ORAL MEMOIRS OF GARLEND ARMSTRONG An interview conducted on May 17, 2016 Interviewer: Christine Lamberson Angelo State University West Texas Collection “War Stories: West Texans and the Experience of War, World War I to the Present” 1 LEGAL STATUS: The oral memoirs of Garlend Armstrong are unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on May 17, 2016. Interviewer: Christine Lamberson Transcriber: Beatrice Waide Editor: Carson Jones The electronic file and complete transcript of this interview were processed in the Department of History at Angelo State University and are available at the Dr. Ralph R. Chase West Texas Collection, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas. 2 LAMBERSON: Okay, so today is May 17, 2016. I’m in Uvalde. And my name is Christine Lamberson and we are doing a War Stories interview. So, to start, can you just tell us your name? ARMSTRONG: So . name? LAMBERSON: Yeah, your name. ARMSTRONG: All of it? LAMBERSON: All of it . whole thing. ARMSTRONG: Garlend Ansel Armstrong. LAMBERSON: All right. And when and where were you born? ARMSTRONG: Hollis, Oklahoma, right on the border of the Red River. We used to go to the Red River fishing and get . you get on the other side, you’re in Texas. LAMBERSON: Okay. ARMSTRONG: That’s where I was born. LAMBERSON: And where did you grow up? ARMSTRONG: Mostly around Little Field, Texas. Levelland, Little Field were the two towns we lived about halfway between. The school was halfway between. They had them in them, but if you lived out here on the ranches and farms, that’s where everybody . They didn’t want to drive ten miles. It was about ten to twelve miles to Little Field or Levelland. Lubbock was about thirty miles from there. LAMBERSON: Okay. And how do you define West Texas? ARMSTRONG: How do I define it? Well, it’s pretty good now, but West Texas during those Dust Bowl days was terrible, horrible. And the sand piled up around your house like snow. You know how you can walk right up next to the house, there’s no snow there? It’s kind of like this out here. I don’t know what makes it . wind or whatever. And . And that’s the way it was, that sand packed up there. And if it rained on it, it packed down. And you had to get bulldozers or some kind of front-end loader and scoop it all up and take it out there, and dump it further out, you know. It was usually in the springs, and they don’t hardly even have those Dust Bowl days anymore. They . because . let me see what. Because of irrigation. A lot of irrigation up there now. And of course, that’s . that’s playing out. What are we going to do when we get another 100 million people? They’re already having water problems up north . somewhere there. It’s contaminated with something that got in there. I don’t know. I can’t . I remember hearing it on 3 the news, you know. But . my mind don’t remember yesterday, but I remember a lot back yonder. LAMBERSON: Sure. So, did you grow up on a farm or a ranch? ARMSTRONG: Grew up on a farm and a ranch. We had . We had both, and we raised a lot of cattle out there, white-faced cattle mostly, for beef. There’s two or three kinds of beef: Angus, and . I can’t even remember what some of them were. Milk, you know, from milk cows. LAMBERSON: Sure, dairy cattle ARMSTRONG: I milked a many a cow. LAMBERSON: [Laughs] ARMSTRONG: Many a gallon of milk. LAMBERSON: And so then, when and where did you enter the armed forces? ARMSTRONG: I lived at . we had moved to Granbury, Texas and bought a ranch there and some farm. And I went to school—nearly all the way through school—there. I think I started in first grade up there. LAMBERSON: Okay. And so you were in Granbury and then you were in the ROTC? Is that right? ARMSTRONG: Well, I wasn’t . Actually, you wasn’t in there just kind of . I mean, it was that type of a deal there but, later on, they got them all organized. You know, then it was mainly a deal to make you patriotic and so they could draft you soon as you got to be eighteen. LAMBERSON: Okay. ARMSTRONG: Or you could volunteer, but you couldn’t . unless you deliberately failed your last grade . If you deliberately fail . failed your test so you wouldn’t have to go to war, they got you. But I graduated and my main problem—well, I guess I had a problem—was everybody was a year older than me because I started school in Oklahoma at five-years-old. In Texas, you had to be six. I’m talking about if you was six tomorrow and school started today, you’ve got to wait. LAMBERSON: Okay. ARMSTRONG: I imagine they’d cut you slack now, but back then, they didn’t. LAMBERSON: Um-hum. I see. So, you were a little bit younger than everybody. ARMSTRONG: Yeah. 4 LAMBERSON: So . So in high school, you were a little bit a part of this program. What branch of the armed services was that for? ARMSTRONG: For the . the United States Navy. We shipped a lot of cattle and stuff, you know, for food and whatever. Raised corn and stuff like that. LAMBERSON: Okay. And so, when did you graduate from high school? ARMSTRONG: Nineteen forty-four. LAMBERSON: Okay. So, in 1944 . and you were seventeen-years-old then? ARMSTRONG: Yes. LAMBERSON: Okay. And so . then when did you officially join the Navy? ARMSTRONG: We had a naval kind of . they had an Army and a Navy deal in school that you could join. And they . they more or less had a class because they knew the war wasn’t probably going to be over for three or four years anyway, and it wasn’t. And so, they . they kind of got you orientated to . They’s going to get you anyway whether you were signed up in the reserve deal or you got . Eighteen-years-old, they’s going to get you. And if you deliberate failed . If you deliberately failed your eighteen-year-old last year in high school, you’re going to war anyway. But luckily, like I said, I started when I was five, so when we moved there from Oklahoma there, everybody’s a year older than me. And so, when I graduate, they couldn’t get you unless you deliberately failed. Well, I was seventeen-years-old. And . and I got . a week before the school was out, then, they sent me a deal and everybody in that school that was, you know, eligible to be drafted or something. They sent . sent you to Lubbock, and you took a physical and you went back home and set your house in order with your family and everything. And in a week, you’s going to be off to boot camp in an old steam engine train with no air conditioning. Then you had to cross the dessert, you know. I went to boot camp in San Diego, naval boot camp. LAMBERSON: Okay. So, were you drafted then as soon as you graduated? Or did you enlist? Did you volunteer? ARMSTRONG: Well, most of us is patriotic and already enlisted, and they couldn’t get us unless you deliberately failed. LAMBERSON: Right. So, you enlisted? You volunteered? ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I was a volunteer. LAMBERSON: So, you volunteered right after high school. You took the train over to San Diego. 5 ARMSTRONG: Yeah. LAMBERSON: So, what was the training like? ARMSTRONG: The training there? LAMBERSON: Um-hum. ARMSTRONG: Oh, gosh, it was in July and August. School’s out, you know, somewhere. And you know, June . when is it out here? LAMBERSON: Yeah, late May, early June. ARMSTRONG: Yeah. And it was out and you . they were going to get everybody. At least you’s going to get to take a physical to see if you’s able to take it. And of course, at that age, ninety-nine percent of them are able, you know. They’re not . by then, all the medicines they had for typhoid fever . in fact, they had typhoid fever epidemics then and my dad died, and I had one little brother that died. And I never did . Me and the brother next to me, we never did get nothing. LAMBERSON: Wow. ARMSTRONG: Get . get . older. LAMBERSON: Sure. So, what did you think of San Diego when you got there? ARMSTRONG: Well, I went through boot camp and they mainly just the disciplinary training, marching and learning to follow orders. And they’d treat . you know, there wasn’t any . You wasn’t going to shore, or what they called going to shore. If you’s on a ship, they call it “going ashore.” They said . Well, actually, they said it if you were on land, you know, that you were going into town, San Diego. We were there six weeks before we got . and about a week before we got to go home . you know, for ten days. It took five days, five days round-trip. You know, two-and-a-half going to Lubbock from San Diego, two-and-a-half days to get back. So, you barely got to stay home. If you happened to have a girlfriend there . which I didn’t.