Texas Liberators - Ray Buchanan (November 6, 2012)

SLOAN: This is Stephen Sloan. The date is November 6, 2012. I'm with Mr. Ray Buchanan in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. This is an interview for the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission's Texas Liberators Project. Mr. Buchanan, thank you for sitting down with us today. I told you I wanted to start by getting a little background on the Buchanan family. I know you've done some genealogy and you know something about the family going back, so I would love to hear you share some of that.

BUCHANAN: Okay. In 1702, two brothers from Scotland came to the United States, in Tennessee. And we originally came from one of those Buchanans. They came down 00:01:00to Tennessee and raised the family there. My great-grandfather was buried in Howell, Tennessee. And--see, they had, I think it was, about five children. And my granddaddy was James Chambers Buchanan. And there--he was born in 1845 in Tennessee. And he was at home when the Civil War broke out. Well, all his 00:02:00brothers joined the army. And he was too young to go at that time, so he run off and joined anyhow. And his daddy went and found him and brought him back to the farm to work the farm. And he didn't like that, so he run off again. He was only fifteen years old, I think it was, at that time. He run off again and joined the cavalry again, Forrest's cavalry. All of them was in the Forrest cavalry.

So my granddaddy was at home when the Yankees had taken over Tennessee, so he would go back to Tennessee and recruit all the young boys that he could find to join the Confederacy. And my uncles all was older than him. And so they, kind 00:03:00of, had taken care of my granddaddy. They'd make him stay behind a lot and take care of the horses and what have you, not get in too many fights. But all my uncles was wounded at least one time and lived over it. And my granddaddy was wounded in the back of his leg. And we always asked him how come he was wounded in the back of his leg, you know. And he said, "I was just getting in a better position, you see." And that was the way he'd said it. And he lived to be ninety-four years old. And I think I was about twelve years old when he died.

He didn't die until--I think it was 1938, somewhere along in there. And when I was about five years old he lived with us. And he talked the war over. He said they captured thirty-three Yankees at one time, and all of them were kids. And they all started crying, so they turned them all loose. (laughs) And didn't shoot them. They thought--them Yankees thought they was going to kill them, but they turned them loose. "We just felt sorry for them, and we just turned them loose." And that was one of his stories that he told. He said that when Sherman come through Howell, Tennessee, he was home. And they had taken everything they had. Chickens, hogs, and everything, and left them one sack of bran that they 00:05:00fed the hogs with. That's all they left them in the house. And he said, "We eat that for breakfast, that bran that the hogs would eat, until we got something else to eat." He said, "Sherman didn't leave us nothing."

SLOAN: Wow.

BUCHANAN: And so that was one of his stories he said. Anyhow, he was living here in Mt. Pleasant in nineteen--no, he was born in Tennessee in 1845. My daddy was born here in Mt. Pleasant in 1888. And he told a lot about Mt. Pleasant, you know. My family was married around sixty-five years and never had a death in their family, their grandkids and great-grandkids, and all. And I told my daddy 00:06:00how lucky he was to be married sixty-five years and never have a death in the family. And he agreed that they was lucky. So we had not one death and there was seven of us, and there's still four of us still living, still living. So the doctor has told me that I have the best genes that there are, and I'll probably live a long time yet. So he may be right, I don't know.

SLOAN: Well, what--

BUCHANAN: So that's just about the story of the family.

SLOAN: Now, what did your father do? What was his occupation?

BUCHANAN: My father was a farmer. He raised everything that you eat. We raised everything on the farm. We never went hungry, even during the Depression. He always had plenty of food on the table. And even families would come and eat with us on Sunday that didn't have anything. We wondered why we had company all 00:07:00the time, but it was people that didn't have nothing to eat. So my daddy would work all day. And he'd come in at noon. And he'd take that old double barreled shotgun and go down on the banks down there--and we had mulberries--trees. The squirrels would like mulberries. And he'd kill a squirrel, bring it home, and that's what we'd have for supper is that squirrel. My mother raised a lot of chickens, so we'd have chicken on Sunday. We had plenty to eat, but a lot of families did not have a lot to eat during the Depression.

And when I was only, I guess, twelve years old, I mowed a pecan orchard in White 00:08:00Oak Bottoms. And they paid me seventy-five cents a day. I was only twelve years old. But that was good money back in the day for a twelve-year-old boy. I always worked. I've worked all my life. I don't even take a vacation. I ain't even had a vacation in twenty years. So I'd rather work. I done seen all the United States and the world that I want to see, and the best place I've been was East Texas. So that's the way that goes.

SLOAN: Amen to that.

DeBOARD: Amen.

BUCHANAN: Yeah. And I picked cotton--me and my daddy would walk a mile to pick cotton and a mile back. And on Sunday the man would come up and paid us for what we done. And I only made two dollars and seventy-six cents that whole week. So 00:09:00that's the way it was, times was hard. People would plant watermelons in the crops. And what you do is just find a watermelon, bust it open, and eat it, you know. And then go on and keep picking.

SLOAN: (laughs) So now what sort of chores did you have on the farm, on the family farm?

BUCHANAN: What chores did I have?

SLOAN: Uh-huh.

BUCHANAN: Well, I helped my mother a lot, milk. We milked cows. So I'd help my mother round up the cows and get them in the pen, and everything. My daddy didn't do that. It was all up to me to help my mother. And I milked a lot. I was just a kid, but all the rest of the kids wouldn't milk the cow. My sisters wouldn't milk them, my brother, Otto, my oldest brother. Course, Kendall wasn't even born at that time. So I helped my mother in all that. And she sold milk. 00:10:00And you had to put it in a can and take it down there. And wet a towel and put around the cans to, kind of, keep it cool before it spoilt when they come pick it up. And we had to be careful. If the cows would eat bitterweeds and it'd be bitter, well, they'd turn it down, you see. And a lot of times they turned the milk down, and we didn't get nothing out of it. So we got a little money out of that.

And Mt. Pleasant had a Borden plant here in Mt. Pleasant that fed all the farmers around here during the Depression. If they hadn't have had that, I don't know what they'd do. But everybody sold milk at the Borden's here in Mt. Pleasant. It's still standing up here in Mt. Pleasant. They had ice cream and all that kind of stuff. So that was my chore. And my daddy had given the oldest 00:11:00son, Otto, when he was twelve years old, he gave him a horse and bought him a saddle. And when I got twelve years old, well, he give me a horse. And of course, he didn't give me a saddle. I kept the same saddle my oldest brother had.

And my oldest brother, he wanted to join the navy before the war broke out, in 1936. He wanted to join the navy. But he wasn't eighteen yet, and daddy wouldn't sign for him. But soon as he got eighteen years old he went into the navy. And he was put on the USS Maryland. Well, he served his four years and was home 00:12:00December the seventh, when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He was home on leave. The Maryland was hit hard. It was the Arizona--the boy from Mt. Pleasant was on the Arizona at the same time my brother was home, and he went down on the Arizona. We lost him. So my brother didn't go back to the navy. He stayed out. And after Pearl Harbor, well, he stayed out for a while.

His time run out to rejoin, and they were fixing to send him to the army. They sent him a note that said they drafted him. So he rushed down to join the navy right quick and went into the navy again. And they made him chief petty officer 00:13:00because he'd already spent four years. So he retired out of the navy after twenty years. He stayed in the Pacific all that time, World War II and what have you. But I don't think he seen much action. He was on sub [submarine] chasers, and he wasn't on a battleship no more. So he didn't see no whole lot of action even if he was in the Pacific. That made a long story short.

I was in high school when they hit Pearl Harbor. In Talco, I was going to school in Talco. And I played football, basketball, and run track for them. And the school paid my meals. They give me three meals a day and a place to live. I was 00:14:00supposed to go to Mt. Pleasant, but I didn't like them. So I wanted to play football, so that's the reason I went to Talco. So they give me three meals a day and room and board, if I'd play football. So I played football. And I was head of the class over there in Talco, president in the sophomore class and also the junior class. I quit before I finished over in Talco and got married. Me and Ellen got married. She talked me into it. So we decided to get married, because I knew I was going to go to war, here now. So we got married. And I stayed out a little while before they drafted me in '43. So that's just about my story, all 00:15:00except I left out one thing. When I was seventeen here in Mt. Pleasant I joined the 3-C [Civilian Conservation Corp] camp. And I was sent to Camp Toccoa, Georgia--no, Arizona; Fredonia, Arizona. And I stayed there in the summer.

SLOAN: Okay, what sort of work were you doing there?

BUCHANAN: We was building a fence across the government land out there. And we would build a mile a week. On Monday we'd clear the right of way, on Tuesday we dug holes, and on Wednesday we set posts. And on Friday we would have a mile of fence made. And we didn't work but about three or four hours a day. It was a long ways out there and a long ways back. And what we had for lunch was a 00:16:00sandwich and an apple or an orange. Sandwich was a baloney sandwich and cheese. That's all we had for lunch. That's all the government give us for our lunch. And we made thirty dollars a month, and we sent twenty-two of it back to our families. That wouldn't work today.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: So I sent my twenty-two dollars back to my family. I really don't know whatever went with my twenty-two dollars. Really, I don't even remember my family even giving me back my twenty-two dollars. I told them, I said--they was going to make a supply sergeant out of me in the 3-C camp. And I said, "No. I'm fixing to get on that Greyhound bus tonight when it comes through, and I'm going 00:17:00to Talco, Texas. I'm going to turn in all my stuff." So I turned in all my stuff, waited for the Greyhound bus. And I borrowed twenty dollars from a little boy out there. He was from Talco, and he loaned me twenty dollars to get on the bus. I told him I'd send him back his twenty dollars. So he trusted me. So when I got back to Talco the superintendent said, "I called out there to tell them that you were in school, to give you honest discharge." Now, whether I ever got it or not, I don't know. But he said, "I sent that twenty dollars to that Belcher boy for paying your way to school." That's how--they was so proud of me 00:18:00getting back to the school because I was on the main team in Talco. So that's a story I left out, but that summer I didn't stay but a little while and--you know, just the summer months.

SLOAN: So you didn't think much of the desert.

BUCHANAN: Huh?

SLOAN: You didn't think much of the desert out there in Arizona?

BUCHANAN: No, no, no. This was a little old town, Fredonia. I don't think there's about three or four hundred people in that little old town. We'd go over there to Kanab, Utah. Now, that was pretty good-sized little town. That's where they made these western movies and what have you. They had little western towns out there, and they made movie stars--movies out there. But there wasn't no girls, you see. You know, there wasn't very many girls out there. And if you did get a girl there, you were liable to get beat up pretty bad because they was so 00:19:00scarce. Them guys, they didn't want you fooling with their girls. You fool with their girls you're liable to get beat up.

So you'd be surprised how dumb, ignorant the kids was back in those days, coming off the farm. They'd send us in new recruits up there. And we'd tell them, Now, what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to take your pencil and a pad and go out there on the highway and count all the cars that come by. And 00:20:00they'd do it. And we told one boy, What you're going to have to do is go water the flagpole every so often. And they'd go do it. And we had a boy that was a professional boxer. And we asked these boys--we had a bunch of recruits, about ten of us. We asked them, Is there anybody in here that knows how to box? One old boy raised his hand. Well, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll arrange a boxing match. We'll find somebody that you can fight. So we get this professional boxer, (laughs) and he acts like he ain't never boxed before. And we matched him. And this old boy, he thought he'd go and fight him. And he 00:21:00walked up there, and that professional boxer just coldcocked him. (both laugh) So he just laid him out, see? That's what the fun was. So just how dumb people was coming off the farm, you know, thinking you had to take orders from you like that. Water the flagpole and do other things. We played that on them. So, okay, that's about the story.

SLOAN: Well, I wanted to ask. You mentioned about playing football at Talco.

BUCHANAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: What position did you play?

BUCHANAN: A halfback. I made nine touchdowns that season. And the first game I scored the first touchdown in that game. And I would play safety on defense. And I got hurt a lot since I played safety. I gave a fair signal to catch one time, 00:22:00and the man just--he knocked me crazy, boy. Not seeing my hand up. He didn't even know what the signal was, I don't think, but anyhow. I never fumbled too much on the kickoff and what have you. I run for one touchdown all the way. That was the only one I run. A lot of times I made more yardage than anybody playing halfback.

There was four of us, and we run that Notre Dame box called the Four Horsemen. You know this thing? We run that. We shifted from one--all four of us shift at the same time. Your right and left. They did away with that, I think, '44, '45, 00:23:00something like that. You can only have one man shifting. But anyhow, we shifted all four. So I was the only one left off the team. That's really one reason, I guess, I got married. And I wasn't going to come back because I was going to be the only one, and I was going to be quarterback. And I knew I was going to get killed because (laughs) the whole team graduated but me and just a few boys. I didn't come back to play quarterback. Coach told me--he give me a football, and all that, and told me what I had to do and practice all summer. But I didn't do that. I didn't even go back. So that's it.

SLOAN: So now did you work on the farm between that time and '43 when you were drafted?

BUCHANAN: No. No. I got a job. When me and Helen married, I got a job at the 00:24:00Butternut Bakery near Mt. Pleasant. And he paid me eleven dollars a week. I checked the people in that loaded up with bread. In the afternoon when they come in, I would check their load and everything, and be sure everything was okay. And I got a dollar a week more for that. The rest of them just got ten dollars a week. I got eleven. I worked in that bakery, and I also wrapped cakes all day long, wrapped cakes and sealed cakes. We made them little cakes for a dime a piece, and we had to wrap them and everything, load them up. I worked there. And 00:25:00that eleven dollars wasn't going very far. I was having to pay five dollars for rent. I only had six dollars left. My wife, she wanted to go to the show every other day, so. (laughs) You know, five dollars didn't buy many groceries.

So I started looking for me a better job. So I got a job at the wholesale house delivering groceries. So I worked there, and I got seventeen dollars a week doing that. So I put in a job for seismograph crew. They were in Mt. Pleasant, and I wanted to go work for them because they paid good money. So they didn't have no place for me. But a guy from Cities Service out of Oklahoma come down there. And he stopped, and he asked them did they know anybody. He needed 00:26:00another hand. So they gave him my name. So he got me, come over there and got me, and said, "If you want to go work with me, I'm going to Amite, Louisiana." And said, "I'll give you"--I think it was thirty-five or forty dollars a week. I said, "Yeah, I'll take it." So I told my wife. I said, "You'll just have to go home and stay with your daddy and mother until I get a check, and I'll come get you. I'm going." And she did. She didn't like it, but she did.

And so I went to Amite, Louisiana. And I worked down there and then moved to Livingston, Texas. And then I was drafted. I was drafted when I was living in Livingston, Texas, working for the Cities Service Oil Company. So I never did try to go back to work for them when I come back from World War II. When I come 00:27:00back from World War II, I was going to rent a farm, this old place that we lived on of four hundred acres. And I leased that, and I was going to go in the cattle business. They said that we could borrow, I think it was, up to four thousand dollars to go in business on that GI loan. Well, I went to all the banks and they wouldn't loan me none. They wouldn't loan me none at no 4 percent. It's lower than that right now.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: So I went to Paris, see if they'd loan me it up there. And they said, No, Titus County is supposed to take care of their own veterans. See, if you was 00:28:00from Red River County, we could loan it. So I come back. I couldn't get a loan. I bought cattle with what I had. Because on the way back from overseas on the boat, I got into a crap game and I won me seven hundred dollars. So I stuck it in my pocket and come home with seven hundred dollars. And there was a boy from Gladewater. He won a lot but he kept on--he went back, by golly, and then lost all of it, and he had to borrow five dollars from me when he got off--when he got to Mt. Pleasant. (laughs) Course, he did all right there. He got home and he went into the automotive--you know, sales, Ford sales in Mt. Pleasant. And so he 00:29:00was my buddy over there. And he asked me one day, he said, "I ever pay you back that five dollars?" And I said, "No, you didn't never pay me back no five dollars." He said, "Well, I tell you what, you go pick you out a car out there, and I'll sell it to you [for] what it cost me." (laughs) So I did. I bought a car from him. But anyhow, Phineas Wagner, so. Let's see where I'm at. But anyhow--

SLOAN: We had gotten you up to--let's go through when you got your draft notice, when you got notice you were--yeah.

BUCHANAN: When I got the draft notice?

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Well, me and my wife come on home. Come on home. Oh, I had about ten day leave, I think, before they'd take me. I'd gone on, like I say, we went to Camp Wolters and that's when I joined the paratroopers. And--

SLOAN: All right, well, tell me that story, because we didn't get that on the recording. So I want to hear that story again.

BUCHANAN: Oh, you want to hear that?

SLOAN: Yeah, yeah.

BUCHANAN: Is this Camp Wolters?

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Well, got to Camp Wolters. They'd run us through all kinds of tests, see what they wanted in the army. See what we could use--the signal corps, and all that. But anyhow, we found out that the paratroopers paid fifty dollars a month more. Not thinking about the reason they're paying it, because you don't live long jumping out of a plane, you know, into combat. So while I was at Camp Wolters--I had been in the 3-C camp, and I know how everything works. And a 00:31:00sergeant run up to me and another boy and said, "Hey, private." He said, "Take these clothes of mine over there to the cleaners and tell them I want to clean them for Sergeant So-and-so." I forget what his name was. I said, "Yes, sir." I'd taken all of his clothes. He went on around the corner, and I throwed them in the dad-blamed can. Old boy told me, he said, "Man, we going to get in trouble." I said, "No. That sergeant didn't have--he ain't even supposed to ask me to take his clothes to the damn cleaners, get them clean. And I'll let him try to find his clothes." So I don't know whether he ever looked for his clothes or not. But that's one sergeant that he asked the wrong private to take his clothes to the cleaner. Because I done seen that trick pulled before.

Anyhow, they sent us to Camp Toccoa, Georgia with the Seventeenth Parachute Infantry. And they were already in training. And we had to go through all that jumping out of the tower, doing pushups. And this Private Green from Mt. Pleasant, he got up there, and he jumped out of the tower. He closed his eyes, you know. He got down to the bottom, the sergeant asked him, he said, "Didn't you get a lot of sleep last night?" He said, "Yeah." "Yeah, I don't think you did, so run around this track five times." An old boy laughed, then one of them--the corporal or sergeant, one of them asked him, he says, "What do you think--what are you laughing about?" He said, "I'm laughing at him running 00:33:00around that track." He says, "I don't think it's a damn bit funny." He says, "You just go around five times right behind him, and say 'I don't think it's a damn bit funny.'" So there he went.

Then they say, Hit the ground. Do twenty-five pushups. So we'd hit the ground, and we'd do twenty-five pushups. And when we'd get through with that, he'd go down the line and say, "How many pushups did you do?" The old boy said, "Twenty-five." "How come you do twenty-five? I didn't count them. Get down and do ten more, for doing twenty-five." And just stuff like that, you know, just to aggravate the heck out of you. So then they put us on KP over there, peeling potatoes and everything. So I looked over there, and there was cartons of milk. 00:34:00God, I love milk. (laughs) I was sitting there, peeling that potato, and I seen all that carton, just standing right there, just a few feet from me. Because everybody, I thought, was gone, I slipped over there and got me one and drank it right quick and hid it. Man, if they'd have caught me they'd have put me in--(laughter) put me in jail for no telling how long. But anyhow, I got by with that. But I didn't do any more.

So they called us in one at a time after they got through. And they got through and interviewed us. And I told you that there was a little boy who weighed 125 pounds. Officer to him, "Son," he says, "you jumped out of an airplane, we'd never find you." Little old boy, he just nearly cried because he wanted into the paratroopers so bad, but he didn't get in to it. They only picked one man. He 00:35:00said he didn't want to leave his buddies, so they told him to get his stuff and get out of there.

So we all come back to Camp Hulen, Texas, down here at the antiaircraft, 838. Then they had about two hundred of us that come in there together. And so then they shipped about, I don't know, six or eight hundred Yankees from New York and around up there, mixed with us. We was all Southern. That's when the Civil War ended, you know. During World War II they mixed the Southern boys with the Yankees, you see. That did away with the Civil War.

And so they'd taken most of the Southern boys and made corporals and sergeants of them. They made some corporals and sergeants out of the Yankees. But I made 00:36:00first class first month. And then I made corporal the next month or two, because I had already had experience, you know, in 3-C camp and all that. So I got a corporal's rating pretty quick, made a gunner on the section. And it wasn't very long through our training in South Texas--my sergeant was from Tennessee, and he was about thirty-two years old. He was really old to be in there, but he had a lot of experience. And we'd go out on maneuvers in South Texas. And we weren't supposed to take a whole lot of cookies and things to eat. We were supposed to 00:37:00eat the rations, and all of that, but he didn't. He'd buy a bunch of stuff. And out there on maneuvers, why, we cooked a lot.

So one day we was going out on maneuvers, and there was a lot of those Bremer cattle that was out there. Them white ones in South Texas. And one of these Yankees asked me, he says, "What is them things out there?" I said, "That's Texas armadillos. That's what they are, Texas armadillos." I didn't tell him any different. So we was set up and everything. And he crawled through the fence over there and was roaming around. And one of them bulls got after him, you see. Running through the fence, he come running up there. And I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "One of them damn Texas armadillos got after me." (laughs) I said, "No. 00:38:00That was not armadillos. They're Bremer cattle," you know. But he didn't know the difference either. So some of those Yankees, they was really ignorant on farm life and animals and what have you. They lived up there in the northern part of New York. They didn't have all that.

SLOAN: Well, I like that wherever you were you had fun. (laughs)

BUCHANAN: Yeah, I had fun. We had fun. We'd barbecue and what have you. But anyhow, when I got through training, I made acting sergeant over a section before we left Camp Hulen. We went to Long Island, New York. And there we did 00:39:00advanced training, out there. We had training with the paratroopers. They come in and drop--the paratroopers dropped at our air--air deal up there. They'd taken the airfield, and the antiaircraft was all behind them. So they just practiced jumping out, you know, and taking that airstrip. And we got through with that maneuvers, went back, and we went to Durham, North Carolina, for some more. Didn't do much training there, it was just to get all ready to go overseas. So they give us all a ten-day leave. So I come home. I told my wife, I says, "When I go back, if you don't hear from me for a while, you know I got on 00:40:00a boat and I'm going overseas. Because I think we're going to leave as soon as we all get back." And sure enough, when we got back they loaded us all up, went to New York. And loaded us on the boat on December 1, 1944, I guess it was.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: December 1, 1944. Well, we was on a convoy. On clear days, you could see--count at least fifty ships in that convoy. We were in the middle, and they had all these destroyers and sub chasers around us, you see, protecting us. And it'd taken us thirteen days at sea, and we landed on a northern part of England. 00:41:00And we got off the boat there and loaded on a train in England. And we went all the way across England to the southern part of England, to a little small town. I forgot what the name of it was. It wasn't very far from Poole, England, but it was real small, a little town there. And it was owned by some English lord or what have you. He had a big mansion there and stable for horses, and all that kind of stuff. But anyhow, it became real cold now. We got there about the fourteenth or fifteenth of December. And they told us to start cleaning up our guns. Our guns had already arrived there. And they was all--had that old cosmoline all over them. And it was freezing cold. And we had to go out there 00:42:00and clean that forty-millimeter and our .50-caliber machine guns, and get them all ready to fire. So we did that.

On about the twentieth of December, they called us and alerted us to get ready to ship out. Well, we didn't know what was going on. It was the Belgian Bulge. And old Patton said, "Get all them antiaircraft units and turn them into infantry and let's get up here." So that's the reason they alerted us, you know, Get ready. But we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know there was a Belgian Bulge, that they was having trouble. So on Christmas Day they cancelled our orders. They didn't need us now. See, they done stopped them. Old Patton and 00:43:00all of them had done stopped them. So we didn't get to go. So we waited about ten more days and got everything ready. And we went and loaded on them big landing crafts down there at Southampton. I think it's Southampton, isn't it?

SLOAN: Um-hm.

BUCHANAN: We landed all our trucks and guns. It all hooked up. And we drove them right into the end of them boats, in line, the whole outfit. And we got on that. And at night, we went across the channel. They almost had run into another boat that night, and I fell out of my bunk. We didn't know what was going on, and we asked what was going on. Said, "Well, we almost hit another boat, see, going 00:44:00across there." Well, we got across the next morning, and they run this boat up to the ramp. I was just--I don't think it was Omaha Beach. I don't know whether it was Omaha or the other one. Anyhow, we drove our trucks right on out.

SLOAN: Um-hm. You were on the LST?

BUCHANAN: Yeah, and we drove our trucks right on out of that boat. I see that same path on TV, right there that I went through there, that house on the side there. And we went to a camp there called Lucky Strike. And there's where they issued us our ammunition, all our ammunition and everything to fight with. And so we got all that, and then we loaded up on our trucks and everything. And we went around the southern part of Paris and joined the Seventh Army over there. 00:45:00We just kept driving and driving. And I kept hearing artillery shells, and we got closer and closer. After a while, they was firing back from us. We'd done passed our artillery. So we went up there--and this was three o'clock in the morning.

Now, I'm nineteen years old and my buddies are nineteen years old, in a strange country you don't know where in the hell you are. They give me a little map, and it had a fence up there and it had a patch of woods there. And I was to go up there and find that place with the woods up there, where I was going to put my gun, the forty-millimeter and the .50 caliber machine gun. So we got out, me and two more, and we ease up that fence row, scared to death. Didn't know what--where the Germans was, we didn't know nothing. Three o'clock in the 00:46:00morning, had a little flashlight, we was afraid to use it. Afraid, you know, Germans would see us and shell and kill us.

But I went on up there and we found the place. Then we come back. It had taken about an hour's time. Then we come back about four o'clock in the morning. We told them to follow us. So we got in our trucks and we went up there. It was the right place. Set and unloaded everything. Our gun, we put our gun in position around there and unloaded everything. And at daybreak, when it got light, I looked down in the valley there. And I never seen so many five-gallon cans of gasoline in my life, stacked up there for half a mile. And that was what we was supposed to guard. You know, if a plane come in and drop a bomb on that 00:47:00gasoline, it'd just all blow up, you see? And I didn't know what we was supposed to do, but that was what we was supposed to do. If any plane tried to bomb that gasoline, well, we was supposed to shoot him down.

So we got the cook out, and he got everything ready. And he made breakfast. And we all eat breakfast. We dug our gun in. We got it positioned. Nothing going on. We didn't see no planes. We didn't see nothing. And I had my field glasses out, and I'm looking down through there. There's some houses over there. And I seen a girl run out hanging out clothes on the line down there. Well, I looked at her awhile, and then after a while, a GI come out of the same house. He'd been in there with her, see? I said, "This ain't going to be too bad." (laughs) You know, being on the front lines.

SLOAN: Yeah, this is battle. Yeah. (laughs)

BUCHANAN: It ain't going to be too bad. So make a long story short, we dug our guns in and everything, got ready. And we thought we was going to stay there for, you know, no telling how long. No. Next day or two, they said, Load up. We're going up five more miles. So we loaded up our guns and went up about five, ten more miles, dug in again. Well, we got everything, but no planes to shoot down. We didn't see no planes to shoot at, nothing. So we stayed there about--I don't know how long. Wasn't very long until they come, says, Load up, we going up further more. So we loaded up, went on up there to an artillery--240 00:49:00millimeter artillery. So I guess we were attached to them. And I don't know why, but anyhow, we was right beside of them. And we dug our guns in and everything.

It started snowing like everything. And gosh, we didn't have no--we didn't have much clothes. We just had an overcoat. We had one white coat for fourteen men. Them Germans all had white coats, but we only had one. So we used that one to go out on guard. We'd go out on guard for two hours. Then they'd relieve us, another man would relieve us. We had a machine gun out there and a radio. And we'd go in that dugout and sit there and watch, see if anything that was--you know, we were liable to be attacked anytime. We didn't ever know. So we found 00:50:00out how to fix our radio where we could bring in Luxembourg, the GI station over there and listen to the music, American music. So we would listen to that, and then we'd switch our radio back. And it wasn't too bad when we listen to American music, you know.

SLOAN: Did you figure out ways to keep warm?

BUCHANAN: Yeah. We just had that overcoat. And we had blankets. We'd just go out there and wrap them up in blankets and everything. But it was still cold. And we'd come back and--so this artillery, they would get orders to fire, you know, 00:51:00and usually they'd fire three rounds, or maybe four rounds. And you could almost see that shell when it come out of that big barrel. And we went down and asked the boy, said--they fired three rounds, so we went down there and asked him, What y'all shooting at? He said, "Well, they had a bridge up there about ten miles from us. They want it knocked out." And he said, "It don't take us but three rounds until we knock that bridge out." So that's what they done. So we stayed there for quite a while, and then we went on up, further and further.

We settled down with the artillery. We was attached to the big artillery. The Seventh Army had a lot of artillery. Patton had all the tanks and everything, but we had all the artillery, see, the 105's and all that. So we was attached to 00:52:00them on the Seventh Army. And they were all lined up, you know. And I dug my gun in, the forty-millimeter. And the M-51 mount, I dug that in. And we was sitting there, and I had a scout out front, about a mile, or a half a mile. And he hollered out over the radio, said, "A P-47 is coming towards you with its machine guns wide open." A P-47. I turned my forty-millimeter right towards it, and he come over the treetops. When he come over the treetops, I fired the 00:53:00forty-millimeter at him, but I missed him. But he cut his machine guns off. Why, I don't know, because he might have could have killed me if he kept on. But when I fired that, he turned that plane right straight up and did it just like that. And I was firing at him. I fired thirty rounds at him. (laughs) I didn't see him no more. (Sloan laughs)

But anyhow--they said on the twenty-sixth, I think, of March, We've got to make a push to the Rhine River. We were in a pocket back there. We were the only ones in the pocket back there that hadn't got to the river yet. So on the twenty-sixth, they said H-hour was eleven o'clock. Well, around eleven o'clock 00:54:00there was about twelve B-17s flew over us. And right in front of us, they started dropping bombs, right in front of us. And the Germans knocked down two of them, exploded in the air. I don't know how many they hit. But them boys never broke formation. They went right straight and they turned right in front of us. They unloaded all their bombs right in front of us and turned on back. But two of them blowed up in the air. There wasn't none of them left. They blowed the whole engine up. Well--so they said H-hour, so that whole artillery opened up all along the front line there. And they fired until nearly daylight, 00:55:00the artillery. So we loaded up. They told us at the time, Load up and go. We're going to the Rhine River, and we going to be there by tomorrow. We loaded up.

And I'll tell you the truth, Hitler had had his army with them horse-drawn artillery. And he pulled all his mechanized equipment, all the tanks and everything, across the river, and tried to hold Americans off with that artillery, the horse-drawn artillery. Well, the P-47s just come in, and just killed all them horses. They were just laying over there on the side of the ditches all the way--all the way to the Rhine River.

So we got to the Rhine River. It's all on that right there. We got to the Rhine River. And my outfit, my section C--I think it was section--yeah. My section, 00:56:00anyhow, Battery C, Section Four, I think it was, they held me in reserve. See, all the others on the Rhine River was up there. And some already--they hadn't crossed yet, but they waited for me. I was in reserve. So they waited until they got the bridge built. And then I went across with mine and got to the levee. They had been dug in right there at the levee. And there was a woman with five kids down in the levee there, in one of them bunkers. She come running up there, 00:57:00the artillery shells are going over. And she said, "Hitler's going to kill us all." My interpreter, a German boy from Wisconsin, he was my interpreter, he said, "That's not Hitler's shells, that's ours going over." She was just--"You going to have to go on back." She didn't want to go back, but he talked to her and told her, "You can't stay with us." We'd taken over the bunkers there that the Germans had left, moved into them. And so we stayed there for quite a while. But I left out one story about Garrett. I want to go back.

SLOAN: Okay.

BUCHANAN: I pulled in--this is a story before we got to the Rhine River that I 00:58:00left out.

SLOAN: Sure.

BUCHANAN: That I wanted to tell you.

SLOAN: I want to hear it.

BUCHANAN: And it's a real good story. I was--we was ordered to a town, I think it was--I can't remember the name of the town. But anyhow, it had a railroad running through it that they hadn't destroyed yet. So they ordered me up there and ordered me to set my forty-millimeter at the railroad tracks at the station there. Well, I went in there, and I dug my forty-millimeter in, and my .50 caliber machine gun in. And it was raining and misting rain in the night. 00:59:00Everything is black. And all at once I heard bombers coming over. And the captain, he called me, because I had gone to school to learn the sound of bombers, you know, the sound of the engine, and tell them which engine was above us, you see. We'd go by sound. So I was schooled in that. And he knew it, so the captain called me up.

He said, "Buchanan, what we got upstairs? What are they?" And I said, "They're German bombers," and I gave him the number of them. I said, "I believe it's four of them, circling." He said, "For God's sakes, scatter the men out, and tell them if they see anybody flashing a light, kill them. That's an order." I said, 01:00:00"Okay." So I scattered them all out and told them. I said, "If you see anybody flashing a light, the orders are to kill them. Those are German planes up above us." So they stayed for about thirty minutes, and then they went away. Well, sat there and nothing happened. And all at once I hear a train coming. Here comes a train. And he had had about twenty-five carloads of ammunition, artillery ammunition. (laughs) I said, "By God. By God, I ain't going to stay here." You know, that's what they was looking for, is that trainload of ammunition for the artillery. If they could bomb it, they could blow the whole damn town.

SLOAN: Sure, yeah.

BUCHANAN: And they're all set, by golly. There's a gun in the middle of the tracks. I wanted to tell you that story. That was really--I just sat there, you know, just thinking, Hell, they ought to drop them bombs any minute. But boy, if they would they'd kill us all. But they didn't. Well, we got by that. So the next day or two before we left that place--we'd taken over a house right by that railroad track. And the Germans had left everything in there, all the dishes and everything, beds--we had beds and everything in the house.

So the sergeant from Tennessee said, "Say," he says, "let's cook us a good dinner and celebrate." I said "Okay." He said, "Go out there and kill one of 01:02:00them damn ducks out there walking around." He said, "I'll make the duck dressing tomorrow." So the boy went out there with a machine gun and shot one of the damn ducks with the machine guns. And well, that Frenchman had a fit, told us we got to pay for his duck. We told him Uncle Sam would pay him, so we got rid of him. So my first sergeant, he made duck dressing. And we went in there, and them Germans had left all the canned stuff and everything. He got in there and got canned peaches and everything. Made peach cobbler and all that. Just had a whole table. There was fourteen of us. We just had ourselves--and the sergeant said, "I'm going to ask the captain to come over and have lunch with us." (both laugh) So one of the lieutenants did come over and had lunch with us. So we all had a 01:03:00big feast, a lot of home cooking. So it wasn't all bad, you know. So I wanted to tell you that story about the train. That scared me to death, though.

SLOAN: I bet. Can I go back and ask you a couple questions about earlier things we talked about?

BUCHANAN: Yeah. Yeah, okay.

SLOAN: When you were training, were you training on a forty-millimeter?

BUCHANAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: You were training on a forty-millimeter.

BUCHANAN: Yeah, I was training on a--I could take a forty-millimeter apart and put it all back together, name every part.

SLOAN: Can you talk a little bit about what y'all were doing on maneuvers and other things that you did in your training?

BUCHANAN: In the training?

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Let's see, we had to do the same thing with the .50 caliber machine gun. We had to name all the parts, clean them, and all that. We had, on our maneuvers, we had to go out and practice firing. A plane would come by with a 01:04:00big towel--banner on the back, about three hundred feet long. And we had to shoot at it, you see. We were trained to shoot it. And we'd get in combat and--(coughs) I always cough like that. And we was good, we could--we even practiced firing at rockets, you know. And we also practiced firing at those little radio planes. We practiced them. We tried to out-judge them, you see, but we never could hit them. We could hit them rockets when they go to their height and then stall. Then I could blow them up. But I never could hit them going up. But we did that.

And let's see. If you got too close to the plane, firing at them, well, the 01:05:00pilot would go in and warn them, whoever was firing, that he wasn't going to fly no more. Afraid he'd get killed. And another time or two--you know, on the forty-millimeter we used--forty-millers had a director. That's the first computer. It was called a director. You had a horizontal and vertical, and you synchronized your gun with it. In other words, every time that moved, your gun would move, you see. So you had a minimum vertical and minimum horizontal, and you tracked planes that way. And you put it on automatic; you didn't do nothing, just fired a gun. Your men on the side didn't do anything.

SLOAN: It would track it for you.

BUCHANAN: They would track it. But we didn't use them in combat. We couldn't. They were too slow, so we just set them aside. We wouldn't use them. A lot of times when we had a long stay in a place, we would build a nice, say, eight-by-ten bunker. And we had electricity because we had them--but they're now in welding, making welding machines, they just--and we had electricity, so we had lights and everything. And we lived pretty good when it was staying in one place. So that's it. Now, on Dachau. Now, let's go down until we done passed the Danube River.

SLOAN: All right.

BUCHANAN: So we was down the road, there. I don't know what we was attached--or 01:07:00who we was attached to. Probably the Rainbow Division or the other division, I don't know which one we was attached to. But we went down the road and set up our guns. There was no planes to shoot at or nothing. And we got word that there was a prison camp up there, up the road there. Well, all them boys wanted to get in on it, you know, my gun section and all. They wanted to go up there and see about this prison camp. So we all went up there to see what was going on. So the infantry had already taken over the camp just a few hours before we got there.

But you know how GIs are. They want to help out. They want to get in on it. So 01:08:00we went up there to see. So Phineas Wagner, a buddy of mine, first thing he did is lower the dang flag, German flag, and rolled it up. He kept it. Another boy from Oklahoma, the first thing he got was keys to the place, and he put them in his pocket. I wasn't looking for souvenirs, I just seen what he had. And so they asked--I guess they asked the infantry there, they wanted to take over and guard. So a bunch of them had taken over and guarded the prisoners there: the guards. Helping the infantry. I don't know whether the infantry even asked them or not. They just--the 838 boys, they really didn't have no business being up there, but they wanted to see what's going on.

Now, I went up there, and I've never seen such a sight in my life. That was 01:09:00just--dead people in carloads, and all them walking around there with no flesh, just bones and--just hundreds and hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Just made me sick. I didn't want to see no more of it. And I got pictures of it in there. I didn't have a camera, myself, but my other buddies had the cameras and everything. They were taking a lot of pictures. They gave me the pictures of them, you know, what they'd taken. But I didn't have a camera. Some of them boys had cameras. They'd taken a lot of pictures and they gave them to me. But anyhow, I didn't want to--I didn't want to stay up there, really. The smell was awful, and to see all them people walking around there. I couldn't--I just 01:10:00couldn't stand it.

But some of the boys, they loved it. They'd taken over to guard them guards. And they roughed them up. They told me that they roughed them up pretty bad, some of the guards that the government had taken over. They sent a bunch of them in to take over, see. And they was--some of the GIs was pitching them candy bars, you know, in there? Hell, that would kill them. One candy bar would kill a person. And so--they told us, Don't--don't try to feed them. So the government had come in and taken over. They didn't like it, so we--them 838 boys, by golly, roughed them up pretty bad, you see. So they told me about--one or two of them told me--I'd go down--I had to go down and stay on my gun every so often. I wasn't 01:11:00supposed to leave it.

But anyhow--but I did stay up there for quite a while, you know, see what's going on and everything. But just like some of the boys was more interested in getting souvenirs while there. And Wagner, later on he got the flag and he gave it to the Jews here, a few years back, the Holocaust. He went to New York and gave it to them. I think it was New York or Washington. I don't know. I think it was New York that he went to give them the flag. I don't know what that boy ever done with all the keys, but anyhow. After that, we went on down. A bunch of Germans give up to us over there. And we went to the end of the war down there, plum to the Austria border.

SLOAN: You were--

BUCHANAN: When the war was over, we heard that the infantry and the Russians got 01:12:00into a little fight there at the last, but I think they got it stopped. I don't know. You know, Americans didn't like them Russians anyhow. (both laugh) So, anyhow--but anyhow, we come on back and made our headquarters in Augsburg, Germany. So I went up there to headquarters to find out what outfit--I was searching for another outfit. And they brought Hermann Göring in there when I was there. And I was just a few feet from him when they brought him in there. And he had on his uniform and all his medals and everything. I guess he thought he was going to have a good time. But anyhow, they brought him in there to 01:13:00Seventh Army headquarters and locked him up. So I got to see him; that's the one I did see.

And so then after the war was over, after that, we trained in Germany to get ready for the Pacific. And we went out on maneuvers. We did practice gunning, and all that. And July, July come, we went to Marseille, France, to get ready to go to Pacific. They told us that it would take ninety days by boat for us going around to the Pacific. And we had to have so many points at that time where 01:14:00they'll ship us home on furlough, or sit there and wait. If you didn't have very many points, they'd let you go back to the States to spend your ten days. But if you had a lot of points, they wouldn't send you back. I never could understand that. We had to wait there. And we waited and waited until they dropped the atomic bomb. So, therefore, we didn't have to go to the Pacific.

SLOAN: You remember when you heard that news?

BUCHANAN: Oh yeah, I remember when I heard the news. Let's see. I forget now what day it was, but anyhow, we heard the news come over. And the war ended. Well, we was tickled to death. So my wife heard it, and she said, "Well, you'll be home any day now." What was that, September?

SLOAN: August.

BUCHANAN: August. Yeah, August. Well, my wife thought I'd be home in two weeks, you see. It was January before I got home. I had sixty-nine points, and if I'd had seventy, I could have been home by Christmas. But I had sixty-nine, so I didn't get home no more than one with sixty points. So my wife couldn't understand why I couldn't come home. I told her, "I'm still waiting for a boat." You know, we didn't have enough boats to bring us all home.

SLOAN: Uh-huh. You said how your brother decided to make a career in the navy. Did you think about staying in the army?

BUCHANAN: No--yeah, I thought about it. They told me in Marseilles--I was sergeant of the guard of a POW, a prisoner camp, there for a while, and we had 01:16:00to pull duties in warehouses and what have you, and guard them Germans. And so I heard they had set up a college there in Marseille where you could go to school. If you entered college full time, you didn't have to pay no guard. You didn't have to pull no duties. So I went up and registered full time. I was taking engineering drawing and French and business law, and all that. And I studied that, and that's where I got the idea of being a machinist when I come out. That helped me because he told me, our instructor told me, he says, "When you get back--now war's over, when you get back, if you'll make a machinist, you'll never be out of a job." That was bearing on my mind, you know. And I was good at 01:17:00blueprint-reading and all that, and designing and everything. I just had a natural talent for that. I never could learn that French, though. I never could learn that, so I just dropped that.

But business law helped me a lot. I learned more about law and what you could do and everything. So that helped me a lot. But the main thing helped me is joining that engineering school on drafting and all that. Because when I come back, like I say, I wanted to go into cattle business, and I never could get a loan. So I got a job as a machinist's helper down here at Pittsburg in a box factory. They 01:18:00paid me fifty cents an hour to learn how to be a machinist. And I set them up on a GI training. And I got subbed, you know, GI training. They promised me that they would give me a nickel raise every six months, but they give me one nickel raise and never would give me no more. And I jumped them out about it. They said, Oh well, we was going to lay you off anyhow. I said, "Well, I'll be gone tonight." The government had bought me a set of tools. The government was supposed to furnish me a set of tools, and they bought them for me. I had a set of tools. They wouldn't let me carry the tools out, said the government hadn't paid for them. So I had to leave them. But I left anyhow.

I went to Talco and hired out at a machine shop over there for eighty-five cents 01:19:00an hour. I wasn't making but fifty-five there, so I hired out at eighty-five cents an hour. And I stayed there. And I draw that sub, so I got to making as much as the machinist. The machinists made a dollar an hour at that time. So I dropped the sub and went on working until two months before I spent my four years, and then I filed for it again. And I got apprenticeship papers as a machinist from the Secretary of Labor. Secretary of Labor, I got that. So I been in the machine job ever since, and I never been out of a job. I've made parts all over the world. I get a big thrill on making parts. And making them, you 01:20:00know, where--you're doing something.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: You're doing something worth something when you're making parts for a factory. Now then, back in '72, when I went into business, my son talked me into it. He was working at Lone Star Steel down here. He was turn farming already and in college at Tyler. He finished Tyler down there. So I was farming down there, the machine shop. He said, "Daddy, only way you'll ever get rich or have any money is go in for yourself, is organize your own company." I said, "That's a 01:21:00good deal, but where are we going to get any backing?" He said, "Well, I got a daddy-in-law,"--(laughs)--"that's supposed to be pretty well-off. And his uncle is real rich. And maybe we can get him to finance us. And we'll build us a machine shop."

Now, my son James, he wasn't but about, hell, twenty years old. I don't know. Something like that. So we made an appointment for him in Tulsa. He owned Gas Mart, those self-service stations all over the country. So we told him our plan. He said, "Well, give me your plan." I told him my plan for ten years on what we 01:22:00could do. And he liked it. He said, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll back you. I'll back you." So he did. He put up some money. And I put up--I got the building up. And I bought the equipment, moved it all in. And got started in '72. And I knew Talco work. And I hired the welders over there. And I got all the business over there at that time. There was a lot of companies that needed machine work in Dallas and everywhere. So I just--oil well supplier up there, 01:23:00Garland. They liked me and they wanted me to build a lot of their parts, so I built a lot of their parts and everything. I built their shafts and their big pumps in Tennessee there, you know?

SLOAN: Um-hm.

BUCHANAN: And Murray Gin, I did a lot of their parts, making gins and big pressers and everything. I made all that. Continental Emsco, I made a lot of their parts. I just made parts for everybody, nearly. And I got quotes out of New York on building power plants. I built part of the power plants here. I 01:24:00built the ladders and all that kind of stuff. I just was overflowed with all the work I could do, you see. And I just kept growing and growing to--we expanded. And Lone Star Steel, I just got all kinds of work from them. Times were so good. And we were on three shifts of machining parts, by golly. And we paid for the whole outfit in one year. We paid for all the machinery and everything in one year of operation. So we just started making money in everything. So now what 01:25:00they done in '72 on up, they shipped all their jobs overseas.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Well, you got none, no. Very few now. You can't hardly make a profit no more. They got your insurance so damn high. They got your taxes so high. You can't make it. So all we doing now is keeping our employees just to make a little profit and just breaking even. That's all we're doing now. We're not going to shut it down because them boys would be out of a job. Then James said, "No, I'm going to shut it down." As long as I can give these people a job, keep them on the job and pay them, I'm going to keep those doors open.

SLOAN: And you're still down there every day.

BUCHANAN: I go down there every day and unlock. Unlock the doors and I stay till twelve o'clock. I come home. I take my nap. I'll stay till two o'clock. I don't 01:26:00go back until two o'clock. And sometimes I don't even go back until three o'clock. But if they need me, they call me. That's all they have to do. But I line everybody up to work and what to do before I leave. And I buy all the materials for all the jobs. And I'll quote the prices on all the jobs. And I have to do that every week. I get a spread sheet of all the parts they need from U.S. Steel. And I have to quote them prices. If you get them wrong, you just lose money if you don't--(both laugh) So that's the way that goes. So I'm still working.

SLOAN: Yeah, you love it, don't you?

BUCHANAN: I love it. I tell you, it keeps me alive. I've had a triple bypass. And the doctor said at eighty--I think it was eighty-five years old. He said, 01:27:00"Man, I ain't never seen a fat person at your age get along as fast as you did on a triple bypass." Hell, I was up the next day. (both laugh) Anyhow, the third day, he had taken all the tubes out of me. I had an appendicitis operation at eighty-three. And I had one of those stopped up valves and didn't even--I didn't even know I had stopped up valves. They didn't even have time to check me. I had appendicitis, they had to operate. So they cut me off--they cut me up. They worked me. I got a hernia right there from that operation. I lifted something, caused me a hernia. I can't get it fixed. I just--I live with it. No. It don't bother me. So that's it.

SLOAN: Well, I want to go back and ask you a couple questions, if that's all right.

BUCHANAN: All right.

SLOAN: We're still going. (laughs)

BUCHANAN: Okay.

SLOAN: I know your unit shot down nine planes.

BUCHANAN: Yeah.

SLOAN: And we didn't necessarily talk about that. Can you tell me what you remember of that? Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Well, my unit--I left the paper in there telling all what they did. They shot down nine planes that night, but 838 got credit for seven of them. Now, I was on the other side. I didn't get to shoot at the planes. All my other units were all that--I was held in reserve. So I can't get credit for shooting them down, see. And we were back in a holding position right there, and we weren't supposed to fire anything, you see. And so one of the boys on the M-51 01:29:00mount--the plane come over, and he opened fire on that plane. And all of us there, you know. And that sergeant just had a fit. He run up there and hollered at that boy, and got him out of there. He said, "What in the hell are you doing, man?" And I think it was a second lieutenant that gave him orders to fire. That sergeant ate him out, too. (laughs) And I'll tell you another story.

Another story, I forgot one. They was shelling us over there on the Siegfried Line. We was up on a hill there, and the pillbox is down there. The Germans was all in that pillbox, a big one. And the infantry was down there. I don't know 01:30:00what infantry bunch it was. But anyhow, these P-47s, six of them at a time, would come, P-47s. They'd open up with the machine guns and just fire at that pillbox until every one of them emptied their gun. Then they'd leave, and here come six more, do the same thing. They wasn't doing anything to that pillbox. So went down there and talked to them boys. I said, "What are y'all going to do?" He said, "Well, one of the boys says he's a welder, and we called for a welding machine. And so we're going to go up tonight, and we're going to weld all them doors shut on that thing." (laughs) And so that night--that night I was looking over, and I seen that welding machine going. It was making a light. They was welding them damn doors all shut. So then we were going to put an explosive on 01:31:00top of that pillbox and blow it up. So I guess that's what they done. I never did know.

But anyhow, they was throwing shells over us. The Germans' artillery shells went over our heads. We was up on a hill. I told my boys--I said, "Boys, we got to dig in. You--we don't ever know when they're going to throw this artillery at us." So they didn't want to dig in, it was just like East Texas, you know. It was rocky and everything. So they got up there and start digging. One boy, he just dug a little hole, and he got in. He put his blanket over the top of it, see, like that was going to stop anything. So I built mine. We dug it out, and I put brush and everything on top of mine, you see. But the next morning, we got 01:32:00up. That thing was--piece of metal about as big as a quarter sticking in that blanket. And I told him, I said, "See there? What if that damn thing were to--you could have got wounded, right quick." He agreed.

And digging them foxholes, digging in and everything--a lot of them so damn lazy they didn't want to do it, but I kept on to them. I said, "Boys, we got to dig in." One boy said, "I got an idea." So he'd taken a hand grenade, put a string on it, and put it in there where he was going to dig his foxhole, you see. And put that hand grenade in there, and had the string on back of there. And he got in behind in a bunker there, started pulling on that string, you see. I said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You should have already--that should have already 01:33:00went off. Stop pulling that hand grenade toward me." He stopped, and that hand grenade was about that far from me. (laughs) And that stopped that. We wasn't going to have no more of that, blowing up his foxhole with a hand grenade. So that's a--well.

SLOAN: (laughs) I got a couple more questions.

BUCHANAN: Okay.

SLOAN: So did you ever have to--I know there were some cases where they were using forty-millimeters as antitank or they were using them on land-based targets. Did you use them just on aircraft?

BUCHANAN: Mostly on the aircraft. I don't think we ever practiced the land.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: We practiced more with the bazooka, shooting them at tanks. Now, I was 01:34:00an expert on bazooka, you know. I fired a lot of bazookas. But to make a long story short, them German bazookas, they had the warhead on the end of them. So a couple of them little Yankees, by golly, didn't know any different. And they was going to heat up their coffee. And they got them a couple of them and put them out. And put the coffee pot on there and lit the fire. And they was making coffee, and it wasn't very long until the whole damn thing exploded. (laughs) It probably would have killed them. I don't know how we got along though.

SLOAN: When you think of eighteen-, nineteen-year-old kids with--

BUCHANAN: The kids, they do anything. They got up there and they--at one place, they said, Why don't we just kill us a dad-blamed hog and have a--and roast him? 01:35:00I said, "Well, go ahead and get you a hog. They went out and shot a dad-blamed little, old pig that weighed about 125 pounds. Brought it in there. And I'm the only one, I think, in that whole bunch that knew how to kill a hog and dress it. They asked me how you do it, and I said, "Well, the first thing you've got to eat him, one is you got to scald that sucker, Bill, and get all that hair off of him." Well, they heated them up some water, but they couldn't scald him. And they shaved the son of a gun. (both laugh) Yeah, they shaved him. They finally got that pig up, and they cooked on that pig I don't know how long. It wasn't fit to eat when they got through with it. They didn't know how to do anything like that. They had heard about it, but they didn't know that. So that's the way.

And I tell you what, I told one boy that's there on the front line, I said--I 01:36:00kept my German interpreter with me all the time. They were my buddy. And he could speak as good as they could, in other words. I said, "Why don't we just go over there to that house. And if there's a lady in there, let's make her cook our breakfast for us." He said okay. So we went over there. And there was. There was a lady in there. And there wasn't no men around or nothing. So we told her, we says, We'd like for her to cook us a good breakfast. She said, "Well, you want bacon and eggs, or you want sausage and eggs?" It don't make no difference. You know, that German woman cooked our breakfast. Then sat down and we eat it. (laughs)

SLOAN: Well, now, I know you got to get back to work, but I want to ask you one more question.

BUCHANAN: Okay.

SLOAN: Are there some other memories? Because one the reasons why we're doing 01:37:00this is because of your time at Dachau. So are there some other memories you have of that time that you were at Dachau that you can share with us?

BUCHANAN: Not really know a whole lot because we wasn't--I had my gun crew down there and my gun down there. I was supposed to stay with them. And the infantry we had had taken over Dachau. And it wasn't any--we didn't really have any business even being up there, because I don't think the infantry needed our help. But, you know, nineteen-year-old boys and everything, they wanted in on everything. They wanted souvenirs and everything left there. And I wasn't really interested in any souvenirs and nothing like that, so I didn't stay up there 01:38:00very long. I seen all them people and everything. And the smell of it and all them people. They said there was fifty-two carloads of dead people that went out of there that day. And they dumped them. And so I didn't stay up there very long. I was just--I went up there to see what it was all about. And that's about all I remember of that.

Now, some of the boys that guarded them guards, now, they told me some stories about them. They told me that one of them guards, he wanted to write a letter to his wife. So they let him write a letter, you know, and everything. And when he 01:39:00got through they just tore it and burnt it. Another boy told me that he kicked one of them guards downstairs. They had a building there they was in. He kicks that damn German in the rear end down them stairs, and I think it broke his leg. They were pretty rough on them. Some of the boys in my outfit was really rough on them, the guards that they'd taken over. They liked to do it. So they told me stories of what they done. But I didn't stay up there very long. I'll tell you, I know a lot of other boys can give you a lot better stories than I, because I didn't stay up there very long. I just seen it, seen what it was all about, seen all them dead people and all them people walking around there nearly dead, and that's it.

SLOAN: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: I wish I could tell you more, but I ain't got no more.

SLOAN: Oh. Oh, I've got to ask you the question. Now, what rank did you get up to in the army?

BUCHANAN: Corporal was as far as I got. I don't think the government--I don't think they give me--I think they done me wrong.

SLOAN: All right.

BUCHANAN: I stayed a sergeant--I mean a corporal, all during that, and did a sergeant's job. They called me to do a sergeant's job, take care of the--a section leader and everything. And when the war was over and come back, I thought they'd give me a ranking. But because I enrolled in school and wasn't doing any more guard work or nothing, they wouldn't give me no more ranking. Now, they told me over there when I enrolled in that school, If you'll stay in the army, we'll send you to England and put you through college in England, if 01:41:00I'd stay in the army. But they wouldn't give me no ranking. They kept me as a acting sergeant all through the war. They didn't call on the sergeant to do anything, they called on me. They told me to identify the bombers and everything else.

And we were over there at Mannheim guarding that bridge, and Bedcheck Charlie [would] come over every night. And we wasn't supposed to fire at him. Wasn't supposed to knock him down, you know. So he come over one evening, and a bunch of the guns opened fire on him, you see. Well, hell, if all the other ones are going to shoot at him, I am, too. I want to knock him down, too. So I turned around, and I empty about twelve rounds towards him. I didn't hit him.

And so next morning, here come two officers. They said, Buchanan, did you fire last night at that German--I said, "I sure did. Everybody else was firing at him. Hell, I opened fire, too." You knew you wasn't supposed to. I said, "I know I wasn't supposed to, but hell, everybody else was firing on him. I thought I'd knock him down, too." They said, Well, did you clean your gun good, your barrel? "Yes, sir." I hadn't even wiped it down. He said, "Open that breach and let me look down that barrel. That officer, he looked down that barrel, said, "Buchanan, clean that dad-blamed barrel. You ain't even cleaned it." (laughs) I said, "Okay, I will." So he wasn't old(??).

I didn't--I cleaned it after he left. But you were supposed to clean your weapon after you fire it, you see. So I didn't clean the darn thing. But he didn't say no more, he just--two officers. I think one of them was a second lieutenant, and the other one was a first lieutenant. Them first lieutenants and second lieutenants, they wasn't nothing but schoolteachers anyhow. They didn't know nothing. They didn't know nothing.

SLOAN: Yeah, you've been around the block a few times.

BUCHANAN: Oh yeah. I've been around the block a few times in my day. So that's about all that I know. I can't think of anything else.

SLOAN: Well, Mr. Buchanan, I know you've got obligations you got to get to. I appreciate you talking to us this afternoon. And Robert and I want to thank you for your service.

BUCHANAN: Well, I appreciate it. I do appreciate it.

end of interview