Page 66 - Anthology

After farming for a while, I bought a milk route later on and the year after I bought that we married. I run
that route for about twenty years. I would go around to the farms picking up grade C, raw milk in ten-
gallon cans. The cans were heavy – they weighed 86 pounds. I’d take the cans to the HB Milk Company
plant in Frankfort, Kentucky to be made into cheese.

I can tell you something that you won’t believe. There was a one-arm man that had a milk route and he
handled that milk with just one arm. He had a wreck and lost one of his arms. I don’t know how in the
world he did it, but he did.

I had my milk route and Oneita worked in the bank. She worked for that bank for about sixty years.

I served my nation from November 1943 until 1945. During my service I was awarded the Purple Heart
Medal, The Prisoner of War Medal and the Good Conduct Medal. I jokingly refer to the Good Conduct
Medal as I believe nearly everyone received the medal and therefore it was somewhat diminished. Not
everybody had one, so yes, I am proud to have served and proud to have earned those medals.

My message to today’s young people is: This is a great country, and the finest place in the world to live.
Work hard, don’t be lazy. Being lazy only gets you in trouble.

NOTES

Camp Blanding was a major U.S. Army training facility during the Second World War. For most of 1944
and 1945, a very large percentage of the individuals sent to replenish the ranks of America’s combat
infantry formations trained at the Camp’s IRTC. In Addition, the Camp was the site of a 2800-bed
hospital, a German Prisoner of War Compound and at the war’s end, a Separation Center.

Fort Meade became a training center during World War II, its ranges and other facilities used by more
than 200 units and approximately 3,500,000 men between 1942 and 1946. The wartime peak-military
personnel figure at Fort Meade was reached in March 1945 70,000. Fort Meade was home to many
services. The Cooks and Bakers School supplied bread for the entire Post. Fort Meade was home to a
number of German and Italian prisoners of war. In September 1943, the first shipment of 1,632 Italian and
58 German prisoners arrived at Fort Meade. Some of those prisoners, including a highly decorated
German submarine commander named Werner Henke, died during their captivity and were buried at Fort
Meade.

Camp Myles Standish was a U.S. Army camp located in Taunton, Massachusetts. It functioned as a
prisoner-of-war camp, a departure area for about a million U.S. and Allied soldiers; and a candidate site
for the United Nations Headquarters, soon after the military camp closed.

USS Wakefield (AP-21) was a troop transport that served with the US Navy during World War II. She was
capable of transporting 6,000 troops. Prior to her war service, she operated as the luxury ocean liner
SS Manhattan. She departed Boston on 13 April 1944, beginning the first of 23 round trips in the Atlantic
theater, and three in the Pacific. Between 13 April 1944 and 1 February 1946, Wakefield transported
110,563 troops to Europe and brought some 106,674 men back to America - a total of 217,237
passengers. In many cases, Wakefield operated as a "lone wolf", except for air coverage a few miles out
of a port. Her primary port of call in the European theater was Liverpool - visited so often in fact that the
transport's crew nicknamed her "The Boston and Liverpool Ferry." The average round-trip voyage took 18
days. After D-Day, 6 June 1944, Wakefield began the first of her trips as a casualty-evacuation ship,
bringing home wounded GI's. On occasion, she also brought back German prisoners of war for
internment in the United States. Sometimes she even carried both evacuees and prisoners on the same
voyage.

The Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) was a transporter for troops and small craft. There were several classes
of seagoing amphibious assault ships of the Second World War used to land large numbers of infantry
directly onto beaches.