| Summary: | (6:53) Mr. McCrary discusses life at home after the war and the markings on World War II planes.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Interview with Leon McCrary
March 12, 2010
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 6
Clint Alley: I’ve heard a lot of people say that on V-J Day there was a lot of celebration, like in the streets and things like that. Were you in Miami on V-J Day?
Leon McCrary: No. I was home on furlough. We celebrated a little bit, but nothing like the big celebrations in the big towns and all this sort of thing.
CA: Yeah, so you were in Anderson?
LM: Um-hm.
CA: Okay. One lady told us that W.C. Handy played the trumpet out here in Florence on the streets.
LM: Oh.
CA: Said that he, he happened to be in town that day.
LM: I didn’t have enough gas to drive to Florence. I’ll tell you what I did. I went back and forth to Miami three or four times before I got out and on one trip I had six flat tires. I mean, the tires are not good. My granddad had a service station and people would give him gas stamps for me so I’d have enough gas to travel.
Rhonda Haygood: How nice.
LM: That was nice.
CA: That was nice. I guess they were rationing the rubber is why the tires were so bad.
LM: Yes. Oh, everything was rationed. Yeah.
CA: You said you had eighty-six points, could you tell us some of the decorations that you got?
LM: I had six Air Medals and I had four or five Battle Stars, going in to Europe we had four or five, I had four or five and course I had the usual Good Conduct and stuff like that. And these, these, they were five points apiece, I think, and so much time for your service, how long you been in, yeah.
CA: Well, after the war did you have any trouble getting a job?
LM: After the war I went to UNA, or Florence State Teachers’ College. Well, the first thing we did we had, ah, unemployment, $20 a week or a month or something, wasn’t very much. So everyone had a good time, really. And we used to play nickel and dime poker up on the creek at Anderson. It’s kind of funny; this will show you how law abiding people were back then. The Sheriff of Lauderdale County would come up and run us off the creek bank when we were playing nickel and dime poker. That’s how, you know, that’s, that’s how law abiding everybody was, he didn’t have anything else to do. His name was Mitchell, I think. Then I went, started going to college and there, there were not any jobs really, not right away, you know. So I went to Florence State. I’m gonna brag a little. I played on the varsity baseball team for Florence State; I had a part time job; I was married and had one child and I won the Keller Key for the highest scholastic average in my graduating class.
RH: Wow.
CA: That is; that’s a lot to brag about.
RH: It is.
LM: That was a lot to brag about.
CA: It is. That’s wonderful.
LM: But, anyway.
RH: And you majored in—?
LM: Business.
CA: Well, when did you get married?
LM: Got married in August of 1946. August the 3rd, 1946.
CA: So, was your wife from Anderson, also?
LM: Um-hm.
RH: Did you ever consider staying in the military after you served or did that do you?
LM: No. I, I, I tell you what, I played a, I played a lot of baseball up at, Anderson had a good semi-pro team, that sort of thing. Everybody had a baseball team right after the war. Everyone. You know, Central and St. Florian, well I don’t know if St. Florian had one, but all the, everyone, Grassy and Lexington and Anderson and Rogersville and the Florence Raiders had a big team here in town. It was, that was fun, playing baseball. But, anyway, no, I didn’t, I didn’t think about staying in.
CA: Yeah. Well, can you tell us, are there any lesson that you learned, just general life lessons from your service in the military, anything that helped you down the road?
LM: Learned to make my bed.
CA: That’s important.
LM: No. I, I don’t know if I, I, if I learned them in the military. I learned that loyalty, I think, really, to be loyal to something and to want to, and want to do something for your country like, I really deprived myself of being a pilot, I think, because I had just felt like I ought to really get out there and go fight the war and all. I think I learned my lessons early on. I’ve learned, I’ve learned something from everywhere I ever, I ever went, really.
CA: I’ve just got one more question for you.
LM: Okay. Sure.
CA: I’ve seen them paint, like, things on the side of the plane for like how many missions they’ve done—
LM: Oh, yeah.
CA: Did y’all do that, too?
LM: Oh, yes.
CA: Did you?
LM: Yes. All the time. Every, every, if you shot down a plane, you’d put that on there, but you put a bomb up there for every mission.
CA: Um-hm.
LM: There’s what, there’s what, anti-aircraft—[Mr. McCrary points to one of his pictures.]
CA: Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s—
LM: —exploding in the air. I tell you—
CA: —that’s thick.
LM: —it, it was worst than fighters in a way because it, you had to fly right through it. You know, you, once you took the bomb run you didn’t deviate no matter how—yeah, here’s, here’s a good, there’s a good one right there.
CA: Okay. Yeah, I see that with the—.
LM: Yeah.
CA: So, that’s one bomb—
Photo of World War II planes and antiaircraft fire.
LM: There’s was a bomb—
CA: —for each mission.
LM: —each mission. Yeah.
CA: Okay. Okay. And you’d paint an airplane on the side of it for every plane you shot down.
LM: Yeah, you’d have one and, and they have, I tell you, of course the, the beauty of it was all of the pretty girls they painted on the, on the side, you know.
CA: Uh-huh. Yeah. Did y’all have a girl painted on the side of yours?
LM: No. I don’t, I don’t know if we did or not, to tell you the truth. The Homesick Angel, I thought, was a very appropriate name.
RH: Who chose the names for the planes?
LM: The pilot, generally, had, had a input. This is a great book here. There’s a, there’s a, good pictures of formations. This is our bomb group.
CA: That’s four hundred and first?
LM: Four-o-first. Um-hm.
CA: Well, do you know what happened to the plane? Is it, ah, did they scrap it or is it still hanging in somewhere in a museum?
LM: Probably not. This, this plane was, had been beat up a lot, so I don’t imagine, they, they had a lot of new 17s that, ah, that were still around. That, that is really something when you do, when you do end a war, what in the world do you do with all the—and I’ve seen pictures of these places out in the, in Texas some places. Hundreds and hundreds of planes just parked there. And jets, you had brand new, your new jets parked there. They become obsolete. But, they keep them, for a long time anyway. Well, is there anything else I can tell you?
CA: I think that’s it. I sure do appreciate it, Mr. McCrary. This has been great.
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