Martin, Ersel Oral History Cassette Tape Transcription
KHM Cassette Tape No. 91/2
Knox Historical Museum Military Oral History Project & Education Project
MASTER FINAL [Last Update: 17 July 2015 ]

Ersel Martin
(13 February 1917 – 20 September 1991)

Tape recorded January 12, 1991
On file at KHM and Kentucky Oral History Commission. Notes by Charles Reed Mitchell.

Interviewed by Clarence Ossie Burch on January 12, 1991 at the home of Ersel Martin, Heidrick, Kentucky. Also present running the cassette recorder was Charles Reed Mitchell.
Transcription by Charles Reed Mitchell, 6 May- 8 June 2015.
One 60 minute cassette tape. Time: approximately 55 minutes.
Open. Release signed.

Almost complete transcription, except for initial notes on family and genealogy, which Martin discussed in his other interview at the Company C, 149th Infantry Reunion cited below. Repetitions, false starts, corrected mistakes, expletives and interviewer’s encouraging comments have been edited out, except where needed in context. No attempt has been made to reproduce pronunciation, although for ease of reading some regionalisms have been regularized to standard English, e.g. “there was” for “they was,” “kind of” for “kinda” or “kindly,” and omitting extra syllables, such as “aholda” where “hold of” is meant.

 

SIDE ONE

 

Clarence Ossie Burch (COB): I’m Clarence Ossie Burch and I’m at the home of Ersel Martin for an interview, and he’s going to read to us a statement about the history of Company C.

Ersel Martin (ER): I am Ersel Martin, a former member of Company C, 149th Infantry, having joined the company in September of 1934 and was a member of the company until after the war in 1945 when I was wounded.

Company C was formed in the early 20s, just after World War I. It was first organized as Company G, 2nd battalion, 149th Infantry in 1921. In 1928 the company was redesignated Company C, the 1st battalion, 149th Infantry. Ben C. Herndon helped organize the company in the early 20s and was the company commander when I joined the company in 1934. He held this position until sometime in 1941.

I loved Company C as one big family and all the men as brothers. There was a lot of men that joined and dropped out before the war, also about 95 of us when we were called into federal service January 17, 1941. All these men I like to call brothers for we were united for a common cause. In April 1941 we got about 100 new men that were draftees. I learned to call them brothers also.

I went in the army as a corporal and was made a sergeant in April of 41, Staff Sergeant in ’42 and then Tech Sergeant in ’43. In ’45 I was given a battlefield promotion to a 2nd Lieutenant. We took basic training for the first three months of ’41 just like we were all new men. Then here come these new men to train from scratch. I was one of these NCOs to help do this. Sometime in July of 1941, I was made Mess Sergeant.

COB: This is January 12, 1991 and I’m at the home of Ersel Martin for the purpose of interviewing Ersel on this date. [Summary of Genealogy record]

Genealogy: Ersel Martin was born Feb. 13, 1917, the son of Chester Martin (Aug. 1895-April 1923) and Rosie Patterson (Nov. 1895-June 1977). Paternal grandparents: Harve Martin and Jane Brackett Martin; Maternal grandparents: Joe and Fanny Ridner Patterson. Ersel has four brothers and one sister. Ersel started school at Beckham Garland in 1922 at Beach Springs at the mouth of Payne Creek. Five years old, he went till cold weather and then dropped out. In the winter of 1922-23 the family moved to Heidrick and he started at Heidrick school in ’23 and finished the 8th grade before his four years of high school at Boone Heights HS, graduating in 1935. The school was then called Boone Number One.

Ersel married Claudia Blevins in 1937 and had two boys by the time he was called into military service, Doug and Don. Diane was born in 1952.

ERSEL MARTIN’S INTERVIEW IN “50TH ANNIVERSARY REUNION OF BARBOURVILLE’S COMPANY C OF THE 149TH INFANTRY AND THE MEDICAL DETACHMENT OF THE 113TH QUARTERMASTER REGIMENT,” KHM Oral History Tape Number 91/6, REPEATS AND EXPANDS ON WHAT WAS SAID ABOUT FAMILY IN THE EARLY PART OF THIS PRESENT INTERVIEW.

Premilitary Work:

EM: When school was out I was 18 years old, practically a man. I just went to work at whatever I could get to do. ‘Course that was in the middle of the Depression. I tried to get in the CCs [CCCs?] but they wouldn’t take me in. So I drifted along with first one thing and then another until a few years. Back about ’36 my uncle had trucks and I drove a truck hauling logs and hauling gravel and various things. They did a little construction work, a little road work. I helped with concrete work and that sort of thing. I worked at the Minton Hickory Mill, started in there about ’38 and I worked there until ’40, and at that time I went to work for the school board, Knox County School Board. I hauled sand with the WPA men and we were building the Grays gymnasium and I hauled sand for that mortar.

Martin was working for the school board when he was federalized.

COB: Well, that gives us a pretty good picture of your family. Now let’s start into the military now. When you were federalized, then you went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

ER: I sure did. I went down there. The first three months in Camp Shelby, Mississippi was kind of hard. Some of these fellows had been in the National Guard as much as 12, 15 years and knew about everything there was about basic training, but they and me, and me in with them, went through basic training just like we were new recruits. We drilled five days a week and they’d set up this camp there and they’d had just got it built. We were in tents but they had them all lined up but no grade work done and the trees were still there. And after drilling five days a week we cleaned up and grubbed these stumps, graded and made walks and all those things on Saturday and Sunday. You remember that, Colonel?

COB: [Laughs] Yes, I was in on that. Now, what about the weather? Did the weather bother you any down there?
ER: The weather in Mississippi is on the average a right smart warmer than it is here. Seemed like though that it rains a little more; the rain was all that bothered me there, the rain and the mud.

COB: How many years did you spend at Camp Shelby? How long were you at Camp Shelby?

ER: We were there almost two years, all of ’41 and most of ’42. We went on Louisiana maneuvers in August of 1941. Had old General [Walter] Krueger at the head of it down there and old Colonel [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was a plans and training officer, the same man that come along CO in Europe and later made president. But he was a training officer in 1941. Promotions during time of war are fast and quick. These maneuvers, when you look back on them… In Louisiana it seemed like it was always hot and dry. You was always out of water, but after all they were a lot of fun when you look back over them.

COB: And you sort of enjoyed the maneuvers.

EM: Yeah, sure. I enjoyed every one of them.

COB: ‘Say you lived in tents? What kind of tents were those?

EM: They called them squad tents. They were about 16 foot square and they had a platform built, a wood floor and a platform frame out around the side and then a pole in the middle that held up the center tent. And these tents on the framework had screen wire on them and in the summertime you could always roll up a flap. Then if it wasn’t the sun wasn’t shining right on you, seemed there was always a breeze coming though those tents when you had all the flaps rolled up.

COB: Did you have any way to heat those tents?

EM: [Laughs] Had a little potbellied stove that was like an inverted ice cream cone. It was about 15 inches in diameter at the bottom and four inches in diameter at the top, was about two foot tall. Didn’t have any grate in it, but just set in a wooden box filled with dirt and had a four inch pipe. Best I can remember it took about seven or eight joints of two foot pipe to reach out the top of the tent right in the center, and on the top you had a spark resister because these sparks would come out the top and would burn holes in the tent. Anyway, this coal we got, I think it was the most sootiest coal that I have ever seen in my life. Three days burning was all you could get out of a fire in the stove pipe, and then you’d have to clean the stovepipe out to get the soot out or it’d smoke your eyes out.

COB: How’d they clean that?

EM: I’ve seen them do several ways, some good and some did bad, but about the best way to get it was, we had a ladder and lay it on that tent—with a ladder that tent would hold you up--and get on top and take this spark resister off and drop a pop bottle or beer can down through the pipe, and for a couple of days then you had good drawing for that pipe. Another way they had of cleaning ‘em out which sometimes worked bad…

COB: That’s the one I’m getting to.

EM: They’d put a half a pint bottle about half full of water and throw it in that fire and try to blow it out. [Laughs] Sometimes if there would build up too much pressure in this bottle and when it blowed up, it’d blow up that stove. It’d pick it up and that soot, all the pipe would fall down and it would be one mess and gum to clean up. Sometimes it would do the job if it blowed up at the right time.

COB: What did they call that stove? Does Sibley sound right?

EM: I don’t remember the name. What’d you call it?

COB: Sibley. Sibley Stove. Do you remember where any instances where some of the training aids which we used were put in those stoves and burned?

EM: No. Don’t remember that.

COB: I remember one morning we were taking a report at revelry and one of the corporals, I believe it was Corporal Moore, said he had a U.S. government simulated mortar report missing and someone asked him how it got missing, and ‘said somebody put it in the Sibley stove last night. Somebody got cold and put it in the Sibley stove. ‘Course, back then we simulated a lot of stuff, you know.

EM: Now, let me tell you about the quarters over at Camp Livingston, Louisiana. We got in Livingston, Louisiana in January of ’43 and the quarters in Camp Livingston were much better than at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. There were about 16 foot square frame buildings, no tents at all, and then we had gas heat, had a gas stove set right in the center that kept this tent, or the hut (that’s what we called them, huts), adequately heated, five men to the hut.

COB: Did you have any fires in these tents?

EM: Occasionally. We had a boy smoked. He was bad to smoke in bed. We had one fellow I remember set the bed on fire twice in one night. There was everyone gone on furlough or somewhere but me and him. He woke me up coughing and going on. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “My bed’s on fire.” He got up and got it put out and I went back to sleep, and 30, 40 minutes, an hour later, I heard him up again. I said, “What’s happened?” He said, “Buddy, it’s caught up again,” and he had to throw his mattress outside and crawl in somebody else’s bed.

COB: I guess we’ve had enough stateside. Let’s go to where you started overseas and all like that.

EM: We left Camp Livingston the last of December 1943 by train and went to New Orleans. And in New Orleans we loaded on ship, the U.S.S. Fair Isle. I’ll never forget the old Fair Isle. An incident that happened there was the water. I’m going to tell this. In the army now I had always been used to whenever there was a spigot of water I thought it was good clean water, and I used it for whatever I needed, drink or whatever. So they had in the latrine, they had this line of spigots down through here over a wash trough, good cold water coming out, and I drunk it just like nobody’s business. Well, we got out in the Gulf of Mexico and these same spigots, I turned them on to wash out of them and took a drink out of them and, my goodness, they was salty as brine. And I said to some of them higher up, “Where in the world is that water coming from?” And he said, “It’s coming out of the Gulf.” I said, “Where in the world did that water come from up in New Orleans when we were at the dock? Where’d that water come from?” He said, “Out of the Mississippi.” I remembered looking over the side of the ship in New Orleans and that was the dirtiest, filthiest water that you’ve ever seen. And there I had been drinking it like nobody’s business. Evidently I had enough shots in me to kill everything ‘cause I never had no ill effects whatsoever.

And from there we went to the Panama Canal in a convoy and I would say we had about four or five destroyers escorted us into Panama. I think when we get into the Pacific, we’ll really have the escorts. But we got through the Panama Canal, and one of our boats that had some of our troops was a fast boat. They turned it loose by itself and it went onto Hawaii, a lone boat by itself. And then we got out there, four troop transports, and we went by ourselves. I said, “Well, I guess they know what they’re doing.” We made it O.K.

We got into Hawaii about January 28, 1944. Hawaii is the best climate that I was ever at in my life. It was really nice. Just cool enough in the daytime till you didn’t sweat much unless you was up doing an awful lot of exertion. You didn’t need a coat but at nighttime, now, it was cool enough that you needed a blanket. Sun would shine most of the time and it would come up a shower of rain, and it would rain real hard for five minutes and the sun shining right on it. It would cut right off just like cutting it off with a spigot and in ten minutes the ground would be dry. Ground soaked it right up someway. We did a whole lot of training in there, amphibious training and jungle training. They had a jungle training outfit out there.

We made an amphibious landing on another island there in a LCI. That LCI was a Landing Craft Infantry; would carry a company of 160 men. It was a shallow draft boat, didn’t cut much water, would go right up to the beach, would open, let down that gate and we would walk right out dry-shod. We went over to the island of Maui and made an amphibious landing, done a little maneuvering, come back on the boat and come back. It took two days to do that. We left in the afternoon one afternoon, landed on Maui the next morning at daylight and then loaded back up and come back to the island of Oahu that afternoon.

We left Hawaii in June of 1944 and went to New Guinea. Melni, New Guinea was the next port right on the eastern tip of New Guinea. We just pulled into port to let off mail and then we sailed right up the coast of New Guinea, ten, twelve miles out. While we were going up that coast they had this volcanic eruption on New Guinea somewhere and the air was filled with this fine ash and you couldn’t see much. It’d get in your eyes, it covered the ship up, it covered our clothes. They at some time or the other had issued us goggles and everybody put these goggles on so they could see, and this ship run upon a reef about ten or twelve miles out in the ocean from New Guinea and we sat there two days. It was on a pretty good list. You couldn’t walk between the beds because they were leaning over so much. Then they unloaded us on just regular freighter transports, and on these freighter transports had no facilities whatsoever to feed a man or to bed him down. We slept just wherever we could get to sleep. Some of the boys always carried a few rations with them. We ate that, and very little water.

We was on that about two days, getting into Oro, Oro Bay, New Guinea. We got to Oro Bay, New Guinea. An odd thing that happened there. We had started taking atabrine pills a couple of weeks before. Atabrine pills was to ward off malaria fever. We hadn’t noticed it on us yet. We got into Oro Bay, the first time we saw those people who had been there for a while and they was yellow as pumpkins. Their eyeballs, the whites of their eyes was yellow. We hadn’t had much to eat in two days and the Red Cross was lined up there, and I thought, “Well, I’ll line up too.” I must have lined up 75, or 80 back in the line and by the time I got up there I got about a half canteen cup full of Coca Cola and one little cookie. But we set up there and New Guinea, now, the climate wasn’t too agreeable. You have the dry seasons and the wet seasons there. And we were there mostly in the dry season, ‘cause, God, it was dry and hot and where we were everything was dry and dusty. The latter part of our stay in New Guinea, it turned into the monsoon, the wet season.

We left out of New Guinea sometime up the first of November, and sailed again up the coast to French Haven. On that ship--it was an oddball ship--it was an old ship built in Hong Kong, China in 1925, had three different nationalities of people on it: had British officers, American gun crew and a Chinese work crew. We went up to French Haven and stayed around three or four days waiting for them to form the convoy of going into the Philippines. This ship we was on, the Anhui, I think its top speed was about 8 or 10 knots, and ‘course the other ships had to slow down to it, and then I was on this ship, now, on Thanksgiving of 1944 .

On December 5 we hadn’t come into sight of the Philippines yet, but we were close enough for airplanes, and the convoy was attacked by suicide planes out of the Philippines. No suicide plane hit our ship but I saw them hit some of the other ships, and I saw one ship [i.e., plane] just barely miss a ship. That pilot was bound to have been dead before he made the last adjustment on his stirring, because when he got within 300 yards of that ship, there was a streak of fire of tracer ammunition going into the front end of that plane. He barely missed that ship, flew over the top of it, and hit the water, and he went under so fast you just had to be looking at it to believe there had been a plane there, it went under that quick. That was on December 5th.

On December 6 we landed on Leyte Island in the Philippines. In the Philippines they didn’t have any docks suitable for these boats to land at, and we unloaded on amphibious boats of various natures. They had an amphibious duck and they had an amphibious tank. Each one of them would haul 30, 40 men and then they would go on land or water either. And then we got on land on December the 6th, moved up there to a holding area, got kind of set up, and I never will forget that night we put out a guard. We was just off a little old gravel road, put out a guard out there and down on the docks or the port where they come in. All these lights were burning, these searchlights. All this anti-aircraft was firing, shooting every which way, but none of it was coming to us. But someone sent a messenger up there to tell us that the Japs were coming in. This boy come in out there talking to this guard. One of our own men, he knew this man, one of them, was ours, ‘cause he was a guard. But they were kind of locked up, and he fired into them. But God being with them, he didn’t hurt neither man, didn’t hit one, just barely hit one of them. But they got through it O.K.

COB: What island are you on?

ER: It was on Leyte Island. But the next day was Pearl Harbor day, December 7th, 1941; makes it real easy to remember due to the Pearl Harbor day. They loaded us up on amphibious tanks, and I never seen a group of soldiers loaded down more than the way we were with ammunition and rations, gas masks. We were loaded down till a man couldn’t hardly go. We got up there right up the beach, these tanks going up right through the sand, and if the water went through a little bay like, they’d just go through the water. We turned up this road, got in there a mile or so and …. [TAPE BREAKS OFF]

END SIDE ONE

SIDE TWO

ER: We got in there and about the first thing I saw was a grader, an ordinary road grader, and some soldier running it, and then just off the road behind the trees about 15, 20 yards, all these soldiers sitting there kind of guarding with a rifle. And we got off just as dumb as we could be, didn’t know what was going on, crowded up. One of these [soldiers] said to us, “You boys better get scattered out there. Get behind these trees.” ‘Said, “These Japs are all around here.” Evidently they weren’t there somewhere. They didn’t shoot at us but they got us up there at a rallying point. And Colonel Bonnycastle come around and made us a pep talk. And we pulled off our gas mask, which was a big load to get rid of. We pulled off our gas mask and piled them up there and never did see them no more throughout the war. Colonel Bonnycastle said, “Now there’s about a hundred Japs over there.” This was about noon on December the 7th. He said about a hundred Japs over there, and his battalion, the 1st Battalion, 149th, he was starting us over there. He said, “You all go over there and knock those Japs out and be back and we’ll have you a good hot supper by suppertime.”

But we got over there and we run into these Japs, and they were some of the best of the Japanese soldiers. Some of them they said were paratroopers that they had landed in there. And they had this plan to retake Leyte Island. These Japs in the mountains there in Leyte had come down out of the mountains to join these paratroopers. Instead of taking that air strip--there were Berry Airstrip Number One and Berry Airstrip Number Two--in the afternoon of December the 7th…. We were there four days, killed a hundred Japs, about that, and lost 42 men killed out of the first battalion. I never will forget I went over there after it was all over with three weeks later to the little cemetery and saw these boys lined up, our boys from C Company.

COB: How many from C Company?

ER: We lost about five or six out of C Company, [William E.] “Frosty” Hammons, Fred Henson, and Willie Alley, Omer [L.] Montgomery. Lloyd Moore was hurt real bad. I don’t recall right off who else but we lost about five or six that was hurt real bad, killed. We got on the edge of the air strip in the afternoon of December the 7th and the next morning we made a big flanking movement down to the left. But that night of December the 7th on the edge of that air strip, we dug in these holes, and in the Philippines I believe we got there during the monsoons ‘cause it rained every night. You’d dig a fox hole and it would fill up with water if it wasn’t on a rise or something or other draining away from it. They moved us out of there and my platoon--I was in the first platoon in C Company--way down to the left. We went down there and run into these Japs and that’s where we had these men killed: Frosty Hammons, Fred Henson. They used as a runner, Willie Alley; he showed one of these boys where a Jap sniper was and went up to shoot and somebody killed him. Fred Henson, they sent him as a messenger and he got killed on the way back. And we were holding up there and I never will forget when the lieutenant, Lieutenant Wayneford, [sp ?] he sent a runner, finally got a runner come back, the third man before we got a word back to the company commander. Company commander said, “Get out of there just as quick as you can and bring the wounded with you if you can.” And we hadn’t more than got started till they dropped what they were dropping, 81 millimeter mortar in on these Japs, and we had one fellow, Ed [Edward] Lockard (from out here at Bailey Switch), was wounded with our own 81 artillery fire. And if we hadn’t had all these rations it would probably have killed him, ‘cause a piece of shrapnel went through two cans of beans, through an entrenching tool and barely under the skin in his back. We got out of there. We went down there and come back without a shot being fired at us.

But we didn’t have any water purification. You just drank water where ever you could get it; it was just standing there, plenty of it. But I drunk this water and about the fourth day I got sick. I had a bloody diarrhea and I went to Doctor Clarence Rick Messer. He was with us. When he saw me he said, “You stay here Ersel. They’ll fly you back.”

COB: Now, Rick Messer, is he a local fellow?

EM: Rick Messer is a local fellow, Nasby Messer’s boy from Barbourville, lived over there at the foot of Sharp’s Gap, taught school over here at Heidrick. I knew him real well. But I got over there waiting, had a little old airplane flying us back. Had a little old piper plane. All it could fly was one man at a time, but they didn’t have to fly them over a mile across this rice paddy. Across this rice paddy was so much water and so swampy you couldn’t hardly get through it yourself, much less trying to carry someone. Anyway I was sitting there waiting for this plane and all at once it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken my atabrine pill. And these atabrine pills I knew that we took one a day, and during all the excitement and everything, that had slipped my mind. I knew you were supposed to take them at mealtime when you had a full stomach but I hadn’t had nothing to eat, but I thought well I’d better take two. And I took two of the little fellows. And sitting there all that long waiting for that airplane and all at once I took sick. I vomited this up, ‘course there wasn’t nothing in my stomach but that water, and it come out of my mouth as green as poison, and I think to myself, “Oh Lord, now I’m poisoned.” But just in a minute it dawned on me it was them atabrine pills. They were kind of a greenish yellow color. But I got over that, but they flew me over there. That was my first airplane ride, about a five-minute ride, all of it. I didn’t get back over there until after the action was all over.

COB: How many men did C Company lose there, did you say?

EM: Forty-two.

COB: Forty-two. Out of the battalion?

EM: Out of the battalion, yeah, on Leyte. We did training work there, amphibious training work on Leyte. We made a big hike into the interior of Leyte Island up in the mountains and got up there and liked to got caught. Where we was at, we got there one morning and that afternoon here come the 11th Airborne marching in. We left down there and I don’t know how true this is, it was a rumor, but the 11th Airborne was pinned down in there and they had to be relieved. Someone had to go there and help them out. Anyway we stayed there in Leyte until long in January, about the 25th of 1945, and we loaded on a ship going to Luzon.

Let me tell this incident about a little Philippino boy in Leyte while I’m here. This little old boy come to me and he was the smartest fellow you’d ever known. He was about 14 years old, but small for his age, wanted to stay with me. He’d do anything in the world for me or these other boys either. I told him we’d just keep him. I got him a pair of shoes, the smallest--had a little Mexican in the company, and I got him a pair of shoes from him—a pair of pants and a jacket. I cut his hair and I got him a mess kit, and he would clean rifles, dig a foxhole, anything there was to do, he would do it. He was real smart because he spoke Spanish, Japanese and English and he could translate for you or anybody. We left Leyte going to Luzon and he wanted to go to Luzon. He cried and everything else but the company commander said no way [could you] take that boy. He had to stay.

We left there going to Luzon about the 25th and we got out there on the western side of Luzon, at really and truly the northern end of Bataan peninsula. Got there about daylight and ‘course we took a lot of information they had, and they handed it down and handed it down and handed it down. All night the night before that we were supposed to make the landing the next day I was up all night seeing that every man had all his equipment, every man knew just exactly what he was supposed to do and all that sort of thing. The next morning just before daylight you’d go down in a cargo net; that’s a big rope net, kind of like a ladder, had holes in it. We went down that net three at a time and when we got down to the bottom there wasn’t no boat down there. I hollered up there and stopped the boys. We locked our arms into this net to hold there. Again we were loaded down with ammunition and rations but we hung on there till this boat come around and picked us off and then the rest of them come on.

But we got there come daylight. The sun was shining and everything quiet. We got there about five or six of these boats together, and they called each one of them a wave, a wave of boats. We went right around and around in circles keeping together waiting for our time to go hit the beach. There was a couple of airplanes flying over the beach but everything was still real quiet, no firing or nothing. You’d read in the papers all these years of what these amphibious landings were like and you were expecting the firing to commence but anytime. But we saw this fellow coming along with this amplifier speaking in a boat to each one of these waves. And finally he got to us and he said, “A good beach, we’ll land you dry-shod, and no Japs.” I’ve remembered that all these years as one of the best pieces of news I’ve ever heard.

And we did land. The boats went right up to the edge of the sand but they had a problem there, not with the foot soldiers, but every piece of equipment they had, every truck, and everything got stalled in that sand but them amphibious ducks. These amphibious ducks didn’t have a trailer to pull, but them trucks had trailers to pull. Every one of them was marred down in that sand. They had to use a bulldozier. I stayed two days there. And three hours after we landed there, there as far up and down as you could see, them supplies was lined up forty foot wide and twenty foot high. They was really pilling up those rations and ammunition, guns going up, anti-aircraft. And I stayed on the beach, me and my platoon, guarding the 149th Infantry’s supplies for two days and nights. And then I caught up with the company at Olongapo, just north of Subic Bay where the big naval base is now. And from Subic Bay we started eastward.

COB: What was your rank then, Ersel?

EM: At that time I was a Tech Sergeant. I was called the Platoon Sergeant. The platoon leader was Lieutenant Snake Wentford [sp ?]. Everybody had a nickname. They called him Snake so we didn’t draw attention to him by calling him Lieutenant or Captain and something of that nature. Snake Wentford. We started eastward across Bataan peninsula, and the first day we’d just got started, we’d run up and down the sidelines there through the hills searching out the Japs and didn’t find anybody. There was some more troops ahead of us. But we come back put out just off the road.

Just after dark here come that artillery, that Jap artillery. They had spotted us just before dark and they had all these places marked out. Lord, if you ever had anything fall on you, this artillery, if you’d hear them shells whistling and coming to you and if they hit a tree, kaboom, bang! We were lucky. We got in the ditchlines and culverts and everything. We had one boy hurt, nobody killed. But the next morning now we marched on up a little bit toward Zigzag Pass. And then for some reason or other they moved our battalion. We come north of the Zigzag, and had these Philippino pigmies--these little bitty men, they was about four foot and a half tall, heavy built little men--we followed them They were guides. And we come across the north end of Bataan peninsula through the mountains and come back down into the plains into the north end of Manila Bay and then we started back west going into Bataan peninsula, the first battalion, 149th.

The Japs were in there dug in. They had a tank in there and all we had with us was what men could carry, their arms and ammunitions. If we had any bazookas or bazooka ammunition, I didn’t see it. But anyway this tank up there really messed up on G Company, and they come to the idea of hitting that Japanese tank with artillery fire. And they had this little piper cub observation and it stayed all day up in the air directing artillery fire at that Jap tank, and they would fire; they’d bracket that tank in. About the time they got it bracketed in, or maybe they hit it the third shot, them Japs were smart enough to move. They’d move four or five hundred yards and then that was to do all over again. But finally in the afternoon they got the tank and knocked him out. Then we advanced through Zigzag Pass on Bataan peninsula.

An incident that happened there, we were going up the road on Zigzag, and them Japs wore an oddball shoe: it was made kind of like a mitten that you wear on your hand. It was four toes went in one side and the big toe went in the other. It was very easy to distinguished a Jap track. And the road was full of them Jap tracks where we was going. A Company led out as the point. I was listening to the radio, and all morning Colonel Bonnycastle was hollering, “Let’s go A Company. Let’s go A Company. Let’s move out.” About noon they run into a machine gun and the Japs opened up on them with machine gun fire and killed a man. And just about the time they opened up this machine gun, here come Col. Bonnycastle’s order over the radio for A Company to hold up and C Company to move through A Company, and I knew my first platoon of C Company would move out through that and we did. They threw us some artillery fire in where this Jap stronghold was. We knew when they would fire, knew the time, how many shots that they were going to fire, something of that nature. And as soon as they’d fired a certain number of shots we’d charge this position. Lord being with us, these Japs had pulled out. There was their pill box they had made up with rocks around and all the brass that they’d done shot at A Company. But they were pulled out and gone.

[To COB:] Cut her off. [After a short break]

EM: This was about the wind up of our action on Bataan. We did the next day or two make a patrol down into Bataan peninsula and our first platoon had a couple of men killed. The only time I saw General MacArthur was he come down that Bataan peninsula in a car, and the next day here he said--a little press release come out--and he said apparently there wasn’t a live Jap on Bataan. But they were still right there hold up in caves and things and we still had to root them out one at a time.

They moved us from there over to Clark Field. We stayed over there in kind of a rest camp for a week or so. Then from Clark Field we come down south to Manila and then out of Manila we went out there to the east into the mountains where these Japs had retreated up in there and we were trying to wipe these and clean these Japs out. And that was more or less just a clean-up operation, a mop up operation, for the rest of my time in the army. I got over there in that operation is where I got hurt on June the 14th.

COB: Tell us how you got injured there then, or wounded.

EM: We were going up this stream, in reality it was a small stream but it carried a whole lot of water and it was falling. It was running swift over these rocks and made a lot of noise. There was a good trail up by the side of it up above the stream and the whole company was going up this path just one man behind the other. The platoon leader, the company commander, he said, “Martin, you go on up a little piece and see if you can find us a place to bivouac for the night. If you can’t, then come back here. We’ll make do with this place here.” So we went on up there and going on up there I never found as many Jap rifles as I did on this trip. And we picked all these Jap rifles up and of course it was right over the creek bank, and just threw them all in the creek.

And doing this I looked up through the trees, bushes, and saw this Jap. He was about 25 or 30 yards away. I fired on him and when I fired he hollered, and me and this squad leader, Iliff Shelton (from out here at Callihan community), right up there we took. This was in the jungle now but on this little ridge they had a place cleaned out, and right at the first glance you could see these six foxholes and a Jap rifle sticking out of every one of them about a foot. We got up within about twelve feet of this first hole, and this first Jap raised up and this boy done away with him with a Thompson. He had a 45 Thompson machine gun. Whenever we stopped walking, then this next one he raised up. I was carrying a little old carbine. It was a semi-automatic, fire every time you’d pull the trigger. But I shot him one time and he went back into that hole. This boy Shelton said, “Ersel, you’d better shoot him again. He’ll shoot us in the back if we go on.” About the time I got ready to shoot, the next Jap just about four steps over, up he jumped out of his hole, and I thought that, up until that boy Iliff Shelton come to see me in the hospital, that he was the one shot me. But Iliff Shelton, he come and told me, he said, “No, Ersel, he didn’t shoot you. He just jumped up and right back down he went,” and he said, “My busted gun was hung up, so he got away.”

I told this boy, “I’m hit. I’m getting out of here.” We didn’t have but 20, 25 yards to go but I lost my breath going down through there. These boys had hold of each arm. I said, “Wait till I catch my breath.” My head just went over and I passed out. They started carrying me out of there and thought I was dead. When I come to, seemed like I swung there. They had two boys holding each leg and two boys holding the arms. Seemed like I swung for five minutes before I gained enough knowledge or conscious[ness] to speak to them. And when I spoke to them they laid me down and then they started tying me up. I was two days getting out to the hospital.

I come to the 80th General Hospital in Manila. Shot me through the right arm and through the right chest. It went into my chest with a very small hole but where this bullet come out it cut a big hole and broke four ribs. These four ribs are in two today. They didn’t reach back together to grow together. They’re loose today. I bled internally something awful. And again I got to Doctor Rick Messer. He said, “Ersel, this is going to hurt.” And I said, “Well, it can’t any more than it already is. So just go ahead.” Had a big flat needle crooked with some kind of gut on it. I don’t know how many stitches he made but it didn’t truly hurt because the aid man back up the line had gave me two shots of morphine. I was sucking air in this hole into my back outside of my lungs. Dr. Messer, he told me later, “You would have been dead in another 30 minutes if I hadn’t got that air cut off on the outside.” That’s the end of my army days because I got back to the hospital, and by the time I got out of there, they’d dropped the atomic bomb and it was over with.

Now if you want to ask me something about….

COB: How many men from this C Company left here actually went into combat with you?

EM: I would say about 15 men. I could get the list and name them all but from memory I couldn’t name them.

COB: What percent, how many was killed of the ones from this company when were federalized and went in there? How many was killed?

EM: Again, I’d have to get the list.

COB: All right. There’s Jess Miller, Fred Henson, Frosty [Hammons].

EM: J.D. Jones

COB: J.D. wasn’t…
EM: J.D. wasn’t with us but he was with the….
COB: No, I’m talking about, we’re talking about trying to keep them together. So that would be three, three of the fifteen.

EM: There was more.

COB: I was thinking there was another one too, but I can’t recall who it was. That’s pretty high percent, isn’t it? You’ve got fifteen men and you get three of them killed. A pretty high percent. Now I was on Guadalcanal. In the first [place], you didn’t have insurance. You had to take out your insurance, you remember, Ersel. And I was in the same type of unit from Ohio, from a small town in northwest Ohio. Some of them had insurance; some of them didn’t have insurance. Well, when people back home, this one lived on this street would get compensation, and here’s another one killed that was a neighbor and got nothing, didn’t have anything. So I was made insurance officer of the battalion after the fighting was over with, trying to get them 100%. Now, it’s automatic. Back then, you had to take it out yourself, you see. But I was in the same type unit and we got several boys killed right out of a little town. Ottumwa, Iowa is where it was. It’s not a good thing, I don’t think, to hold them together.

EM: But for the men to being satisfied, they’re really truly better satisfied when they’re in camp when they’re in training with people that they know. They enjoy being with them. I know three years, ’41, ’42, and ’43, we would all get furloughs together, get one car, and six or seven of us would all come to Barbourville for a furlough. Otherwise, if they’d been scattered all over there’d been no way you could have got six or seven men to come home on a furlough in one car.

COB: Ersel, you never did tell us where you got and in what action you got your battlefield commission.

EM: As I said a while ago, promotions in a time of war are fast. I didn’t really and truly want this battlefield commission. As a matter of fact, it knocked me out of getting home a little sooner. I would have got home [sooner] and I knew this. But anyway the regimental commander Colonel Skelton called me down to the regimental headquarters to question me. You had to answer the question right ‘cause he knew when you answered wrong. And the only question that he asked me that would have turned me down: he said, “Do you think that you can lead a platoon and kill Japs?” There wasn’t but one answer I could give him to that, “Yes, sir.” “No, sir” and he would have busted me to buck private and that would have been all of it.

COB: You’d proved that you could do that, hadn’t you?

EM: I’d proved that ‘cause I’d been a platoon sergeant and I’d been a part of it.

COB: We haven’t got much time on the thing there. Do you have anything else that you’d like to say?

EM: I’ll tell you this funny story about these foxholes running full of water. On Leyte Island the second night we were there these two boys, a fellow from up here in Pineville, Orville Mason and a fellow from Indiana, Donald Booker, they was in this hole together and it was almost full of water. And this Booker got up the next morning quarreling about Mason pulling his poncho off of him and it raining. I said, “What did it matter pulling the poncho off of you? You were already wet.” “Well,” he said, “it just seemed like it was a little warmer with that poncho over you.”

COB: Ersel, what is your assessment then of the men you led, the men you were with? Would some of them shirk or back down? Did you have to push a lot of them?

EM: In my platoon, of course a rifle platoon full strength was 40 men. You had three 12-men squads, two runners, a platoon guide and a platoon sergeant. That’s 40 men. But you don’t more than hit combat till you start losing them, wounded, killed or every which way. And it seemed that after we’d been in there a little while we never had more than eight men to the squad. Sometimes it was low as six, six to eight men to the squad. And then out of these six to eight men in the squad as you looked at them, the squad leaders were always good, and then you had two more men, the first scout and the second scout, would be reliable, and the other two or three would just take up space. One incident, I sent a couple of fellows up a trail to be alert and on the lookout while we just had a little break, and they come back and this one fellow, which was a good soldier, and he said to me, “Now, Ersel. Don’t send me out with that fellow no more.” I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Well, we got out there looking around and I said to him, ‘What would you do if you looked out there and saw a Jap?’ And he said, ‘I’d run back down there where Ersel is.’”

COB: We’d better cut this out, I guess and had better get going…. But I’ve enjoyed this; it’s been easy to ask you questions.

EM: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed it too. If there’s anything you want to cut out or redo just come back and we’ll try it. I got nervous here…
[Breaks off]

END OF INTERVIEW