Interview with Joseph Rogers [June 25, 2009]

Louise Forshaw:

Today is June 25, 2009. We are Institute of Historical Survey in Las Cruces, New Mexico where veteran Joseph Wilson Rogers will share his military experiences. Mr. Rogers was born in Pensacola, Florida, on October 13,1925. He is now eighty-three years old. He lives at 306 Capri Arc in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Mr. Rogers served in the United States Army from July 1943 to April 1946. He achieved the rank of Corporal. The interviewer is Louise Forshaw. Alright, Joe, could you tell us what you were doing just before you went into the service?

Joseph Rogers:

I lived in Pensacola, Florida, and at the time I was seventeen, I was getting ready to graduate from high school when I took a set of tests for what was called the "Army Specialized Training Program." Fortunately I passed it and I was invited to go North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was in an engineering program for one semester. Actually, prior to leaving I was not only a high school student but I worked for a dairy as a soda jerker. [Laughter] Which was an excellent job; I hated to leave it. I worked for great people, but of course I had to say good bye to join the service. At North Carolina State, while we were being prepared for engineering, the truth of it was, the military by 1943 realized that they I needed infantry more than they needed engineers. So our entire class of two hundred men wound up in the infantry. I went to an induction center at Camp Blanding, Florida, and from there went to a Camp Livingston in Louisiana for further training. I was subsequently sent to the 86 Infantry Division, and first of all started off in an anti-tank unit but wound up, fortunately, in a headquarters company in the Ammunitions and Pioneers Platoon. And I say that because I think headquarters company and that particular unit were a little bit safer than being in, say, a rifle company or an artillery company or something of that sort, so I was glad to be there. I suspect that being in ASTP led to being in that particular unit. Let's see. After Camp Livingston, our division was transferred to the west coast, and to Camp San Luis Obispo, California. Perhaps many people would realize from that time period that that was a rather famous place for the preparation for island invasion, and that's exactly what we did. We were trained on these small landing crafts. Incidentally I got deathly sick in one of those things. Part of that training, incidentally, and I don't know if you want anecdotes or not...

Louise Forshaw:

Yes.

Joseph Rogers:

Part of that training was going up very high towers and coming down rope ladders on the other side. We had one fellow, who unfortunately had a neurosis about heights. And the poor fellow, when he got to the top, almost found it impossible to come down. I'll mention him a little bit later. But he really was, in such a state that he was a grown man in tears, just weeping and crying and unable to accomplish this task. Of course, the top sergeant felt that he was a coward, which he was not. It was a matter of psychological disturbance. But we subsequently went down to San Diego, California, but this time it was aboard ship. When it came time to engage in a landing, I have to tell you that looking down from the deck of a ship to the water, it was much, much, much higher than those landing towers had been in San Luis. The landing craft down below almost looked like they were small crafts. This is important because the fellow I just mentioned, who had such trouble with the towers, when he was sent over the side, he got down on the rope ladder, just a matter of a couple of yards, and he absolutely froze. Now, I want you to imagine that here we have thousands of men on this ship, and I do mean thousands. They were all over the deck, they were on the stairwells, all ready to go over the side, and this fellow was blocking everything on our particular ladder. I want you also to imagine that he's now in full Army invasion dress; he has a full field pack, he has boots, he has a rifle and a bayonet, he has a gun belt, the whole works, so that if he falls and misses the boat he's going to sink to the bottom of San Diego Bay like a rock. If he hits the boat, he's going to die of a very, very bad fall, because from that height, it was like several stories high, he's surely going to kill himself. It took five men to take this fellow back up to the ship deck and take him to safety so the rest of us could descend. And so that was our experience prior to landing on Coronado Strand. Perhaps some of you will remember the beautiful white sand south of the Hotel Del Coronado, but that was our landing site. I discovered when I got there that the sand, while it was beautiful was as hard as a rock. For the first time in my life, I think, I goofed off in the Army. I decided that sand was just so darn hard I wasn't going to dig in. And, lo and behold, a colonel caught me. He chewed me out right there on the spot, giving me the importance of fox holes, but nobody was going to go into that sand more than a few inches. While we were at San Luis Obispo, and we were expecting to go over to the islands, but over in Europe things were happening that changed the entire scenario. Everyone will recognize the Battle of the Bulge. Perhaps many people will recognize the famous German general at the time, General Von Runstedt. So they had what was called the "breakthrough" as well as the bulge. General Eisenhower, being, I think, a rather cautious person, decided that he was not going to take any chances. He did not know how far the Germans were going to penetrate our defenses. So, all of a sudden, we received our orders to pack all of our ordnance in a protective grease called "cosmoline". We were working getting our ordnance protected against corrosion from salt air and things, as you might realize. Within just a matter of a few days, we were on troop trains headed across country. It took us a few days to get there, but we landed at Camp Miles Standish, which is just a few miles from Boston. We were there just a few days, and I have to tell you, I spent one of the coldest, most memorable nights of my life freezing on guard duty. It was so cold. And being a boy from Florida, I was just not used to that type of temperature or penetrating cold. Then I tried to remember some of these ships and things we were on, to be more specific about some of the dates now. I am reading from an itinerary, and on February the 3rd, 1945, is when we left San Luis Obispo by rail en route to what was always referred to as "unknown destinations," [Laughter] but it certainly wasn't to the west. We arrived at Camp Miles Standish on February the 9th and we stayed there just a very few days. On February the 18th we were transferred to the Boston port of embarkation and embarked on the U.S.S LeJeune. Let me spell that out for you, L-E-J-E-U-N-E. So away we went. On March 3rd, 1945, we arrived in La Havre, France. We were on board ship in the harbor for just two days. On March 5th, we disembarked and moved to Camp Old Gold, France. It's important for those who don't know, that Camp Old Gold was a tent city, and it had been used many times for the same specific purpose of holding units until they were ready to go into actual combat.

Louise Forshaw:

Can you spell the name of the camp?

Joseph Rogers:

Well, these camps, another one was Lucky Strike. They were named after cigarettes. Camp O-L-D G-O-L-D. It was four miles north, near - I'm going to spell this for you too - Doudeville, France. D-O-U-D-E-V-I-L-L- E. We stayed there from March 6th to March 24th, 1945. We left Old Gold en route again to unknown destinations. On March 27 we arrived at Cologne, Germany, after a journey of about 325 miles.

Louise Forshaw:

Were you on a train?

Joseph Rogers:

No, we were in trucks. That was the story of the 86th Division, I think. We were in trucks half of our lives. As you probably also know, Cologne, Germany, is also on the Rhine River. That part of the war was called the Watch on the Rhine. That was to protect our side of the Rhine River, and to also engage in reconnaissance. Our reconnaissance was primarily done by another unit of the division, so I was not directly involved in that. Unfortunately, while we were in Cologne, and by the way many of you will recognize that it is famous for its cathedral, which was just a few blocks away from where we were staying, but also within the block was a wine cellar. Many of our fellows liked to go into the wine cellar and drink. At that time in my life I neither drank nor smoked. But Bobby Wigstone, who was in my squad, was one of the fellows who went down into that wine cellar and got drunk. When he came back to where we were staying, he was assigned guard duty. Lo and behold, our platoon sergeant, Sergeant Elias, and that's spelled E-L-I-A-S, went out after midnight to inspect the guard and of course the standard call from Bobby was, "Who goes there?" And just as Bobby says, "Who goes there?" his gun goes off and fired accidentally. Now remember he had been drinking; this was an accident and the bullet flew over Sergeant Elias' head. Elias was mad as hell; he was absolutely infuriated. From that time on, Bobby was given every bad duty he could be given. And this plays a role, in just a very short while as you'll discover. On April the 6th, 1945, we were assigned to the 1st Army to engage in combat in the Ruhr Pocket. Now, the Ruhr Pocket was a rather famous industrial area of Germany. It was important that it be not only contained but demolished. So what the American and British troops did - the British were coming from the north and we were coming from the south and the west - was to completely encircle the area and then simply squeeze it, close it off. On April the 10th, 1945, we were walking in double file - this is very familiar to people; in the Army infantry we walked double file down these dirt roads - and Bobby and I were talking. He raised a question that sort of surprised me at the time, but he said, "Joe, what would happen if a shell fell among us? What would determine who would live and who would die?" And we concluded that it would just be dumb luck, that's what it was. The next day, April the 11th, we were just on the outside of Attendor when we stopped at a crossroads. We had a break for lunch. Just as I had my mess kit filled with the lunch (I have no idea what it was,) all of a sudden we heard the whistle of an incoming shell. This, as it turned out, was an eighty-eight mounted cannon on a German tank. They were trying to zero in on us. As soon as that whistle came in, all of us froze, and then of course, started to run. I started to take a route that I was pretty much alone on, or at least I thought at the time. But the shells kept coming in, and one shell probably struck somewhere between where me and where Bobby was. Now, as a part of Sergeant Elias' punishment of Bobby, he was assigned to guard some German prisoners, just a few of them. Lo and behold, this shell killed him. This is ironic for another reason, I'd like to tell you - I'd like to honor Bobby very, very much because Bobby was not even five feet tall. The regulations at that time said that a soldier had to be at least five feet to get in. He went to the Navy, he went to the Army, he went to the Marines, and he was repeatedly turned down by all three services. But he wouldn't give up. Finally, this little guy, he was about four eleven, he got a recruiting sergeant to pass him through. He did not need to die in this. But he wasn't going to be left behind either. And I have to tell you, he had the cutest little wife. Here was this guy who was 4' 11" and his wife, Anne Wigstone was about 4' 10"; they were like a couple of dolls. And very, very much in love and I have to tell you, whenever Bobby talked about the war, he was one that was always going to come back, he was not going to be killed, he was going to come back. The fact that it was otherwise was very saddening to all of us. As a matter of fact, I'm sorry if I'm not telling this in perfect sequence, as I worked my way away from where the shells were coming in - Gratefully we had an outstanding artillery unit with the 86th Division, and I say that proudly because they had won awards when they were back in training, even as far back as Camp Livingston. They knocked out that German tank. It was knocked out after three or four shots; they got it that quickly. So I went and rejoined our fellows. Sergeant Killelea, whose picture I'm showing now to Mrs. Forshaw, but came and informed the rest of us that Bobby had been killed. I was saddened, and shocked. This was April the 11th, 1945. This date is significant for another reason, and that because the following day, our beloved Commander-in-Chief President Roosevelt died. I have to tell you, it was the saddest day of my life. To have a good friend like Bobby and our President die the next day, it was just simply a double blow. I don't mind telling you that I cried, I threw up, I couldn't eat, but I was not the only one. I've often wondered what a younger generation today would think of that. Would they care all that much about the loss of a president, as we did at that time? But it happened, and another sad part of this is when I was escaping the bombardment, I had a mess kit full of food, and I didn't know when I was going to eat again, I didn't know how far this thing was going to go. So I was running and landing between shells. You could hear the whistle of the shell coming in, so you could run and hit the dirt. At one point, I got up and I looked at the mess kit and I thought, what am I doing with this damn thing? And I threw it. Well, the next day I decided, I needed my mess kit. So I went back and I found every piece of it, including even my knife and fork, and cup. I decided to go back by way of a road instead of by this stream. And by the way, I'd like to mention, too, on one of the times when I hit the dirt, I was very near a little running stream, and it would have made sense in a lot of ways to get down into that ditch, in case a shell hit near by. I decided, no, if I get knocked out I could drown in that stream. So I decided to stay where I was. Anyhow, instead of going back by way of the stream, I went back up to a road, and as I was walking back to our unit I was aghast when I spotted, on this high pile of manure, Bobby's body face down on this. The German farmers collected manure, and they had these piles. They were six, seven feet high. There was his body, and I looked at him. And to my horror I saw where the shrapnel - Louise, would you believe - the shrapnel went through one side of his helmet, went through his brain and lodged like an arrow head on the other side. I was absolutely demolished. I just couldn't believe the horror of this sight. I can see it today, as surely as we can look at each other, I can see Bobby's little body there. We used to kid him that him being so small he would make a small target. [Laughter] Compared to some of us who were over five, six feet tall. But I went back, and, to put it into context, it was still April 11th with the 12th coming up and Roosevelt's death. But the war goes on, and that's exactly what happened. It's my understanding that Bobby is buried in France today. We continued to close the Ruhr Pocket. The British were coming down, and our destination was Hagen, Germany. I'm going to move to April 16th, or the 17th. And we were near a town that I can't find on my map here called Altena, Germany. It would have been north of Attendorn. I had been assigned guard duty. And I was probably on guard duty somewhere between ten and midnight. After guard duty, I went back with my platoon. My unit was sleeping in a barn, in a loft actually, with hay all around. A few hours later, it must have been like four or five in the 10 morning, the two fellows who were on guard from our unit, Tom Cummings and Bob Deuchend, these fellows were replacements, they were so new to our platoon that even my sergeant Killelea can't remember who they were. All of a sudden they came running back to where we were in the barn, shouting something like, "Counterattack, counterattack! We've been hit!" Both men were wounded. Apparently there were some German Panzer troops trying to get back to their lines and escape when they ran into Tom and Bob. Now remember, I'm asleep after having been on guard duty. As soon as they started shouting, everybody started rushing out of the barn, because all of us had to very quickly prepare for any real counterattack. Now, that turned out to be false, there was no such counterattack. But we didn't know that. So everyone started filing out, except me. And you know what happened? I wore these wire-framed glasses and they had little hooks on them. I thought I was being very smart. I put the glasses into the trigger guard of my rifle, it was a carbine. And when this happened, I grabbed my carbine and guess what, my glasses flew into the hay. It was pitch dark, my glasses were gone, my eyes were 20/100, which was very, very bad. I was absolutely desperate because I was now blinded two ways. I was blinded in the dark and I was blind without my glasses, and that is so bad, that I still cannot see more than a short distance away without getting a blur. Nor could I see through a rifle sight. I would not be able to fire my rifle without my glasses. So I'm feeling around in the hay, trying to find my glasses, and Sergeant Killelea is shouting at me now, "Joe, get the hell out here." I said, "Kay, I can't. I have to find my glasses." And it took a few minutes, all I could do was just feel around and finally I found them and got out of there. Needless to say, Louise, I was terribly embarrassed. I was absolutely humiliated. And it wasn't because I was scared, in the sense of being scared of the Germans, I was scared of not being able to see. What I did, guard duty still had to go on and daylight was still coming. So I volunteered to go back and do an extra tour of guard duty for another two hours, which was a very scary thing. [Laughter] There was another fellow by the name of Kulkilka, from Minnesota, but Kulkilka and it may sound strange but we often called each other by our last names as well as our first, and Kulkilka and I then had this very scary two hours of guard duty. [Laughter] It was like every sound was a pending disaster waiting to happen.

Louise Forshaw:

Your imagination can run rampant.

Joseph Rogers:

It turned out okay. One of the German Panzer troopers was also wounded by either Bob or Tom, and he turned himself in then, to our unit. Surrendered, so that he could get medical care. I often thought that he looked like someone out of central casting of a Hollywood movie. He had this look of a very, very mean German. He was not a handsome guy, had a face like a bulldog. I have no idea what happened to him. Is it okay to mention a rumor?

Louise Forshaw:

Of course, of course.

Joseph Rogers:

Well, in this case, rumor has it that one of our noncommissioned officers had had a brother killed shortly before in Germany. And the rumor is, that he took this soldier out and shot him. That is nothing more than what used to be called "scuttlebutt" but I don't know, and in this case I guess it makes no difference. Well, let's see. This was happening then, on the 17, I think it was, of April and within the next two days we had closed the Ruhr Pocket. It evaporated. I must say that this was a big, big accomplishment for the Allies. I'm looking here at this itinerary, and my gosh, all I can tell you is that we went through town after town after town

Louise Forshaw:

Were you headed north?

Joseph Rogers:

I am glad that you ask that, because actually what happened was we left Altena, where this incident that I just described occurred, and we headed south, not north. And once more, to an unknown destination. We traveled over 275 miles, we passed through W-E-R-Z-B-U-R-G, Nuremburg, en route to that unknown destination. On April 20th we were assigned to the 3rd Corps of General Patton's 3rd Army with the destination being combat in Bavaria. We continued southward and then toward Bavaria, and on April 25th, 1945, we were getting very close to a major city in Germany, Ingolstadt, Germany, which is located on the Danube River. Let me spell Ingolstadt for you. I-N-G-O-L-S-T-D-A-D-T. Shortly before we got there, I spotted some American planes and German planes, and as it turned out, I think the German planes notified an artillery battery somewhere in the distance. But on April 25th, 1945, I was sitting on our truck, and this is what our truck looked like. I am showing the pictures to Louise. Let's see, I think they were one and a half ton trucks where our platoon was. Again, you can see Sergeant Killelea here. There were two fellows sitting on each of my sides. One was Umberto Canto. U-M-B-E-R-T-O, and his last name Canto, C-A-N-T-0 and this is Charles Owens. All of a sudden a shell landed on the right side of our truck and both Umberto and Charlie were wounded. I was not touched. Isn't that amazing? They both wound up in the hospital and we never saw them again, although rumor has it that Umberto Canto eventually married a German nurse whom he met when he was recovering from his wound. Remember, we are also an escort to a big load of ammunition. We're carrying ammunitions for the entire battalion, that's how much ammunition we had. I'm in the ditch now, and I think to myself, my God, if a shell comes in and hits this truck, it's going to destroy a whole city block, practically. So I look forward, and I see Sergeant Killelea, he's the only other person I could see at this point, and he looks back at me, and I have to tell you - that was one of the happiest moments of our lives. To see each other in this ditch, and with the shells still coming in. So here again, it was a blessing to believe that you would never hear the shell that killed you, which was a myth, I think, from many wars before that helped people retain some courage. Between the shells coming in, Kay and I moved several blocks, and went into a home where we encountered a small German family. A man, a wife and a daughter who might have been about nineteen or twenty. The thing I remember from that experience, we were in a basement of course, because they were just as afraid of the shells coming in as we were. But the thing I remember is how terribly frightened they were. They were scared of the shells, but they were also scared of us. And you can imagine that some soldiers would have taken advantage of that young girl. She was quite pretty. But we reassured them as best we could; at this point I don't know how much English they understood, but we assured them there was no danger from us. Within the next half hour the shelling stopped, we thanked them, bid goodbye and left. I've often hoped that their lives turned out to be happy ones. They would have been in the western Germany after World War II, so they weren't on the Russian side. If you recognize these dates of April of '45, you might realize that now the Germans were getting very close to complete defeat. Now that's important because we were moving absolutely lickety-split on these trucks down - have you heard of the Autobahn?

Louise Forshaw:

Yes.

Joseph Rogers:

The Autobahn was - well, actually it was the state of the art highway at that time, and later we emulated that through our United States. We were going very, very fast. We claim, Louise, that we were the first American unit to cross the Danube River. It was famous of course for the song, "The Blue Danube"; you probably have learned from other interviews that the Danube was not blue, it was more like mud. We crossed the Danube on April 27, 1945. My notes say here, these are the official notes, these are not my own personal notes, but it said we were spearheading the assault of the 3rd Army of General Patton. We were his right flank division. We proceeded to cross the Isar River, and we went to Friesing, Germany. I don't think it's necessary to mention all these other cities where we were located. They're just city after city after city. But here I need to mention, that on May the 1st, we moved into Ekelsburg, Austria[?], and that's where I was on VE Day, which was May the 7th, 1945. By that time, Hitler had committed suicide.

Louise Forshaw:

How did you receive word of VE Day?

Joseph Rogers:

In a sense, it was like word of mouth. I don't recall any proclamation. I think at that point, and this may sound strange - as exciting as that was back in the states, and you've seen photographs of that, of course I think to us it was more of a sense of relief. What happens next is that we were assigned to the 15th Corps of the 7th Army. We moved from army to army to army, and in this case it was the Army. We proceeded through other towns of Austria en route to Mannheim, Germany. We arrived in Mannheim, Germany - of course, that's a major city - on May the 15, 1945. We had traveled something like 333 miles, and we passed through Munich and also Heidelberg, Germany. The army was generous enough to give some of us a chance to do a little recreational touring, and I was allowed to go to Heidelberg Castle, where they had these enormous wine casks that were just absolutely huge. That was really a rather wonderful break. Heidelberg Castle is on the Rhine River, and we left Mannheim on the 30 of May en route to Camp Old Gold, France again. And one of the other things I was allowed to do on the back of that one-and-a-half ton truck was to go on a very brief tour of Paris. That was memorable, because I had a chance to see things like Notre Dame, and we did not have time, of course, to go inside the great art museums, but what was really delightful because we could see the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower and things of that sort. I've often wished I could go back, but alas, I've never been back to Paris to tour it the right way. So on June the 1st, 1945, we arrived back in Camp Old Gold, after traveling a total of 512 miles. The 86th Division now was ready to embark for the United States. Now this is extremely, extremely important, because we were one of the last two divisions to go to Europe, and now we were the first division to return to the states. The very first division. Why? Because the war was still going on with Japan, and MacArthur specifically requested us. It was very, very logical. We had seen something like forty-five days of combat, we had low casualties, we had all of that amphibious training back at San Luis Obisto and San Diego, we were the perfect choice for the invasion of Japan. The 86th Division returned on four ships; the James Parker, the General Brooke, the General Bliss, and the Marine Fox. I happened to be on the James Parker, along with the entire 2nd Battalion 17, and the 343™ Regiment. On June the 8th, we were at anchor in Southampton, England. On June the 9th, we sailed for the United States. We arrived in New York on June the 17th. And I have to tell you, one of the great thrills of my life was seeing the Statue of Liberty. On June 17th, upon our arrival, we debarked and moved to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. Camp Kilmer was sort of- I would call it a staging camp, because what they did was prepare you either for departure or in this particular case, they prepared us for furloughs. They were going to give us thirty day furloughs, and so I went back to Pensacola, where I was born, and was allowed to stay there actually longer than the thirty days. I was in Pensacola now, on furlough, from June the 19th to July the 31st, 1945. Now we were assigned to still another army. This time the 4th Army, which was stationed at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma.

Louise Forshaw:

So more travel for you? Oh, more travel. Were you on troop trains for all this travel? Yes, in this case we were on a troop train. What I'm doing is looking at my notes. We were at Camp Gruber, and we were scheduled now for island invasion. Guess what happened. The first atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima on August the 6th, 1945, while we were still at Camp Gruber. The second atomic bomb was dropped at Nagasaki, on August the 9th, 1945 just a few days later. But that did not stop our moving. On August 18, 1945, we left Camp Gruber by rail, en route to an unknown destination, again. And, on August the 17th, 1945 we arrived at Camp Stoneman, California after traveling 2, 158 miles. And at Camp Stoneman, we stayed for almost two weeks, and then were transferred to the west coast point of embarkation at San Francisco. We embarked on the USS General Robert Lee Howze, and sailed for an unknown destination. But you were headed out to the Pacific? We were on our way. What was the travel like on these troop ships? For me, for the first two or three days, awful, because again I would get seasick. But I discovered if I slept on the deck, it was much better. I also discovered that, while I would get seasick for a couple days, there were men who were sick the entire voyage. And you cannot believe how it was for those men, for all practical purposes, traveling below deck. Can you imagine what it smelled like; it was just absolutely dreadful for them. On the other hand, while I was on deck I recovered, able to eat. Fellows played games, poker, bridge, whatever, and it turned out that it was not too bad. The one exception to that is that on one occasion we caught the edge of a cyclone, and it was very, very rough, because the water, of course, was coming all the way over the front deck. Well, let's see, where are we here, we're aboard the USS General Howze, all the way from August th 29th to September the 7th. On September the 2nd there was the official signing of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. So you can see, the sequence of how lucky we were. We crossed the International Date Line on September the 7th. I know some people would laugh at me, but I've always kept, and I thought I had it here handy, oh here it is, this little certificate. It's sort of tacky, I suppose, but I liked having it.

Louise Forshaw:

There aren't too many people who have these certificates, indicating they've crossed that Date Line.

Joseph Rogers:

Well, and it's very specific, too. Right where we were at the time, so we had crossed the International Date Line, and we set anchor on September the 10th at Eniwetok Atoll on the Marshall Islands. And that's E-N-I-W-E- T-O-K. We were only there for one day, and then again we were off to an unknown location. On September the 26th, we were at anchor in Tacloban, Leyte, on the Philippine Islands, and you'd recognize that as one of the more southern islands. We expected, actually, to debark there. But they changed their mind and again we were off to an unknown destination [Laughter]. On September the ? we arrived at Batangas, B-A-T-A-N-G- A-S, on the big island of Luzon, in the Philippines. We debarked the next day, and moved inland on Luzon, where we temporarily camped. On October the 1st, 1945, we moved from Lipa, Luzon, to Angeles, Luzon. Angeles is about sixty miles north of Manila. That's where we remained stationed, Louise, until March the 22nd, 1946. What's already begun is that we in effect became replacements for those units who had been on the islands and had suffered casualties for a long, long time. Replacements for 20 those who deserved to come home sooner. But by March the 22nd, my number came up and I moved from Angeles to the 5th Replacement Depot. I don't remember where that was, but we left for Manila and on March the we left Manila and embarked on the USS General Langfitte - L-A-N- G-F-I-T-T-E - headed for the United States. Let me mention that, while we were in Angeles, I was placed with another soldier in charge of the Company PX. That was very, very nice duty, because I had a chance to sell beer and cigarettes, and it was just very pleasant to do something that soldiers liked. I was not a smoker or a drinker, so I used my beer and cigarettes for young Filipino girls to do my laundry. I hated doing laundry. Water was scarce. I hate to use the term, but I'm sure you've heard it before. Have you ever heard of the term "whore's bath"?

Louise Forshaw:

Yes.

Joseph Rogers:

A whore's bath is where you have to take a bath out of your helmet. There was one point when we were in Germany that we went thirty days without a decent bath. I know there have been many men who had it far worse than us. The irony of that was, I can still remember going - and we had these makeshift little showers, and you get in and they'd limit you to maybe one minute of soap and water, and another minute to wash off. [Laughter] Then we were back on trucks. I'll always remember that, after this thirty days and getting that shower, which was just wonderful to have as short as it was, we were back on trucks and the dust covered us all over again. But at least it was clean dust.

Louise Forshaw:

That's right [Laughter]. While you were in I gathered- that you had an opportunity to meet some of the Filipinos.

Joseph Rogers:

Oh yeah. And I guess in my experience too, the fellows that we met were very nice. It was very, very pleasant. There was not a lot of intermingling or anything of that sort. Maybe there was more for the officers, but here I was just a lowly Corporal by that time. We arrived in San Francisco on April 16th. We moved again to Camp Stoneman, California. On April 17th, at Camp Stoneman, we left en route to a separation center. A separation center was at another camp called Camp Beale and so, on April the 21st 1946, at Camp Beale, California, I received my official discharge. You might note, that here I was a soldier from Florida, getting a discharge in California. There was a reason for that. I had changed a great deal, through the war experience. And I realized that a lot of my attitudes had changed. I had seen boys from Chicago and elsewhere who had better educations than I did, and I realized that the South's education system was not as good as it was elsewhere. I also realized that my view in regard to racial relations was completely changed, I would have been way out of step in the South with its still existing prejudices. In my hometown, they had separate schools for blacks, they had separate churches for blacks, they had separate areas in the movie theaters for blacks; they lived in a segregated area of the city. They even had black and white water fountains, and all the rest, and I realized that was not me anymore. So, my sister and her husband - my sister's name was Marjorie, and his name was Robert Eldridge, she had met him as a young cadet in Pensacola. He had gone to what was then called, "the Annapolis of the Air" and received his pilot training. Just as a side note, they were at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. He was up in the air at the time, flying one of these big PBY's, and a PBY is one of these airplanes that can land on water or land. When it was attacked, my sister was out hanging up clothes and could see the planes coming in and of course went through all the emotions that people at that time went through at Pearl. But he was ordered, he said, "That plane is more important than you are." He said, "You find a place to land." And she did not know where he was for over ten days. But at least he was safe, he landed on some nearby island, I have no idea where. In any case, they were now stationed in Coronado, California, which is a suburb of San Diego. So, he flew to Moffatt Field; I was given a ride down to Moffatt Field, and he picked me up and flew me back to Coronado. So now we're very close to the end, I've gotten my discharge, and of course my plan is to go home to Pensacola, and they took me on a Sunday drive to San Diego State College. I fell in love with it, absolutely on the spot. I said to myself, "I want to go to this school." I went home, said goodbye to my mother and my brother and his family and my friends. I returned to San Diego, entered San Diego State College, and I didn't waste any time. That summer, I took my first class in Psychology from a wonderful professor, and then enjoyed three of the most wonderful years of my life at San Diego State. I think that's a good place to end this story.

Louise Forshaw:

Well, except I'm going to ask you a few questions. You've already alluded to some of this. You've indicated that you changed in your outlook, especially toward other people and toward education. Were there any other ways in which your military experience affected you as a person, do you think?

Joseph Rogers:

Oh, yes, I think in many ways. One, it gave me this tremendous experience geographically. I went across the country four times, Louise, I've sailed across two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, I've seen Germany and gone through places like Belgium and the Netherlands, down into Austria. But also, one of the ways, I didn't realize until maybe later with hindsight how naive I was as a seventeen and eighteen year old. I guess I thought I knew a hell of a lot more than I did. I certainly, I was eligible, by the way, to go to Officers Candidate School, as my army general classification test, the AGCT showed a score of one hundred and thirty four; for Officer's Candidate School all you needed was one hundred and ten. But I was certainly never fit to be an officer, I was just too young and too immature. I also had a naive view of bravery. I thought bravery was just where somebody did something daring, and it turns out that I came to realize, there was a direct relationship between fear and courage, and that the more fear you have, the more courage it takes to overcome it. And I realized - and I'm sort of proud of this - when the shells were coming in, I was scared at first, but I was able to overcome, and use my intelligence to do what had to be done to get out of the situation. And for that, that was a great growth experience for me, to learn that when the chips were down you did what you had to do. The other thing is, there have been secretly released papers, after the war - classified documents that verify we were scheduled for the invasion of Japan. The other thing, I guess I'm sort of proud of, is that, I was ready for that. I didn't expect to live through it, but I was ready for it. And this is a part of that generation. I guess it's been called, "The Greatest Generation". It was like doing what you had to do. That, to me, was a tremendous growth experience to be able to say that now, or to you, that I didn't want to go, and I didn't expect to come back, but I was ready to go. And so were most of the other fellows. It is true we had some desertions; in San Francisco before we left for the Philippines, but those are just a couple of the things that come to mind.

Louise Forshaw:

Now, you've had a life since your time in the service, how did you spend your work life? Can you tell us briefly about your career?

Joseph Rogers:

Well, first of all, the experience at North Carolina State was beneficial. If you go back to the early part of the interview, I was there for one semester when all of a sudden we were all taken out. By the way that also happened to Sergeant Killelea, he was in the Air Force, and they no longer needed Air Force pilots, so he wound up in the infantry along with us ASTP people. But that actually gave me a semester that counted toward my bachelor's degree.

Louise Forshaw:

Wonderful.

Joseph Rogers:

It was wonderful. And once I went into San Diego State, I went every summer and I wound up with a bachelor's degree in three years. During that three years, well, during my senior year I was given an internship at the San Diego Welfare Department with my clients in the Old Age Security Division. My youngest client was sixty-three and my oldest was over one hundred. I worked there for a year as an intern and loved it. However, I really wanted to work with youth, with children. So I became a juvenile probation officer. I was a juvenile probation officer for the San Diego County from 1949 to 1956. I started off with both investigations and supervision. The department decided to change it into two separate units; supervision and investigation, and so for the last few years of that I was a special investigator of new juveniles being referred. I married Doris Gay Elsworth on September 26, 1953, and we will celebrate our 56 anniversary this year. We have four children; Deana, Suzanne, Jefferson and David. My sister and her husband, Bob Eldridge that I just mentioned, and my old professor at San Diego State, his name was Dr. Barnhart, a wonderful man and fun teacher encouraged me to go to graduate school. Every time I saw Dr. Barnhart he would say, "Joe, when are you going back to school to get an advanced degree." I'd say, "Oh, Dr. Barnheart, I don't have that ability." That may sound self-serving, but I didn't think I had the ability to go on for a doctorate. They talked me into it, so I applied at four schools, got turned down by Berkeley, but the University of Washington accepted me. So my wife and I went to the University of Washington and had wonderful, wonderful years there. They were just super. You can't believe the excellence of the faculty that I encountered. Let's move this on very quickly. After I got my degree, I taught one year at Washington State University in Pullman, and then went to Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where I taught there for six years. Then I came to New Mexico State, as was mentioned this morning at coffee. I came to New Mexico State as the new head of the department of Sociology and Anthropology; it was a newly created department, so I was actually the first head of the department. Brad was already a member of that faculty, and he was just a young anthropologist, and he's younger than I am. But I taught for over thirty years. From 1968 - and I retired in - I think I said this morning '92 but I believe it was '91, but I sometimes get confused because I continued teaching for another number of years in the Honors Program. And so, I didn't actually stop teaching until almost 2000.

Louise Forshaw:

Joe Rogers'. Well, you have had a long and interesting life. I sometimes call myself a "KD", "a kid of The Depression," because that's something you're too young to remember, but you never forget it, The Depression.

Louise Forshaw:

But we learned a lot of very good lessons in the depression.

Joseph Rogers:

Oh yes, I still remember some of the Depression meals such as tripe and turnip greens. [Laughter]

Louise Forshaw:

Well, we thank you very much, Joe Rogers, for sharing your experiences with us. This completes our interview with Joseph Wilson Rogers.