WWII days by Glenn Clayton Stover	Transcribed by Rod Stover from an audio tape recorded 25 January, 1972, from and by Glenn Clayton Stover.   Transcribing from tape is not easy.  There are so many nuances, pauses, “let’s see,”  “so on, and so forth,”  “ahh, wait, no, it was...”   Much of this has been left out for ease of reading, but yet, it’s tempting to try to capture “country talk.”  Typically, “...” means pauses or utterings of no consequence omitted.  (Parentheses) are used to insert expansions or explanations.  [Inserts by me, Rodney R. Stover, when I just can’t help it, are accompanied with brackets .. ]
Index: The early 40's (photos) Kentucky Texas Shipping out Over there The 12th Army Over there, again Again, but better England & Paris Back home Pat's Store (click for photos and sketches)	Related Link: The TWELFTH ARMORED DIVISION

WWII days
The early 1940's
	We was married in ‘41 (photos) and you were born in 1942, and that Fall I got my notice to go to the Army.  You were about 4 or 5 months old.  When the kids asked what I thought about when I got my notice... of course, at that time,.. it just looked like, well, somebody had to do it!  So, I didn’t really think too much of it.   But, when I got on the train in Kearney to go, if I had known it was going to be over three years, I don’t know what Idda done.  ‘Cause I thought within six months or a year I’d be back home and so on... which didn’t happen!
	[Ellen Gruber Ingerson, Glenn's young sister-in-law, describes the dilemma in a December, 1998 letter:]
	Prescott, Arizona December, 1998 . . ... need to clarify the part where he was called up by the draft board.    No, he wasn't so happy or willing.  He was much older than most of the men [29], and actually over the age limit.  But, each county had a quota to fill and all the younger fellows avoided it by being "needed on the farm."    Also, he had been sick and was diagnosed as a diabetic.  Dr. Ehlers put him on a diet to control it, and he had followed it carefully for several months.    When he went to Omaha for his physical, he was confident that they would not take him.  He told them he was diabetic so the M.D.s did a blood sugar - normal.  They held him for two days during which he ate many candy bars, drank pop and any thing else to raise the blood sugar.  Again, the test came back normal.    He was really a fine specimen of a man.  Probably called "Pop" or "Gramps" by the young men he trained as Seargent.    It caused a lot of excitement and hurried decisions about the store and all.    Dorothea and you went with him to Camp Campbell, Ky., and another place in Texas.  It was Dorothea's first look at the "real" world behond the small towns of Nebraska.  It shook her up to see women drinking....    As to the store - Tom Morton did not buy it.  He had been in the SeaBees and discharged.  He then managed the Safeway in Neligh, Nebraska.  (Uncle Hank [Rathjen] got a lot of mileage out of "going to Neligh to find the "Safe way," as they [Tom & Bernice] had four kids fifteen months apart.)  Tom was let go from Safeway when the previous manager came back from service.    Tom did run the Poole store for quite a while, but he was ready to move on the day your Dad got home!    You and your Mom were living in Mae Crostous' house for part of the time you Dad was over seas, and I baby-sat for her.  [no wonder she was always been my favorite Aunt! - rrs]    .    .             - Aunt Ellen

Fort Campbell, Kentucky
Cropped from batllion photo, 12th Army 495th Armored Field Artillery, Ft. Campbell, Ky, 28 March, 1943	I went to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, and was there for just about a year, I guess.  You and mom lived here (Poole) for a while and then moved to a little house in Ravenna... It was north of Grampa Gruber’s on the west side of the street... just in the next block north, a little house and you lived there until... I can’t remember when I got my first furlough... Some of them got their first furlough right after basic training, but they put me in a radio school, which lasted for other six weeks or more, and so I didn’t get home right away.  But when I did get home, if I remember right, we moved back, we moved the stuff back here to the house here (Poole) and then, I went back to Ft. Campbell and made arrangements for a place for us to stay down there. [RRS insert;  Clarksville, Tennessee, was the nearest large town.  Ft. Campbell spans the border between Kentucky and Tennessee.]    I rented a room, as I remember it, and called mom and told her to come on down.  Which, she did.  And when she got there, this room we had rented, the man didn’t....  I didn’t state that we had a small child and so forth, and he was just wound up like crazy when he found out ‘cause he didn’t know... they didn’t want any KIDS around, so when I got in that night... he started in with me, and we found this other place way up on the hill.  A big old ranch style or plantation style home, I guess is what you’d call it.  And, it had four great big rooms downstairs, and then a great wide stairway and then there was rooms upstairs and we rented on of these rooms for $10 a week which was I guess cheap at that time.  It had a bed and a couch and a place to do some cooking and so forth... so, we could do some light housekeeping in there, as you might call it.    It was kind of a cruddy place, though.  You had to sleep on the davenport and you kept having little bumps on you, and we finally got to really looking it over one day, and we found that dang davenport was just lousy with bedbugs!  In the South, that’s common.  So, I went down and told the owner, or manager, or whoever he was, about it and he said “Well, what do you suggest we do?”  And I said, “Well, I suggest we take it out in the back yard and burn it up!”  Which we did.  He went right up with me and we carried her down and we set it on fire and burned the damned davenport up!  Because, that’s all it was good for; it was just LOUSY.  I don’t remember what we did after that... where you slept. [Rod doesn’t remember, either]

Texas

Anyway, after our sojourn in Kentucky, and we had maneuvers down there and at that time all families had to go home, so mom and you got to go home with... can’t remember for sure who it was, but anyway, you got a ride home, and we went on maneuvers for six weeks or a couple months or something;  after which, we went to Texas. The closest town down there was Abilene.  We was down there quite a while, and I kept looking for a place.. It was really hard to find a place to live down there, it was just so close to an Army camp, and it was so crowded.  I had mom come down with you... the first couple of nights we stayed in a hotel, and then this one fella was going on leave for a few days, so he said we could use his place.  We checked out of the hotel and went to his place and found out that his leave had been canceled, so he couldn’t go, and we went back to the hotel and the room had been rented.  We stayed someplace that night and the next morning I got up at 4 o’clock and headed uptown; that’s one time I swiped a Sunday paper to look at the ads, and I see an ad for an apartment up at the north edge of Abilene.  The busses weren’t running at that hour, so I walked, don’t know how far, twenty some blocks up north, and I was sittin’ on their doorstep when they finally got up and opened the door.  Found out they had listed it with the Army center, the place they had for recreation and so forth..  They had listed it down there the night before and had already rented it.  All you had to do is say you had a place for rent and bingo, it was gone! I remember him! He was mean! Look, he's going to whack my sand castle! Roddy & Tommy Mee, May, 1944    And so I went clear back home, and that afternoon we rode around with Johnny Mees, they had a kid about your age.    ...Johnny Mees... they had this little brat that you fought with, ‘cause he was sure spoiled.  But we lived there then (Abilene) until it was time to ship overseas when you and mom came home and lived here in Poole.     We saw a sign “for rent,” a room for rent, so we stopped real quick, and I beat it in and jerked down the sign as I went in.  We rented this room with these people.. they had a house... just average size, three bedrooms.  And so we rented this one room, a bedroom with kitchen privileges.  It was their kitchen, they still lived in the other side of the house.  June, 1944    They had two bedrooms they rented for $10 a week, which is $40 some a month and they still lived in their own house and got some $80 bucks a month  rent!  Which, wasn’t half bad! We lived there for quite some time until... down in the southern part of town, the people who lived there moved out or something... anyway, we had a chance to rent the whole house for considerably less, $80 a month or something, so Johnny Mees and us rented the house, and then we took in another couple, so there was three families living in that same house and we lived there in Texas ‘til it was time to go over seas.  This Johnny Mee had his car down there, so I rode back and forth to camp with him; I paid him so much a week.  Then, when we got orders to go over seas, why, of course, you and mom had to go home.  And we shipped out.

Shipping Out

Excerpts from the History of the 12th Armored clarify movements, places and events: "The 12th Armored Division was activated on 15 September 1942 at Camp Campbell, Kentucky. Following training and maneuvers in Kentucky and Tennessee, the Division moved to Camp Barkeley, Texas, near Abilene in December 1943....The 12th Armored Division staged at Camp Shanks, New York and sailed for England on 20 September 1944, under the command of Maj. Gen. Roderick R. Allen. After landing at Liverpool on 2 October 1944, the Division proceeded to Tidworth Barracks on the Salisbury Plain at Wiltshire. Five weeks later, the 12th crossed the English Channel, landed at Le Havre, France and went on to assembly near Auffay,France...."

I remember we got on the train in Texas one night, or early in the evening, and we traveled all that night, and we got up the next morning and we wondered where we were, and we were still in Texas, because that’s pretty good sized.  We went clear across the country to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where we had a bit of a session there, and finally got on a boat to go over seas.  That was a Navy boat, the U.S.S. Bliss, which was a nice boat, in a way.  It held about 1500 troops.  We went over in convoy, there was I don’t know how many ships... lots of them.  We went over that way ‘cause there was quite a bit of danger on account of the German subs.  We left in October, landed in England... it took us about eleven days to get over there.  They were going to land us at LeHavre, France, but the harbor had been bombed there just a few days before, and it was a mess, so they had to put us into the docks in... around England, but there wasn’t any port that would accommodate the entire convoy.  So, we just landed all around England, and then they shipped us to a central place in the South Central part of England into a camp there.  Maybe England is an old country compared to us, but it was still way behind.  We had tents to sleep in and it was rainy and foggy.  You set up your little old cot to sleep on, and the water would run right under it during the night; it was really miserable.  We was there about two weeks or so, I got to visit London while we were there, and then we shipped across to France.

Over there...

The English Channel isn’t too wide, but it took us three days.  We went across in one night and then sat there for two days bouncin’ in the waves waiting for a chance to land because the wind was so strong and the waves where so high that we couldn’t.  We were on those flat bottomed LSTs, I guess you call them, so we couldn’t pull in, couldn’t dock, couldn’t land.    We landed in France, went across France, and finally into the combat zone in Southeastern France, and from then on, it was sort of hectic.  We went through France and through Alsace Lorraine, and I’ll tell you, that was a MESS.  That country was just torn up so terrible, it was pitiful.  The people here that don’t really know anything about it, if they’d see the devastation that took place in those countries where the war had gone through, they would maybe stop and think.. It was really terrible, just awful.  Then eventually we went through France and into Germany and crossed the Rhine and down south into the Bavarian Alps and it was when we were down there that the war finally ended.  Then I transferred from the outfit to the Army of Occupation and stayed over there for some time before finally they transferred out on numbers and I finally headed for home.  It was quite a problem in knowing what to do.  I talked to the Colonel about it.  I was almost tempted to enlist and go into the Pacific Theater, because I figured that by the time I came home and spent six months, the war would be over there... But, he talked me out of it, and that’s exactly what did happen, though.... The ones that did get transferred right away were here in the States when the war ended in the Pacific, so they were home six months or so before I was.  So, it would have worked out, but of course, that was one of those... you was taking a big chance doin’ that.  I finally got home in January, 1946; over three years.

[Insert by Rod Stover. I knew this song as early as I can remember... Over hill, over dale, ‘til we hit the dusty trail, and those caissons keep rolling along. In and out, hear them shout, counter march, and all about, and those caissons keep rolling along. For, it’s Hi, Hi, Hee, in the field artillery, Count out your numbers loud and strong! (HUP, TWO, THREE, FOUR!) For, where e’re you go, you will always know, that those caissons go rolling along. It's the Army's theme song. Thanks, Dad. There are other versions...the Internet is just phenomenal.  "Caissons" was written by by Brig. Gen. Edmund L. Gruber.  Gruber?  What a coincidence. Another project... ]

Back to WWII.... Rod:  What division were you attached to? The 12th Army

When I went to Tennessee, they were forming a new division, the Twelfth Armored Division.  I stayed in that through the time in the States here and then over seas until after the war was ended.  Over there, most of the time, we was with the Seventh Army; we did get transferred to the Third Army, old “Blood ‘n Guts” Patton’s outfit.  To help out with the Battle of the Bulge.  We headed for it, but they got it under control before we got there.  We were attached to the Third Army for a while.  We called him old “Blood ‘n Guts” Patton.. his guts and our blood..  Its about the way it was.  Then, right after that, when we got stopped... They got that under control..  They turned and headed us east and it come out in the paper.. I don’t know if I’ve still got a copy of that.  I have a bunch of souvenir things you’ll have to look at when you’re here..  But, we were further east in Germany than any other outfit at one time.  It was kinda wild, you didn’t know what you was doing, or I don’t know whether anybody did or not for sure, but it was crazy.

Over there, again...    And then after the war ended over there, I transferred into First Armored Division, which was an Army of Occupation.  I talked to the Colonel and so on about it.. right after the war they started recruiting for Pacific duty.  Well, I kinda had it figured out that the deal was that you’d come home for six weeks at home, then you’d have six months separate training for Pacific duty before you went over seas.  The say I had it sorta figured was that by the time that was up, that it would be over, over there in the Pacific and you’d be sittin’ here at home ready for a discharge.  I talked to the Colonel about it; I had a notion to volunteer to go over there..  He said I was crazy.  I said that’s the way I had it figured and he said “Yeah, it might be that way, and it might not.  And if you once found yourself on the way over there, then you’d be there for hard to tell how long.”  So, he kind of talked me out of that, so I transferred to the Army of Occupation.  Then, of course, they started discharging... on a point system.  I was with them, oh, it must have been six months or more before I finally got enough points so that I could get out.  And that was kind of a wild affair, too, you went from this outfit to that outfit, and they shipped us up to the north part of France and then a week or so later they loaded on a train and shipped us south to the southern part of France to Marseilles.  And we got on a... I wouldn’t say a ship, it was more like a boat; it only held about 500 troops, the “Helen Hunt Jackson.”  ..It took us eighteen days to get home on that thing, right out in the middle of the Atlantic, one 24 hour period we fell back, I mean we were further away at the end of the 24 hours than we had been a day earlier, because of winds and storm.  We were going full speed ahead and losing... you can’t say losing ground, hardly... Anyway, we were going backwards instead of forwards.  It took eighteen days to get back to New York and we were just there a couple of days or so before we got put on a train to Ft. Leavenworth where we got discharged. Rod:  Were Mom and I at Grampa Gruber’s waiting when you got home? [RRS insert.  I have a distinct memory of a knock, the door opening, and this big man in uniform saluting.  Don’t know if this was after his discharge or on one of the furloughs.]   Yes, you was over there.  You were living here in Poole.. I had phoned from Leavenworth that I would be in on that 11 o’clock train that come into Ravenna, and so mom and you sent over to meet the train, so you went to sleep on the davenport, besides, I didn’t get in on that train.. Something, misconnections somewhere.. we had to hitch the train in Leavenworth, and go to Omaha, change trains in Omaha, back to Lincoln, change trains in Lincoln to catch this one to Ravenna.... So, I think it was that 3-4 o’clock in the morning train I got in on.  I believe we came right home... We was up to Grandpa’s for a little while and then we came home yet that morning.  Yeah, I know, ‘cause grama (May Stover) got up out of bed at 4-5 in the morning and came over.   She had the Post Office all the while I was in the Army.  Yes, and it was a wonderful thing for her because it set her up for her Social Security and stuff now, because she wasn’t under (any other) retirement.   Mom didn’t teach while I was over seas.  I came back in the Spring of 1946 and she taught that Fall.

And again, but it gets better...

The experiences and so on, I wouldn’t trade the experiences for an awful lot of money, but I sure wouldn’t want to do it again.   When we went over, we landed... we went over in convoy.. we were on a Navy ship which was a pretty decent boat; it held about 1500 troops.  ‘Course we went in convoy then because it was dangerous for any ship to be out by itself so all the ships going towards Europe would congregate there in the New York harbor and then we all left at once and stayed in convoy all the way across for protection.  Had some airplane carriers, too... Flying around looking for subs and so on.  It only took us eleven days to get to England.  Then the harbor where we were going to land got bombed just the day or so before and it wasn’t fit to land at, so we put in at different small ports around England, then we got on those little English trams.. they’re really something,.. and all finally congregated at this camp in England which was, well, it didn’t belong in this day and age, that’s for sure... We had tents, it was raining, water run under the tents.  Your stuff all got wet, they didn’t have modern toilet facilities at all...  They had big rooms.. big buildings for toilet facilities, but there wasn’t even holes in the ground.  They had about a ten-gallon bucket under the hole and the English guys would come along with their truck, and there was a strap door on the outside and they’d reach in and get the bucket and empty it into their truck, and Y-e-e-a-l-ch !! [RRS insert:  How do I possibly put into displayed text an adequate expression of  Dad’s unique way of saying “Yuck” or “Yech” ??  (I may have to find that tape.  And make a RealAudio file out of it)] That was what I’d call a mess, but they were really not modern there. [RRS insert: Right.  Not nearly as modern as the two-holer at Poole.]

England and Paris    ‘Course in the cities and so on it was, (but) this was sort of a temporary camp, I guess. We were there for two or three weeks before we could get a chance to go across into France, then we crossed the channel in those L.S.... what they call ’em.. Flat bottomed boat, anyway, and of course, we went across in one night... it was only a few miles.. but, we got over to the other side and the wind was blowin’ so strong and everything and we couldn’t dock, couldn’t land.  So, we were there for three days rockin’ on this boat before we could pull in and get a chance to unload.  Then, we went across France, and it wasn’t too many days after we got there that we hit the front lines, but we were in France for a long time... I even had one three day furlough in Paris.    Oh, while we were in England, I got to go into London and see.. the different places like the palace, Big Ben, Rivers, #10 Downing Street, things you always hear about..  And that’s what we did, we visited most of those places.  In Paris, we took in the Eiffel Tower and all that stuff, which was all right....

Getting back home....    When we left Marseilles, France, it took us three days to get out of the Mediterranean and that sea was just, well, just as smooth as.. there wasn’t a ripple on that water anyplace just really a smooth, calm, sea.  The Merchant Marines on this ship were getting, I think, time and a half, or double time because it was considered dangerous waters on account of floating mines and so on, but luckily we didn’t happen to hit any.  When we got on the train in New Jersey to go to Leavenworth, we had a...  I think it was about a six hour layover in St. Louis... It really kind of surprised me, they came through and told us that the train wouldn’t leave... That was about 6 o’clock in the evening.. And, that our train wouldn’t pull out until midnight.  And, so, they let everybody go, we could go down... into St. Louis and do whatever you wanted to just as long as, well, they didn’t care, really...  I mean, we were heading for discharge, so they said you know where you’re heading for if you don’t get back, why it’ll be delayed, so they just let the whole train load loose in St. Louis and I thought that was kind of odd in a way because, well, a lot of those fellas hadn’t been home or had a chance to be out in an American city for one year, tow years or more, but it worked out all right... I guess they all got back..  Some of them had to be carried, but they made it.  Another guy and I, we just went downtown a ways and, I think if I remember right, we stopped in and had a hamburger or something and went to a show.  And went back ‘cause we didn’t want to take any chances on to gettin’ there when we should.  So, that part worked out O.K.

[RRS insert:  I think it was here, whenever... That Dad forgot to turn off the recorder.  So, theres this shuffling sound, I think it’s his slippers, and then the refrigerator door opens, and Dad says:  “Gawd, that's aweful!”   No idea; rotten rutabagas, maybe.]

Some History of Pat's Store...(click for additional photos and sketches) Rod:  “When did you buy the store?  From Duncan?
	Yes, I bought the store in 1939 from Mrs. Duncan.  I worked in it from three years before that, from 1936 till ‘39 at, well, I was supposed to get a dollar a day.  But, we didn’t make that much money, and we put out a certain amount of credit, so quite a bit of my wages I took in store accounts, which, well, some of ‘em I collected on and some of ‘em I didn’t.  But that was in ‘39.  Then, when I went to the Army in ‘42, that’s when I sold it to Eggleston, actually, and Dudley run it for him.  ‘Cause old Walt (Eggleston) wasn’t... don’t know if you remember old Walt or not.. but, he wasn’t capable.... ‘Course it turned out that Dudley wasn’t, either.  But, he run the store while I was in the Army and he was still there when I came back. And then, shortly after I came back is when Tom Morton (married to mom’s twin sister, Bernice) bought the store from Eggleston.  They moved in to the back of the store and I was just running the Post Office... all I was doing then.
	Grandma (May Clayton Stover) had run the Post Office while... as soon as I went to the Army ‘til after I came back.. or for a couple of months after I come back.  I didn’t have to take over for ninety days, I guess it was.  That was in the.... I suppose the Spring of 1946.  What I wanted to do with the Post Office, I wanted to get a transfer someplace else under Civil Service through that, but that didn’t pan out so good.    And then that Fall is when mom taught school up here at Poole.  Just a week or so before school was supposed to start, whoever had the contract had given it up and so they asked her to teach, so she taught that year from the Fall of ‘46 through the Spring of ‘47.  ‘Course, I just run the Post Office and Tom was in the store and I’d come home that way and get supper and so on, so it worked out pretty good.  I know you spent quite a few afternoons sleeping in the Post Office window. [I remember that.  Pretty well.  Also remember looking at the calendar when it turned 1-9-4-7 when Gram was keeping me while Mom was teaching.  Wilma was single and still living at home, frequently baked cookies in the kitchen stove fired by cobs; always had flour hand prints on her blue jeans. - RRS] Probably Shenandoah, 1947, photo by Ellen Gruber   And then,... well, Tom got sick of the store and wanted me to take it over and so on... and, so the next Spring, as soon as school was out, I told him I would, but we were going to take a little trip first.  So right after school was out, we took our, you might say, our first trip, we went to St. Louis.  We left here and went to Shenandoah, Iowa.  That’s where Allen’s lived at that time.  We stayed overnight there.  Ellen (Gruber, mom’s little sister) went along with us and so we went to Florence’s (mom’s sister) and Gus’ (Garmatz) in St. Louis.  Let’s see, that was in the old ‘37 Ford.  And we were there for a few days, and then on the way home, I don’t suppose you remember hardly any of that, but we went South of St. Louis about fifty miles or so and then cut west through the Ozarks.  This pottery they displayed just every few miles, why, here was another one. [I remember lots of it; Shenandoah, fifth birthday in St. Louis, a double barreled cork gun, locking myself in the bathroom, going to the zoo, a big beaked bird, and yes, the pottery stands. - RRS]    We got back home then, and I took over the store then the very next week.  We didn’t hardly even inventory it, we just made a rough guess at it and I paid him so much...  Tom, that was, and he took off that very same night.  That was on a Sunday I went down and bought it to take over Monday morning, and when I went down on Monday morning, I found out he had jumped in the car, he left Bernice and the kids there, but he jumped in the car and took off for California.  He couldn’t really stay too long in any one place.  So, Bernice lived there for several months, I don’t know just how long, then she moved to Ravenna and he didn’t show up for a long time.  There was about three months she didn’t even hear from him, she didn’t know where he was, and come to find out, he’d been clear up to Alaska just horsin’ around.    Then after she moved to Ravenna is when Ed Poole moved in the back.. I rented that to them.  He couldn’t keep up his place.. I guess he was running a little low on money, so he sold his place to Bert Standage and moved in the back of the store.  He helped me out a little bit in the store...  I think I charged him at that time, $5 a month for rent.  There wasn’t any water there, drinking water, so I carried a five gallon can of water down every day for them, ‘cause,  well, the way they lived in those days, you wouldn’t think of doing that now, but that’s the way they did.  They lived there for quite a while until... well, he got to where he just wasn’t able to do the cooking and stuff.  She was pretty helpless.  So, they moved to a home in Kearney, but before he got their stuff cleaned up and everything, he had a heart attack and died.  And so then after that, I just made a store room out of the back of the back rooms there.  I put my extra stuff,.. I was pretty crowded anyway ‘cause, oh, kept building up the stock all the time.
	If music is what you crave, Get a tuba... Burma Shave.   When I took over, I come out with new rules.  I closed the store two nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 o’clock and didn’t go back, and boy, that was really something.  So, I only had to work four nights a week that way.  ‘Course some of those nights got pretty long like Saturday night when I had... I bought a lot of cream, and I remember the latest that I got home one Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning after hauling making two trips to town with cream, it was 2 o’clock Sunday morning when I finally got home.  I’d have, oh, I forget what, over twenty ten gallon cans of cream.  It was pretty fair, an awful lot of work to it, but it was pretty fair business.  I had a commission check some months as high as $125 which seemed like a lot of money at that time.  It wouldn’t be much now for that amount of work, and I wouldn’t think of doing it, but I really put in lots and lots of hours in that store for a pretty small wage, really.

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