William Cole - The 93rd

 

I'll start at Fairbanks Morse in Beloit, Wisconsin. It was a diesel plant that made submarines during the war. I happened to be privileged to be working there in the kitchen, washing pots and pans. One of the naval officers came through one day and told me, said, “Willie, would you like to be deferred and not have to go into the war? The war was just getting hot.” And I said, well, I didn't think they would draft me right away, “Hell, no, this job is nothing. Why would I want to be deferred and stay here?” And it surprised me. That was September of 1942. 

 

January of 1943, I was at Fort. I mean, Camp Custer. Not Camp Custer, excuse me. At Fort Wheeler. [chuckles] I've got it all wrong now. [audience laughter] I was at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. [audience laughter] And that camp is in the middle of Wisconsin. And not very many black soldiers live up in that area. [audience chuckles] As a matter of fact, where I lived up from Beloit, Wisconsin, there was not too many black people there at that time. I went to schools where it was all integrated and everything. I knew anything about prejudice or segregation, all that type of thing. 

 

When I got to Camp McCoy, there was two or three blacks in the group. We went to Camp Custer, Michigan. When we got there, the group got blacker and blacker. [audience chuckles] And then, from there we went to Camp Wheeler, Georgia. That was a training camp to get soldiers ready in a hurry. I don't know if you know it, but World War II, the American soldiers were trained in 13 weeks. They had to learn what would get put before them. If they didn't, the instructor would tell you, “If you don't pass, you know what's going to happen, don't you?” “No. What, sir?” “You're going to be dead in a little while, because this is for keeps. You got to learn these things.” 

 

Well, so happened that I was sent to Camp Wheeler, Georgia. We had a black army. Career man was there. They called him Iron Jaw. He must have been 65 years old or so, but he was training troops. When we came in, he said, “Well, I want to tell you fellows something. They think that you're not fit to serve in the army, because most of you are cotton pickers and farmers, and you don't know anything about anything but milking cows and plowing horses. We're going to make a liar out of them. I'm going to tell you how to use a rifle and how to use other instruments that are not rifles. Anything that you have in your hand, you want to be able to kill with it, because you've got a very capable enemy that we're fighting up against. They're well trained, and most of their privates had as much education as our West Point men.” 

 

That scared us to death. Being black and not having gone to the universities and schools and so forth, the most of us. This is a terrible dilemma to be set into. “I'll make Iron Jaws out of all of you.” We got through our training, and the next thing I knew, we was in Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal, a lot of American boys died there. There's a Wisconsin division known as the 32nd. When we got down there, the Wisconsin division was there to train us and break us into doing jungle warfare. And I was very proud of them. I was from Wisconsin. [chuckles] 

 

By the time we got to Guadalcanal, we had been well trained by this Iron Jaw, this black man. He taught the man how to shoot a Browning automatic running at top speed from the hip. You could hit a bushel basket 50 yards away. And he said, “You have to be able to be an expert with your weapon. Otherwise, you're going to die. And also, with a knife, trench knife, you could throw the knife or you could do close hand to hand, but fighting with it and come out on top. This is the type that all the men had trained that.” 

 

But then, when we got down there, we were surprised that the jungle warfare was something that we were not used to, certainly. But the main thing that surprised us, the newspaper had said about these little Japanese people that was little and teeny little old people. We had a surprise. We went down there, and these were Imperial Marines. Have you ever heard the expression, Imperial Marines? The Imperial Marine is about six foot tall, the average one of them, a very able adversary in any man's army. And this is the type of people we came up against. 

 

Well, at the time my mother got a letter that I was missing in action. I hadn't been missing in action. I'd been detailed to a group that was going under the hills and spy on the Japanese, because they had a colonel down there was making fools out of the American army, his tactics and so forth. It just befuddled everybody, what was happening, what was going on. So, we have to find out what's going on. So, we observed from the hilltops, and we found out that the airplane that was raiding us every night or every two or three nights, and disappearing into nowhere was coming out of a mountain. They had a mountain that they had put up a plane on a boxcar, a flat car. It was on hydraulic pulleys. It come out to the front, and the plane would take off, and then they'd shut it up again. Just like it was a mountain that hadn't been disturbed. And that's how he--

 

When he got through with his strife and bombing, he would go back there, and close the mountain up, and look like there was nothing there. When we found out that and we reported that back to the headquarters, they took that mountain out. There's no more of that type of stuff. [audience laughter] But then, when we came back down out of the mountain, that's the first time that I got fired on. Was crossing a little hill, and down a little creek. It wasn't a river, it was a small creek running across that bottom. We got about knee deep in the water, and a machine gun fire opened up, 50 caliber machine guns, cross fire. That's when I thought I was going to meet my maker. 

 

One bullet hit on this side between my legs and another side didn't hit me. We went into cover and called back down for support. They dropped martyrs all over the top of the hill. When we went over there, it was nothing there but split up, cut up, and charred corpses. That's the first time I had a close call. I said, “That's the time when my mother must have been praying for me, and God answered her prayer.” Because I was not a Christian, and I didn't know anything much about God or anything then. But I was so thankful that I had a mother praying for it at home. 

 

Then we have to find this colonel that's doing all this dirt to us. His name was Colonel Lucci. We had a bunch of young black boys that had been highly trained by Iron Jaw. They said, “The only way we can get him without him killing himself.” We'll have to go into his camp, and take him by hand without firing a shot. We have to use trench knives and get to him and kill him, so we can bring him back untouched. They did just that. They caught him in his bed sleep, and they brought him out with his hands tied and his feet tied and put up holes in and brought him out to the headquarters. He was in perfect shape. They were able to interrogate him and so forth. 

 

But shortly after that, we were back-- When the [unintelligible 00:47:14] went down, you'd have a brief rest, we'd go back and you'd have American entertainers come over. USO girls, if you heard of them, they'd come over and they was entertaining us and telling us all the grand things that were back in the States and singing to us. And so, when all of a sudden, the loudspeakers opened up, said, “We have a special announcement to make.” “What in the world could this be?” “The war is over. Japan has surrendered. They dropped the bomb on them and they surrendered. Unconditional surrender. You boys will be going home soon.” We were so happy. The girls jumped off the stage in the middle of the soldiers [audience laughter] and just had a time there. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Then, I got back home. I got back home to Pittsburgh, California. We marched down the street to de-embarkation area where we sent back to our homes and that. It was so wonderful to see these American girls, big, tall, king-sized girls that we're not used to. [audience laughter] This was America, which we like kissing the ground that America was on, because it looked like going to heaven there. When we got back to our hometown and so forth, we had our GI bills and all that, all these things had come along. I went to Rockford, Illinois to get a home. I got a surprise. They said, “You people can't have a get by here. We'll find you a place but you can't buy here.” 

 

I was so disappointed. I thought I was a gladiator. I fought for the country and come back and here they're so in this type of stuff in my face. It was a long time before I bought a home, I was so discouraged with that. But I'm so proud to be an American soldier, and I'm glad that I did what I did, and came back to the United States. I think it's the best country in the world.