James Groesbeck ______

Transcription: James Groesbeck ________________________________________________________________ Today is June 19th, 2008. This interview, this is Bill O’Hara conducting the interview. I am interviewing Mr. James Groesbeck, and the spelling on the last name is Groesbeck, and Mr. Groesbeck is, lives in Austin. This interview is taking place by phone. I am in the Stephen F. Austin Building where the General Land Office is housed in Austin at 1700 Congress Ave., and Mr. Groesbeck like I said is at his home in Austin. The interview is being conducted in support of the Texas Veterans Land Board Voices of Veterans Oral History Program. All right Mr. Groesbeck, we’ll get started with a few simple questions and then we’ll just get talking. When is your birthday and where were you born? James Groesbeck: I was born in El Paso, May 26th, 1921. And your parent’s names? James Groesbeck: Were Mary Kate Groesbeck was my mother and John Douglas Groesbeck was my father. Both Groesbeck’s? James Groesbeck: Oh yes, actually they were. And where were they born? James Groesbeck: My mother was born in Stephenville, Texas, I believe, and my father was born in Illinois. They were distant relatives. I’m curious what brought your father to El Paso? James Groesbeck: Business, he had a, had a business partner in Torreón, Mexico, and he ran the uh, American end of the business. And which branch of service did you join? James Groesbeck: The U.S. Navy. OK, and what made you want to join the Navy? And how old were you when you joined? James Groesbeck: Let’s see, I had uh, graduated from the University of Texas, I’d completed the degree requirements that is in January of 1941. I was still 19 at the time. Pearl Harbor came along. I was working for Hughes Tool Company. They indicated that, that uh, they could guarantee several of us a six-month deferment from any military service, but couldn’t foresee beyond that time period. They had some defense contracts and uh, I thought that uh, didn’t like the idea of being, the possibility of being drafted, so I never, never registered for the draft but chose to volunteer for the Navy. I enlisted on a, on a Friday the 13th of 1942, and uh, as soon as I had been sworn in, they told me to go back to work. They didn’t have a training facility available. So I didn’t go on active duty until June or July of 1942. So you graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree at the age of 19? 1 James Groesbeck: Yes. That was great. And uh, University of Texas in Austin? James Groesbeck: Yes. And then you went to work for Hughes Tools? Was that Howard Hughes’ company? James Groesbeck: Yes it was. To my knowledge, I never saw Howard. That was very interesting, very interesting. Well where were you when uh, Pearl Harbor was attacked? James Groesbeck: I had actually uh, come up to uh, take a date to the uh, UT Longhorn football game with the University of Oregon on December 6th, and uh, stayed over, overnight, and uh, took her to uh, dinner. So the next Sunday, the next day on Sunday, December 7th, we saw the, the movie about the, uh, the World War I hero Sergeant York, and we came out and the news boys were hollering “Extra!,” that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. And so that uh, that came as a shock. What did you think about all that? Can you remember what you must have felt like when that happened? James Groesbeck: Shock. I was certainly, certainly surprised. And you hadn’t enlisted yet at that point? It was the following summer? James Groesbeck: No, I had not, had not considered it at that point. And it was subsequent to then that uh, Hughes Tool people told us, told several of us that they could get us deferments for six months, and I, I mulled it over and wanted to be sure I had a commission, so I volunteered in the Navy’s Officer in Training program. My folks had once toyed with the idea of, of getting me a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy, but uh, we never, never really pursued it. So I did recall that before I went into the Navy. So you had already considered the Navy before, before you went to college. James Groesbeck: Well, I hadn’t, my folks had. OK, so in the summer you enlisted and you went into the Navy and where did you do your training at? James Groesbeck: First spent a month as an apprentice seaman in the Officer Training Program at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and then was transferred to midshipman school in New York City in an old, what had been an old battleship of Theodore Roosevelt’s great white fleet. It had been converted into an armory for the New York State National Guard and then when the war started, the Navy had taken it over. I spent, I was one of the so-called 90-day wonders. They gave you 90 days of training? 2 James Groesbeck: Yes, uh-huh. So what ship were you on? James Groesbeck: Well, I wasn’t sent to a ship after we finished the training at the, it was on the U.S.S. Prairie State. After we finished our training, I was commissioned in October, I was sent to the amphibious force of the Atlantic fleet and went through uh, they have a gun class support training at uh, Norfolk, Virginia, and uh, that involved learning about amphibious warfare and went through uh, besides the naval aspect of it, the naval gunnery, how to control naval gunfire and what the ranges of the various naval guns were and maximum ordinance, what kind of hills you could shoot uh, you could shoot over, and uh, I was sent to the 189th Field Artillery Battalion of the Oklahoma National Guard that’s, had been activated as the 45th Division, and uh, went through amphibious training from the land standpoint with, with that uh, Army battalion, and then returned to Norfolk and waited, and we, there were several of us that grew restless because we’d go to the officer’s club and be mingling with officers who had been out on convoy duty fighting submarines and searching for submarines, and we were just standing by doing, doing nothing, and finally uh, we let it be known that we were on the bored side and uh, so somewhat later, we were told that there was a mission available that would guarantee some combat, but it was strictly a volunteer undertaking, and uh, 8 out of the 27 volunteered. And of course we weren’t told what it, what it was, we were just told we were volunteering for a special mission. And it turned out that they sent us down to the Army’s parachute school at Fort Bend in Georgia, and uh, we spent a week there learning about parachute jumping, and including one night jump. And then we were sent back to Norfolk, and we waited a little bit, but they then sent us up to New York City to catch a flying boat, uh, because the surface convoys were going to take 7 to 10 days to get over to where they wanted us to be, which was in North Africa, and uh, the flying boats were, were a surprise to me. I didn’t know they had them. They were like the old PanAm Yankee clippers I guess that had operated before the war, but these were American export, uh, shipping company subsidiary, and they were very luxurious, nicest way to travel imaginable, and we, unfortunately they couldn’t take off because of the weather, so we spent three days waiting for the weather to clear, and we enjoyed New York City. But we were kind of looked down as we were four of us who looked very healthy and suntanned from the Georgia sunshine, and everybody, young men who were in civilian clothes, we had to be in civilian clothes for this travel, and at that time, the military was required to wear uniforms at all times, so we were, we were looked uh, looked at very curiously, and contemptuously by some. But at any rate, and we had no civilian clothes, so they sent us down to a charitable organization, uh, called Bundles for Britain where Americans had contributed old and used clothing to be sent to England which was under aerial bombardment by Hitler, and their manufacturing industries were in trouble, so the Americans were trying to help out. So we wound up wearing some clothing that had been contributed to that cause, and we finally took off. The plane was, went out of La Guardia. It was not an amphibious plane. It was purely a flying boat, but it was a commercial thing and had young American women as stewardesses, and they were like the old- fashioned Pullman cars. They had upper and lower bunks, and uh, in the daytime, made up the seats that could face like the old Pullman cars with a drop leaf table in between so people could play cards and that sort of thing, and eat. They served meals on these drop leaf tables. So it was a very luxurious way of travel, and it was certainly to me. We flew up to Goose Bay Labridor and then uh, then over to Ireland which was a neutral country, and was not involved in World War II, and in fact the Germans had a diplomatic representation there, so we, that’s why we had to wear civilian clothes.

Load more