What city . Philadelphia. What were your recollections of the Great Depression . Eating a lot of beans, we were on welfare even back then and we would eat dried beans. We did not have rarely did we have any sort of meat. And my father was sick so he could not work. And there were not jobs around at the time until roosevelt started the new deal. Thats one of the big things that sticks in my mind, eating a lot of baked beans. Of course, i had to go out into the woods and cut would to try to keep warm and i purchased my own close from when i was about 10 to 11. My mother made a lot of our close through the depression era. Interviewer what did you do to make extra money . Andrew if a neighbor wanted some help planting a garden, i may be made a dime or . 15 or Something Like that. Little jobs. I also help the gentleman who cut and sold wood. I would help him and get a few pennies there. And i would purchase my clothes, my shoes, because my parents didnt have the money to do it. Interviewer what was your dad doing before he got sick . Andrew originally he was a shoe cutter i trade. There was a cotton mill in the cotton mill was owned by rd wood. Wawa, it was a cotton mill and the cotton got to him and he had heart troubles. They also thought he had tb, but that was not true, he was in a sanatorium for im going to say six months or a year . But it never proved out, never came up positive. But for some reason they figured he had it but he didnt. But the cotton mill was the one that you might say really put him out of commission as far as working. He lived to be 68 i think. He did, during the war, work a little bit. He was a timekeeper, he could do that on the jobs the wpa had. But there was a bomb plan outside of mays landing during the war and he was the timekeeper for a few months or year, he was never there long enough to get social security. My mother went to work as a seamstress im going to say in the early 40s. When the jobs started to come around. I started working steady when i was about 16. I worked in a grocery store, and there was a gentleman who had an oil business, delivering oil, you would deliver a gallon here or there back in the days. And i was an automobile mechanic for a while. Then i got a job with a company out of atlantic city. We were building solid banks, that they could pump the sand behind. My mother and father knew the gentleman was the superintendent of the shop in atlantic city. When he came over to pass one day he said would you like to learn the machinist trade . I said sure. So i went to work, i went into service but when i came back they hired me back and i was there until 1961 or Something Like that. By the end of the depression, it was over. Interviewer when did you get involved in the army . Andrew i went for my physical on august 8, 1942. I passed the physical and was inducted into the army august 22, 1942. It was a saturday. On friday the 28th we went to agusta, georgia, and on the 29th we went to whats now fort gordon. We went on maneuvers april, may, i would show it here someplace, june, july i think. Came back, we left there im going to say around the eighth or ninth of november, we went to camp kilmer in new jersey. We loaded on a ship which i remember as the 17th of november. We went on the aquitania, was a big british ship. It was a rough ride, i think it was the food, it was not the greatest. The weather was calm compared to coming back. We landed in scotland, we were put on a train and went down to a town in southern england called wooden under the edge, its a beautiful town, i went back several years later. We landed there on november 26 of 1943. It was thanksgiving day, incidentally. We were there, we went through more training, and we were there until june the 13th. Another gentleman was supposed to be there, he had a girlfriend with him and he knew he was coming close to leaving so he asked if i would take over until later on. Later on i got the call, i forget what the word was, the whats name, the code that we were going to move out. We moved out that night. We went to the staging area in england, and boarded a ship. We loaded the 15th of june and landed on the 16th of june in normandy. And from then on, i would have to look at the book to tell you what towns, interviewer what beach did you andrew omaha. The aviation, the german fighters were still making their presence known around their. Interviewer you were trained as a medic. Andrew i was trained as a medic, yes. Interviewer what unit were you with . Andrew the 45th Evacuation Hospital. 40 nurses, 40 doctors, approximately 230 enlisted personnel. Interviewer letter bearers andrew we didnt have to do that. We took care of the patients, they went into receiving, the preop, they went to surgery. I was in a ward and we took care of the patients after they were operated on. We bathed them and got them the penicillin shots, whatever else, help change their bandages and so forth. And i had more than one infantrymen telling me he would not change jobs with me. We were not far behind the front lines. That was our duty, we worked 8 00 at night and late in the morning and 8 00 in the morning and late at night, except when we changed shifts and then we had to split the shifts, if we were working days we had to go off at noon and come back at 8 00. Basically 8 00 to 8 00. Interviewer what units were ahead of you that you are helping take care of . Andrew that i cannot answer. I have not the faintest idea. We were in the first army, so whatever units were there. The one i know was there was a Second Armored Division. I know that because we had an excellent colonel, i wont get into that but they transferred him to the Second Armored Division and brought it into our unit. Its a story, but as i say, politics. Back then, im sure i knew, but today i cant. Can you tell me about when you received your first andrew that would be in how many, i could tell you how many we wound up with if you are interested in that. We were there from june 24, we had to get equipment that was not with us, so we had to wait for the equipment and so forth but we started the operation on june 24 of 1944 and wound up on july 19 of 1944 with a total u. S. Army, 1762 patients. 55 pows, and 18 others. Wait a minute, that includes allied personnel, the u. S. Navy, marines, and so forth. From there we went to the town of ariel, and we were there from the 20 for the july, until we moved. Because back then we were setting up in tents and that was no easy project. Interviewer a fullservice hospital . Andrew fullservice, everything. Interviewer when you treated your first batch of mass casualties, did your training prepare you for what you saw . Andrew i think pretty much so. When we are in the station hospital, i was in the medical end of it. We have the basic training, and we went into combat and i was in the surgical ward, they did chest and stomach wounds. Mostly chests, stomachs, this one had something else. With the training we had we knew what we were getting into. I did not get it in the hospital, but i knew with the training that we had, that we were going to have wounded patients. Interviewer did you have quite a few patients . Andrew yes. That was something too. I think about this every so often, lets say you go off at 8 00 in the morning, you come back at 8 00 in the evening and where such and such . He passed away. It wasnt pleasant. It was war but you didnt want to lose anybody. No matter what. It was not great when you came back and the patient wasnt there, one of the patients. You may have lost two or three, you know what im saying . Andrew how did you deal with interviewer how did you deal with that . Andrew you were so busy you didnt have time to really dwell on it. You know what im saying . You were going on constantly, particularly with the dayshift, you are going constantly, taking care of patients. I dont remember how many we had. In the wintertime we were over in buildings, always in buildings, and depending on the layout of how many patients we could put into a room, maybe we had 20, maybe we had 25. Some of them you had to catheterize, get them bedpans, do shots of penicillin. We gave penicillin shots like you could not believe. In the army we could do that, and private life you could not give a shot. But we did. You didnt have time, you do not like it but she did not have time to dwell on it. I still remember, he was not a patient in my ward, but one of the wards close by, we heard a soldier screaming because they wanted to take his arm off. I can still hear him screaming at times. You knew it could not be helped. I had enough confidence in our doctors that if that arm could not be saved it was not, you know what im saying . It just wasnt possible to save it. I felt that we had some excellent physicians, doctors, surgeons. We had orthopedic surgeons, everything. Plastic surgeons, yes. We also had medical doctors back then we had nasopharyngeal is, pneumonia, basically. The winter was brutal, we had medical doctors. And i always felt that the colonel we went overseas with, he was tough but fair, but you respected him and he built an outfit there. I think we were all proud, you will always have the guy, but basically we were proud of what we were doing and trying to do the job the best we could. Im not bragging, you know what im saying, but thats the way i felt about it and what i feel about it when i step back and reflect on this after its all over. It was a tough deal, but as far as im concerned it made a better person out of me overall. Interviewer you made she mentioned treating patients who died when you were away, but you had patients who died while you were treating them . Andrew yes, i dont know how many but yes, while we were on duty, yes, definitely. Its not a pleasant thing. Even though you did not know the person, basically, you may know his last name because hes a patient but you were not friends. It still had an effect. Interviewer how many people worked in your ward . Andrew two on a shift, basically. Along with the nurse. The doctors, there were a couple of wards that were being taken wards. Ng care of the interviewer what was your ofimum capacity in terms patients you could treat . Andrew if i remember correctly, i believe a tent with 20 patients. Interviewer at a certain point did you have to turn people back because you are overloaded . Andrew i never heard of that being done. This book tells me i went through it before i came up we were loaded at times, we had an overfill, but to my knowledge we never i never heard of it. We never turned a patient away. If they did, i did not know it. There are some admissions here and you figure, you have 230 of this and 40 doctors, but when you get patients like that and you have to operate, its not a 10 or 15 minute operation, you know what im saying . Its a lot of work. Some of those doctors put in all kinds of hours. But i dont know me, i cannot remember ever being told that we had to send patients away. I dont remember seeing anything in this book. Interviewer tell me more about other experiences you had, you stayed at a specific spot for a bit . Andrew there were three or four of us along with a major who was on detached service for couple of months. Interviewer when was this . Andrew i didnt keep records, but it was the six18 Clearing Company and they made it into a hospital, but it was basically battle fatigue. It did happen. I dont care what patton said, it did happened. I still remember one soldier, he was in at least four or five invasions. North africa, sicily, italy, i think southern france, and normandy. One of them maybe he missed. But he did not want to go back to battle and i could understand that. Believe me, youre talking about invasions, we went in 10 days later, but im talking about the soldiers who went in there on day one. Onto the beaches. Im sure it would get to more than one. Whether they had more of these i any more of these hospitals, i dont know, but for the first army as far as i know, this was the only one that was there. They needed rest. There was not anything other than rest and medication. They could take care of themselves, basically. We did not have to bathe them, there were no wounds, those kinds of things. Mostly just rest and medication. The officers there did at times used sodium penthol injections to get them to talk about things, to relieve them of some of the stuff. But there was not much other than seeing that they got good care. That pretty much ended about the time we left that outfit and went back to our own outfit. Near as i could tell. Interviewer and you stayed there for a few months . Andrew yes. Interviewer how many patients were treated there . Andrew i dont know, i would say several thousand, but im only guessing to be honest with you. I would say at least several thousand. Interviewer the soldier you told me about, who was in a few invasions, do you know what happened to him . Andrew i do not. I often wonder that, believe me. To this day it bothers me because i dont know and i have no way of knowing. Interviewer do you know some of the patients you treated that were sent back . Andrew some were sent back to their original units, i know that. Interviewer others were discharged . Andrew discharged out of the hospital, if you want to call it that. Thats what i would call it, sent back after they were rested up to their original outfit. Interviewer back in world war ii, battle fatigue and posttraumatic stress, that was kind of looked down upon. Andrew it was. To me how do i say this . They were never really involved in seeing what people had to go through. As i say, to me, patton was totally wrong, his thoughts on this stuff. To me, theres a limit on what some people can take. Theres a breaking point. I dont care what they say, and some of these guys, what happened to any of them i cant remember at this point whether some of them were either sent home or discharged or sent to other outfits or something of lesser duty, i dont know this. But i am positive that some went back to their original outfits. And what happened to them after that, i cant say. The gentleman who went through at least four invasions, i cant even remember his name. I dont know his name. This is hindsight, i should have carried a book. You know what i am saying . Back in those days, you werent thinking of that. Interviewer you were a kid. Andrew this gentleman wound up living in randall town, maryland, he went back to the War Department and got this information. I think he had some but he went back and got a lot of it and wrote this book. Interviewer did you have some severe cases of soldiers who were seemed to have lost it completely . Andrew i had one, but that was not from war, that was from fort gordon. They brought them into the ward one night and we put him in a private room and he got out of the bed and went down the hall and i followed him down and he was going to take a chair to one of the patients. He threw the chair, came up, missed me, and hit the water cooler. That was from alcohol. I dont remember any of them that way at the mp hospitals. I hate to use that word because they were not they were basically psychiatric, battle fatigue, back then, that was the word they used. Interviewer how many people were working in that facility . Andrew in that outfit, im taking a guess, probably 125 total officers in all. Interviewer after you left, where did you meet up with your regular unit . Andrew i met up with them in belgium, across the borderline from germany. Interviewer thats in the fall, i believe. Two so you went back to your regular ward . Andrew things have changed around the bed, i went back to a ward. Back then, the rooms were small, they could not have many, there was a two and a two a, i believe i was in two a, chest and stomach wounds i took care of. Later on, after the war was over, you do not have the casualties, it was mostly medical. We were in operations up until sometime in september, lets see, september the fifth. We were in operation and we got ready to head home. We left germany somewhere after that. Interviewer tell me about the battle of the bulge. What happened to your unit . Andrew the bomb went over and landed in our courtyard at 5 30 in the morning. No one got hurt. Interviewer a shell or a bomb . Andrew some kind of a shell. Shell is a better word for it, some kind of shell, came off of a tank or something. We survived that all right. That night, as i say, we were in an lshaped school building, and even though we had a big red cross out in the field next to the hospital, the germans came across and bombed that ordinance depot. I was walking out of the room, basically into the hall. The bomb fell and the glass thank god we had will blankets up on the windows, because there was also a nurse out there, a couple of nurses, we did not get hurt by the glass. We moved 200 some patients down. Into the bomb shelter in short order. Everyone, as far as i can remember, were removed properly and we took care of them down there. They moved us out of there when the battle was going on. I think we went to the town of upin, we went to the town of huy, or Something Like that. We came back into you into upin on the 19th of december. We came back after two days. We started operations, and if i remember, we went back and almost immediately turned back and came back. And we set up the hospital again, we were not gone long. I sort of remember that we did it and basically made a uturn. We started the operations again on the 21st of december and we ceased operations on the 26th of december. I remember that a little bit because the 25th of december is christmas and i was working the day shift. We were able to split around a little bit. Sitting in a church service, you could hear the germans scraping not far from us. Nothing hit us, off in the distance, but you could hear it. And our planes were up there, and i did at one time see a dogfight while we were there. We got them. Interviewer too close for comfort. Andrew yes. You are right. Yes. Thats what took place there. Interviewer during the battle of the bulge, did you have problems with supplies . Andrew we sent some of our trucks to the fourth army medical depot. And they had to move that out. They send some of our officers, some of our drivers to move that out. Some of them got trapped, but they said they came back and they said they would never criticize an infantry man again, ever. They said they stood right up and fired at the germans so they could get out of there. I cant remember now, i think one of the trucks was lost, but all of the personnel got back. I think we lost one truck out of the deal. They just got the truck. I think what i read, every once in a while i go through the book, for something i think about. Interviewer did they pick up wounded . Andrew no, it was to move the supplies, im assuming they supplied us with our medical supplies, bandages and whatever else was needed. But they got it out of there. But it was a little tough go for a while. If i remember right, there were a couple of the officers, i dont think they were doctors, i think they were other personnel, Company Commanders and those kinds of things. But im sure we did not send any doctors, i would bet on that. Interviewer respect for infantrymen. Andrew th