Name/Title
Avon Wheeler, TranscriptEntry/Object ID
R2022.20.19Scope and Content
Transcript of interview with Avon Wheeler about his WWII memories.
Brief Summary/A Few Direct Quotes:
We had just married in September; I had been turned down from the service because of my knees. We had just returned from church when the news came, and Roosevelt said that we had been bombed at Pearl Harbor and we all had a job to do. I wanted to be in the military police department, and I had to go to school and learn how to control people in the street. Then I got Chief of Staff Marshall and after 2 years or more was transferred to foreign service. I did basic all over again and went overseas with the quartermaster's service company. The service was segregated then. When we got to England the white soldiers had told the British kids that we had tails and they would run up and grab you in the back trying to find a tail where the American soldiers had said that tan Yankees have tails. I landed in Liverpool, and we shipped out. They took everyone off the ship except us and we stayed in the harbor for 2 days because they didn't know what to do with us. We left Liverpool and went to Cardiff, Wales. There is saw Lawrence Chris who had gone to the service from here in Lorain. We were, of course, quartermaster service company. They think you don't belong, but you belong because without us you would have no food, no ammunition, no nothing. We found out later that our company actually was supposed to go in the second wave on D Day. We didn't go because the U boats had chased the convoy clean around the coast of Nova Scotia. So, we were late and needed at least 10 days of briefing for the invasion. The morning of the invasion it was almost called off because of the fog. We fished out of the channel we put in the day before and some of the stuff we fished out the next day it had been bombed and the Germans dug in. the company that took our place there were 2 people left out of 216. A 2nd Lieutenant and a PFC out of 216 men. So, if we hadn't been late, we would have been killed. Our company worked what they called the Redball Express. We loaded trucks sometimes for 18-20 hours getting stuff to go across the channel. We sent Patton fuel for his tanks 3 days in a row before we would find him. We told him to hold up where he was at, and he said he had 5 miles of fuel which he would use and then hold up. That's how we became attached to the fifth to supply them with fuel and stuff. He was just a war Mongol and would stand up in the tier on a tank when it was going down the road with his two big pearl handle pistols that he wore all the time.
I was in England for eleven months and then came back stateside. We came home the first trip that the Queen Mary made after the war was over. I was actually home 71 days and was shanghaied. That's how I went to the South Pacific and wound up in Batagush in the Philippine Islands. That's the place where the Japanese killed American soldiers on the Bataan March called the Batagush Massacre. If a soldier was weak and could not keep up, they just shot them. I was in the Pacific a little over 9 months. Our company went on strike because we were told we had to lift 50-gallon drum and stack them while the Philippines were small they game them the crane that we had and did not have to lift the drums. They broke up our company and would not allow more than 4 people from our outfit to go to any one because were troublemakers. We were an all-black outfit with white officers. MacArthur oversaw the South Pacific and put up a white picket fence to separate the black soldiers from the white soldiers. We had to dig foxholes and I told one white kid, you're not good enough to sleep with me, you're not good enough to die with me. Planes would come at night and the alarm would sound and you would get into the first foxhole that you could get into.
Segregation was the same all over. We had white officers stand up for us when a toilet situation occurred. The white soldiers were closer to the toilets then we were, and we had to walk the entire length of the ship to go to the bathroom. One of our executive officers, the commander, was arguing at the top of the stairwell and I saw this kid coming and I saw his hand go up and he was getting ready to stab an officer with a trench knife and I caught his arm and told him it was not worth it. It was a color problem. The Officer was white, and we were black.
I called my wife from Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1944 and told her I was coming home.Acquisition
Accession
2022.20Source or Donor
Found in CollectionAcquisition Method
Found in CollectionOral History Details
Interview Date
2003Oral History Notes
A full transcription is available at the Lorain Historical Society. Please contact us for research inquiries.