Interviewee: John W. Meyer
Interviewer: Jack Sigler
Date of Interview: 11/03/2010
Category: World War II
Status: Pending
Tape Location: Box #61

Sigler: Today is 3 November, 2010. We are interviewing Mister John Meyer of Sarasota, Florida, concerning his experiences in World War II. Mr. Meyer's telephone number is [redacted]. The interviewer is Jack Sigler of the Reichelt Oral History Program, calling from [redacted]. This is Side A of Tape One. Good morning Mister Meyer.

Meyer: Good morning.

Sigler: Do you understand that this interview is being recorded?

Meyer: Yes, I do.

Sigler: Okay, fine. I want to talk about your experiences during World War II.

Meyer: I'd really like a copy of it, if you don't mind.

Sigler: Oh, we'll definitely get you a copy. After we finish, I'll tell you about that. Sure. Why don't we start out by just saying where you were before you joined the service, how you got in, and your story from there.

Meyer: I was a freshman at the University of Illinois, and I entered into the ROTC program. This was when the school started in the fall, which was in September, if I'm not mistaken. And I was called to active duty in March.

Sigler: Which year?

Meyer: This would have been 1942. I guess that was when it was, I'm almost certain. So then I was called to active duty and I was sent back to school to a program called the ASTP program. And it was at that stage that the army was very interested in getting educated people in, I guess, it was for engineering more than anything else. But it was a program of which they sent you back to school and you went to the same thing, it was like going through OCS. It was basically the same thing, but it was all different types of schooling and education, math and so on and so forth. So, I finished the first program as I'm apt to at the University of Syracuse in New York. And I'll never forget this because we got there and it was so cold, and there was no place to sleep. There was a synagogue that they opened and they let us sleep in the synagogue. [laughs] It was the first time I'd ever been in a synagogue in my life, but I was very grateful to them. And then they had a house, they were cleaning houses on a street—I think it was Waverly—and the house was not vacant yet, so we stayed down there for, I guess, a week or two. And then the house became available and we moved into a regular home that the military had purchased. They also had, right next door to us, another one that they had done for the Air Force. So we Air Force guys that were going in, went in, to the Air Force next door to us, and we were in a house next to them. One was the ASTP program and one was the Air Force program. So, then after a twelve or thirteen week period there, we were transferred from Syracuse University to the University of Illinois, which did not make me unhappy. [laughs]

Sigler: Back where you'd been.

Meyer: The original situation was that we were supposed to get a week off in between semesters. The semesters were twelve or thirteen weeks, whatever it was, and then they sent us to the University of Illinois, which put me right back where I was originally, and I was ecstatically happy about that. I ended up passing at the University of Illinois. Now, that was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life, by passing in the University of Illinois. Well, those that flunked out all went to the Air Force, but we that passed were very, very fortunate enough, and we were sent up to Chicago and we went to a school up there called DePaul University—it was not the DePauw in Green Castle, Indiana, there's a DePaul University in Chicago—on March 11 [1942]. We were there and, in the middle of the program—as I say, if I'd have been smart, I'd have flunked out and gone with the Air Force. But instead I passed and went up to Chicago there. It lasted six weeks, and all of a sudden, they shipped us out and I was shipped to Camp White, Oregon, as an infantry replacement, with no infantry training or anything of the sort. So, that was it. And the next thing I knew, I was on my way over to Hawaii, to jungle training, and made the original landing in the Philippines.

Sigler: Now, did you have a commission at this point from ROTC?

Meyer: Hell no!

Sigler: That's what I thought. So you went through all this training and end up as a—

Meyer: As a buck private in the infantry.

Sigler: Wow.

Meyer: They just needed infantry replacements, and I think it was the Battle of the Bulge was hit over there or something like that, and some of them—part of the ASTP program—went over to Europe and the other part of us went right over to the Philippines. So, I landed in Hawaii and we took some training over there, and I went to San Luis Obispo first, and took some training in learning how to go out of the large vessels down into the smaller little boats that used to take us in for beachheads. And I took that in San Luis Obispo and then went on over and then I went back and—

Sigler: Now, that's in California, right?

Meyer: Yeah. Right. I was training just to fix three out of order cargo vessels. It was only a couple days they had us there. Then we went over, from there, to Hawaii and I took a little jungle training in Hawaii. And from Hawaii they put us on a boat and we were supposed to go to a place called Yap, which was an island that they had considered to invade. I don't know why, but that was the story, and maybe it was a cover story, I don't know. But we saw all the information on Yap and found out that they had money that—the money and things were like great big wheels of rocks. Or great big rocks that were turned into wheels, or something of that type of nature, and that was their currency. Very interesting, but we never got there. We joined MacArthur and made the Red missile landings in the Philippines.

Sigler: Now you went directly from Honolulu to the Philippines?

Meyer: From Honolulu, and we were going around. We were assigned to MacArthur and we made the initial landing in the Philippines on Lady.

Sigler: Right. Now, you were in the ninety-sixth [96] infantry division.

Meyer: Ninety-sixth [96] infantry division.

Sigler: Do you remember what regiment you were in?

Meyer: Three-eighty-first [381].

Sigler: Three-eighty-first [381] infantry. Okay, and your position then was—

Meyer: A buck private.

Sigler: A buck private rifleman or—

Meyer: Rifleman.

Sigler: Right. So, you got into the Philippines, landing in Lady.

Meyer: Right. Then we made the landing on the Philippines and I was sent back to get more ammunition—at the historical landing when MacArthur had gone back there—and I was no more than five feet from MacArthur when he was wading ashore.

Sigler: Oh, that great picture. [laughs]

Meyer: Well, I don't know that I was in it, but I don't remember. I know the picture is very vivid in my mind. And it was just coincidental, it was not planned, I assure you. [laughs] But being a buck private, I carried the damn—they sent me back to get more ammo and I did. So I took that back, went on back and joined my frontward company, and I went through the entire Philippine Campaign. It was over after 29 days and I was hit with shrapnel on the twenty-ninth [29] day, on the last day of the Campaign. [laughter] There was a small amount of shrap pellet went into my leg, my right leg. I stayed in—we were very blessed in the Philippines, because we, as I said, we almost had armor. [laughs] We were so—it rained every single solitary night and you slept in water, your foxhole filled up with water. It was like you were in a bathtub all night. It was a very interesting experience. At that time, at night, we had setup. We would put tin cans and so forth on wires to keep these Japanese from infiltrating into our area. It so happens that you could hear it when they were coming in, and then we would send up flares to try to spot where they were trying to infiltrate. One of those things, one of them, apparently, got through and I can remember one of the flares went off, and the sky was right above me. And there was a knife right in front trying to stab me, and we had a bout and I choked him to death. I did get a wound in my right arm, a knife wound, where he stuck me a little bit. I threw my hand up and I had enough of a thrash to deflect the knife, and so on and so forth. But that was my first experience on anything like that. Then in the Philippines, when you went to bed at night, your end of the foxhole at night, you'd get all that mud all over you. And when you got up in the daytime, it would bake, and it was almost like having a bulletproof vest. [laughs] Because you're all full of mud. And it actually would stand up. Well, when I took my shoes off—and this was interesting because when I took my shoes off for the first time that I was able to do that, it was after twenty some-odd days, twenty-nine days. After I was wounded, they took them off and my socks had rotted away, and they were just blotches of socks, and the rest of it had all rotted away. It was very interesting. It's because the infantry travels on its feet. So, from there I was put on a boat. I was sent back to the hospital, the evacuation hospital, and I was fortunate enough to be there the night that the Japanese dropped the paratroopers upon our hospital.

Sigler: Oh, wonderful. [sarcastically]

Meyer: And one of the Japanese officers got in, and he sliced the tent open with the sword—with one of those long, Japanese swords that they have—and unfortunately, we were laying in bed, couldn't do anything, laying on cots, awaiting the evacuation to go out to the boat to take us out of there. And fortunately one of the guys there was able to shoot him before he did any damage. Then the next morning, we were put on the S.S. Mercy and I was sent to the hellhole of the world, which was a place called Hollandia, New Guinea.

Sigler: Okay. [laughs] If we could go back for just one second, do you remember the unit number of the evacuation hospital?

Meyer: No. No, it wasn't an evacuation hospital.

Sigler: General hospital?

Meyer: It was a—well, you know, I didn't go to the hospital. I went from on the Mercy, on a boat.

Sigler: No, in the Philippines.

Meyer: That's what I'm taking about. After the experience on the beach, the next morning we got on the S.S. Mercy, we were put on the Mercy, and we were taken down to Capitini—now I can't remember what I said before, or whatever the hell the name it was [Hollandia]—in New Guinea. And that was absolutely the worst place I've ever been in my life. I wanted to get out of there, and as soon as I was able to go and was waiting to be reassigned, I was supposed to be reassigned on combat. I said, “The hell with it. I'm going back to my company.” And I went out on my own. I was not supposed to go back to my own company, they were going to reassign me to something and I didn't want to do that. So I went out to the airport and I hitched a ride. I said, “Where you going?” And he said, “Where you want to go?” I said, “I'm going back to the Lady.” And he said, “Well, I can take you part-way.” And I had a wonderful experience because I got to ride in a glider, and I'd never done that before. He took me up and he cut the glider loose and we landed. I happened to have a friend that was on Palua, so I went over to see him. He was a captain at the time, and I knew him in high school. He was a couple years older than I was. I had a very nice visit with him, and then I went back, I hitchhiked my way back, and went back to the Philippines and rejoined my outfit. And I rejoined it in time to be stupid enough to go to Okinawa. So then I went into Okinawa, and I went into that one, and after—our whole damn outfit—after twenty-one days, there were twenty-nine of us left.

Sigler: An infantry company. [chuckles]

Meyer: [laughs] A company and a battalion, that was all that was around.

Sigler: Wow.

Meyer: At that time, I was wounded again. I had been blown out of a hole. I have on the right side of my head, shows that my brain has been effected. But not enough to be—you know, it's just noticeable. My son's a doctor and one of his great friends that he went to med school with is a psychiatrist, so he X-rayed my head. And he told me that there was actual damage there, and so on and so forth, but it's nothing that's, you know—

Sigler: Doesn't cause you any problems at all.

Meyer: It gives me the excuse to say, when I do something stupid... [laughter] But that's exactly what happened. Then after that I was sent back, on various ways, and I ended up on a ship coming back from Hawaii. They had a couple of Japanese prisoners down there, and that was something because it was very rare that you got Japanese prisoners. I remember that they gave us a reward if we could go out and catch a live Jap in the Philippines and return it to them alive. And if we could, why, we would receive a bottle of whiskey, or you'd get a bottle of scotch and a bottle of bourbon. Boy, you should see everybody clear out. [laughter] I don't know anybody that was fortunate enough to catch one, or anything of the sort. I didn't, but I sure looked. [laughter] What I did see, though, was Filipinos bringing in Japanese and what they had [done] is they had decapitated them. And how they did it—because the Japs wore their hair short—I don't know. But they had them somehow. They had them tied to a pole and they walked through with two Japanese heads that they'd cut off. And apparently there was a body for them, somebody was carrying it off. And if you did catch a live Japanese or Orient Asian you'd get, then they would tell you to take them back to the Italian headquarters, which was maybe five miles away. They'd say, “You take this man back there and I want you back here within 15 minutes. And that's an order!” So that meant you went out and shot him. [laughs] And that was it. Because you could not possibly get back there. So you're obeying the orders, and that was what happened. At that stage, we were there and we were dive-bombed at that time and everything else. That's a funny thing—I've never realized that—but when a bomb's coming down, you swear it's going to hit you. And you can be a half of a mile or a mile away, but boy, when it's coming down, it looks like it's going to hit you. Anyway, that night, I did some dumb stuff and, whatever it was, and I got reported. I got upgraded to a sergeant, they made me a sergeant. A buck sergeant. So, I got rewarded that. And from then on, we stayed in the Philippines. I can remember one night when I got out to go to the latrine. We were in tents that lifted up off the ground, a different type of a tent than a pup tent. It wasn't one that you slept in every night, when you were carrying your pack around or anything else. And I stepped down, and nothing but a nice, great big boa constrictor starts to wrap himself around my leg, and I hacked it with a machete and got away. Boy, that really scared me, because I hate snakes. [laughter] Always have. I was hit in the face with one when I was riding on horseback one time, and it fell out of a tree and landed on me. It was just that time, was just whew. After that time, they always do that to me. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. Now, where was I?

Sigler: You landed on Okinawa.

Meyer: And I came on home from there, and I was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. I was in the hospital at Fort Lewis for awhile, then sent back to Percy Jones' convalescent in Battle Creek, Michigan, and discharged and went home. I was home for three days, and I went right back to college and started college about a month late and made up all the stuff.

Sigler: Back to the University of Illinois?

Meyer: Yep.

Sigler: Now, you were discharged then before the war actually ended, or just after?

Meyer: Well, yes, I was discharged.

Sigler: It was close.

Meyer: It was over. Truman had died or—

Sigler: Roosevelt.

Meyer: Whoever it was. Roosevelt had died, I guess it was.

Sigler: Yeah. Truman had just taken over.

Meyer: Yeah, Truman had just taken over, and that was about it.

Sigler: Okay. That was quite a military career. [laughs] Now, you were promoted Sergeant in the Philippines?

Meyer: Yeah, in the Philippines. So on my trip home—I gotta tell you, this is a story. [laughs] It's not really—maybe it's not to be recorded—but it's sort of kind of funny. I went to Saipan. On the way back, I went through Palua and Saipan. Those were the two landing places where the planes took off. And the next thing, I went by boat or something or other, I came there from Hawaii. I went to Tripler General [Hospital] first, but [laughs]—can you turn off your recorder?

Sigler: Sure. Just a second. I shall do so. [some mumblings about turning the recorder off]

[Tape recorder turned off, then recording resumed]

Sigler: Okay. I think we're back on again.

Meyer: I have to tell you about what some of the Red Cross personnel would do. The girls were always—they were responsible for catching up with your paychecks and things of that type of nature. And, absolutely, when you're not around to be paid like I was, I had about $300 or $400 coming, and by the time I got it—she knew I had this money coming because she was trying to select (?) it from me. So she was offering her services. And she would do this with different people, and she ran up and she would take the funds. I didn't do anything with her or anything of the sort, but she was very successful in what she did. She would put the bills, to hide them, and she'd take them in Stars and Stripe (?) and she would mail them back to her family. And the irony of it all is after the war, when I went to work, she was from Peoria, Illinois, and she had made up an account with Merrill Lynch and she put over a hundred grand in the account with Merrill Lynch. It was worth it. [laughter] So, she did very, very well for herself.

Sigler: [laughing] Yes, she did. Oh, boy.

Meyer: You know, when you're in a position—when you trace down, like, you know, a guy's been wounded, he's been in combat and he missed all the paydays, even a buck sergeant gets a little bit of money. [laughs] So, I had something coming. I think it was 300 bucks or something like that. Because I hadn't been paid for six or seven months. Whatever it was, it was really funny, because that was the way they did stuff.

Sigler: That would be about right. Even I remember the old pay scales. Privates made $21 a month. So, you came home, finished up in the hospitals, and was discharged.

Meyer: I went back to school immediately.

Sigler: Okay. So your military career actually ran about three years or a little more?

Meyer: I've actually got about two years.

Sigler: Two years, okay. Within that, what was the most interesting thing that happened to you in that period?

Meyer: That's a very difficult question. Of interest is one thing. Of things that I will never forget is another thing. This was a very—this is one thing that makes you believe that there's somebody upstairs. We were entrenched in—they had taken over some Japanese positions and they had all this tunnel type of crap with different entrenching, and it would go off in different locations and different places.

Sigler: This was in Okinawa?

Meyer: This was in Okinawa.

Sigler: Right.

Meyer: I was in a little foxhole type of a situation and it was an off-spin of one of the trenches that they had dug. You know, they'd dig a trench and you would go a long distance and then they would have little things that went off those trenches, and that was where they would hide or something or other, or stay. So that if you hit the area, if you hit one place, the guy that was a short distance away might not get hurt, you understand?

Sigler: All right, yeah.

Meyer: It was at nighttime and I had a—you know what a poncho is?

Sigler: Yes.

Meyer: Well, I rolled a poncho up and I was using it as a headrest. I put it under my helmet and on my mat in the back and I was laying on it like a pillow. It would elevate you to a certain extent and take the pressure off of it. I had my helmet on, I took my helmet off so I could...So there was a tremendous barrage and I had rolled this thing and I took it off and I lay it across my stomach. I don't know why or anything of the sort, but I just did. And about that time, a shell explodes right near me. It was white hot. It wasn't red hot, it was white hot. So it was sterile. And it went through my poncho. It was approximately, I'd say, 12 or 14 inches long, and it was a piece of shrapnel. And I could see it was white. It hit and it went through the poncho, and it did not break my skin, but it left a great big welt all the way across my stomach. And if I would not have had that poncho on there, it would have cut me in half.

Sigler: Wow.

Meyer: And when you took the poncho out the next morning—you know how you feel up paper? Fold paper up and fold it and cut it out, paper dolls, and they come out—you know what I'm talking about?

Sigler: Yep, yep.

Meyer: It had that effect. And the poncho was just nothing but holes, you know? But the very fact that I had it rolled up in a ball and it was enough, it stopped it. But I did get a little burn across my whole stomach.

Sigler: Yeah, but even so, considering...

Meyer: It would have cut me in half if it hadn't been for that.

Sigler: Wow. That's something you don't forget, the most memorable.

Meyer: Yeah. So that's the culmination of the whole thing.

Sigler: Anything else you can think of right now?

Meyer: Oh, I can tell you when I found out Roosevelt died, I was happy. [chuckles]

Sigler: Oh, okay. [chuckles]

Meyer: Don't mind telling you that.

Sigler: A good Republican?

Meyer: Not as strong as I am now.

Sigler: [laughs] Okay. I'll turn the recorder off.

Meyer: I will say one thing. My dad always said the biggest mistake he ever made in his life was thinking about voting for Roosevelt. [laughter]

Sigler: He was a Republican, too?

Meyer: Yep.

End of Transcription.