| Summary: | Mrs. Warren describes her life at home and her husband’s job while he was stationed in Italy during WWII.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Library
Interview with Frances Warren
October 12, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Rhonda Haygood and Patti Hannah
Clip 2
Frances Warren: As a young bride I did not know much about married life but I was not able to go out with my friends as I had done before and it was a very anxious time because you never knew if they were coming back or not.
Rhonda Haygood: Um-hm.
FW: But, anyway I stayed with my mother and dad and rode the school bus to school. And George’s mom and dad they had two boys in service, George and Fred, so every Wednesday I would ride the school bus, it was in a different direction from my home, I would ride the school bus down and spend the night with his mom and dad. And George had one sister but she was away from home at that time. And they also lived on a farm and I remember Granddaddy Warren, we called him Granddaddy, he had a buggy and Grandmother and Granddaddy and I would go to the watermelon patch or to the field or wherever but I wouldn’t ride in the buggy because I’m afraid of mules. I’ve always been afraid of mules, but he got the idea that I thought I was too good to ride in that buggy.
RH: Uh-oh.
FW: And it took a while before he realized that I really was afraid of mules. But anyway, when George left he went to Oran, North Africa and he was there for, I’m not sure how many months but not a long time and then went on to Naples, Italy and he stayed in Naples, Italy about twenty-one months. But while he was there I could only hear, well anytime during the war, wives only heard from their husbands through letters and we had what was known as V-mail. It was a one page, little thin sheet of paper that we wrote on and if he wrote anything that the Army frowned on it would be cut, marked out or cut out. So that’s the only way we heard from him. It’s the only way I heard from him until he got home. That was in July of 1943 and I did not see him again until Christmas Day of '45.
RH: Wow.
FW: It’s quite different to the wives today.
RH: Um-hm.
FW: But that’s the way it was back then. But in Italy, he and a friend of his were able to rent a room from an Italian family and they lived in their home. They didn’t have to live in barracks or tents or whatever. But he, he worked while he was in the Army in the Station Hospital, it was 106th Station Hospital and he admitted the patients and kept the records. But many times during the time that he was in Italy there would be boys from around home that would be injured and he was able to help clean some of them up, and dress them and give them a bath and administer to them. So he saw several boys including one of his cousins and they were able to get together on their day off and they would go into town or do whatever they wanted to do. So he was in Italy un-, I should have looked up that date, but his outfit was going to Japan and he thought he was going to be left behind because he had yellow jaundice and had, was in the hospital, but, ah, the doctor in the hospital said, “Well I’ll take care of you on the trip if you want to go.” So they were on the ship for a good long time and the night they dropped the first atomic bomb they were sitting on the ship outside Okinawa ready to go on into Japan.
RH: Really?
FW: So that pretty much stopped their trip to Japan. And they got off on Okinawa and stayed for about seven months. At that time Okinawa had been bombed daily and there was nothing left. But two times during the time that he was gone that I was most anxious and most worried about him was once when I heard that 106th Station Hospital had been bombed in Italy and it was about six weeks before we got mail so I didn’t know for six weeks whether he was alive or not.
RH: Wow.
FW: And then when he was on Okinawa I heard about the typhoon. We had a radio at that time, no television. But I heard that the post office had been blown away, that everything on the island was blown away and only his tent and one other was left standing. And that night during the time that the typhoon was so bad somebody else’s tent would get blown down and they would come, they were holding the post and they were able to keep that tent standing all night.
RH: How about that.
FW: But a lot of the boys moved the dead out of the tombs, on Okinawa they buried them on top of the ground and they moved the dead out and got in those tombs for safety.
RH: For safety.
FW: Un-huh.
RH: Oh, wow.
FW: Then one day George was on, he was in his tent and this guy came down and said, “I’m looking for George Warren.” And George said, “Well, I’m him.” He said, “Well get your things ready. You’re going home.” And at that time, during that stage of the war, they had points. They had points for each year they had been in service. They had points for each battle they were in, each battle star that they’d gotten. They had points if they were married or if they had children. So George had enough points to come home. And he was the only one at that time that they took off the island and he got on the ship and they came into Washington state. He rode a train from there to Anniston, Alabama and he tells the tales of the boys that were on the train, they’d pass a, and a bunch of girls would be waving and they’d get off at that station. And they’d get a taxi and catch them then on down the way somewhere.
RH: Oh, no.
FW: So George got home at twelve o’clock on Christmas Day, 1945.
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