big guns and jarrin’ the elements, you’re gonna have rain.  I don’t give a damn whether it’s in Indiana or California, or Saipan, you’re gonna have rain.
     RV:  Did anyone in your unit get malaria or come down with any diseases or anything?
     Sr:  No, we took medicine to keep from gettin’ malaria.  I forgot what the stuff was, but anyway we took it to keep from gettin’ malaria.
     RV:  Did you ever see MacArthur or any of the other generals?
     Sr:  No.
     RV:  Did any famous entertainers come by and entertain the troops when you were in?
     Sr:  In Hawaii, we had Bob Hope come by one time, but out there in combat, there was no place out there for an entertainer. [Dog whines]
     RV:  How did you feel when you heard that FDR had died?.
     Sr:  Well, that was a shock to the whole military, the whole country, and to every damn soldier that there was, because we didn’t know what would happen next.  ‘Course everything turned out for the best.  But it was a shock to all of us, and he was a great man.
     RV:  When you heard Germany surrendered, how did that make you feel?  Did you think the war with Japan would be over pretty soon, too?
     Sr:  Well, we knew that Germany was gonna surrender, and we also knew that Japan was gonna surrender.  The only thing was, we just didn’t know when.  Because we didn’t go over there for ‘em not to surrender.  It was either surrender or die, one of the two.  As long as there was an American soldier that could get from here to there, that’s the way it was gonna be.  We went over there by the way, to take the country back or kill ‘em.  That’s all there was to tell ya about it.
     RV:  What was your reaction the first time you actually saw or met a Japanese person?
     Sr:  To be honest with you, I don’t know as I ever met a Japanese person.  Especially a soldier.  For the simple reason was, we didn’t get out and go, we was over there for a job.  We worked Sundays, we worked holidays, and so on.  We wasn’t over there by the way, on vacation.  We was over there to do a job, and the quicker we got it done and the quicker we got home, the better we liked it.  There was no goin’ to town because, hell, all the towns was destroyed.  I mean where we were at.  Where I was at.
     RV:  What about other soldiers from other countries, like Australians?  Did you run into any of those people?
     Sr:  We had some of ‘em at Fort Dix, New Jersey, takin’ trainin’ one time.  In other words, they were foreigners, too, as far as we were concerned.  We knew they were our allies, but back in those days, it wasn’t like it is now.  You done what you was told to do.
     RV:  After they dropped the atom bomb, what did you think?  Did you think it would be over soon?
     Sr:  Well, we knew it would be over soon, because we was right on Japan’s doorstep.  I heard one time that it was three hundred and fifty mile from Okinawa to Japan, but after I picked up that pamphlet that I gave you the other night, I found out that it was about eight hundred or eight hundred and fifty mile.  But I didn’t know that.  I had no maps.  I couldn’t a’read one if I had one.
     RV:  What did you do after the war was over and Japan had surrendered?  What did the Army have you doin’, since there was no more fighting to be done?
     Sr:  Well, we done our usual routine until we got to come home.  Of course, so many of us had to stay there, and so many of the Americans had to stay there and keep a guard on a little bit of piece of real estate.  ‘Cause Okinawa was only supposed to been sixty mile long and six mile wide at that time.  Of course if they knocked down some of the mountains since then, past fifty years they coulda shoved it in the ocean, widened it out a little.  I don’t know.
     RV:  When you were in the Philippines, did you run into any Filipinos?
     Sr:  Run into quite a few Filipinos.
     RV:  How did they treat the American soldiers?
     Sr:  They were very polite people.  Poor people, but polite.
     RV:  Did you have much time off?
     Sr:  We didn’t get time off.
     RV:  So you didn’t get any furlough or anything?
     Sr:  In a combat zone?  We didn’t have airplanes back then to haul us backwards and forth.  If you went, you went on a ship.  When I came back from Okinawa to San Francisco, I was ridin’ a big ol’ ship.  I didn’t come back in a plane.  Things has changed in the past fifty years.
     RV:  Did the Army show you any movies about venereal disease?
     Sr:  Oh yeah.
     RV:  What were they like?
     St:  Well, now you’ve got me there.  On Okinawa, we was not supposed to go with any women whatsoever.  They had a disease there that. . . .  What was it?  Elephantiasis.  You might’ve heard of it before.  The Army told us that if you got elephantiasis, that you stayed there on Okinawa for about ten years.  I saw one or two people on Okinawa that had it.  Your legs and feet swell up, and look like they’re gonna bust.  I mean, they get huge.  And I didn’t want none a’that.
     RV:  Did you eat any interesting food over there, besides what the Army gave ya?
     Sr:  No.  After you left Hawaii, you did not eat any food that the natives put out whatsoever.
     RV:  Why was that?
     Sr:  For one thing, they didn’t have it.  For the next thing, you didn’t know what in the hell you might be eatin’.  You might be eatin’ snake, or dog, or lizards, or . . . what in the hell you might be eatin’.
     RV:  When were you discharged?
     Sr:  I was discharged January 12th I think it was, in 1946.
     RV:  What was the first thing you did when you got back home?
     Sr:  I went to my sister’s in Alabama.
     RV:  How had things changed since you went in the Army?
     Sr:  They hadn’t changed.  All of your industrial was turned over, you might say overnight, to war material.  You didn’t have any new automobiles, new trucks, tractors, or anything like that.  Things really hadn’t changed during the war years.
     RV:  What kind of work did you do after you got back?
     Sr:  My dad and my two older brothers were commercial fishermen.  My dad wanted me to go into commercial fishin’.  Well, after about three years a’doin’ it, I found out there wasn’t no future there and I quit.  Come to Louisville and got me a job.  When I quit commercial fishin’, I went to the GI Automobile Mechanic School.  I knew when I got out of that school where I was at, and all I was livin’ on was 120 dollars a month.  I’d’ve starved to death, I couldn’t buy a job.  See, everybody was comin’ home from the Army.  I didn’t have no job when I left there, when I left to go in, except a war-time job, war plant.  I didn’t have nothin’ to come back to.  I had to get out and make it on my own.
     RV:  Did you have any trouble getting your military pension?
     Sr:  I didn’t get no military pension.  Only the people that got wounded over there, when they got back to the United States, got a pension, that wasn’t able to work.  Now I did get, when I retired, I got a hundred dollars a month added onto my retirement.
     RV:  Did your opinion of the government change after the war?
     Sr:  Not really.  I think that they did what they had to do, and they had to have the people that.  I’ll put it like this: I believe that in World War II, if people like Cassius Clay and them people that went over up there in Canada, that when you did come back in World War II, that you would’ve spent some time in the penitentiary or that they would’ve put you up before a firing squad and shot your stinkin’. . . .  Now that is a sore spot with me.  When a man is called on to do a job . . . when his country is in need . . . why, you know, and then a son of a bitch renege on it.  I’ve heard of them soldiers by the way, if they turned around and run, gettin’ shot.
     RV: When you were overseas, how did you feel about your commanding officers?
     Sr:  The commanding officers were very nice people.
     RV:  So none of them gave you . . .
     Sr:  They didn’t wanna be there, either.
     RV:  Okay.
     Sr:  They were educated people.  They didn’t wanna be layin’ out there in them muddy foxholes.  They treated you decent, you had to treat them decent.
     RV:  Was there any of your fellow soldiers in your unit that you had a problem with?
     Sr:  No.
     RV:  So everybody got along?
     Sr:  Sure they did.  Everybody had to get along, for the simple reason as this: you might need that soldier that was next to ya.  You can’t fight him and the enemy, too.
     RV:  When you were out there in the field, and a holiday came by, did you all do anything special?
     Sr:  Yeah.  We guarded the perimeter.  And if we need be, we would’ve give our life for it.
     RV:  What did the Army tell you to do if you were ever captured?
     Sr:  Give ‘em your name, rank, and serial number.
     RV:  Do you remember yours?
     Sr:  My serial number?  35699407.
     RV:  What was your rank when you got out?
     Sr:  Technician Fifth Grade.  I only got that by bein’ a truck driver.  I never did get into the big trucks.  I wanted to, but I never did get into ‘em.  Didn’t have time.
     RV:  Did you get any mail from home?
     Sr:  Whoever I wrote to, wrote back.
     RV:  Were there any soldiers that you looked up to or admired?
     Sr:  Why should I admire a soldier?  I was man, same as he was.  I mean, I wasn’t as educated as the majority of ‘em.  But, hell, they wore clothes just like I did by the way, and a pair of big ‘ol broke-in shoes.  I didn’t even admire my captains, and lieutenants, and so on and so forth.  I treated ‘em with respect.  If I hadn’t of, they’d a’had me put in the damn brig.
     RV:  Did you see anyone get put in the brig?
      Sr:  We didn’t have a place for prisons.  Only in camps in America.  In other words, if you didn’t measure up, you didn’t go.  Got it?
     RV:  What did you do in your spare time?
     Sr:  We didn’t have any spare time.  We had (               ) equipment to keep up.  We had our own clothes to keep clean.  We didn’t have a launderer.  Grandma wasn’t over there then.
     RV:  What did you miss most about home?
     Sr:  That’s a good question.  Bein’ free.  That’s the best I can tell ya.  Doin’ what you wanted to when you wanted to.  Goin’ down to the corner an’ drinkin’ a beer or a soft drink, and not havin’ somebody tell you “you can’t do that.”
     RV:  Did you get any beer while you were there?
     Sr:  Why, sure.
     RV:  Did you listen to the radio?
     Sr:  We didn’t have radios back then like we’ve got now.
     RV:  So, you never listened to Tokyo Rose or anything?
     Sr:  On the radio, yeah.  But it was a big radio, it wasn’t something you could carry ‘round in your hand.  I listened to Tokyo Rose a few times.  ‘Course she was doin’ what they told her to.  She might’ve been a hell of a fine girl, I don’t know.
     RV:  What kind of things did she say on the radio?
     Sr:  Well, I heard her one time and she said, “Americans get out of the Philippines, we’re gonna gas ya.”  We was scared to death of gas.  But we wasn’t scared enough to run.  We called her bluff.  They never did bring no gas in on us.  We stayed where we was at and held what we had.  In other words, she didn’t worry us too damn much.  We had a gas mask that would protect us from probably anything that they put out, and we carried it with us all the time.  We had a tent made out of plastic, that if we got mustard gas, or something like that that would burn us, then you could smell it.  We’d pull it down over our heads and sit there with there with a little tent standin’ up.
     RV:  What other kinds of equipment did you have?
     Sr:  Trucks, guns, hatchet, knives.  Whatever it takes to get through the woods or through a field.
     RV:  Were you ever hit by a typhoon over there?
     Sr:  On Okinawa, I was in two typhoons, and I was in two typhoons on the ocean.  In one, the ship would go over a wave, and through a wave.  The two on Okinawa, they were pretty rough.  The last one I was in there, it was 125 mile-an-hour wind or 175 mile-an-hour wind.  They had to tie all the airplanes down.  Dig holes, put the wheels in the holes, and tie ‘em down.  They had a bunch of sea planes, and oh it destroyed a world of sea planes there on Okinawa.
     RV:  Did you have trouble adjusting from a military life to civilian life when you came back?
     Sr:  No.  A lot of people did.  For instance, my first cousin.  He came back and he finally got married and went to somewhere up in Ohio.  But while he was in there, he got to be an alcoholic.  And that’s something I could never be.  I can drink, but after I drink so much, I get so damn sick, that I wish to hell I’d never thought or heard of it.
     RV:  Did you like being in the Army?
     Sr: That’s a good question.  I started to go back in one time, and I went over to sign up, and they said I was too old for what they wanted.  Said, “give it some time.”  I’m still givin’ it time.  I’m glad they didn’t take me back in because I couldn’t handle the stuff that goes with the Army now.  And really I couldn’t back then.  I couldn’t type and couldn’t operate a computer.  They needed manpower.  They hadn’t needed manpower, they wouldnt’ve took me.
     RV:  How old were you when you tried to get back in?  You said you were too old.
     Sr:  I don’t know.  I was probably twenty-four, twenty-five years old.  But I was too old to get back in.  I mean, if I’d had some kind of special skill, hell, they’d a’took me in a heartbeat.  But no special skills, don’t want ya.
     RV:  We’re just about out of tape, so I guess that’s all.  Thanks Grandpa, for letting me do this.
     Sr:  Well. . . .
     RV:  Anything you want to add?
     Sr:  No.
     RV:  Okay.  Thanks a lot.

END OF INTERVIEW

     RV:  The preceding interview with World War II veteran Robert Vest Sr took place at his home in New Albany, IN, May 29, 2000.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B