King, General "Gene" Tye. Oral History Cassette Tape Transcription

KHM Cassette Tape No. 1991/16
Knox Historical Museum Military Oral History Project & Education Project
General "Gene" Tye King
(Born: 7 April 1920)
Tape recorded 10 July 1991. On file at KHM and Kentucky Oral History Commission. Notes by Charles Reed Mitchell (1 January - 1 February 2012). Final adjustments: 1 February 2012.
Interviewed by William Sherman Oxendine on 10 July 1991 at the home of Charles Reed Mitchell, 237 S. Main St., Barbourville, Kentucky. Also present running the cassette tape recorder and occasionally taking part was Charles Reed Mitchell. William Sherman Oxendine (23 June 1919-22 May 1994) is represented by many interviews both as interviewer and interviewee in the Knox Historical Museum collection.
Two 60 minute cassette tapes. Time: approximately 90 minutes.
Open. Release signed.
Almost complete transcription. Repetitions, false starts, corrected mistakes, expletives and interviewer's encouraging comments have been edited out, except where needed in context.
See "King, General "Gene" and Lois Gatliff," Knox County, Kentucky: History and Families, edited Charles Reed Mitchell, Barbourville, KY: Knox Historical Museum, 1994. Printed by Turner Publishers, Paducah, Kentucky, p. 244. W.S. Oxendine, "Knox Central: Regional Champs at Two Years of Age," Knox Countian, Fall 1991.

TAPE ONE - SIDE ONE
William Sherman Oxendine (WSO): General, I've heard other people refer to you as "Gene." Now, I don't want to insult you by calling you by a name you don't want to be called by, but do you prefer one to the other, or does it matter to you?
General "Gene" Tye King (GTK): It doesn't make any difference to me. I never was too fond of the name General but anytime that I'm in southeastern Kentucky, most people know me by General.
WSO: I wouldn't know you by anything else.
GTK: But anywhere else, why, if they were asked who General King was, they wouldn't know me.
WSO: So you don't care if I refer to you as General.
GTK: Not in the least.
WSO: I think if I could do that for around here, if anyone who uses this tape for information would understand it better if they knew you were talking about General King.
GTK: Well, that's my name.
WSO: What I'd like for you to do if you'd take a few minutes is to go into your family background, tell where you were born and when you were born, who your father and mother were, where they were born if you know, your mother's maiden name, their occupations, any information along that line that you can furnish.
GTK: Well, my father was Wesley King, whose grandfather was named Wesley King as well. He was born in what was originally I guess in Bell County probably, and then they came into what we knew or what we always referred to as King Town. And my grandfather John King established the King Post Office in King, Kentucky, which of course no longer exists. And that is about eight miles south of us on highway 11.

Charles Reed Mitchell (CRM): In Knox County?
GTK: Knox County. Yes, sir. And my mother was Sarah Ota Stafford, and the Staffords came from Virginia and part went into Tennessee. The other, her father, which was John H. Stafford, came north into Kentucky and lived. .. and he married Betty Vannoy [van-NOY],
WSO: S-T-A-F-F-O-R-D, Stafford?
GTK: That is correct.
WSO: All right, that last name, would you spell that?
GTK: V-A-N-N-O-Y, Vannoy. And he married Betty Vannoy and they farmed where the present location, I guess would be best established by where 3442 highway leaves highway 1530 in Mackey Bend, which is at the Stafford Bridge, that property which I own now since my mother is deceased and I'm the only living heir.
WSO: Is that to the right of the road after you cross the bridge?
GTK: No, it's to the right of the road before you cross the bridge. And my father's...
WSO: How far down in there does that go? Did it go to where the Paynes lived?
GTK: We border the Paynes, yes. Paynes and Stanley Lawson.
WSO: Quite a bit of territory, in there, isn't it?
GTK: Oh, I don't know.
WSO: Is it on both sides of the road?
GTK: On both sides of the road. My father's family all moved to southern Idaho in 1914. He had three brothers and two sisters. They remained in Idaho but my father came back to Kentucky, and we, in my lifetime, I made my first trip to Idaho when I was four by train. They had made a trip to Kentucky prior to that. I have a brother [Kenneth] prior to that but he had pneumonia and died in southern Idaho, in Buhl, Idaho, as an infant. And I went to Idaho when I was four. We migrated back and forth, but Dad always kept his place in Kentucky. We came from Idaho one time-this might be of interest in today's society--we came from Idaho and it took us 18 days by T-Model Ford. No motels, few hard surfaced roads, mostly gravel, some dirt. There were camp grounds they were called then, which we had a tent, we pitched a tent at night and stayed over night and got on the road out the next day. All of our possessions were in or on this T-Model Ford. We went to Idaho the last time in 19...well... We came from Idaho in 1931 due to the Depression.
He and his father and brother had lost everything they had out there. They lost their ranching possessions. I say they lost, they had to dispose of their ranching possessions and their cattle in order to pay the bill. You couldn't take Chapter 11 then, and bankruptcy was really a dirty word. I mean, if you had any pride, you didn't want to take bankruptcy. So we returned to Kentucky and we went back to Idaho for one year in 1935 and came back in '36. Farmed one year out there and back. The King family were all farmers. Staffords were farmers. My mother and father's education was, well, Dad went some beyond, I guess at that time they called it Normal, beyond the eighth grade.
WSO: You know where?
GTK: In Barbourville.
WSO: B.B.I. or City school?
GTK: B.B.I. 'Course their elementary education was in King, KY and at Mackey Bend. At which Mackey Bend was where I received part of my education in the beginning.
WSO: Is this old two-story building that still stands there, was that the schoolhouse where you went to school in?
GTK: That was the schoolhouse that I went to school in.
WSO: And you went one year of high school in that schoolhouse?
CRM:Are you talking about opposite the entrance to Goodin Creek?
WSO: No, it's up Mackey Bend.
GTK: It's out in Mackey Bend just across the...
WSO: It's a mile up there.
GTK: Yes, it's a mile. It's a mile from our house, a little over a mile. I walked to school there,
elementary school, when I wasn't in Idaho. I was vacillating back and forth between Idaho and there.
CRM: You forgot to give your date of birth.
GTK: I was born April the seventh, 1920. That two-story building, the top floor at one time was
a Masonic Lodge. And later Bill Elliott had a group of us in the seventh grade that he tutored and actually we went through the 7th and 8th grade in one year and took an examination and qualified
for high school. Fact, I don't know, we might have played you[r team] at Boone Height. I don't know if you were on the team or not but I remember another individual from that because he rode my back all afternoon, and that was Ralph Mays.
WSO: No, I hadn't started then.
GTK: You're that much younger than I am?
WSO: No, I'm older than you are.
GTK: But anyway, I came from there to Knox Central and finished at Knox Central in '37. I
believe that was the second class at Knox Central.
WSO: You graduated in '37?
GTK: '37 at Knox Central
WSO: Did you start in '35?
GTK: No, I started in'36. I had two years in Mackey Bend. A.E. Chesnut was the teacher
down there.
WSO: I thought it was a one-year job [high school at Mackey Bend]
GTK: I believe it's two.
WSO: Well, anyway, Knox Central started in '35 and if you remember...
GTK: '36 was the first class, graduating class. I was in the second graduating class.
WSO: You were with me and that's the year that we won the regional tournament if you remember. Now, did you graduate that year [1937]?
GTK: Yes.
WSO: You graduated the same year I did.
GTK: Yes, I did.
WSO: So you must have gone two years to Mackey Bend.
GTK: Yes, I had to. And then I went to Union College and qualified as an elementary teacher
and my first job was teaching at the old homeplace of my father, which is King, KY. King Town. And I taught there two years before going into military service. Then I came back. I was in military service, oh, I guess officially January 1941 till March 1946. I was in the National Guard of course while in high school and in college here. In fact then I was too young but I was always large for my age and looked older than what I was, but I got into the National Guard two years younger than I was supposed to be.
WSO: Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, cause I want to explore that a little bit. You taught two years before you went into service? So you started teaching the same time that I did in the fall of 1939? in July of 1939? and you taught two years. So you ended in the fall of 1940. Do you remember, the county ran out of money in the fall of 1940 and cut the school year short? And we didn't teach, I don't think, but five months, so we got out long about November. When did you join the National Guard?
GTK: I joined that National Guard I believe in '35 or '36. '36, I guess it was.
WSO: Who was the first sergeant? Did you join the medical...
GTK: I was in the medical battalion [ie. platoon],
WSO: O.K. And were there 13 in it? When I came in there were 11,1 think. Jack Elliot and I came in and made it 13. Had there been 13 prior to that and two got out?
GTK: I can't verify that because all I can tell you is Major Parker was the C.O. and Captain
Clifton was an officer and I can't tell you who the first sergeant was.
WSO: You were.
GTK: No, I was a private and then I worked my way up to company clerk. Homer Jackson, he was a sergeant. Oscar McNeil, I believe, was a sergeant. Later I became first sergeant, yes. WSO: Do you have any idea of when that was?
GTK: I'm not sure whether it was in 1940 or... I'm kind of gray as far as the time but I think it
was 1940. I'm not really sure.
WSO: Now, you were first sergeant on November 30th 1940 when I came in, so you must have been...
GTK: Yes. I was first sergeant. I don't know how long I'd been first sergeant.
WSO: And Oscar and Homer were three-stripe sergeants, or better. And that's all we had until the outfit broke up, I guess, if it ever did break up. I don't know what happened to it. I was going to ask you that later on. Let's see, have we got anything left about your father and mother? Your mother's name was what again, did you say?
GTK: Stafford.
WSO: We've got that. Now, do you know her mother's maiden name?
GTK: Her mother's name was Vannoy. Her father's name was John Stafford.
WSO: Stafford and Vannoy. Can you go back any further than that?
GTK: No.
WSO: What about your father's mother?
GTK: My father's mother was a Mason. Sarah Mason. M-A-S-O-N.
WSO: Now, do you know her mother's maiden name?
GTK: No.
WSO: Do you know where they were from?
GTK: Around Chenoa, which is in Bell County, I believe, to the best of my knowledge.
WSO: Now, let's come down to Union College, because there was a lot of interesting things that happened to us. I include myself. You were pretty much like me; we had very little or no money and we worked our way through over there. And both of us worked on the farm I think, and I don't know what you did. I know that I plowed corn.
GTK: Yes, You plow [with] the red mule?
WSO: Yes.
GTK: Did you ever ride the red mule?
WSO: No, I never did ride her but I tied her to the steps of the stairway at Speed Hall and hid from colonel on hot days. If he'd caught me I guess he'd fired me. You remember what we made? I do very well.
GTK: No
WSO: We made twenty cents an hour and most of us worked ten hours a day, and made two dollars. Do you remember what tuition was then?
GTK: No
WSO: Sixty dollars. Sixty dollars a semester.
GTK: I remember what my first day's pay was that I worked. It was not at Union College. It was
fifty cents a day and that was from sunup to sundown.
WSO: That's what I made hoeing corn before I went to college.
GTK: That's right. I milked cows over there. That was my first assignment and then I got out and plowed the corn.
WSO: A lot of people don't know that. They don't know where that corn was raised and I show them over there. I tell them right here where the Student Union is, is a cornfield and it was, and it went clear over to Manchester Street, if you remember, and clear back up there almost to that old gym [Soldiers & Sailors], the only gym there was then. Now, we started practicing basketball, you and I, there, plus all the others at the same time and we had some real good experiences I think at that. Charley Davis was our second coach [at KCHS], If you remember Herb Tye coached the first year over there and went to Barbourville High and Charley took over. On many, many occasions when we had an away game, Charley would take us out to his house. His wife would feed us our supper before we went to...
GTK: I've related that to many people, that he was almost like a second father to an awful lot of
boys. And we'd go and, well, we just made it our home away from home there. I also remember - mentioning him - we hadn't won a ballgame and this isn't any reflection on Coach Tye because he was a great coach, but he didn't have the relationship with boys that Coach Davis did, and we hadn't won a ballgame and he [Tye] became ill and Coach Davis took us to Wallins and we won our first ballgame just going away.
WSO: Do you remember the first year that we were there—I believe I'm right in this—Union was having a good team at that time. Bill Buchanan was playing with them and Chicken Cartmill or Cartwheel or whatever his name was. Davis said if we were to play Hall High up there, and we hadn't won a game, and if you beat them ...
[Interruption: Electricity goes out.]
WSO: We have just lost the electric power and we have as rapidly as we could switched to battery and we hope this is as good as it was before. General and I were talking about the last football game of the first year that we were over there, and Coach Davis promised if we would go and beat Hall High that he'd take us down to Richmond and watch Eastern and Union play, and we went up there and beat them twelve to nothing, best I remember. And the next day true to his word he took us down to Richmond to see Eastern play Union, and I believe Union won.
GTK: Union won the ballgame. I believe they did.
WSO: I'd like for you—I've told this is in two or three interviews that I've had—I'd like for you to tell in your words some of the experiences we had as high school players. Not many people know it, but Union College had the only gymnasium in Knox County at that time, and there were three or four--Knox Central and Artemus and Barbourville High and Union-basketball teams that had to use that gym to play in, and not only to play in but also to practice in. If you remember we practiced from twelve noon to one o'clock. Would you describe what went on? I've done it two or three times.
GTK: Well, I don't know that I remember vividly everything that went on and you wouldn't want
me to describe some of the things that did go on.
WSO: What happened when the twelve o'clock bell rang? That's what I would like for you to pick it up there. When the bell rang over at Knox Central to break the period at twelve o'clock.... That was our practice period.
GTK: Well, there was a mad dash to Union College.
WSO: We went through people's halls and gardens and yards.
GTK: That's right. We took the most direct route to the gymnasium. The thing that was most
outstanding to me, or the thing I remember most or has meant the most to me I think, was the close camaraderie that was developed among all of us on those first football and basketball teams those two years.
WSO: I agree with you completely.
GTK: And it's still true today. And the same thing-and you'll probably get into this later-but the same thing is also true of the National Guard and those individuals that went from here into the military. There are a few things I guess I'd better not tell what went on in these football games and some of the basketball trips. I think we had two very successful years. We worked hard but we also had a lot of fun.
WSO: You know the thing that's remarkable to me is when we won the regional tournament, Corbin had won the state tournament the year before and they had those big boys, those Cluggish boys that played with them. And we went down there to play in the district tournament and we played them in the finals and they beat us 38 to 18. The reason I remember the score was I wrote Charley Davis and had him to write me down all the scores of the games that we played that year, including the tournament game. I've got it somewhere if I could ever find it. And when we came back up to Union to play the regional, why, we drew in the same bracket that Corbin did. But Benham also drew in that bracket and they had a real hotshot team, had Spider Thurman; I don't know if you remember him.
GTK: Yeah, I remember Spider Thurman.
WSO: And he became an All American I think down at Eastern, a small-college All American. And we beat them rascals in that regional tournament.
GTK: Also I'll relate an incident, I don't know if you recall it or not, but—I think I was telling you
this when the power was off~in the last practice before the regional I sprained an ankle just real badly and I should not have gone to the regional. I should have been replaced really but if anyone was to help the team in any way, but Coach Davis wasn't that kind of a guy. He kept me on and he also took me on to state. Of course I could do very little. But he kept asking me how my ankle felt. Of course, I lied and told him fine. No problem. You know, Long John Mills wasn't the most coordinated fellow in the world at that time but at that time he was probably one of the taller ballplayers in the country. I went in. 'Said, "Could I go in?" He said yes and he substituted me in and the first thing I did was I stole the ball and here was Long John standing down there right under the goal wide open, no one on that half end of the court. And I cocked that ball behind my ear and threw it like a baseball, and old John, it went right through his hands and hit the backboard and it sounded like a cannon. Coach Davis—I can still hear him today—he said, "Dat- Dang it, King, can't you throw it any harder?" Well, we all knew that we had to feather-pass the ball to John when you passing on to him. He hadn't grown up yet.
WSO: That's right. He added a lot to that team though. Defense was what made him valuable.
I remember, I just happened to be there when that game was over. Nick Denes, who was the Corbin coach, later went on to college and coached somewhere, came down in our dressing room and he put his hand on John's arm and said, "Here's the man that won the ballgame for you. Because he held my big boy down."
GTK: Yes, he did.
WSO: We went on to Lexington, stayed in the Phoenix Hotel, if you remember. I don't know if you were as naive as I was or not. You'd at least been to Idaho, I'd never been out of Kentucky and I'd never stayed in a hotel before. We were assigned rooms there in the Phoenix Hotel and I couldn't hit the ground with my hat. It was just more than I could take.
GTK: Those elevators were strange to us, weren't they?
WSO: What I wanted you to say: when we got through practicing over there [at Union's gym] we had to get, most of us, get back to class and there was many a time and you may have had a similar experience on those cold winter days, and I'd sit down in class and my head was caked over with ice because we'd take a shower, if you could call it a shower, after...
GTK: It was a quickie.
WSO: Oh, it was a quickie ... and never had time to dry my hair. It's a wonder we hadn't all died of pneumonia or T.B., or something. But I remember raking ice out of my hair after we'd sit down in the room and the teachers didn't seem to [care]; they cooperated perfectly. We charged a dime, we played in the afternoon. Lucy [Hubbard Oxendine] was in school over there at the time and she never saw a game, never saw a single game I played because she never had a dime. I kid her about it. She wouldn't come and watch her sweetheart play ball. But she said that she couldn't have if it cost a penny, because she didn't even have one. People can't understand that now. That is something that is hard to understand.
GTK: We didn't have anything maybe monetarily but we sure had a lot of worldly goods [sic]
and ....
WSO: You look at our class, General, how many people went on to bigger and better things. It's not often that a class, that high percentage of a class, could do that.
GTK: I'm not aware just how high a percentage, but I know of a lot of people....
WSO: A lot of people, you start counting.... Joe Albert Willis was a very successful storekeeper, made a lot of money. Joe Albert is in real bad shape now; he's blind as a bat. Glenn Jackson succeeded. Of course Martin was doing all right; he died a long time ago. Tom Winkler. John Elam.
GTK: Oscar McNeil. They were behind us one year.
WSO: And you and I became college professors. Ethel Martin was librarian here in this county forty-some years. I'm not saying that was a typical class necessarily because a lot of kids that would have gone to high school, could have gone to high school—they were of the right age, but they didn't go and as a result they.... I believe there's 35 or '6 or 7, something like that, in our graduating class, wasn't there? 33?
GTK: I thought it was 35. But I guess I stated it very poorly a while ago but we didn't have
anything monetarily to speak of but we sure, we sure were .... [Tape breaks off]

TAPE ONE - SIDE TWO
WSO: General, we were talking a while ago about our experiences in high school. Let's go on to Union College and get through there shortly because I want to spend some time with your military experiences. I lost track of you after I left Camp Shelby and I don't know what happened to you. We both started at Union at the same time, didn't we?
GTK: Yes.
WSO: When did you finish, after the war like I did?
GTK: It was after the war. I came back and entered Union College in September '46,1 guess.
Maybe it was '47.
WSO: And you graduated [when]?
GTK: '49. I went from there to University of Kentucky and got a B.S. and M.S. degree from the
University of Kentucky and went to South Dakota State, on the faculty there for two years, and from there to Texas A & M University—then Texas A & M College—to study toward the Doctorate degree and got my Doctorate degree. I did it like a lot of Aggies; I kind of stretched it out a little bit. I was supposed to receive a degree in '56 and I got it in '58.
WSO: How'd you do that? You mean they extended the time for you?
GTK: No, no. I would have finished in '56. However, they put me on the faculty full time, and it
took me a couple of years to get the dissertation written, and every time that I was about ready to finish, some crisis developed, and I was detoured and I got the doctorate degree in '58.
WSO: I see. Other than the experience at... South Dakota State?—did you say?—you taught your entire college teaching career at A & M, didn't you?
GTK: That is correct.
WSO: And how many years was that all together?
GTK: '53 through '89, so what's that, 36?
WSO: Yeah, I guess it is. Can you tell us a little bit about what you did there and what successes you achieved? 'Course, I read in the Barbourville paper about a lot of things that you did. I don't remember now what they were but... Don't be modest.
GTK: Well, it's kind of hard to brag on yourself, you know. I did my work, my doctorate work, in
meat science and technology, and when I was just completing my work, why, my major professor was promoted or elevated to department head. And I was interviewed then. They told me they wanted me to be interviewed at different places but not to accept a job anywhere until I came back home and they wanted to talk to me. I was offered a job at LSU and one at Washington State. I came back from Washington State and they said, "We have a position here on the faculty if you want it." Which I accepted, primarily because we were already at a point there as far as success was concerned that it would have taken me ten years at either of the other schools to attain. So I was responsible for the meat section in the Department of Animal Science in the
College of Agriculture at Texas A & M from 1956 until I guess 70. And I was appointed from there to assistant department head and I remained in that position until 1986. At which time I retired and then they wanted me to stay on half time and coordinate the basic course in animal science. I've been very fortunate in my academic career, received a lot of honors that it might be questionable as whether they were deserved or not. And the American Meat Science Association, I was awarded the distinguished teaching award, the signal service award, which is for outstanding service to the industry in your career, whatever time period that might be. And in the American Society of Animal Science--! am a fellow of the American Society of Animal Science--and I received that in 1981. They have a program at Texas A&M University at which they award outstanding professors for teaching, research and student relations; that's the way it started out. I was the second recipient of the distinguished achievement award in student relations, which is sponsored by former students association, and I was also designated in 1986, the year I retired, as the honor professor in the College of Agriculture. So I've been very fortunate in my academic career. I guess I probably enjoyed those last three years, the three and a half years, more than any others because - I don't know how familiar you are or how much exposure you have to administration, but I don't care for college administration. And I was in that position for about 14, 16 years, which was—well, there's no need to describe that. The last three years when they asked me to coordinate the basic course of science there, which meant handling four lecture series weekly and 20 laboratories. I said I coordinated them, I didn't teach them. I taught one lecture and one laboratory, and I had anywhere from 10 to 15 graduate assistants handling the other 19 laboratories. And that's the time I had a lot of fun because I love to teach and I love young people, and I love to be around young people and work with young people. I've been blessed, I guess. My wife often wonders how, she wondered how I ever received the Student Relations Award, 'cause students would come over to the house and she'd excuse herself 'cause she knew they had private information or problems they wanted to discuss with me. She said, "But I couldn't help hearing what was going on." She said, "Their voice was all I ever heard." And she said, "I don't know why they think so much of you because you never tell them anything." And the point is really, most of the time, young people, if they have some confidant [that] they can unload on or talk to, they usually solve their own problems, as you well know.
WSO: Well now, I'll tell you, I was on Union College's campus 19 years, and I can testify that you didn't get any honor that you didn't deserve, because they don't throw those around carelessly. So I'm sure that you earned those awards.
GTK: I'm most appreciative of everything that I received, and I guess probably I'm more proud
of—that's what this watch signifies—I'm more proud of the distinguish service achievement award in the university there for student relations than I am for anything else. This belt buckle here signifies the honor professor award.
WSO: That's great. I'm proud of you.
GTK: Well, thank you. I can tell you a current story--do you want me to?-about this belt buckle. I hadn't been in this [Knox] county courthouse for many years, I don't know how many. 'Happened to have a little business in there while I've been here and they're apparently having district court, and here's all these people that I'd forgotten about. Judge [Jimmy] Hinkle came down the hall and he and I went into his office. He said, "I've just heard a fellow say in there..." 'Said, "You see that belt buckle that fellow's wearing there?" He of course knew the man and called him by name. He said, "You know I bet that thing cost a thousand dollars or more." I said, "What you're telling me, Judge, is that I'd better go out this way than back through there."
WSO: [Laughs] All right, let's get back to your military career. You went to officer's candidate school, didn't you?
GTK: Yes, sir.
WSO: When did you leave Camp Shelby to do that?
GTK: When they went from the Square Divisions to the Triangular Divisions at Camp Shelby I
became surplus.
WSO: Was that after we got back from maneuvers?
GTK: Yes.
WSO: How long after?
GTK: Oh, I don't know, Sherman.
WSO: We got back in November, if you remember.
GTK: If we got back in November, I don't know, I guess, I don't know, January or February
probably. I don't recall.
WSO: That's close enough.
GTK: But anyway I became surplus and they also made me first sergeant in the surplus
company. That surplus company consisted of all the excess sergeants of all ranks. I had at one time 19 first sergeants and 22 master sergeants and don't know how many tech and buck sergeants. About all I did was keep a duty roster and send them out on detail and that wasn't really easy. I was getting fed up with it.
WSO: Was that at Shelby?
GTK: That was at Shelby. I was wanting... This was monotonous; this was boring. So I went to
the major—I had a major C.O.—I went to the major and I says, "Major, I want the first assignment out of here. Any outfit that has a first sergeant vacancy, I want it." He says, "No," he says, "I can't do that. I want you to apply for OCS. I said, "Major, you know as well as I or better that there's a waiting list—I just saw it this morning—of a hundred on that waiting list and they take two to four. I'll be here forever." He said, "I don't know that you will. You may not." He says, "You put in an application." I put in the application. A week later they called me in for a physical and a week later I was in OCS in Abilene, Texas. Camp Barkley, Texas. I believe that's Camp Barkley. Anyway I went through OCS there and I was in one of the short classes. We went through in 13 weeks. They crammed in 17 weeks into 13, and [I] graduated and was assigned to a separate ambulance battalion consisting of a headquarters, a service company and three companies. I was a brand new second lieutenant commanding a company. First ambulance battalion that was ever organized in the U.S. Army. But let me back up relative to this military. I have another story. I was written up in Stars and Stripes as being the youngest first sergeant in the United States Army at the time, and I was all of nineteen. And if you recall, next door to us was a service station down there at Camp Shelby and the first sergeant there had stripes from his wrist to his elbow. And I don't know why they did it but it seemed like that all of the guys that came in as selectees that had an-S.K.Y. or-S.K.I -ending name wound up in service company. I'll never forget one morning, it was not too light and he was having difficulty pronouncing names, and he says, "Aw hell, all you S.K.I.s and S.K.Y.s boys," he says, "step forward." So he counted them I guess. But anyway, from Camp Barkley in Abilene, I don't know, we were there I guess in training three or four months, I don't recall. At any rate, we were shipped to Camp Young, California, out of Indio for training, and when we went overseas, we were destined to go to North Africa.
WSO: That was as an ambulance outfit?
GTK: That was a separate ambulance battalion, and it was not attached to any... You
answered to Corps, you didn't answer to the division. We answered to Corps. It was completely separate.
WSO: What was the highest ranking officer you had in ...
GTK: In the battalion? A lieutenant colonel. The company commanders were captains, major
exec. And we did desert training nine months out there and that was the time General Patton was also training his army for desert training as well. We were stationed at the east end of Camp Young, the last unit. I happened to be officer of the day and I heard the call come from sergeant of the guard and officer of the day that was on the motor pool. I went on to motor pool and here was one of my men had General Patton looking down the muzzle of a carbine. Carbine rifle. We got an accommodation for that. What he was doing, what Patton was doing down there, that's how that guy operated. He'd gone down there and tried to steal a truck. Just testing to see how alert we were. And this boy wasn't about to let him move a foot. But anyway that's kind of a side issue. We went from there to ... We shipped out and instead of going into North Africa we went to England. Liverpool, England. As you might imagine, going from desert to the climate of England, we had almost a hundred percent sick call. We were really a sad outfit for a while but finally we got everybody well and we took over a lot of English buses. We had to train all our drivers to drive these buses and drive on the left hand side of the road, in black out. We trained for I guess eight or nine months there or more. We went in D-Plus 8 or 9 into France.
WSO: Normandy?
GTK: Normandy. We went right into the Cherbourg area and I got in contact with Patton again.
We were in 3rd Army and we followed him across France and crossed the Rhine River—we didn't
cross but he did—and he was pulled back for the Battle of the Bulge. I evacuated all the south area of the Battle of the Bulge, 'cause causalities were so severe.
WSO: What were you doing, hauling wounded back to the field station or hospital, or what was
it?
GTK: Whatever. Our outfit was designated to be where the causalities were the hottest.
WSO: Did you still have those old English buses or did you have ambulances?
GTK: We had ambulances when we went into Europe. We were hauling patients in those buses from the channel; we were set up on the channel. I evacuated the first load of causalities that came from France and we used the buses there. They were both ambulatory and litter type buses. We could put 18 litter patients in a bus. But he [Patton] grounded everything except tanks and ambulances when he took all across France. He was just so far ahead of his supply units. And we went up through...
WSO: Were causalities pretty high behind him?
GTK: No. I don't know how to answer that really. Relative to the number of causalities in the 1st
Army and the 9th Army, his causalities were the lowest. At times they were the greatest. The 1st Army, which was Bradley, as you well know, he was overly conservative in my opinion. You might say that Patton might have been maybe a little too aggressive. But we went up through Luxembourg and from there to Liege, Belgium and from there across Germany to the Rhine where we met up with the Russians. But our outfit, I was a separate company. I commanded a separate company and the battalion became non-functional and these companies were spread out to different areas. I evacuated the 101st Airborne out of Bastogne, causalities from there, and I can tell you that after that was... I had an interesting experience there, I'll relate to you.
WSO: Before you go on, how soon after the fighting stopped, or did you do it during the fighting?
GTK: Man, it was during the fighting. We were as far forward as the first aid station on back
and we would evacuate back to a back hospital or we might evacuate to an air field. It just depended on what was accessible. I had a platoon I lost communication with, so I went up to Bastogne to find it, to check to see if I could find it. There was a machine gun emplacement, and that was when the Germans were coming pretty strong. A machine gun emplacement and they had lost, I guess they had two or three causalities. Me and my driver real quickly became ammo bearers, and it's hard to describe to you, when you see just hundreds of men coming at you and shouting and swearing about the Americanas and then just mowing them down like flies. Why, we didn't know when it was going to stop. But I guarantee you, we learned how to carry that ammo pretty fast.
WSO: I bet you did. What had you been promoted to by this time?
GTK: I was a captain at the time. I had two promotions I never knew anything about. They
finally caught up with me when I got into Germany. The bodies, see, it was so snowy and cold, the bodies were so thick, frozen, you could walk on bodies and never touch your foot on the ground It sounds gruesome but that was just the way it was. This is a side light, but as we were going through France, I remember the first Christmas. We were having Christmas dinner, and this was when Hitler was infiltrating our lines with undercover people that he'd put in prison camps with American soldiers to learn English, and I'll have to admit, they were difficult to pick up. Two guys came in and we were having lunch, Christmas dinner. We invited them to eat with us and they spoke, I would say, almost perfect English. I didn't pick up an accent but we had been alerted that this could be happening, that these guys would be infiltrating and picking up all the information they could. So I started just visiting with them and asking them where was their home in the States, and one said he was from Kentucky. I says, "Where from in Kentucky?" He says, "Louisville." I says, "They have pretty good basketball team there, don't they?" and I just kept feeding him along till he started... I knew he wasn't from Kentucky and never had been. I says, "Well, I believe you guys better come along with us. We're going to take you over to the Military Police. I happen to be from Kentucky myself," and, boy, they started to leave and jump on their motor cycle. My driver was always, my back was always covered. He immediately had them looking down the barrel of a carbine Our non-coms and officers were armed over there.
WSO: Did you have a Red Cross on your arm?
GTK: Best target in the world. And had four of them on your helmet, one on each side, and
front and rear. Well, you didn't if you were in Patton's army. You also kept your windshield down
and covered in Patton's army. He was an interesting man. I had the greatest admiration for that guy. As a separate C.O., I could attend all these meetings Patton held as a unit commander. And here I am a lowly lieutenant at the time, the lowest rank, and usually there was a colonel, a few majors maybe. But I have one thing to say about my military career that I'm extremely proud of.
At one time I could have told you how many miles we traveled and how many patients we evacuated, but in three and a half years we never lost a patient that was in our care. We only had one summary court-martial which the colonel ordered. And I advised the young man to get the assistant company defender and he beat the case, and the third thing was that we never had a VD case in three and a half years I had this outfit. I'll also have to admit to you that the outfit was hand picked before I left the United States.
WSO: You had Pro [prophylactic] stations amply set up then, didn't you?
GTK: Well, we didn't. The guys were.... Yeah, they were adequate. Then that was a mark on your record, you know, if you had VD. I got these guys all together whether it was right or wrong, and I says, "Listen, guys. We don't want to get any, but if you get, if you do have contact, come and see me," 'cause I had some MD lined up to take care of it. I never had any and they were very proud of this.
WSO: We had a good record at Shelby, too.
GTK: Well, you don't want this on tape that happened down there on maneuvers, do you? In
Louisiana?
WSO: Why, I don't see why not. [Laughs]
GTK: You remember the time we ran out of prophylactics?
WSO: No
GTK: You don't remember that time?
WSO: No. I must not have been on duty at the time.
GTK: Well, we did two or three times.
WSO: You were in the ordering part of it. I was in administration part of it. I want to ask you something. Those medical stations that were set up. did they in any way resemble what we had at Shelby? Were we on the ball so to speak in providing medical attention?
GTK: Yeah. Sure. They streamlined quite a bit after that. Had to. I sent six ambulances to the front to make an evacuation, and while they were at the front—I can't remember the town in Germany—the Germans counterattacked, and came around and cut them off. The guys came back, the Germans stopped them, inspected their ambulances and they had a German soldier wounded. They let them through, passed him on back. Not three days later, I guess it was referred to as the Battle of Malmedy [Belgium] where the Germans wiped out everybody [December 17, 1944], but there was one soldier at Malmedy that made it. He played dead.
'Cause we evacuated him. They just lined them up, these krauts did, it was S.S. troopers that did it. They just lined them up out there and mowed them down. Well, I evacuated that one man out of Malmedy. He made it.
WSO: I read that. Where were you when the war ended?
GTK: Sitting on the Rhine River. They pulled me back to Reims, France, and at Reims, France
we got orders that they were going to send us to the China-Burma area. And we had... You know it was set up then on a point system, so many points and you got to go home. We had more points than anybody or as many points as anybody in the ETO, so there was a lot of drunk soldiers that night when we got that word. And I went to headquarters and pleaded our case in Paris and they agreed with us. So they dispersed the outfit. They started sending them home filtrating them out by seniority and points. They sent me to Oxford, England and put me in command of the enlisted personnel of a general hospital.
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

TAPE TWO - SIDE ONE
(SIDE THREE OF THE INTERVIEW)

WSO: I'm interviewing General King on his life experiences and he is in the process of telling us what he did after World War II with Germany ended in the spring of 1945. General, if you'd continue to tell us what happened to you after the war ended, we'd appreciate it.
GTK: Well, I was moved back to Reims, France and received orders to go to the China-Burma
area. Of course, that created a great disappointment among all the guys and there's quite a few people drunk that night but I had the opportunity to go to Paris and plead our case to headquarters in Paris, and they consented to disperse the outfit or let them go home based upon the point system that was in effect then. I had I think, I don't know what it was, but I know I had twice as many points as was necessary to qualify to come home, so I was sent to Oxford,
England to take over command of the enlisted personnel of a general hospital. And I was there... WSO: What rank were you at this time?
GTK: I was a captain. While there, my majority [rank of major?] caught up with me and I guess I
was there about three months, two months, before we... I brought this general hospital back to the United States, and there was 466 men, 60 doctors, 96 nurses, and 46 Red Cross personnel. And as might be expected, who do you suppose created the most problems? The doctors. The 466 men, I didn't have any problems with.
WSO: There weren't any Bergers in the bunch, I guess?
GTK: You remember Lieutenant Berger?
WSO: I sure do.
GTK: Then I came home. They put me in command of a troop train out of New Jersey, out of
[Fort] Dix. to [Camp] Atterbury, Indiana and I came to Atterbury and came on home. I had about six weeks at home or so. I was going to stay in [the military],
WSO: Oh, really?
I was going to stay in the military until I arrived home and found out the condition of my daughter. We had a cerebral spastic daughter, which you know about. They had withheld this information from me, my wife and parents, thought it would cause me to worry and create a problem over there, and they just didn't want me to have something else additional to worry about. It was quite a shock, I have to admit. So when I realized her condition, I... I was assigned up here to Danville, Kentucky. They had a military mental hospital up there at the time, and so I requested separation and went into [Fort] Knox and separated. That was in March of '46.
WSO: I got out in November of '45.
CRM: One thing, the pistol that you gave to Jim Gatliff, could you tell us the story about how you obtained that? I understand that was obtained in Germany, was that correct?
GTK: Yes. Toward the end of the war Germans were surrendering to anyone, I mean by the
hundreds, thousands at times. We were at Hildesheim, Germany and this pilot, this plane came in and surrendered. It had some German officers' families on board, and I relieved the pilot of his pistol. At another time I was carrying a payroll and we were following a vehicle, and had it captured, German personnel, and this German major came out of the back of this vehicle and I had to shoot him. I took his.... That's really the pistol that Jim has. The other one was let go to another friend of mine. But the one that Jim has I took off this S.S. major that was trying to escape. I didn't know what he was going to do when he came out of that vehicle, whether he was going to get me or us or what. You just react in those cases.
WSO: Did you have any Kentucky boys with you in that battalion that you were talking about? GTK: No.
WSO: None of the boys at Shelby went with you? You never saw any of them after that?
GTK: No, I never saw anyone. I ran into Arnold Faulkner... I got in contact with Arnold Faulkner
in France. I got in contact with Orville Elliott in England, but I never got to see him.
WSO: You mean Jack?
GTK: Yeah.
WSO: Jack's dead, isn't he?
GTK: Jack is deceased, right.
WSO: I never did see him after the war. Where did Scott [Gatliff] go and Jack after they split up at Shelby?
GTK: Now, Jack was in some outfit in England, and Scott went with an outfit to the South
Pacific.
WSO: Was he with the 38th Division?
GTK: I don't know whether he ended up with the 38th or not. I think he was pulled out of it. Scott
[Gatliff] was an exceptional, talented mechanic, and of course, he and I, he is as near to a brother as I expect to have had. We went in together but he was always doing something for the outfit in Shelby, making something or fixing this or fixing that. Anything that broke, Scott usually fixed it. When we separated there I wasn't in contact with him any more until we came back home.
CRM: Did he tell you anything afterwards that you remember, any stories [about WW2]?
GTK: No, He never talked much about his experiences, which I don't think were very pleasant
in the South Pacific.
WSO: You don't know whether he was anywhere near the 38th Division or Company C or any of those boys?
GTK: No, I don't.
WSO: Or Jack either? I have no idea where Jack ended up.
GTK: Jack ended up in Europe. He was in England. Jack came back home, of course, But I
don't know what outfit he was with, but he and Tommy Elliott were both in an outfit over in Europe.
WSO: Would Tommy know anything about Jack?
GTK: He probably would. Yeah. They both, I'm pretty sure, went to the European theatre.
WSO: There were three of us, battalion people, at that reunion.
GTK: Mack of course went to the air force as a bomber pilot.
WSO: We had a bigger percentage, probably bigger than Company C had, probably about 18. GTK: I was just getting over that back surgery. That was a bad time of year to have that
reunion.
WSO: It was a lot of fun, though GTK: Oh, I'm sure it was.
WSO: I enjoyed seeing W.B. Mayhewand Bill....
GTK: When you're down there in Texas where it's dry and start north in all that ice and snow,
you think twice, particularly when you get old.
WSO: We had Shit on a Shingle for lunch, and what did we have for supper, Charles? I've forgot. It was a good meal.
CRM: Roast beef, wasn't it?
WSO: Yes, I guess it was.
GTK: After I came back here I commanded this local guard unit for three years I guess.
WSO: How long did you stay here? Oh, that was when you finished up at Union.
GTK: No, no. Oh, yes. That was when I finished up at Union. That's correct.
And then they made a battalion headquarters out of it and I was Colonel Burch's Operations officer for the battalion. You want me to tell you...
WSO: Got out of the medics?
GTK: Oh, yeah. I guess we were infantry. What were we here? Armored patrol or something? I
don't recall now.
WSO: Tell us what you were going to tell us.
GTK: Both of you know Mike Hawn real well. Mike was a tremendous soldier and we got out of
Fort Knox on maneuvers. Mike was the operations master sergeant. I told Colonel Burch, I says, "I'm going to keep that dude sober for a few days." Col. Burch says, "Well, (coughs) I'll buy you the biggest steak in Kentucky if you do." So I did. The last day of the field operation, we were going on an all-night maneuver, and course Col. Burch and I had already developed some tactics for our particular battalion's operations. What we actually were going to do, and did, was capture the regimental headquarters. But anyway Mike, I had to stay behind. We didn't have a full officer's staff so I stayed behind as Executive, Battalion Exec. And I says, "Mike you're going to be with Col. Burch and you're going to be the battalion's Operations Officer. He says, "Aww, I don't know if I can make it or not." I says, "Yeah, I believe you can." i says, "I want you to go down there in my jeep and get that map case and bring it up to me." He went down there fumbling around and got that map case, and of course I'd already told Col. Burch and everybody else what was in it: it was a fifth of whiskey in it. Old Mike picked up that map case and shook it a little bit and course heard it girkle [slosh], you know, and he went into that and, honestly, I thought he was going to drink the whole fifth. He turned it up and, boy, he just liked to have never taken it from his mouth. And he put it back together and here he come and he was really stepping high when he got up there, and he saluted, you know, and he said, "By God, I think I can make it now."
[Laughter]
WSO: And did, I bet.
GTK: Oh, he did. We captured regimental headquarters and that didn't make Bonnie Castle
and his boys very happy either.
WSO: He and Jimmy Hale with one eye were as good a soldiers as there was in that Company C. And Mike was busted how many times, a hundred?
GTK: I don't know.
WSO: I guess this is all I've got to ask. This has been the longest interview I've ever conducted. I'm sure you're wore out.
GTK: No, I'm fine.
WSO: I'm tired.
GTK: You're tired? Are you used to having a nap in the afternoon, Sherman?
WSO: Yeah. Most of the time, in a good easy chair.
GTK: Well, I've enjoyed this. This has really been a pleasure for me. I haven't been very organized; I've just kindly reminisced back and forth sort of haphazardly but hopefully it will be helpful.
WSO: I have too. I've enjoyed being with you. You know, I have expressed some angry things about you to various people...
GTK: Oh, I've got to tell one story. I've got to have this on tape. About you. Sherman and I were
taking public school art at Union College under a lady by the name of Miss [Katherine Van Deusen] Sutphen. And honestly I couldn't draw a square with a ruler. And Sherman wasn't bad. WSO: I wasn't good.
GTK: And what I did I had a girl in the community where I lived, the whole family of them was just natural artists. I cheated. She did all my drawers and I'd turn them in; Miss Sutphen thought I was just out of this world, and she'd have me critiquing the others' work. We got to Sherman, I says, "Miss Sutphen, don't you think he needs a little more detail here? Wouldn't this be better if it was highlighted more?" And she'd make Sherman do it over. Finally, Sherman got fed up with it. He says, "Now, General, damn you!" He says, "I'm going to spill the beans on you if you don't get off my back."
[Laughter]
WSO: I'm going to tell this one. It's in appreciation of this fellow. Our company commander was a Jew from New York, a first lieutenant. I don't know whether there was a worse S.O.B. in the army or not, but he was a bad one. He put me in charge of records and I designed a method of keeping them that made sense. The way it was being done didn't make sense. He didn't notice it for a day or two what I was doing. He came in and saw it, evidently it was not regulation but it was very efficient. He jumped on me and I never took such a talking in all the days of my life. And I took it for a while and then I started talking back. I called him everything in the world and he told me to get to my quarters and consider myself under arrest, and I got up and left. Do you remember that? I was down there on my bunk and General came down and said, "You're in trouble, buddy." I says, "I know I am." He had me scared to death. Well, he didn't have to scare me, I was scared. I don't know what you did, but you got me out of it. I know you did; now, you don't have to deny it. I know you talked him out of court-martialing me and I was forever grateful to you. But what I started to tell you while ago, I've expressed some angry things about you because you've come up here and not even called me, much less come to see me.
GTK: Well, that's... We had a Mackey Bend reunion and you've got a son lives down there,
and you own a farm down there and you didn't even come to it.
WSO: I didn't even know you came to the Mackey Bend reunion. See, if you'd of called and told me, I'd of come down there.
GTK: To tell you the truth, Sherman, I was the instigator of organizing that, and it's been going
on for twenty-two years and I've been only to the last two. We've got too many folks here to have to visit and so forth.
WSO: I didn't really get mad at you
GTK: I knew you didn't. Back to old [Lieutenant] Berger, I had more on him than what you
knew. If he'd started pressing charges against you, I could have nailed him to the wall and he knew it. We had two Yankee medical doctors as officers and then we had Lieutenant Barr from Frankfort, the dentist. Well, he was all right. He was a nice guy. But these other two guys didn't know from, could do nothing. I had to dress them for parades.
WSO: Yeah? Put their clothes on and fix their insignias and stuff the way it's supposed to be? GTK: O.K. I'll quit since I've told Miss Sutphen's story.
WSO: She was a lot of fun. I remember one time she had us drawing black people's profile. I didn't know what a black person's profile looked like. I'd seen hundreds, of course, but I never noticed a profile and I drew one and handed it to her [and she said], "No, it's not right." General, did you know Milt Townsend, several years later after I went to Union College, was going through some old papers over there .... This maybe ought not to be on tape...
GTK: Do you remember when they initiated Glenn Jackson over there?
WSO: Yeah, I sure do, and I hated it because he's my brother-in-law, that's what made it bad, or became my brother-in-law. I ain't gonna tell that story now; I'll get in trouble.
GTK: Glenn just made a few of those big he-men football players tow the line and they didn't do
what they were going to do to him. They were going to take him over there and dump him in the pond but they didn't do it.
WSO: [He pulled out] a barrel opening about that big. What was that, a forty-four? I never saw such a thing in my life. You know, what made it funny though, was afterward, he went over there and jumped in.
[Laughter]
GTK: Yeah, he did.
WSO: Yeah, and his sister came down and beg his case but that didn't help a bit. He never did go back to college.
GTK: I never knew that. I was just thinking about, going back to the military again, I was sitting
here thinking about, if we had of had one-tenth of the technology in World War II that they had in this Dessert Storm, man! We thought the German V-2 rockets were out of this world, and their 88 Howitzers, and they were good, I mean at that time real good. But those V-2 rockets they had, they were really terrific. You hear those dudes coming, whenever the humming noise cut off, you'd better get in a hole.
WSO: The first ones, what were they called, V-1 ?
GTK: Yeah. "Buzz bombs" was what they called them.
WSO: They'd fly along, tilt the wing up a bit, throw it off its course and it would circle around and go back to Germany, eventually. But that V-2, buddy, you couldn't hear it. It was beyond the speed of sound.
GTK: I know there down in Weymouth, England, when we were getting ready for D-Day, they'd
come across at night and the sky would light up and~this isn't an exaggeration--it looked like if you were up there, you could just walk, that was how thick the flack was, and you couldn't understand why in the world, how anything got through that, it was so dense. I know the first night we moved in there, I told the guys.... We had a patients' dugout, bomb shelter. It was already there. I told the men, I says, "You guys, don't worry about your slip trenches tonight, use that patient bomb shelter over there." But me and the other officers, we dug ours behind our tents. The way we dug them, of course, we had them covered and a hole on each end so that one of us could go in one hole and one in the other. A raid came that night and I guess one poor ole boy, Ole Til, bless his heart, he didn't make it to that bomb shelter where the men are supposed to go to . He came right down on top of me. I says ... No he was there when I came out; that's the way it was. I came in. He says "This one's full." I says, "Naw," I says, "Move over, Til. There's another one coming in." Toward the end of the war there, I remember one plane coming through one night and it looked like it was impossible for that plane to get through. They finally got him out
of the channel there. We evacuated him. He was just a kid; he was about 16, 17 years old, scared to death, as I would have been.
WSO: I went into the cadets after Mack did. I flunked out in primary, but I went through the first part of it at Maxwell Field, the preparatory stuff. And they had a lot of kids in there, 18, a lot of them. I was 21 at that time.
GTK: I guess that was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wanted to do the same thing
but my wife had to sign for me if I went, you know. She wouldn't do it WSO: Well, I've got to go, Charles. Let me tell one more thing. We lived in tents at Camp Shelby. Our detachment had to help do guard duty. The sergeants didn't have to do it. The General never would make Scott or Tom do it, so the ones in our outfit that had to do it was Warfield and me and Jack Elliott. And we had to do it about once a month.
GTK: Corner [Colonel?] Combs. Don't you remember Combs? Hoppy never did do it.
WSO: Yeah, Combs too. Anyway, we were sitting there Warbuck—we called him Warbuck, Leland Warfield—went up there and got his rifle and you had to go over somewhere past the mess tent to do your duty. And he had his rifle on his shoulder holding the barrel out here, holding the barrel with the stock back here and when he saw us he'd start hollering, "Kill 'em all! Kill 'em all!" It was a great relief to a bunch of poor, homesick people way down there in that black country. All you could see was them black women working at the PX; they got to looking so white after a while, didn't it?
GTK: Well, that was what I was referring to, about running out of prophylactics. Had to make it
up three or four times. There was four of them down in the woods and it was like lining up for...
Oh, I need to tell another story about Patton.
WSO: Tell it.
GTK: That made me think of it, all these troops there lined up down in the woods. Patton in Patton's army. He issued at the ration depot, along with rations, cognac, well, wine, cognac, whatever. He had brothels opened all across France and he had doctors assigned to every one of them and that's the reason the VD rate was so nil. And we never had a drunk. I never had a guy that even looked like he was drinking in my outfit and, you know, if they had to go hide or hunt or whatnot. I was double when I went in for D-Day. My guys, if they knew they were going to be driving wouldn't drink anyway. When they came in if they wanted to relax, they'd take a drink or two. That was fine, as far as I was concerned; didn't create any problems.
WSO: This concludes the interview with General King. General, we sure appreciate your cooperating with us and sitting here all this time and telling the wonderful stories you told and reminiscing and we wish you the very best of luck from here on, and we hope that this tape will benefit those that come after us, to let them know what it was like back in 1940.
GTK: It's been my pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity and I commend you folks here in
Barbourville in doing this because these are many of the things that you have in the museum-l've been up there--are those things that would never be assessable or available too had it not been for a few of you guys taking a hold and organizing and doing that which needed to be done. And thank you for giving me the opportunity.
WSO: Thank you.
END OF INTERVIEW