Clarence M. Forster Narrator

Carl Ross Interviewer

July 25, 1989 Minneapolis, Minnesota

CR: Hello? Okay. This is an interview with Clarence Forster of Minneapolis. The date is July 25, 1989, the interviewer is Carl Ross. Why don't we begin then with something about your earlier life, your origins, I think you born in South Dakota, wasn't it? Minnesota CF: North, I was born in North Dakota, the little town of Alfredin, North Dakota. CR: What's the town?

CF: Alfred. Society CR: Alfred. Project CF: Yeah. And I came from a large family,Radicalism there were 10 of us, my father died when I was young and we went through poverty and things were really rough. I experienced hunger many times... CR: Was this on the farm or in the town? HistoryHistorical CF: In, in, on the farm andCentury in towns. My mother at one time tried to open up a restaurant and support us that way but she wasn't Oralsuccessful and everybody in the family when they became old enough to go out on the farm and work, that is when they're 12-13 years old, they went and they worked. I went on a farm when I was 13 and I worked for two years on a farm. I could go to school if there wasn't any work, but as everybody knows there's always work on a farm and so I went to school very little. And finallyMinnesota I decided that that's enough of that, I'm going to leave. And I told the peopleTwentieth that I was leaving and the fellow took my hand and he gave me five 50 cent pieces, this is for two years of work, I was 15 then and I came to Minneapolis on a freight train, tried to find something here, I remember walking hungry, down by the old Farmers Market, where the produce area there and seeing these displays of fruit and vegetables and I walked by one store several times, there were a lot of boxes of apples and oranges and bananas and I finally walked by once and I quickly walked and I grabbed an apple and I stayed here oh I don't, probably about a week, slept outside, from here I finally decided I had these two brothers up in Superior, Rudolph and Walter and so I went up there and up there I, they were two well established radicals and I did a lot of reading there and I took part in parades and demonstrations and distributing leaflets and things like this and listening to speeches, they'd go out and Rudolph and Walter both they'd go someplace to some town and I'd go with them and I'd listen to them and funny thing about that now, I can remember them talking about unemployment insurance and medical care and pensions for the elderly and most politicians and they says well you listen to that commie bastard. Now we have people like even Reagan talking about things for the elderly and daycare and... I stayed in Superior two years, came back to Minneapolis, participated in the truck drivers strike and bounced around in town here, attended some demonstrations and finally in the, '36 the, 1936 the war started in Spain.

CR: Could you back up a little bit here, Clarence.

CF: Yeah.

CR: Your family name was Forster.

CF: Yeah.

CR: Your mother was Finnish? CF: Yeah. Minnesota CR: And your father was? in CF: Irish.

CR: Irish. Society CF: But my mother was married more than once. So WalterProject and Rudolph and I are actually half brothers. Radicalism CR: Yeah. So your mother was married earlier, previously, to... CF: Haryu. HistoryHistorical CR: To whom? Century Oral CF: Haryu.

CR: Hayu? Minnesota CF: Haryu.Twentieth CR: Haryu. Okay, yeah, okay, so Walter Haryu and Rudolph Haryu are your half brothers.

CF: Half brothers, yeah.

CR: And did you all grow up together?

CF: No, no we, by the time, by the time, see I was next to the youngest in the family.

CR: Okay and they were the oldest.

CF: They were the, Rudolph was the second to the oldest and then was Walter. And so by the time I can be in the period where I can remember things they were already gone.

CR: So they had left home and followed a some more different path and you kind of got reunited in Superior, Wisconsin.

CF: Yeah.

CR: So at that time Walter Haryu was already the secretary of the Northern States Cooperative League?

CF: It was the...

CR: He had been the, an educational field worker for the Central Cooperative Exchange.

CF: Yeah.

CR: Before that. Minnesota in CF: Yeah.

CR: And then he, at the time you were there he was working with the... CF: The Workers and Farmers Cooperative Unity Alliance. Society Project CR: Unity Alliance, correct, correct. AndRadicalism Rudolph was working in the same set-up wasn't he. CF: No, he was an editor of the Tyomies. CR: He was an editor of the Tyomies. HistoryHistorical CF: Yeah. Century Oral CR: Doing some farm work also.

CF: Yeah.

CR: Yeah, okay I wanted to clearMinnesota up this Forster-Haryu combination here. So you had not particuarlyTwentieth become, you had become somewhat politically active in Superior but I judge from what you're saying that you were what about 17, 18 years of age at the time.

CF: I was 15 when, I was almost 16 when I went to Superior.

CR: So you were born about 1913 or '14.

CF: '15. I'm 73 now. I never did become really, probably because I don't have the capabilities or the education, course they didn't have an education either, but I never did become really motivated or active you know.

CR: You didn't go to Superior school at all did you? CF: No.

CR: So your schooling was very little of grade school and...

CF: Very little of anything. Well I used to do a lot of reading and I remember when things started in Spain, particularly I remember one time when Mussolini's son in law, he was the Italian foreign minister, he came to this country for something and I can still remember him, watching a newsreel or listening to the radio, Count Galiazochiano and I remember reading in the paper about his trip here and on the same paper there was an item where the Italians had gone into Ethiopia and Mussolini's son was a pilot in the Italian Air Force and he had been interviewed about what it was like and he says when he dropped his bombs into a crowd of people to him it was just like a rose coming into bloom. And I thought then that there's got to be something wrong with people like that, that something should be done about them. Then the non-intervention policy of the League of Nations where Germany and Italy and England and France blockaded Spain, it was one of the most ridiculous things in history where they were to see that nobody brought anything in to either side, let them fight it out and settle their own problems, or the all of Franco'sMinnesota I'd say 80, at least 80% of what his military capability was was Italian and German and the Moors and this really bugged me to think about that and how can things like this go on you knowin and then there was a time when there was a group of Spanish students from the University of Madrid made a tour of this country, trying to get people involved in getting Congress to change the neutrality act that we had where we wouldn't see anything to either side but we could sell them, sell to the Germans and the Italians and they in fact they got most of their oil from the United States, from theSociety American oil companies. And they had a meeting here at the old Minneapolis AuditoriumProject and I don't remember what the crowd was but it was a tremendous crowd and I listened to these students and I talked to them after the meeting and I, there had been talk of peopleRadicalism going to Spain, to volunteer, and there at that meeting I made up my mind that I was going to go and I did. History CR: You've been, living on the north side of MinneapolisHistorical all this time. Century CF: Yeah. Oral CR: And you were contacted by a number of people of left wing Finns and others [unclear], I think you also had gone to work as a moving picture projector operator. How did that happen?

CF: Well, no, that I really learnedMinnesota in Superior when Walter conducted some tours for Minnesota, Michigan,Twentieth Wisconsin, showing movies from [unclear]. And I went with him. CR: So you were a projectionist for him.

CF: Well not at first, he, he did that too, I just went along with him and I helped him as I could and one time there was a scheduled showing of a picture in I believe it was Brule, Wisconsin and all of a sudden he couldn't go, he had to go someplace else and he asked Bill Lowry to go in his place. Bill didn't know anything about the projector and I knew something about it so I went and that's how I got involved in that, that's where it started.

CR: So you operated one of the Minneapolis movie houses? CF: Yeah.

CR: Was it downtown.

CF: Ah, that one on 7th, [unclear], 7th & Hennnepin. Not too long, this came up I believe in, the end of 1935 and I was there several months.

CR: Did you belong to the union?

CF: No, never got in the union. After World War II when I came back I tried to, the only way to get in was as a member of the union and so I went to the union, projectionist union, and they were willing to take me in but the only thing they could offer me was a part-time basis, you know, somebody got sick or something, you set at home and wait for them to let you know that there's so and so can't go to work and would you collect the tickets please.

CR: Well probably come back to that after a while here. You said you came, okay you were living on the northside. Any more of your feelings about that community?Minnesota About the Finnish community there? You had a lot of friends among the Finns I know that. in

CF: I do remember the old Finn hall, but it was, it was, I don't, I just can't remember when that folded up but it was shortly after I came back here that it they lost, they lost... Society CR: There wasn't much going there anymore. Project CF: No, and I do remember the small hallRadicalism we had I believe it was on... CR: Was that about 5th and Humboldt. History CF: 5th and Humboldt or Girard or something likeHistorical that. Century CR: Yeah, that was just a kind of aOral storefront affair. CF: Yeah, it was, had been at one time a store, grocery store.

CR: Yeah, so that would be the Finnish radical movement on the northside was pretty much shot already by '35-'36 in other words.Minnesota Twentieth CF: Yeah.

CR: You were saying you participated in the truck drivers strike. What did you mean by that?

CF: Well I wasn't, really didn't have, a personal reason to, I wasn't a truck driver, I didn't have a reason to be in it, but Jim Flower was active in it then and I used to do a lot of travelling around with him and I remember these fights in the armored cars and then the battles and so I took part in it.

CR: Was Jimmy Flower a member of the union?

CF: No, no, he wasn't, I don't think he was a member of the union. CR: There were hundreds of people who were sympathetic to the strike and participated in it, mainly from the unemployment councils and movements like that.

CF: Right.

CR: You said one time, you were talking, that you hung out with Jimmy Flower. What kind of a guy was he?

CF: He was, to me he was a real oh I don't know just how to describe him but we always got along real well and I had a lot of respect for him because of what he was doing, working to improve the conditions of the working people and I appreciated that. And there were no [unclear] times that I wish that I would have the capability of doing the things that he did.

CR: Did Jimmy Flower work on the sewer project in Minneapolis? CF: I don't know if he did or not. Minnesota CR: That was probably a little later. in CF: I do remember him being business agent of the building laborers union, he was there for a number of years I believe. Society CR: Was that before the war or after? Project CF: Before the war. Radicalism CR: Before the war. Well as far as I know he got into the laborer's union through working on the sewer project. Along with a number of other people. Did you know Jack Kusisto on the northside? HistoryHistorical CF: Yeah. Century CR: Jack worked on the project. DidOral you know Vic Lapaco? [unclear]

CF: Yeah, I knew him not real well, I knew his brother better than I did Vic. CR: Yeah, I think Vic worked onMinnesota that... CF: I'm Twentiethsure he did.

CR: ...on the sewer project. [unclear] brother we knew from Superior, he was working on the Tyomies up there.

CF: Yeah. There were quite a number of Finns that worked in that sewer project from the northside. Matt Hill and Saari, Walt Saari, Kusisto. Kusisto was the dad of Bill Kusisto the football player and wrestler, wrestling promoter...

CR: Oh, is that right? Let's see, did you know Joe Rivers?

CF: No. CR: Yokan?

CR: No. I think he came from Detroit and he returned there, he was also one of the Finns who worked on that project. You lived with Walter Haryu on the northside for a while.

CF: Yeah, I was there, when I came back here from Superior, Walter was already down here and I lived with him then until I went to Spain and then when I came back from Spain I lived with him for a few months.

CR: And Walter Haryu was doing oral history interviews for the WPA writers project at the time you lived with him I think.

CF: Yeah.

CR: He interviewed some of these people you mentioned. Some of those interviews in fact are at the Society. Walter was also the secretary of the 1938 300th anniversary of the Delaware settlement of the Finns in Minneapolis. [Unclear] know about that?Minnesota in CF: All I remember about that is they had this committee, I can't recall just how many people there were on it, I do remember some of the names, but these were people from churches, from the left-wing and from the right-wing, it was quite a mixture. And a kind of funny thing about that committee is at the time Walter was working on this WPA Project andSociety I don't remember just what the details were but anyway he was arrested by the FBI andProject I happened to be at the house when they came to get him and they hauled him away and it didn't take long before the board got out that he had been arrested and he was well thoughtRadicalism of by all, everybody on this committee, they thought quite a bit of him and especially the people from the churches, every day somebody from the churches was coming over and bringing food and telling Walter's wife that it was really a crime that a man like that should be in jail. It's kind ofHistory curiousHistorical that their views, there could be so much difference in their views but yet they thought quite a bit of it. Century CR: I wonder, I don't know what theOral case involved here was, was that the federal court trial of local radicals in relation to the WPA?

CF: It seemed to me like it had something to, I think they pulled off a strike or something, the writer's project. Minnesota CR: ThereTwentieth was a WPA strike in the fall of, the summer of 1939 and I think a number of federal cases came out of that. This is about the right time, isn't it?

CF: I think so.

CR: Though the 300th anniversary of the Delaware [unclear] was 1938, the WPA strike was in July, August of 1939. This is something to check out, we should follow up on that.

CF: I don't remember just how long they were in jail. I don't...

CR: Did the case go to trial? CF: I can't remember. But I do know that when he did come home, the first over to the house were people in the churches.

CR: That is curious. He had been secretary of the...

CF: He was secretary of the committee.

CR: ...of the anniversary committee, yeah. Do you ever remember meeting Arnie Halovan?

CF: I never did...

CR: [Unclear]

CF: I never did meet him but I heard a lot about him.

CR: He come around to the house to see Walter? Minnesota CF: No. He was probably on this committee too. in CR: He wasn't in that picture you gave me.

CF: He wasn't? Society CR: I don't think so. We'll look at that. Project CF: I don't remember what he looked like.Radicalism

CR: Well he looked a little like George Halovan. History CF: I don't remember much about George either. Historical Century CR: Yeah. Anyhow in between theseOral things you have been to Spain, sometime after the trucker's strike and before 1939.

CF: Right.

CR: It was in 1936, you said youMinnesota had made up your mind at that mass meeting at the auditorium which wasTwentieth a splendid, remarkable meeting, I think myself there was at least 4-5,000 people there, if I remember correctly, I was there. In fact I worked with Martin Mackie on the committee organizing it. It was a great success. But you made up your mind there already to go. You also mentioned a little while ago as we were chatting before this that you had recruited two people to go to Spain.

CF: Yeah, I, when I...

CR: I don't know if recruited is the right word, but you at any rate persuaded them to go to Spain with you.

CF: When I, when I made up my mind to go and I was finally approached by Eric Burke, you know about going, I said sure I'll go and Harold Stona and I were good friends and he was in some way related to Jim Flower's wife and one time I was over there at Jim's house and they were visiting with Harold and I told then I said I'm going to Spain, why he said hell I might as well go too. So he, we agreed that we would go together. And then somebody came to the door and here was Lynfours, he came down from Sebeka.

CR: What was his first name?

CF: Veiko.

CR: Veiko Lynfours. So Harold Stona also must have come from Sebeka which is...

CF: Originally yeah.

CR: Which is where Jimmy and his wife, at least his wife had come from, the Flowers lived there for quite awhile. Minnesota CF: Yeah. So we, Harold, I didn't know Lynfours but Harold introducedin us and we talked and after a while I says to Harold I says why the hell don't we take him with us, he come down here looking for something. So, Lynfours says what do you mean take me with you, where? We said Spain...

END TAPE ONE SIDE ONE Society TAPE ONE SIDE TWO Project Radicalism CR: ...which is a long ways from Minneapolis. CF: Well the three of us we were going to goHistory together, we got our passports but through something that we didn't have any control over, them two left together...Historical Century CR: From Minneapolis. Oral CF: From Minneapolis on the bus. To New York.

CR: Was there a local recruiting office? Minnesota CF: Yeah.Twentieth Not at that time there wasn't, but later on there was. CR: The recruiting office was later run by a guy named Art Taylor.

CF: Art Taylor, yeah.

CR: Was Art involved in these preparations that took place here? Or [unclear] or what?

CF: Other than, other than when Art recruited somebody, all that I know that he done was take care of the passport thing and the transportation and other than that I don't know what he did.

CR: Did he do this for you? CF: No, because he wasn't, at that time he wasn't involved in it.

CR: That's something...

CF: He got involved in it after I had already made a commitment. But anyway Linfours and Stone they wound up going several days ahead of me to New York and they got in New York and they immediately got on a boat and away they went. In the meantime this, by the time I got to, on the bus to go to New York, this neutrality act had come up and there became some difficulties there in knowing just what to do. So Pete Jorgenson, Henry Mark and myself wound up in New York for a time. It was kind of, kind of interesting, we left Minneapolis, got a Greyhound bus and you were to get off the bus and you were to walk I don't remember just exactly the details but you were to walk two or three blocks and you were supposed to stand on the corner and you hold your suitcase with the left hand and somebody would come and get you and that's the way it was all the way through to Spain. When we got to France, we rode on trains, buses, taxicabs, private cars, walked from place to place and you were never sure where the next place you were going whether somebody would be there to find you and finally we, I don't remember just how long it took,Minnesota but we got to the Spanish border. In the darkness we headed for the Pyrenees Mountains and went over the mountains. And in Spain I was, first at the southern front, then I was at Madrid andin at the Battle of Teriwall, in crossing of the Ebro River and the retreat back across the Ebro. The last several months I was all by myself, the only foreigner within the 11th division, the Spanish division commanded by Lister and that was kind of a well I don't know it was really a bad time, but it was a kind of a dreary time being the only one you know, everybody else was Spanish and there Societywas a problem with communication you know and nobody spoke English butProject I had to learn some Spanish and when the time came to leave Spain these Spanish people were, that I had been with for these months they were in a way glad to see me get away fromRadicalism it but they were also sorry to see me go and I felt the same way. I really felt that they would eventually win the war which didn't happen, I really felt that they would because when people, the vast majorityHistory of the people in a country make up their mind they want something, they're going to get it, but I guessHistorical it doesn't always work out, you can't beat power and might you know.Century You can accomplish some things but... Oral CR: So you were in Spain then going on for two years?

CF: No, it was, so I left here the 10th of February in '37 and we came back the end of '38.

CR: '38. Minnesota Twentieth CF: Yeah.

CR: About, [unclear] for two years.

CF: I think it was something like 18 months or something like that.

CR: You worked as a recruiter for the Lincoln Brigade [unclear].

CF: Yeah, yeah.

CR: Did you, what kind of training did you get when you arrived there? CF: We had, this group I went with, we had some training in New York, we had a lieutenant, he was a lieutenant in the United States Army and we were up in the hills someplace in New York and we were there I think two weeks. We had some old rifles and, that they scrounged up and he took us out and he gave us some basic training.

CR: Just for two weeks.

CF: Yeah.

CR: How many were in that group?

CF: I would just have to guess now probably 25 or 30 of us.

CR: So with two weeks of basic training you went to Spain. CF: Yeah. Minnesota CR: Arrived straight to the front or more training? in CF: No, no training, I went, I drove an ambulance down to the southern front and there too I wound up with two German medics who didn't speak English and they or I didn't know much about Spanish at the time, we just got there but it was kind of difficult. Society CR: So you generally... Project

CF: But then I did down there, I did run intoRadicalism some Americans, I remember Jim Benet from San Francisco, he was there, some, a couple of American doctors and nurses whose name that I don't recall. One interesting thing in Spain, this wasHistory on the crossing of the Ebro River and I don't remember the name of the town but it was a little town,Historical going through the town and I looked into a, walking on the sidewalk rightCentury close to a house I looked in a window and I seen an American flag on the wall so I knocked on the door andOral I went into the house and the guy came to the door and he says come in in English and he spoke fluent English, he was a Spaniard that had been in the United States for seven years and after the Spanish Republic came into being, he decided to go back and he told me a lot of interesting things about Spain, he said you move around Spain and you see all these villages and there's one fabulous building in town, it's the church, the Catholic church, which he says for centuries has been the peasant'sMinnesota pay for that building and they own nothing, they live in houses withTwentieth dirt floors and he says I came back he says because I felt that things were going to change and maybe I could come back here and someway acquire some land and grow grapes or something, olive trees or something.

CR: So at this point you were alone, or were you still with a unit?

CF: I was with these Spaniards then, the 11th Division.

CR: But this was in the retreat...

CF: This was in the first crossing of the Ebro Republican offensive and then... CR: Okay.

CF: And then the retreat, this is where an awful lot of the Lincolns got killed or captured in retreat across the...

CR: It was a severe defeat and the brigade was almost broken up and retreated as best they could back over the river.

CF: Yeah.

CR: But were you, you were in the same offensive in the same retreat then.

CF: Yeah.

CR: But your unit, did your unit hold together?

CF: Oh yeah. Minnesota in CR: So you retreated then with the Lister group, regiment.

CF: Yeah. Yeah. CR: But at that point they discharged you so to speak. Society Project CF: Oh the... Radicalism CR: Is this when you started for home? CF: Yeah the Republic went to the LeagueHistory of NationsHistorical and said they would withdraw all foreigners hoping that the League of Nations someway would... Century CR: Would safeguard the units at Oralleast.

CF: In some way that Franco wouldn't, they would persuade Franco to withdraw the Germans and the Italians, but that didn't happen, but by then they, the Republicans had the majority of the people behind them, they had most of theMinnesota population, they had enough men, what they needed was material. So they went to the League of Nations and they said that on this certain date that all foreignersTwentieth would be withdrawn from combat and sent back, repatriated. And that's what happened, got orders to leave.

CR: So did you re-cross the Pyrenees with a group?

CF: Yeah. Didn't walk across, we went by train.

CR: Ah ha, okay. So you were actually repatriated.

CF: Yeah. Rode the train all the way through France, the, I believe we left, came back from the port of Le Havre, came back on the SS Paris. CR: So here you met quite a few of the members of the Brigade finally.

CF: Yeah, there was quite a number of people that I hadn't met or known before either in Spain or known before Spain that I got to know on the way back, among them was Don Sayer from Rochester, Harold Stone, my brother Kenny were in the group, Jack Lane from Duluth, Jim LaBell from Duluth.

CR: Was George Lund in that group?

CF: I can't say for sure.

CR: Meet Martin Kusistu there?

CF: No, never did meet him there. CR: You have photographs somewhere you said of the... Minnesota CF: I have two photographs of groups on the boat, of vets comingin back and as many times happened, when you get home and you put things away but then you don't remember where they are.

CR: Well we certainly hope you're going to find these. Society CF: If I do find them I'll see that you get them. Project

CR: So how was the readjustment to AmericanRadicalism life again in Minneapolis? CF: Not much different, there was an awfulHistory lot of people that were helping us back and applauded us for doing what we had done, but there were an awfulHistorical lot of people that thought, said what kind of jerk are you for going over Centurythere. But those kind of people I think were really in the minority. CR: Well did you feel that politicalOral climate in the United States 1938 to...

CF: Oh, yeah, things have changed tremendously I think from what it was like 50 years ago. Even the most extreme right people now talk of social security and [unclear] Minnesota CR: I meanTwentieth had it changed in the time that you went, that you were in Spain, did it seem pretty much like coming back to the same place or...

CF: Oh there have been, I think to my mind, there had been a change...

CR: Course you came back just when the Farmer Labor administration was going to get defeated in the election, or it had just been defeated when you came back I think, the fall of 1938.

CF: Yeah, yeah. But to me it seemed even though like Bernard, congressman Bernard got defeated, that basically there were more people that were involved in the left wing movement and a lot of that, I don't know if it really would have to be the left wing movement but in the problems of working people than there had been before Spain. CR: Well the trade union movement was getting better established and so on, that's for sure. They tell me you moved back to the northside of Minneapolis then. What was your observation about what happened in that community during the Finnish-Soviet war that followed, this winter after you got back.

CF: [Unclear]

CR: You had this period in 1938 when there was kind of [unclear] in the community if Walter Haryu could be secretary of the United Committee, then the Finnish-Soviet war begins and what did you feel in that Finnish community at that point.

CF: Well to me it was, I, the sense I got out of it, that all the Finns there, they got this idea of Finnish power, they were beating the Russians and nobody could beat the Finns you know, I couldn't sense too much dissension between say somebody like Walter and then somebody from the church but the ones that were not in the left they got this fantastic idea that the Finn was it you know, there was nothing like a Finn. Minnesota CR: Kind of Finnish chauvinism. in

CF: I can't recall, that probably was, must have been some kind of squabble between the Finns there but I can't recall any. Society CR: Did you know that in the St. Paul Winter Carnival inProject the winter of 1939-40 there was a contingent of Twin City Finns who had marched in the carnival parade with these white uniforms of the Finnish guerilla soldiers and skis overRadicalism their shoulders as a contingent...

CF: Yeah, I heard about them. History CR: Kind of a demonstration of support to Finns inHistorical the war, you heard about, did you know about it then? Century Oral CF: I, yeah, I had heard about it...

CR: Since then, or you had heard about it then.

CF: When it happened, yeah. Minnesota Twentieth CR: Did that sound like the popular thing to do?

CF: To most of those Finns, yeah, to most of the Finns, yeah. I remember the, there was a Finnish sauna on Glenwood, really a popular place.

CR: There on Glenwood.

CF: On Glenwood.

CR: Yeah. CF: The newspapers came down and took pictures of these sturdy Finns getting their sauna.

CR: So, okay, eventually the United States gets involved in the war, did you volunteer or did you wait for the draft?

CF: I registered for the draft and I had one of the real low numbers and the day after Pearl Harbor our national organization volunteered us as a unit, but we were turned down.

CR: Who did?

CF: Our national office. Veterans of the Lincoln...

CR: Of the Lincolns.

CF: Lincoln Brigade. But we were turned down because we were an undesirable element. That would have been kind of interesting, it could have been developed into quite a fighting outfit, possibly a lot better than any of the John Wayne's movies. Well anywayMinnesota we were turned down, I had this low draft number and oh it was, I think the third week in January, '42, that I got a notice that I should report for a physical downtown at the Medical Arts Building for, in the beginning they were using volunteer doctors for physicals and I went and got my physical and a few days later I got a card saying that I was to report to Fort Snelling on March 3rd, '42. And I went to Fort Snelling and went through all these tests and questionnaires they had and one Societyof the questions was any previous military experience and it was an NCO, I don't rememberProject if it was a corporal or a sergeant that was interviewing me and I told yeah I was a year and a half in the Spanish Republican Army, that's what I said, I didn't say International RadicalismBrigade, I said I was a year and a half in the Spanish Republican Army. He looked at me and he says just a minute he says I got to leave, you wait here and he was gone for 45 minutes and he came back and says you're in the Army, what went on in that 45 minutes I don't know but I, at that timeHistory I don'tHistorical think the government had really made up their mind what they were going to do with us and fortunately I was drafted into what had been the North Dakota National Guard, theCentury regular army had absorbed all the national guards and these people knew, they knew immediately that OralI had, they were told that I had been in Spain but they had no qualms about it me being an undesirable element, they accepted me and I never had a problem with them. Some of the veterans did, that did get into the service, did have problems with the brass, but I never did. And I spent a year, three months in Fort Lewis Washington, we went through a lot of training there and from there weMinnesota went to down the desert in California so we thought we were going to wind upTwentieth in Africa, went down in the desert for a month. From there we went to Camp Gruber Oklahoma...

CR: Camp what?

CF: Camp Gruber Oklahoma, I think we were there three or four weeks, then we headed for port of embarkation to go to Europe, and it was either five or six months in England before the invasion on the channel coast. A number of these small town on the channel coast, they moved all of the civilians out and we hid in these houses like civilians until the invasion, then we went to, I was in the artillery, field artillery, 155 millimeter howitzers and in the invasion we were attached to the 82nd and the 101st airborne divisions. One of our officers jumped with the 101st airborne division and for the first three weeks from the invasion we were with the 82nd and 100 airborne division and they were pulled out and they went back to England. Then across France we were with the 3rd armored division, got up to Paris, circled Paris, let the Frenchmen go in and liberate the city. On Belgium, in Germany...

END TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

CF: We took part in capturing the first German city, the city of Aachen, there happened to kind of a curious division thing, we got into the city and we looked for, I was in the [unclear] survey, fire direction and survey and observation headquarters battalion of the, of our artillery outfit and we looked for a high place, building that would be suitable for observation on high ground and we found a, I don't remember a five or six story building that wasn't in too bad a shape, it was on high ground and we went up to the roof and that's where we decided to do our observation and we'd take turns and then we'd, I and two of the other guys we went down looking through the building and we got down to the basement and we found what had a German commandMinnesota post, and the Germans evidently had left there in a real hurry because they didn't take anything, the radios, all their equipment was there and it didn't look like anything had been boobyin trapped so we took turns in being up on the roof and in the basement and one time when we were down in the basement we were, me and two others, we were sitting there eating some k rations and all of a sudden we heard a sneeze or somebody blowing their nose and looked around and there was even a generator in there that worked, there was electric lights, and we looked around didn't seeSociety nothing. And all of a sudden I don't know what the hell we're doing here, we're liable toProject get our ass shot off here and pretty soon hear somebody blowing their nose again and this is William C. Howell calling at CBS New York, these were the first, they were going to makeRadicalism the first broadcast from a German city and this, where these radios that the Germans happened to be tuned and the radio was on, the switch was on and it was tuned in to the right frequency and here'sHistory these guys, these newsmen were going to make this broadcast from Aachen and we heard it. And anywayHistorical from there then we went across the [unclear] River, kept to the Rhine RiverCentury and Eisenhower had said that it would be really something if somehow or other somebody couldOral capture a bridge intact over the Rhine River and there was a group of engineers that did capture this railroad bridge and we went across that bridge. Eisenhower said that in his book that everybody that went across that bridge on the first day got a bottle of champagne, we never seen it. And going through Germany we, every town in the agricultural countryside you'd see, these little towns there was always a barracks like building where the Germans used people that they hadMinnesota brought in from other countries for farm labor you know, they were, theyTwentieth were a shortage of manpower and anyway I, about this, these camps, these people that worked on the farms and later in Buchenwald concentration camp there were, had been 700 Spanish Republicans that were captured in Spain, or France and they told me that some of them had worked on these camps where the farmer would come and get them and they would feed them, some of them fed them just enough to, so they could survive and work. Some of the Germans did feed them a little better than what they were supposed to, but to it's kind of interesting that all the things that have been said about concentration camps and so very little has been said about these camps that were strewn all over Germany where people they were actually slaves you know and when they could no longer work, when they got so bad that they couldn't work, they went to the gas chambers. And the most interesting thing about, to me about the war was getting into the Buchenwald concentration camp and meeting these Spaniards. I stayed in the camp with them for four days, I rounded up all the c rations and k rations and candy bars and cigarettes that I could and I had two duffel bags full and I took them there. Found a couple of Spaniards that could talk fairly decent English and I found out a lot of things about what had happened to them you know, they were with the French underground and eventually they were captured and brought into Germany and put into forced labor and many of them wound up in the gas chambers. Wound up the war with 69th Infantry division, they met the 69th division met the Russians at the Elbe River in...then when the war ended we, we had enough points, they had a point system for discharge and going home, we all had enough points to be amongst the first to leave but our officers left immediately after the war and we got a new group of officers. Our colonel was a recent West Point graduate and there had been talk of the need for occupation troops in Berlin and that's where he wanted to go so we got held up through him, we got held up for about three months after the war ended in Germany while we all fought against going into Berlin and he tried to get us in there. This is what I, that's more movie picture business experience, we were stationed in a little town, a very small town and there was a city, Alsfeld, oh probably 25 miles from where we happened and all the smaller towns there were American units stationed. So the army authorities, they designated this city of Alsfeld as a place where we could go for entertainment like movies and shows andMinnesota for [unclear] you know so one day we were out, fell out for the reveille and the first sergeantin says got a directive here, questionnaire looking for somebody with experience in running a motion picture house and I stuck my hand, other than running the machine I had no experience with...I, six weeks in this town of Alsfeld running this movie house for the GIs, and being in World War II and getting into Germany, I always thought that I had a pretty good understanding of what fascism meant, but it was really something to see what really could happen under fascism. And I thinkSociety that everybody in this country should if they haven't seen pictures of these concentrationProject camps they should see them, see what could happen when you have a, we hadRadicalism 'great communicator' here Reagan, Hitler was also a great communicator, he communicated to the people and I don't know if anything like this would ever happen again but I think people owe it to themselves to look into these things and understand what could happen. And a lot of talk now aboutHistory the collapse of the communist system, what's going on in the Soviet Union, what is the Soviet UnionHistorical now 70 years old or something like that and they haven't really solved anythingCentury but we're now how old are we, 200 and some years and we still have hungry people, homeless people,Oral racism, and it's quite a difference 70 years, over 200 years.

CR: It seems to me that you, your description of your artillery unit throughout the war from the Danube to the end, of Paris left out two things, one is that this was a particularly distinguished unit of the artillery that saw action onMinnesota much of the front during the war and you kind of went quickly over the landing.Twentieth Your unit landed on Omaha Beach I think. CF: Utah.

CR: Utah Beach.

CF: Yeah.

CR: What about that, can you describe that a little more?

CF: Well it, the landing wasn't too bad but we got in all right and I remember that we went through a real intensive training program and I think we saw more of the, the army used to have training films "Why We Fight" and I think we saw a lot more than, of these films and talks by people on why we were fighting than the average and I think this was true of some divisions like the 101st airborne and the 82nd airborne and possibly the first infantry division and the third armored division because they all went through a real extensive training program in this country.

CR: This was both in military instruction and also perhaps you're saying in...

CF: Why we were there.

CR: ...in orientation or political education, you knew more about what the war was being fought for.

CF: Yeah.

CR: That is apparently is a great advantage as far as you can tell.

CF: Yeah. And to us it meant an awful lot because we couldn't be involved in like hand to hand combat, when we out on a observation post we always had like whenMinnesota we were with the airborne divisions we always had a group of paratroopers with us and youin always knew that when dark came and then light came that they were there but, and this, when they went back and we were with the for a short, really just a few days we were with a division, 29th infantry division and then for the aviation division, they were units that hadn't been through much training, they had been drafted and hadn't spent, been in the army too long and there were times when we'dSociety take them up with us and in the morning they were gone, we didn't know where they were,Project we were there by ourselves... CR: You mean wiped out or just left? Radicalism CF: Huh? History CR: You mean wiped out or just left? Historical Century CF: They left. Oral CR: You were also in the Battle of the Bulge.

CF: Yeah. We were, when the Battle of the Bulge started, we were in Germany and they, 101st came in to Bastogne, they request,Minnesota we were corps artiller y, that we could be attached to different divisionsTwentieth and there were artillery units back further you know, but the 101st requested that they wanted this same artillery unit that they had had in the invasion, so we had to pull out of Germany and go to Bastogne and stories about the war you hear all the talk about Patton, about how Patton came in and rescued the 101st and mostly this is just a bunch of garbage.

CR: How so?

CF: Huh?

CR: How so?

CF: Well it's a lot easier to write stories about a guy like Patten you know, a guy that slapped a soldier and had these pearl handled revolvers than about some guy like Omar Bradley that wasn't very colorful you know and, I don't think the 101st would have had any problem getting out of there without Patten.

CR: You were with the 101st in the Bulge.

CF: Yeah.

CR: In fact you were providing artillery cover for the 101st.

CF: Yeah.

CR: So most of your service was very close to front line service, almost continuous.

CF: Yeah. Right.

CR: You all left the war as non commissioned officer? Minnesota in CF: No.

CR: Sergeant. CF: No. Society Project CR: Corporal? Radicalism CF: No. CR: Private. HistoryHistorical CF: PFC. Century Oral CR: How so?

CF: Well one thing about, this was a, I was like a [unclear], I was real fortunate to be drafted into a unit like this but this being a nationalMinnesota guard, these were most of these people were younger than me... Twentieth CR: They'd had a full contingent of officers already.

CF: Yeah, but they had been in the national guard for some period of time and I don't remember just what the furlough set up, that I think it was different for the national guard from what it was in the army, but anyway when they were absorbed into the army, they had a tremendous amount of furlough coming because they had been in the national guard for so long and when furloughs came up they would all stop at the top of seniority list, whoever had the most furlough time come and he would go on furlough down there in Fort Lewis Washington, and when they'd get down to the bottom of these North Dakota people, that was the end of it, no furloughs. Then they'd build up so more time and they'd start at the top of the list again and it was the same way with promotions, if you weren't from North Dakota, I told them once I was born in North Dakota, does that have any significance, but that didn't mean anything. But they were all, they were all real good people except the colonel, the first colonel we had was, he had been the editor of the Jamestown, North Dakota Sun and he had a lot of political pull so he went in as a full chicken colonel into the army and I remember when we went to Fort Lewis we got off the train and there he was and we lined up there and he gave us a welcoming speech and he said that 34 years ago today he says I was got into the American army and he was saying, he said that I was hoping that in some miraculous way I could become a corporal so now I'm a colonel but the poor guy he didn't know anything about artillery and one time we were on maneuvers they had a corps which sent out inspection crews to see just what went on on these maneuvers and I happened to be up on an OP one time and the colonel was there and one of these inspection crew asked him something pertaining to our fire and the colonel couldn't answer the question so this inspector says colonel he says we're going to find out just how much you know about this artillery business. Two weeks he was in command of the Fort Lewis laundry. Then we got a colonel and this guy he had been an engineer with the North Dakota Highway Department and he understood a lot of things about survey and things like that which is important in artillery but he never did even make it to colonel he was just a lieutenant colonel all through the war and that was, we always puzzled about that, why didn'tMinnesota he become a, but he was not really a I don't know what you would call him a highly polishedin military man, he, like when we got into Germany he said that, he says now we're in Germany, he says these are the people, the bastards he says that brought us over here, if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be here and he says you can see all kinds of American units out here, when they've got to get some rest they're out here in these mud holes he says that's not going to happen with you people, he says we're going to go into a town and if there's a house standing and you go in that house and he saysSociety there's a bed in there he said you kick that Germans ass out of that bed and send himProject out in the mud hole and you get in the bed. And I suppose that was because he wasRadicalism like that, that was one of the reasons that he never did make colonel.

CR: He cared about his men for one thing. HistoryHistorical CF: Yeah. Century Oral CR: But that's also a typical conquerors attitude. Conquering army, the winning army, taking over the beds.

CF: Yeah. But there were a lot of American units that, when they, they wouldn't go into a town, they wouldn't, stay out of the townMinnesota and bivouac you know and out in the woods, some mud hole in the ditch,Twentieth something, but we never did that unless we had to you know.

CR: So although you were a radical red, you had no problems on this account in the army.

CF: No.

CR: Your record of course followed you all the way through but it didn't seem to make any difference.

CF: It didn't make any difference to them. One time in, I hadn't been in too long we were in Fort Lewis Washington and we went out on some kind of a camouflage exercise learning how to camouflage vehicles and equipment. I was with a group and we were camouflaging some gun emplacements and two majors come over and I hadn't seen them before and pretty soon they wind up talking to me, they says we understand you were in Spain, that's right, and we kept talking, they kept asking me about what it was like in Spain, I talked to them but they kept backing away, backing away, pretty soon we were 100 yards away from anybody else and I kept following them you know and they kept taking a step or two back and finally they wanted to know what my political affiliation was and what I thought about the Soviet Union and then I told them I says well I says I didn't ask to be here I says I was drafted and I says I'm here, I'm going to do as I'm told and I'm going, if I have to I'm going to fight the fascists like I did before and I don't know who the hell you guys are and I don't give a goddamn and I says I know that I shouldn't be talking like this to an officer but do whatever the hell you want, but you're getting any more answers from me on anything and I never was questioned about anything anymore by anybody.

CR: But in your mind there always was a very close connection between your experience in Spain and your experience in World War II. CF: Being in World War II a lot of people say why did you go to SpainMinnesota and it's not the easiest thing to explain to get people to understand you know but my experience in World War II really proved to me that I did the right thing in going to Spain. There, I don'tin think that there was, without World War II I don't think there would ever have been any doubt in my mind that I had done the right thing by going to Spain, but being in war to really reinforce that idea in my mind, that was right and... CR: You didn't really yet... Society Project END TAPE TWO SIDE ONE Radicalism TAPE TWO SIDE TWO CF: ...fellow was in the unit I was in that didHistory ask meHistorical what the hell did you go over there for you know and I never did take the position that I've got to start explaining to anybody why I went there. I says well you get over thereCentury in Europe I says you'll find out and especially when we got into Buchenwald concentration camp, thereOral was quite a number of them guys come and told me that you were right, we know why the hell you went to Spain. But I think that it's really something to say that I was one of those that went to Spain, there's not too many of us left now. CR: Well I think that's true, you'llMinnesota find today even among younger people certainly almost everyoneTwentieth who remembers anything about the World War II, you find an interest and respect for experience of the Americans who went to Spain. Certainly it's, in American literature, American writing, and so on, it's kind of treated as one of the significant and romantic if you please chapters of American life over the past few decades. I think under that romantic feeling about it, there was a fairly wide appreciation that it was an important and significant event even though it involved rather few Americans and it certainly had repercussions. It certainly sent out waves throughout the American society. Any number of younger people who were then in college, or just growing up felt the impact of those events. It was one of the things that signaled that coming of World War II and the quite epic struggle against fascism which has kind of seemingly receded in the background today, it's not that well remembered.

CF: Yeah. CR: In that respect it's a symbolic thing about life in this country and about this century.

CF: Many things, many books, many stories have been written about Spain, but leaving anything about politics out of the question, there's nothing in history that can say otherwise that the Republic was brought about by the people and their free election and because there was communists involved, socialists involved in it, so many things have been written, it's just like anything there's all kinds of armchair quarterbacks that know the answers you know, that if this would have been done this way and that would have been done this way everything would have been fine, but the thing is that if the so-called free world would have given the Spanish people the means to fight with, the war would have been over in a month, it would have, there would not have been any Lincoln Brigade and...

CR: It might have substantially changed some of the history of the time. But this phrase 'it might have been' has little to do with actual history. CF: Yeah. Minnesota CR: There has however been in the past, recent period some movementin towards a revisionist history of the Spanish struggle, from a right wing point of view. For instance the ideas brought forward that it was essentially an extension of Stalin's policies to establish a base in Spain and that boiled down it was just part of the Stalinist expansionist movement and the conflict between let's say western values and Soviet communism. And I presently think that'sSociety a misreading of Spain, whatever the machinations of Stalin's [unclear] were, whateverProject stupidi ties of politics were committed in the struggles between the communists and the anarchists and so on which unquestionably to some extent weakened theRadicalism Spanish Republic, the essential basic anti-fascist character of the struggle was still there. CF: Yeah. HistoryHistorical CR: And this, this revisionistCentury history, or this probing into the depths of some of the events ought not to obscure the nature of the epochOral of the period which was a period really of mobilization against the fascist offensive which was developing by Nazi Germany. So you lived through some interesting times. CF: Oh, been an interesting life.Minnesota CR: WeTwentieth all did for that matter.

CF: It's, back in them days there wasn't, I think now there is more acceptance of the Lincoln Veterans having done something significant than there used to be.

CR: There's that too, yeah, that [unclear], revisionist side to...

CF: But it's, we supposedly in our democracy we know everything that's happening, South America, Nicaragua, the Lincoln Brigade has sent, I believe now it's 24 ambulances to Nicaragua plus spare parts, medical equipment and all this money came from the American people it didn't come from Stalin or Moscow or anyplace, it came from the American people and one of the veterans went down there and he's a building contractor and he built homes for the Nicaraguans and our, media and tv networks were down there and filmed this, but you never see it, now why the hell is that. You never hear about these ambulances and it's really something when the ambulance campaign was started, an ambulance isn't too cheap you know and the guys that started this figured that it would be really something to be able to send an ambulance there, maybe even two, now there's 24 of them down there.

CR: Yeah, that's pretty good for a rapidly shrinking group of men.

CF: Yeah and it's, there's less than 300 of us now and we can't really take the credit for it, because it was money from the American people, but we started it.

CR: Well it's kind of a memorial to the Lincoln Brigade, contemporary monument of sorts.

CF: Reagan he, three times on national TV, he referred to us when his talk about aid to the contras, the American people have always been you know willing to go help somebody, for instance he says there was the Lincoln Brigade fought in the Spanish Civil War. TheMinnesota only problem is they were fighting on the wrong side. If he were right, there were American volunteer flyers in the Spanish air force so if we were the men on the other side these flyers alongin with the condor legion they could have destroyed the town of Guernica, which most people don't, remember only because of Picasso and the rest of us we could have probably went into after the war in Spain we could have went into Germany and learned the finer points of running these concentration camps... Society CR: Well I thought when Reagan used that illustration inProject support of the so-called freedom fighters in Nicaragua that truly was a recognition of the degree to which the Lincoln Brigade, the Americans fighting in loyalist Spain entered the AmerRadicalismican consciousness, that Reagan could appeal to that theory and that sentiment among the American people in his defense of his outrageous policy in Nicaragua, that said volumes for the recollection and memory of the Lincoln Brigade. Well perhaps we should close this, Clarence. HistoryHistorical CF: I suppose. When I'm thinkingCentury back it's something to think about, our politics, there's only one man in Congress that had the courageOral to vote against the neutrality act and he was from Bernard.

CR: True. CF: John T. Bernard. Minnesota CR: WellTwentieth probably more importantly, since we've been talking about Spain here, we should just between you and me kind of express a feeling that those Minnesotans who fought in Spain who didn't return should not be forgotten, that the men in your recollection, [unclear] Tantula, and Kenny Brown, Pat Duofalu...

CF: Henry Buskoff

CR: Herny Buskoff...

CF: Yeah.

CR: And others who really we must recall somehow, should not be forgotten. And one of the things we will try to do is to make a list of men who fought in Spain and those who died in Spain from Minnesota as complete as we can before this project ends.

CF: On the, brings to mind to me what Hemmingway said Reagan said we were on the wrong side and Hemmingway said that those who died in Spain, I don't remember exactly the words, but no one ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain.

CR: True, let's leave that as the epitaph...

CF: Okay.

CR: ...and the last word. Thank you.

END INTERVIEW Minnesota in

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