Texas Liberators - John "Jack" Reynolds (September 13, 2011)

SLOAN: All right, this is Stephen Sloan. The date is September 13, 2011. I'm with Mr. Jack Reynolds at his address in Dallas, Texas. This is an interview for the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission's Liberators Project. Mr. Reynolds, thank you for sitting down with me today to do this interview.

REYNOLDS: Well, thank you for coming. You've come a long way and--

SLOAN: Well, it's worth it. I'm excited to hear what you have to share with us because I know your story is a fascinating one.

REYNOLDS: Uh-huh. I don't know about that, but--(Sloan laughs) I hope my voice will carry out.

SLOAN: Yeah, we'll get--we'll get your voice.

REYNOLDS: It's kind of messed up from this problem, you know.

SLOAN: Yes, sir. Well, I--I'd like to start, if we can go back, I'd like to know a little about your early childhood. If you could tell me a little bit about your childhood and your family and your life there in South Dakota.

REYNOLDS: Okay, well, I was raised in Canton, South Dakota. Born in 1924 and grew up there and lived there until I was fourteen, 1938. And my father and grandfather were in the filling station and garage business, but my father went on the road for the same company that they-- whose products they handled.

SLOAN: I see.

REYNOLDS: And he travelled parts of three states, all of South Dakota, all of North Dakota, and part of Minnesota. So he got home about every other weekend. And I usually had a job of some kind when I was growing up. I delivered The 00:02:00Saturday Evening Post and Country Gentleman and Ladies Home Journal. Saturday Evening Post was five cents a copy. That's how I got my spending money.

SLOAN: Now, were you able to keep that money for yourself, or did that go to the family?

REYNOLDS: I kept it for myself.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: All--all cent and a half out of the five cents.

SLOAN: Well--you--we had talked earlier--(both talking)

REYNOLDS: We were--

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Some people weren't that fortunate.

SLOAN: Yeah, I know. Well, we had talked about--it's a good point to talk about; the Depression was going on.

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

SLOAN: If you can talk a little bit--I know you were young early on in the Depression, but what are your memories of that?

REYNOLDS: Well, I mean this--we didn't call it Depression. We called it hard 00:03:00times. And it was--it was pretty much that. My father and grandfather gave credit to their customers. And, of course, it finally broke them, but they--the small merchants like that did a tremendous amount to keep the country afloat. And they ran a tank wagon, they called it, out to into the country to deliver tractor fuel to various farmers. They were switching over from horse farming to tractor farming. And so they let them--they built up some big credit bills. And 00:04:00they always figured when they got money they'd pay--they'd pay it, but that didn't always work out that way, I guess. But it was just the way things were. We just didn't have--have a whole lot of money, but we were probably better off than most of the other people.

SLOAN: Yeah. Well, when you got a little money in your pocket what would you do with it?

REYNOLDS: I'd go down and get an ice cream soda. It cost twenty-five cents, and that was about what I made in a week.

SLOAN: (laughs) Well, that's good spending for a week's pay. About right. (both laugh) So did your--your older brother probably worked as well.

REYNOLDS: Oh yes.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yes, he did. And when we got teenager we both worked on farms. I was 00:05:00in Iowa by that time, you know. But yeah, we both had to do whatever we could do to make a little money for ourselves.

SLOAN: Yeah. Well, you mentioned earlier when we were talking that 1938 was the hardest of the hard years. Can you talk a little bit about that?

REYNOLDS: My parents did not share their business with us. When they told us we were moving, we moved, and whatever their conversations were, they had it to themselves. But I remember my dad built a trailer in our garage, in the business 00:06:00garage there, and we towed that to Texas with our necessary things. And then we lived in an apartment that our aunt had. Rented that from her, and went to school there in Bryan for two years. I played football one year and then--tried to. (Sloan laughs) And then delivered papers.

SLOAN: Do you remember when you heard that you were moving what your--how you felt about it?

REYNOLDS: Oh, I guess it was all right with me. I'd been in Bryan a few times 00:07:00when I was little, you know, about two and five and like that. But it was all right, really. We towed that trailer down to Bryan. And Dad came down for the holidays and that sort of thing.

SLOAN: So how long did he stay up and continue to work?

REYNOLDS: My dad?

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Well, he never did at that time move to Texas. We stayed in Texas for that two years, and by the end of that he had relocated to Iowa. He kind of started over again. And he was--initially, of course, in South Dakota he was 00:08:00selling refinery products, and he had some other lines as well, of machinery. And so he was selling machinery to filling stations and garages in Iowa. The only thing was they weren't making any. They had switched over to wartime footing, you see.

SLOAN: Yes.

REYNOLDS: (coughs) So he'd sell anything he could find, and he couldn't find anything to sell. And at the end of--that's when my brother, of course, meantime was at A&M [Texas A&M University]. In and out of A&M, he had his own system 00:09:00going. He'd work a semester and go to school a semester. And when I graduated I was offered a job in the shoe store that I'd been working in as assistant manager for, I think, twenty-five dollars a week. My brother wrote and said, "Come on down to the shipyard." And I told the folks that's where I was going. And Dad said, "Well, wait a week, and I'll take you down there." We ended up all three of us working in the shipyard, my brother in the engineering office, and my dad and I were chippers. And what that is is you've got a high-frequency air 00:10:00hammer about this long with cold chisels in it, and you cut steel with it. All the fitting-up welds that they had to make, you know. Then you had to clean those off. And sometimes they'd have us bevel plates to where they could weld them together and that sort of thing. And that was very, very hard work, and paid very well.

SLOAN: Do you remember how much you were making?

REYNOLDS: Yes, when they finally started hiring--they'd had some kind of labor problems to begin with and they had a--they gave a test. And I had been going to 00:11:00what was known as a shipbuilding school, just learning how to use chipping tools and everything, and building up my strength a little bit. They gave us the test. And my dad, they hired him as first class. And they hired me as third class. And that was seventy-eight cents an hour. And then, after I'd been there a while, they promoted me to second class, and that was eighty-seven cents an hour. And then, after I think three months, I made first class, and that was a dollar and a quarter an hour. And that was truly big money in those days.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: And you earned every penny of it, of course.

SLOAN: Yeah, can you talk a little bit about what the work was like?

REYNOLDS: Well, you're using a cold chisel on steel, and there's a lot of that to be done around welding and everything. These were some of the first welded ships that were made. And so you had to hold that thing where it couldn't bounce like a jackhammer, you know. If it bounced, you weren't cutting. And so you were using your muscles very much all the time. And it was a lot of heat from the sun on that steel and everything, and--

SLOAN: And so they were working around the clock? You were working eight-hour shifts around the clock?

REYNOLDS: Eight-hour shifts. And after we'd been there about three months, I guess, they started asking us to work overtime. And we never turned them down. So we ended up--and they paid time and a half after forty hours, not after eight hours, but after forty hours. And then time and a half if you worked Saturday, and double time if you worked Sunday. And so they started asking us to work overtime. And so we were working twelve hours a day, seven days a week--no, five days a week, and eight hours a day, two days a week.

SLOAN: Yeah, you were telling me you had to go out early because of all the traffic on the--

REYNOLDS: Oh yeah. Yeah, traffic was really bad. We had to start two hours early to get there on time and everything. You didn't want to clock in late because they'd dock you a whole bunch.

SLOAN: Yeah. Well, you know, one thing that I didn't ask about--so that's--you worked there for six months, and that was in '40? Or--

REYNOLDS: Forty-two.

SLOAN: Forty-two, yeah. One thing I didn't ask you about was Pearl Harbor. I know you remember--

REYNOLDS: Well, I was a senior in high school in Council Bluffs when that happened. And I remember the radio told us about it and everything.

SLOAN: Do you remember what you felt or thought?

REYNOLDS: Well, it made me mad. It made me mad. Incidentally, prior to that, 00:15:00that fall we'd gone across the river to Omaha to watch a parade of the Seventh Cavalry from Fort Meade, South Dakota. It was the last horse-drawn, or mounted parade in--of course, they also had all this motorized equipment as well, but that stuck with me pretty good.

SLOAN: Yeah, I bet. Yeah.

REYNOLDS: That was Custer's outfit, of course.

SLOAN: Yeah, yeah. Well so, after your stint in Houston you went back to Bryan-College Station, right?

REYNOLDS: Yeah. Oh, and started A&M--

SLOAN: Then you enrolled in A&M, yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, enrolled in A&M.

SLOAN: And what course of study did you do at A&M?

REYNOLDS: Civil engineering.

SLOAN: So why'd you have an interest in that?

REYNOLDS: Couldn't think of anything else. It was just about almost literally true. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do. But my brother was taking civil engineering, and I thought I'd try that. So the main problem, of course, I didn't know what an engineer did. I was a long time figuring that out.

SLOAN: (laughs) You thought they drove the train, right?

REYNOLDS: Well, yeah, but some people think that, that he's the one that pulls the little cord that goes toot-toot, but actually the fireman did that. Wasn't the engineer.

SLOAN: Yeah, that's right. So what do you remember from that time at A&M--that year at A&M?

REYNOLDS: Well, it wasn't a year. It was--

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Well, I remember I couldn't get enough to eat. They fed us exceedingly well there. But just my--I was wound up pretty tight, I guess, at the time. And I was putting everything I had into it, and that was something. And I had two roommates. And one of them--on Saturday morning, I think, we had a class. We had a PE class on Saturday morning. He was going out to run cross-country, 00:18:00and--yeah. So then he and I, this one roommate and I, we'd go around to this cross country, and about a mile in from the dormitory, we'd run right--run back to the dormitory, and take a shower, and started hitchhiking out for the weekend. You know, we'd have a date someplace. That was our main mode of locomotion, was hitchhiking. We called it "highwaying."

SLOAN: Yeah, that makes it sound more sophisticated.

REYNOLDS: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, we had a lot of informal rules and regulations 00:19:00because if you didn't, there would have been a chaos.

SLOAN: Well, you've got to share these. What are the--do you remember any of the informal rules and regulations?

REYNOLDS: Well, yeah, you took your turn. You know, you put a bag down or something like that and get your place in line. And if somebody stopped to offer you a ride, nobody mobbed him. Only one person would go up to the car and ask him where he's going, and if he--he had the option of taking it or passing it on to somebody else in line. And that was one of the main things. And most of the main cities in Texas had an Aggie corner, and that's where you'd go to catch a ride. And it was a no-no to go upstream of that point, but downstream was okay.

SLOAN: (laughs) There's an etiquette involved.

REYNOLDS: There was. There was. Which, incidentally, when I got discharged from the army, I hitchhiked all the way home from California. Three rides, I think it was, three or four.

SLOAN: Well, as we think about your time at A&M--so you were there for how long that first time?

REYNOLDS: Probably half a semester.

SLOAN: Half a semester. And then you left there--

REYNOLDS: I still call myself a member of that class.

SLOAN: Oh, do you? (laughs) So you left there to go where?

REYNOLDS: Fort Sam Houston.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: And from there, I was sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. At Camp Claiborne I became a member of the 398th Engineer Regiment General Service, which was just being formed. And everybody in it, except a very small cadre of non-coms, was rookies, including the officers. And that was kind of interesting. Since I had a little bit of ROTC, both high school and A&M, and Boy Scouts, they made me a corporal. (Sloan laughs) I knew how to set up a pup tent.

SLOAN: (laughs) That was going to be real useful.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, when nobody else knows, it does--knows how.

SLOAN: So, well, tell me what Fort Sam was like when you got there.

REYNOLDS: (sighs) Don't have a whole lot of memories of Fort Sam. You know, it's a beautiful place, being a permanent post and all.

SLOAN: Well, did you do your basic there?

REYNOLDS: No, that was just induction.

SLOAN: Okay, it was just induction. Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, my basic was at Camp Claiborne. Halfway through that, they sent us to Arkansas, to work on a flood. We learned to build all kinds of stuff, you know, bridges and stuff like that. Gin poles and sheer legs and tripods and all 00:23:00kinds of stuff for moving equipment. But up in Arkansas, they were working on a flood of the White River. And so we learned how to match our slopes and to control seepage, how to build chimneys around sand boils so they wouldn't wash the levee out. We built a few bridges and then went back to--went back to Claiborne and finished up. And just before they finished up, they came and asked me if I wanted to go to the ASTP. And I said, "Well, what's that?" And they 00:24:00said, We don't know. But it was the Army Specialized Training Program, and nobody knew what it was. So anyway, they sent me back to college, and I went first to LSU [Louisiana State University], which they called a STAR Unit, which was some kind of an acronym, I think, but only--it was just for casuals. And then they sent me up to Lake Forest College, on--it was thirty miles north of Chicago, on Lake Michigan, and--

SLOAN: So what was your training there? What were you taking course work on?

REYNOLDS: Well, it was about--it was kind of like a pre-engineering, but it wasn't as much as I'd had at A&M, you know. I had some liberal arts stuff in 00:25:00there too, geography and all. But anyway, that was--I started, I think, in September of '43, somewhere along in there. And along about in March of '44, well, they broke us up and sent us out to the California desert. And that's where we joined the 104th Infantry Division. And at that time there--an infantry division has about fourteen, fifteen thousand men in it. And they brought in five thousand replacements from the ASTP into the 104th.

SLOAN: Wow.

REYNOLDS: They were coming off of desert maneuvers at the time. And then they 00:26:00took us from there up to Camp Carson, Colorado, and we trained up there under General Terry Allen. And we specialized in night fighting. And then from there they sent us overseas.

SLOAN: I know this was unusual to have such a focus on night fighting. Can you talk a little bit about what that training was like?

REYNOLDS: One of the main things was on the attack; that's the only place it made any difference, I suppose. And on the attack, while they would go in, 00:27:00instead of being all spread out, five yards apart so that one bomb or grenade or shell didn't catch a whole bunch of you, we went in in column of twos, with front and flank patrols out to where we didn't, hopefully, run into any big surprises and all. And that way we were able to keep control and not lose people. You know, we got--we'd get lost in the dark. And we'd sometimes get within one or two hundred yards of the enemy, to where you had to spread out and go into skirmishers, you see. But that was probably, kind of, the crux of it 00:28:00right there. You try to get used to the dark and that sort of thing. And they had a--they put on a school there, a division scout school. They called us the Wolf Scouts. And they brought in--see, I was in the defense platoon of division headquarters company. And that's just basically three squads of antitank squads. For this school they brought in two men from each line company, which made quite 00:29:00a group.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: But from my platoon they put--we had eighteen guys in it. And we learned all kinds of night patrolling and how to find your way with a compass and all that kind of stuff. A whole bunch of stuff you learned that way.

SLOAN: Well, did you have a sense--we haven't talked about how much you knew what was going on with the war. But you're not training in the desert anymore--

REYNOLDS: (both talking) No.

SLOAN: --so you probably had to have an idea that--

REYNOLDS: No, desert fighting was all over with--

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: --by that time.

SLOAN: So you knew at some point you were probably going to Europe.

REYNOLDS: That was probably a pretty good guess, right.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: It didn't look like jungle training, you know.

SLOAN: Um-hm. Well, the engineering--you picked civil engineering on a whim, or just because you didn't know what else to do. Did you enjoy that sort of work?

REYNOLDS: It was most rewarding. I mean, I didn't get rich or anything, but I had a very satisfying career in engineering.

SLOAN: Well, I was commenting earlier on your--woodcraft is a hobby of yours as well, and it kind of speaks to that, you know, creating and designing and building.

REYNOLDS: Well, it's very helpful in a way because I was very good at drafting, and so I was able to design and plan my own projects.

SLOAN: So when did you get an idea of where you were going next, where you were going to be deployed?

REYNOLDS: Well, they sent us to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. And, see, I was there during my twentieth birthday, and I had an uncle in New York who was a manager of Saks Fifth Avenue. And I finally was able to get in touch with him and went out to his home and met him for the first time in my life. But the--see, the 00:32:00invasion had already taken place, so there's not much doubt as to where we were going, I guess. And we were the first ones to go from the United States directly to France. We landed at Cherbourg. And landed about ninety or ninety-one days after D-Day. And it had taken that long to clear the peninsula and the port of 00:33:00Germans and obstacles, I guess. So we were--they anchored out and brought us in in lighters. But some of them came--we went on a regular troopship to--I guess it had been a luxury liner at one time, the George Washington. Some of them went over on Liberty ships, which was what I'd built in Houston, and landed at Utah Beach and waded ashore. Not under fire.

SLOAN: (both talking) Yeah, that's how they had to get to shore.

REYNOLDS: But got your feet wet, anyway.

SLOAN: (laughs) Well, you remember--can you talk a little bit about the mood on the ship going over?

REYNOLDS: Oh, I think everybody was in a pretty good mood. They did a little 00:34:00zigzagging, but I think the U-boat threat was mostly taken care of by that time. And there was always some guys playing cards or running a shell game, something like that. But the last--I do remember, though, that they handed out some little bitty books that were stapled together, little booklet deals. And some guy was teaching us a few words of French, how to pronounce it and--you know, "Where's the railroad station?" and all that kind of stuff was in this little book. And 00:35:00so we kind of went in for that. Then that little book, which I have since lost, when we got over there--when we finally got to where there were some people to try to talk to, was in Belgium. And it was in a Flemish part of Belgium, so the French equivalents didn't do much good. We were writing down little--I was--writing down little Flemish equivalents, and then we didn't stay in Belgium very long. Got over into Holland, so I was writing little Dutch equivalents in 00:36:00it--writing very small, of course. And then I got into Germany, and for a long time there wasn't anybody to talk to, but when we did find somebody, well, we were writing German equivalents down. So all of my lexicon of German and French and Flemish and Dutch, it's lost.

SLOAN: (laughs) So had you ever been overseas before?

REYNOLDS: No.

SLOAN: No, you'd never been overseas. So what was that like, for the first time, to be in Europe?

REYNOLDS: Well, it was--damp. (Sloan laughs) It was cold and damp. And this was 00:37:00in September and October. But in the Cotentin Peninsula--you know, that's where I'm really speaking of. Other places weren't that much different in climate. But it was--it was interesting. In one of the places where we were in Belgium, we was on the grounds of the Peter Paul Rubens home, Flemish painter. And, of course, that was where our headquarters was. We were in the huts that the Germans had left behind on the grounds. And we had been--the reason we were in 00:38:00there, in Belgium and Holland, was they had attached us to the Canadian First Army. And so, anyway, we were there for a while and did all the stuff with the language things, trying to get our clothes washed and everything and finally got that done.

And a translator came by and said, "Now, we're not supposed to go to Brussels. It's been reserved for the British. So you're not supposed to go there. It's off-limits. And the train station is right over there." (laughs) So we went 00:39:00off-limits that evening in Brussels. I remember, I think they gave us a couple of dollars or something--a very, very little bit of money. We didn't normally pay, but they gave us a little money. See, of course, we were making combat pay by now. But we decided we wanted something to eat, and we saw a sign on this door for a restaurant. We went in, went up the stairs, went down the hall--into the hall. Man comes to the door. He's dressed up in a white tie and tails. And 00:40:00all these ladies and gentlemen wearing their dining [formal wear]--you know. He told us he didn't think we'd be comfortable in there. (laughs) And I'm sure we wouldn't have. We couldn't have afforded a cup of coffee. (laughs)

But then we got into Holland. I watched some shoemakers making wooden shoes, and that was fascinating. They could just--the skill on all of those guys. They were 00:41:00really something. And they had--where we were we had replaced a British infantry division. And there was a British armored division on one side of us and a Polish armored division on the other side of us. And at about that time, they issued the one and only time they ever gave us a liquor ration. They gave us the bottles, some kind of hooch, for our squad. And the squad leader's name was Bruno Dash(??). He was a big Polish boy from Chicago. And some Polish guys went by in one of these Bren carriers. Little--it's a fully tracked vehicle about the size of a jeep. And they stopped and he talked to them. And he came back, and he 00:42:00had a kind of a strange look on his face. And he was asking us if we would donate our share of the liquor ration to him so he could entertain his Polish friends. We said, Sure. And so he went over there and the three of them downed this liter of whatever it was. And he came back and he said, "You know, I asked them, I guess you guys will be going back to Poland pretty soon?" And they said, Yeah, we think we will, but we don't know what kind of a Poland. To me that made no sense at that time, but made all kinds of sense [later].

SLOAN: Yeah. You talked about encountering, like, the Flemish group in Belgium, and once you had a chance to kind of interact with some of the Europeans, how were you--can you talk a little bit about how you were received, or kind of your interaction with citizens there?

REYNOLDS: There were--they were friendly. When we convoyed through France, from Normandy to Belgium--of course, we were--these convoys go for miles and miles and miles. And they stretched through village after farm after village after farm. And we stopped every two hours, whether we needed it or not. And everybody'd get out and do their business. And it didn't seem to bother the 00:44:00local ladies. They came out and brought us a loaf of bread and stuff like that. And I remember we were stopped like that one time, see this well dressed gentleman, overcoat, I don't know, homburg or bowler or something, some kind of hat on, a tie, all dressed up. He came walking by, and I guess he had the same urge as we had. So he just pulled up to our garden gate there and did his business too. (laughs)

SLOAN: You're just acting like the locals.

REYNOLDS: Just about. Some young lady walked--drove by on a bicycle. It was a little bit much for her.

SLOAN: All right, so your group pushed--you pretty much--that area was secure getting to Belgium. When did you meet some resistance?

REYNOLDS: In--from part of Belgium and in to Holland. You see, being in the defensive platoon of headquarters company, I wasn't on the front lines, you know. You understand that. But they fought their way into Holland. Then the 00:46:00first night in Holland we were out in the country, and you were asking how they received us. This farmer--I noticed some guys lined up at this barn. It was not a high barn like ours, it was--but it was high enough, I guess. And each man that went by, he'd pitchfork a--he'd give him a pitchfork full of hay, and he'd move on. So we each got a pitchfork full of hay. And I took that out in the pasture where I was to spend the night, and I dug a trench long enough to lay down in, and lay in the--lined the bottom of it, and put some willow sticks in 00:47:00there and lined the sides, and put my shelter half over the top of it. Cold blowing night, and I was just as comfortable as in my own bed. He was--he was--

SLOAN: So he was helping you.

REYNOLDS: He was being--yeah. He put that up there for his cows to eat.

SLOAN: Well, your group, the combat engineer group, what sort of work were y'all doing at that time? What were y'all focused on during that time?

REYNOLDS: It was not a combat engineer group.

SLOAN: Okay.

REYNOLDS: I was in the defense platoon--(both talking)

SLOAN: I'm sorry. Defense platoon. Yeah, yeah.

REYNOLDS: --of the division headquarters company. And what that is is--well, it had three squads of about ten men each. And we were--armament is an antitank, 00:48:00you know, a fifty-seven millimeter gun and a .50 caliber machine gun and a bazooka. And we all had rifles and things like that. Our job was securing headquarters so they didn't get blown away. And pretty good job as long as they're winning.

SLOAN: That's right.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. And I forgot what your question was.

SLOAN: Well, I was just asking what y'all--I was asking more kind of what y'all were doing in--when you began to meet resistance, I guess you're just bearing down and preparing for that sort of--yeah.

REYNOLDS: Uh-huh. Well, they--yeah, they attacked them.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: And drove them back.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: And a lot of that was wading through icy water and everything like 00:49:00that. You know, really bad stuff. But from--we were there in Holland, I think, about--oh, about three weeks, and then they brought us back into the American army. Then we moved 165 miles and relieved the First Division at Aachen, and were able to have people in contact with the enemy continuously, both in Holland and in Germany. So when we got through at the end of the war we had 195 consecutive days in contact with the enemy. But from Aachen on, that was a--that 00:50:00had been a hard siege, and then the rest of that was more the Siegfried Line and all that kind of stuff. Went on into the town of Brand, and then into Eschweiler, and into Weisweiler. And Weisweiler, we spent a lot of time there, all during the Bulge.

And in Eschweiler my buddy and I went over--decided we needed to go out and fire 00:51:00some of our armaments. We hadn't had a chance to in the States and everything. So we had a little time to ourselves; we went off by ourselves, took several things with us. We had an ammunition ration that was given to us, you see, to--which filled up the bed of the truck. And had a bazooka, and we picked up a German machine gun and Panzerfaust, and various things like that, went off and fired them where we wouldn't bother anybody. Our gun was set up in the driveway of a filling station, looking down towards the front. And so we got over there, 00:52:00and we fired all of this stuff. A Panzerfaust, we fired the bazooka. We fired the German machine gun, which has twice as fast the cyclic rate as ours is there, you know.

And then the last thing we did was--had a grenade. It was in a heavy, drawn steel case. We didn't know what it was. We'd never seen it before. It said "Grenade, Smoke, WP" on it. And everything's backwards, you know, in army type. Grenade, smoke, WP. And so, well, my buddy says, "Well, it's a smoke grenade." "Well, I don't know about that." Anyway, he pulled the pin, dropped it, and we started off. I said, "Let's get out of here." We began running, and by that time 00:53:00the thing went off. And there was this big shower of white phosphorous we ran out from under. (laughs) Didn't have any good sense. When we got back to the filling station where the gun was set up and the guy that was on guard with the gun--the rest of them had gone someplace, to a movie or something. And he had a great mind, too. He had run on the same track. He took this grenade, Smoke, WP around the side of the filling station, opened the door to the ladies' room, dropped it in the john and--pulled the pin and dropped it in there. Closed the door, afterthought, he stepped aside. About that time, the door went past him. (laughs)

SLOAN: Man. (laughs) These are boys with big toys.

REYNOLDS: Boys with big toys. (laughs) We weren't always that crazy, but there were exceptions.

SLOAN: Well, you mentioned the Bulge, and I know that was a particularly hard time.

REYNOLDS: Well, for us it was a boring time.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: We were just to the north of it, you know, just a little bit to the north of it. We could hear and see the noise and the flashes and everything else, but they weren't shooting at us. But we had been at Weisweiler. This is 00:55:00just a mile or so from Eschweiler. I don't know why they moved only a mile, but I mean--and we'd been there awhile and got a three-day pass to Verviers, Belgium. And so we rode the truck back to Verviers. Got there, they took our rifles and ordnance. Supposed to have cleaned them or something. Checked them, I suppose, cleaned them. We got a shower, first one. We got clean clothes, first time we'd had any clean clothes. We'd go out to enjoy the town, and this was at 00:56:00a Belgian barracks called Verte-Caserne. And an MP at the gate says, "Hundred and Fourth, go back." And so we went back, and we had until midnight. And they said, Well, load your rifles. And we got in the truck, went back to Weisweiler. That was our three-day pass. That was the day the Bulge started. And they didn't know what anybody was. They thought we might run into something on the way back. They didn't know.

But--oh, before that happened, we had a fire in a house that one of the squads 00:57:00was occupying. And--no, it was after that, after we got back. And it was in the attic. They used straw up there for insulation, and someone had set it afire somehow or with a stovepipe, I think. To put it out, we must have had a hundred guys out there with helmets, passing water from one--you know, a bomb hole or shell hole up to put out this fire. And we got through, finally got it out. And 00:58:00there went my shower. (both laugh) But the company commander--I guess it was one of the nicest things he ever said to me. He said, "We get another chance, I'll send you back to another three-day pass, and you can get another shower."

After things--after the Bulge got it quieted down, we crossed the Ruhr River, and we made our way all the way to Cologne. And I think we were one of about three divisions that took Cologne. There were us and the Third Armored Division 00:59:00and I think one other infantry division that took Cologne. And we were there, and the same buddy and I went down to see the cathedral. We find our way down there, a lot of it blocked with rubble and everything. And while we were there we looked at the cathedral. And the Krauts lobbed a shell in on us from across the river. Didn't hurt us, but it got a guy--injured him a little bit. I don't 01:00:00know how bad--who we'd been talking to from the air force. But anyway, it'd been--you know, several weeks passed since I'm talking about, and the company commander gave me a three-day pass to Verviers again. And so I went to Verviers and had a nice three-day pass that time. And came back, but I didn't come back to Cologne. I got there, we'd run up the river and through Bonn, and then there was a pontoon bridge across the Rhine River. We went across on that, and when we 01:01:00did we were in the Remagen Bridgehead, you see.

And so when--it's kind of interesting that--kind of key moments, you know. One was when the Bulge started and the other one was when we got into the bridgehead. And while we were in this town of Honnef, which is where we were at the time, some teenager came by when I was on guard on the gun. And he was 01:02:00acting kind of strange, so I called him over. And he was carrying this Luger, which is sitting right over there. And so I got that from him, and I gave him a chocolate bar or something. And that's kind of a prime souvenir.

SLOAN: Um-hm. Well, I know after--so there's quite a bit of momentum after--when y'all started moving again.

REYNOLDS: Oh yeah, we were just blowing over there, you know, twenty, thirty miles a day sometimes. And one of our regiments with the Third Armored Division 01:03:00made the Ruhr encirclement, and the rest of them were coming along behind and following them up and everything like that. And after that, then they started to push all the way across the country. And they went real fast and made a number of stops along the way. It was long distance and everything. And--but this one day we made a little--our squad usually operated by itself. One squad would move up and secure--with our platoon leader, we'd secure a site for division 01:04:00headquarters, and the others would stay back guarding, and move up with rest of them, that sort of thing. And it took us a little ways into the Harz Mountains, and decided we were in the wrong place, turned around and went back. But his language problems--he was trying to ask people where the German Army was and they said, Well, you know--pointed like that. He took it that there was a house down a few hundred yards down the road there. So he ordered us to put a shot through it. We did. The old man came running down: "No--No soldaten. No soldaten."

SLOAN: One thing that you mentioned earlier that I wanted to go back and ask about--the Allies--you were connected to this Canadian--what was the opinion of the Canadians, and what was the interaction like with that Canadian group?

REYNOLDS: Being in the Canadian Army--but it was a British corps, and so all we saw was--no, we did see. We saw some Canadians, we saw some British, we saw some Polish. Well, they had a little different outlook than we did, you know. Being in the middle of a conversation, they said, Oh, tea time, cheerio. And they'd go 01:06:00off and light a fire and heat up their water for tea.

And when this went on in the little town there where I saw the wooden shoemakers, the main--there's--I don't know. All I know is there were two main streets there, intersected in a T, and then one--the stem of the T went over a dyke, and I didn't get any farther in than that. And we were in that intersection, and there was a park there, and beyond that was a school. Well, the park was occupied by a battalion of British tanks. And we had MPs on the 01:07:00corner, both British and American. Americans stayed there twenty-four hours a day. British, at midnight, they left. Anybody out after midnight, you ought to want to know where they're going, the way they looked at it. (laughs) And they had two guards marching around that park all the time. Just--we'd stay in the shadow. And if he'd come by us, well, he'd wait until you get by and challenge you to your back. (laughs) But these guys were walking guard. And they had--they 01:08:00had hobnails on their shoes, on their boots, and then in their heels was a horseshoe set in to the heel. Boy, they made a lot of racket, you know, going around there. And the Canadians that we talked to, talking about the British rations, said they were terrible--how terrible they were. They said, You guys would quit. (laughs) But I guess we got along pretty good with them. (Sloan laughs) I saw [Field Marshall Bernard Law] Montgomery one time. He came to our headquarters. Saw him at a distance.

SLOAN: Did you have much of a sense of kind of the mood of the headquarters and what was going on, kind of activity within there?

REYNOLDS: No. It was just like--you know, we knew all about map reading, and I never saw a map except in Stars and Stripes, about that size. We didn't know what was going on, like, whenever--you know, if you were right in the headquarters.

SLOAN: I know General Allen stayed with the 104th, right?

REYNOLDS: Yes. Yes. And he was the only one, I think, in World War II that 01:10:00commanded two different divisions. Did you know that?

SLOAN: No, I didn't know that.

REYNOLDS: He commanded the First Division in Africa and Sicily. And he got crosswise with some of the higher generals, and they sent him--they relieved him without prejudice. So they went back and they gave him another division, which was us. And he was a very beloved general, especially after--well, you know, came to all our reunions until he died and everything. But we felt like that we had--we always got there first and had the lowest casualties due in some part to 01:11:00our training in night fighting and also just an aggressive spirit, I guess.

SLOAN: Did morale stay pretty high, pretty good?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, yeah. I could see those guys after they'd been fighting for a long time though, and they got the thousand-yard stare. You know, just exhausted, that sort of thing. But--after this little foray into the Harz 01:12:00Mountains, we--I think we were lost. (laughs) It wouldn't have been unusual with that particular officer. We went to a town called Duderstadt and spent the night in Duderstadt. And we met a couple of guys, one of them was from the 106th Infantry Division, which had been wiped out practically in the Bulge, and so he'd been a prisoner. They'd marched him east, and then they marched him back to 01:13:00the west. They get too close to the front on either side, and then they started him back east again. And this guy told them he was sick. And they didn't shoot him. They left him behind. So he was there when we got there.

Another little guy was a Jewish guy, I think. He wasn't in our--wasn't a soldier, and he was--the soldier hadn't had anything to eat. And I went in a bakery. And they had one loaf of bread, and I made them give it to me. I've thought since that I should have given half back to them, but I didn't then. We had plenty of food, but it wasn't with--our kitchen hadn't gotten there and--you 01:14:00know. So I wanted to feed the guy a little bit. He was starving. And so, anyway, this Jewish guy, he said, "Well, I can tell you where we can get eggs." So the next morning, before dawn, we started out. And we went out in the country for a few miles, and he went up, and I stayed with the vehicle. He went up and rapped on the window, woke the people up, came back with a hundred eggs. And so we took them back to town, and were feeding this guy that was starving. He would say, "Well, I'm going to be sick. I'm going to be sick." He'd go ahead and eat it anyway. (laughs) And then, the following day was when we went--reached Nordhausen.

SLOAN: Okay. Well, what did you know of the camps and--I mean, how much awareness had you had of the camps, before we get to that?

REYNOLDS: Zero. Never heard of it. We pulled into Nordhausen in the afternoon. We found these apartment buildings. They were quite nice, fairly large buildings, and there were several of them. They were spaced maybe a hundred feet apart, something like that. Out behind them, they had little gardens, you know, a little strip of garden for each apartment. And most of them would have a 01:16:00rabbit hutch. They raised their rabbits for meat. And we kicked occupants out of an apartment for our squad, and we went in there. And after we'd been in there a while, one of the guys came up, and he had a funny look on his face and says, "Come with me." And we all went over next door. We got next door, and there was this stink coming out of there, a big stench. And we went in there and our medics were in there. And they had all of these people that were nearly dead, and they were just feeding them a little teaspoon at a time of hot chocolate or 01:17:00something. And if they fed them very much, they'd get sick and die--get sicker and die. And they were just barely alive. And the smell was the smell of death.

And so they told us where it came from--where it came from, and we all got in our truck and we went out there to the camp. On the way saw an older man, made him get on the truck with us to go out there. We didn't bring any of them back. And when we got out there and--I know I didn't see all of it. What I saw was all 01:18:00of these dead people laid outdoors, there on the ground, and it looked like acres of them. And they were--you know, they'd been living in there and--and there was others in there that were--they hadn't brought out. And just a terrible scene. And what we--what we didn't see at all was the underground factories that they had, see. That was back under the Harz Mountains that I told you about. They had these underground tunnels back under the Harz Mountains, and these were slave laborers who were build--who were working on the buzz bombs. And--

SLOAN: V-2 rockets.

REYNOLDS: The V-1s, and I think also the V-2s. We saw a lot of V-1s go by and on in. They had a distinctive noise to their engine, you know. And then you'd hear the engine cut off, and you'd know it was going into a dive and everything. There's pictures there.

SLOAN: I see. Yeah, at Nordhausen.

REYNOLDS: Nordhausen. I've heard since that they called it Dora-Mittelburg or something like that.

SLOAN: Dora-Mittelbau, yeah.

REYNOLDS: Dora-Mittelbau, but we just knew it as Nordhausen.

SLOAN: So what did you do once you got into the camp, that they were working to--to get--? (both talking)

REYNOLDS: We didn't do anything.

SLOAN: Yeah. They were--they were trying to get the--

REYNOLDS: The ones that--that could be--had a chance of saving, our medics were working with--on them, and they did just tremendous labor to--to try to save those people and all.

SLOAN: It's hard for people now to understand what it was you saw, and, you know, this sort of horror and death that you saw. I mean, that--

REYNOLDS: Well, it still bothers me. We went back to our apartment. And the guys 01:21:00in my squad were as fine a young man as they come. Were just--well--nobody was saying a word. It was just almost like they'd forgotten how to talk or something, you know what I mean? They were--it just affected them so much. And 01:22:00the occupant of the apartment came and wanted to get something out of the refrigerator. I don't know, milk for a baby or something, which--you can't imagine anybody saying no. The guy that met them at the door said no and sent them off. It was just kind of beyond words. You know, we'd seen a lot of dead but nothing like that.

SLOAN: Yeah, there was nothing that really prepared you for--

REYNOLDS: Nothing.

SLOAN: You said now you still think of it. Is there a time where--is there something that kind of causes you to think of it or--like now, when you think about it? You had said it still bothers you.

REYNOLDS: Well, it didn't haunt me or anything like that.

SLOAN: Sure.

REYNOLDS: But it comes out when I start talking about it like this (unintelligible). Would you like a cold Coke?

SLOAN: I thought--we're okay.

REYNOLDS: Water?

SLOAN: I'm glad you took a drink though. I know your voice gets--throat gets dry after a little while.

REYNOLDS: Well, see, I've got cancer in the esophagus, and it's producing mucus 01:24:00all the time, and it makes my voice gurgly and everything, you know, and messes it up pretty good.

SLOAN: Did--as we talk about this experience of you--did it change how you felt about the enemy that you were fighting in the war, after you saw that?

REYNOLDS: I would say so. I mean, we--you know, you can hardly imagine that kind of brutality. I'm trying to think of the name of it. There was a massacre of 01:25:00American troops in the Bulge. What did they call it? I can't remember.

DeBOARD: Malmedy.

REYNOLDS: What?

DeBOARD: Malmedy.

REYNOLDS: Malmedy Massacre, yeah. Of course, that made everybody mad. It really did.

SLOAN: So how long did y'all stay in Nordhausen?

REYNOLDS: I think we moved the next day.

SLOAN: Moved the next day.

REYNOLDS: And we made several more stops before we got to the end of the road. 01:26:00Where we ended up was a town called Delitzsch. And that was on the Mulde River, a tributary of the Elbe. And between the Mulde and the Elbe was supposed to be kind of a no-man's-land or something. The Russians stopped at the Elbe and we stopped at the Mulde.

SLOAN: So you didn't have any interaction with the Russians?

REYNOLDS: Well, our recon troops had a patrol over there, and they made it all 01:27:00the way across, you know, and which--going through territory held by Germans. And the Germans let them through, and they made contact with the Russians across the river and got good and drunk.

SLOAN: I've heard a lot of that happened.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. And then they invited the Russian division commander over to meet our general, and the defense platoon was constituted as an honor guard for 01:28:00this Russian general. And this was planned some days in advance. And they took our helmets, and took them and varnished them, and put a division insignia, the timberwolf, on the front of it--you know, a perfect target. And they gave each of our squads a flat iron and a can of shoe polish.

SLOAN: Did you get to take another shower?

REYNOLDS: No shower.

SLOAN: No shower. (laughs)

REYNOLDS: Just--

SLOAN: Just window dressing.

REYNOLDS: Well, I don't think the Russians could have smelled us anyway. 01:29:00Actually, I think we were probably showering in local facilities there. But we ironed our pants and ironed our jackets, ironed our shirts, and we ironed our shoes. The reason that was necessary is that they were--our shoes were made with the rough side out. And you couldn't polish them, so we shined them down with a flat iron and--where they were a little bit slicker, you know, and then polished them the best we could. And then we were the honor guard when the--they flew him over in a spotter plane, I think, and they brought him in in a jeep or command 01:30:00car or something. But our headquarters there at Delitzsch was in a place called the chocolate factory. It was built in a square with a hollow inside and everything. We secured that. And we were there for at least one night, or maybe two--at least one night. We were there for two nights before the headquarters moved in. So our little ten-man squad had this whole big building. And somebody 01:31:00had gone and gotten a German water can and it was filled with Everclear, medical alcohol. We had quite a party on that. We cut it with grapefruit juice.

SLOAN: This is while you were securing the town?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, yeah. We had somebody on guard doing it.

SLOAN: Yeah. (laughs)

REYNOLDS: But we were--had a pretty good little party there.

SLOAN: So you were in Delitzsch when you heard of the surrender?

REYNOLDS: I'm trying to remember.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: We were in Delitzsch for a good little while.

SLOAN: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: And they stopped and festivities stopped and everything. But--I can't remember where I was when the V-E Day came, but it must have been there.

SLOAN: Well, you remember--I'm sure you remember how you felt when you heard the news.

REYNOLDS: I felt good. (Sloan laughs) They--from Delitzsch--we had passed 01:33:00through a city called Halle on the way to Delitzsch. It was about thirty miles, I think. Something like that. And it was a beautiful town, and it hadn't been beat up too bad. And they tried to get them to move out or surrender or something so we wouldn't have to tear the town down, you know, but with mixed results. But I think they ended up having to tear about a third of it down to get the Germans out of there and all. But they saved all they could. They tried their very best. It was just--we hardly do when you have other objectives in mind.

SLOAN: Well, I know you saw a lot of devastation once you got into Germany.

REYNOLDS: Oh yeah. Yeah, a whole lot of it. And in--from Delitzsch they sent me back to Haag. There was an airfield there, a German airfield. And they told me to go back there and pick up some men at the city hall, the bürgermeister's office, take them out there and clean out the barracks. And so I did that. I got lunch from their cook, and I went over there and picked these guys up. Took them 01:35:00up there and got them busy. And they had a foreman and they didn't need me, so I was driving around the town some, you know, and everything. And end of the day, well, I took them back to the city hall. Next day, I did the same thing. It was a Monday and a Tuesday. And finished up several barracks there, big ones; finished up with them Friday. And I don't know why, but I got on the telephone. And the regular telephone system was working. I got into division--into my company. I said, "Okay, I finished. What do I do now?" They said, What? Didn't 01:36:00we give you--tell you not to do that? (laughs) They'd called it off and told everybody but me, I guess. So I got about a week's sort of a vacation. And anyway, then later on, though, they went ahead and moved over there, so all the cleaning I did was useful.

SLOAN: So how long did you stay in Germany? I mean, the war's over.

REYNOLDS: Oh, war's over?

SLOAN: Yeah. Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Not very long. I've got this division history here. We were there a few weeks, but being one of the later ones to get over there, we were one of the 01:37:00first ones to come back. Now, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? The idea was that they were going to train us for Japan. And so from Halle we went in a motorcade to Leipzig. Leipzig we got on trains. Left all of our equipment, all of our trucks, heavy guns, everything. Rode these forty-and-eight trains. I've got pictures of them. Forty-and-eight was--goes back to World War I. Little bitty boxcars with four wheels, and they got stenciled on the inside of them 01:38:00their capacity. Either forty horses or--forty men or eight horses. And we had thirty-two of us on there. Forty would have been standing room only. And we rode those for four days and four nights till we got to a place called Camp Lucky Strike. That was at LeHavre. And from LeHavre, we went back to New York and arrived, I think, about the Fourth of July. You know, the fire boats and dancing girls and everything. And then they gave us from there furlough. I think we got thirty days actually at home, and then we went out to the west coast, Camp San 01:39:00Luis Obispo. And we were training to go into Japan in November. Stop it, go see what Nell--if she needs me.

SLOAN: Okay. Okay. All right, sure.

pause in recording

SLOAN: All right, so you're on your way back to the States. Did you know at that point--are y'all having a conversation about what's next while--the four nights and four days you're on the train?

REYNOLDS: Nah.

SLOAN: No. (Reynolds laughs) You're looking for more Everclear and the grapefruit juice. (laughs) So--

REYNOLDS: No, we had--our boxcar that we were in didn't have a good roof on it. And, of course, it was always raining. And every time that train would lurch 01:40:00where there was a sheet of water down through the joints in the roof. After a night of that, we saw a carload of potatoes with a big tarp over it. And so when we left that time, why, the tarp was on our boxcar. (laughs) And little more--little more comfortable after that.

SLOAN: Kept you dry.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. And then the last two nights, I got up on top there and cut a hole in the tarp and crawled under it. So I had a place to lay down all the way, you know, without having my feet on somebody and that sort of thing.

SLOAN: (laughs) You're creative. So you had reported back in August, in 01:41:00California. So you were there training when you heard the news.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, training had not really started yet.

SLOAN: Okay.

REYNOLDS: But we were there in August.

SLOAN: Okay. Do you remember when you heard the news that the bomb had been dropped?

REYNOLDS: Yes. Yes. And then the surrender.

SLOAN: Yeah. What was your--do you remember what your thoughts were when you heard about the bombing of--the first bomb?

REYNOLDS: Well, we were--sounded good to us, you know. When the news of V-E--V-J came, well, that was--that was big news.

SLOAN: Yes. Yeah, because for you knew, as you said, you were preparing for an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. Yeah. Didn't know--at that time didn't know when, but--you know, they didn't tell us anything. But I found out since that it was--they had the date already set for us in November.

SLOAN: Well, so V-J Day happens. You're in California. I know there was celebration. What was the mood like? How'd y'all celebrate?

REYNOLDS: I don't remember particularly. I know we were--everybody was all happy about it and everything.

SLOAN: You were anxious to get back to Texas.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, they soon started discharging. They had a points system, and they gave you priority. And I got home in time for Christmas.

SLOAN: Well, we skipped that part. We talked about it before we started interviewing, but you'd gotten married. We didn't even talk about that part.

REYNOLDS: Well, I didn't get married until 1950.

SLOAN: Well, you had met this girl. I'm sorry, you'd met this--I thought y'all met?

REYNOLDS: I didn't meet her until 1950.

SLOAN: Oh okay. Well, I didn't--I thought you'd met her earlier.

REYNOLDS: No.

SLOAN: No, you met her in 1950. Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

SLOAN: That's right, and married soon after that, pretty quick after that, yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. I graduated from A&M in January of '50. Then I met her in April, and married her in November.

SLOAN: So did you go back at A&M fall of '46, I guess?

REYNOLDS: Spring of '46.

SLOAN: Spring of '46. So there were a lot of GIs, I'm sure.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, most of them were GIs. Yeah. Yeah, I went to the spring semester and summer--both summer terms, and then I dropped out and worked in the fall semester. Then I went back and finished in four years.

SLOAN: Finished in four years. Well, I'd like to hear the story again for the record about how you met your wife. Your mother was involved. I remember you telling me that.

REYNOLDS: My mother had been working in a children's store, and her mother had grandchildren that came in to buy stuff, you know. They had--her father had rented a house there in Bryan for the summer, and now her mother had come out and spent the time with him there. So Mother came home, and that was--see, I had lived at home while I was going to A&M. I missed quite a bit of the experience by doing that, but anyway, that was--and I had gotten a job with a construction 01:46:00company when--building a building on the campus when I got out of school. So I was still staying at home and had just gotten started there. Anyway, Mother came home, said, "I met a woman. She has a pretty daughter, and I want you to come meet her. And we're going to go call on her." I said, "Okay." So we went and called on them. Before long I was going down there after supper every night. They didn't eat until late, so I'd eat another supper down there. Her mother was an outstanding cook, and so is she.

SLOAN: And y'all were married not too long after that, I know.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, we--I think we courted for about three months, and then got separated for about three months when I moved to Dallas to another construction job. I've got hand cramps. She came to Dallas with some friends one weekend, and other than that we didn't see each other. So I told the boss, "I'm going to get married," and he said, "Well, that's fine." "Well, I want some time off to get 01:48:00married." And he says, "Well, you've got the whole weekend. What are you talking about?" And so that was how we decided to get married the day after Thanksgiving. And then I just didn't show up on Friday, but I showed up on Monday.

SLOAN: (laughs) Short honeymoon.

REYNOLDS: Short honeymoon.

SLOAN: So you made your business in construction. That's what you made--you said you--

REYNOLDS: That's how I started out.

SLOAN: Okay.

REYNOLDS: But I stayed with the general contractors just one year, and then I went to work for consulting engineers. And--and the first one I worked for was 01:49:00called Cooke & Fowler, and they had a city-county bond issue, road and bridge bond issue. And I got--eventually became their bridge design engineer. And when that was about to wind up, well, then I went to work for a structural engineer named Marcy Stokes. Worked for him for about two years, and then I got a job with another consulting engineer that had several contract sections of I-35E. So 01:50:00I worked for them for one year. And that was--all of these were very formative and instructive for me and everything. And then at the end of this one year they were--you know, politics got into it to where they didn't hire my boss back for any further freeway work because they had to get some others--some other consulting engineers that they didn't want.

SLOAN: I see. Yeah.

REYNOLDS: So they said, Well, we just won't do it at all. So that's when I went to work for Dallas Water Utilities. It was Dallas City Waterworks at that time. 01:51:00And I went to work for them in February of 1958. That was right after the end of the biggest drought that had ever been in record in Dallas, Texas.

SLOAN: That's right.

REYNOLDS: Broke in the spring of '57. In '57.

SLOAN: What was Dallas's water situation at that point, when you came on?

REYNOLDS: Well, they had dug their way out of it a bit, but it was--it was still pretty dicey. But we were here all during that time that--of the drought. And their main water supply was Lake Dallas. And Lake Dallas was basically out of water. And they had to go through the Red River and get all that salt-laden water out of it, and every other well that they could reactivate. They used 01:52:00every possible source of water during that time. And all that water from the Red River, it killed all the azaleas and other salt-intolerant plants and rusted out all the water pipes and all the hot water tanks. Boy, at the end of that period of time, Dallas--citizens of Dallas had the best water piping and the best water tanks you can imagine. You know, it all had to be replaced.

SLOAN: That's right. So I guess that Ray Hubbard is a response to that--building Lake Ray Hubbard and having that as a--didn't Dallas develop that as a water source, I think, right after that?

REYNOLDS: Lake Lewisville was under construction--

SLOAN: Lake Lewisville. Okay. Okay.

REYNOLDS: --at that time. And then, of course, we got some water rights in Lake Grapevine, relatively small amount. And we got a little bit of water rights in Lake Lavon. And we got a major water right in Lake Tawakoni. And Lake Ray Hubbard, the only one that we owned and operated, lock, stock, and barrel. 01:54:00But--and since then they've also brought--gotten Lake Fork Reservoir. And they have a water right in Lake Palestine that has not been put to use yet. They also built another one above Lake Lewisville, Lake Ray Roberts.

SLOAN: Well, now, how long were you with the Dallas Water?

REYNOLDS: Almost thirty-two years.

SLOAN: Thirty--two years. Long career. You saw a lot of changes.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, yeah. It was a really good job for me. Just--in all of my jobs, 01:55:00I guess, I was able to make use of most everything I learned, and was able to do anything I thought I was big enough to do, you know.

SLOAN: (laughs) One thing I know we talked about earlier that you've done is you've gone to reunions or meetings of the 104th. You talked a little bit about that.

REYNOLDS: In the first many years, I didn't go to any of them.

SLOAN: Okay.

REYNOLDS: Except they had one here in '68, I think, they had in Dallas, and I went to part of that. But then the last number of years I went to as many as I could.

SLOAN: Since your retirement? Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, yeah. I can't--you know in the early days, I didn't care much about it, but my attitude changed with time and all.

SLOAN: Yeah, what does it mean to you now to be able to go?

REYNOLDS: I don't see but maybe one or two that I had known in the service, but you meet a lot of people that you can--you know, if they're a timberwolf, you can talk to them and swap stories. And everybody went to the same places to some 01:57:00extent, but nobody had the same experience. And so it's really interesting and enjoyable in that way, and also it's a very patriotic and spiritual experience.

SLOAN: Well, what--I'm sorry, go ahead.

REYNOLDS: And they'll always have a great speaker there, that sort of thing. One thing I'll mention particularly, one of the little towns that we liberated in Holland. The mayor of that town came several times to be our keynote speaker. 01:58:00They remember us and they appreciate us. And they--a couple of their towns renamed their main street, or maybe the only street Timberwolf Strasse. And so--and they've had--of course, I've never been able to take part in but they've had battlefield tours, many of them, and a lot of them go back there and--you know.

SLOAN: Retrace the steps of the--

REYNOLDS: Yeah, but that was--time-wise, that was just a small interlude of our whole time over there. But those people are kind of special, and they don't 01:59:00forget, and they teach their children. And they have some reenactment groups that--they have our uniforms. They have our equipment, you know, jeeps. They have just about everything like that. And every--I think it's October, they have what they call the "March to Remember." And some of them have little museums in their garages or something.

SLOAN: That's got to be great to be able to share that with the guys that you were in the 104th with.

REYNOLDS: Yeah. Yeah, it's--it's really been a joy being able to go there. And 02:00:00Nell has gone with me to two of them, one in New Orleans, which was real good, and one in Little Rock. Aside from that, she's been like this and unable to go or to stay by herself. And so our daughter Nancy would take a day off from her teaching job, stay with her, and her husband and the two grandsons would go with me. And so that in itself has been very rewarding. And the younger grandson, 02:01:00Paul, is a bagpiper. And so he's taken his pipes with him and played a tune for us at the reunion.

SLOAN: That's neat. Well, are there some things I should have asked you about that we didn't get a chance to talk about?

REYNOLDS: Well, I think you did a great job, really. Working by myself alone I was just going chronologically and interminably. (both laugh) But this way we got through quite a bit of it.

SLOAN: Anything we missed we should have talked about?

REYNOLDS: Well, I've done a bit of hunting. I did quite a bit of woodworking.

SLOAN: What do you enjoy--with woodwork, what do you primarily do?

REYNOLDS: Pretty wide variety. I did some of the things in this room, and then I've done things for my church. I've been--I've gotten a lot out of making stuff for the church. I made one cross that hangs over the altar that's ten foot high, 02:03:00Celtic cross. But I made this shelf, and I took a few carving lessons and made that.

SLOAN: Oh wow, that's beautiful.

REYNOLDS: And I made those out of some kind of whiskey boxes over there when I first started out. And the bookcase there, and those things there. These shelves.

SLOAN: Do you still do any woodwork?

REYNOLDS: Well, I've still got my shop. And I haven't been doing any but I'll--I'm not saying I quit either.

SLOAN: You haven't. I know you haven't. One thing that you mentioned there that I'd like to ask, you know--again, just one more question looking back on, kind 02:04:00of the Nordhausen experience. And you're a person of faith. You're a person whose faith is important to you. And just looking back on that experience, I mean, how have you thought about it? How have you processed it, as you think about just what you saw?

REYNOLDS: Well, I wish I could give you something profound on that but I can't. It--it was just a time when people were doing horrible things, and they're still doing horrible things.

SLOAN: Yeah, you saw the worst of what men can do to each other.

REYNOLDS: Pretty much. Pretty much. We saw other places in this town of Duderstadt that I mentioned to you. There were some whole barracks there--laborers, both men and women there, all in the same barracks. I don't think they were--I know they were working them, but I don't think they were abusing them so bad there, that I could tell. But with--having freed them, now 02:06:00they were kind of getting into a riotous mood, you know, and stormed the liquor store and stuff like that.

SLOAN: Mr. Reynolds, you've been generous with your time today.

REYNOLDS: Well, you're the one who's been generous to come all this distance and everything. And hopefully I haven't bored you to tears or anything.

SLOAN: Well, Robert DeBoard is here with us too, who's helping with the interview, and I know both of us would like to thank you for your service to our country, and the things you did for us, sitting here years later.

REYNOLDS: Well, you're more than welcome.

end of interview