Oral History Interview with Donald A. Mercier

VAN ELLS: Today's date is August 18th, 1997. This is Mark Van Ells, archivist Wisconsin Veterans Museum, doing an oral history interview this morning with Mr. Donald A. Mercier of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a veteran of the European Theater.

MERCIER: Pacific.

VAN ELLS: Pacific -- good heavens, you're right. Pacific Theater of World War II. I got that part right. Thanks for coming in. I appreciate it. All the way down from Eau Claire.

MERCIER: Certainly welcome.

VAN ELLS: Why don't we start by having you tell me where you were born and raised, and what you were doing prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

MERCIER: I was born and raised in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, a town of about five thousand people. I went to a Catholic grade school there and a public high school. Pearl Harbor I can remember distinctly because I was helping my father clean up. He had a tavern there; we 00:01:00were cleaning it up to get ready for business. And we had our radio on, and we heard the announcement. And I think I knew pretty much right then that I was going to get involved.

VAN ELLS: Now at the time you were about nineteen or so?

MERCIER: Born in 19 -- uh February 1st, 1922. So that that was in '47, yeah, about 19.

VAN ELLS: Now as a young man of military service age, the draft had started at this time, so I'm wondering if -- what I'm getting at is did you have some idea that war would be coming to the United States? That we would be getting involved, and did you think about how that might affect you before Pearl Harbor?

MERCIER: Not very much, but like I say I felt that I eventually was going to get involved in that.

VAN ELLS: It wasn't very long until after Pearl Harbor that you decided to enlist.

MERCIER: Well, what happened--

VAN ELLS: Or did you decide to enlist? -- I guess that’s what I’m--.

MERCIER: No, I did decide, but prior to that time I'd gone -- after high school, 00:02:00it was the deep Depression. So, I went into the 3 Cs, the Civil Conservation Corps, for the state of Wisconsin. And--.

VAN ELLS: Which was when, in about '39? Or no?

MERCIER: No, I graduated in '40. So, it would have been late -- the fall of '40.

VAN ELLS: And what was that like?

MERCIER: [Chuckles]. Well, I -- my cousin and I both decided to enlist together, and at the last minute he backed out. So, I went down to Menomonee, Wisconsin. Our job there was to break rock for rip rapping rivers, and I was too small to handle the sledge or the hammer, so they gave me a pair of safety glasses and a kind of long pliers, and I held on to the chisel so the guy could hit it. Three months there and then three months down in Sparta, Wisconsin was the Headquarters camp for the CCCs of Wisconsin. I became a -- started -- well I had trained to be a ham radio operator using the Morse Code and the keys. But eventually I went to distribute telegrams. 00:03:00VAN ELLS: As I understand the CCC, it was supposed to be military-like?

MERCIER: Yes, it was, considerably. You had barracks, and officers, and you did revelry in the morning, and yeah it was military type clothing.

VAN ELLS: Now -- also as I understand, not to dwell on this too much, but I'm interested in this. It was designed for two groups of people mainly, young people and World War I veterans. Were there a lot of World War I vets there?

MERCIER: Not that I'm aware of the camp that I was in at least. I think there were World War I troops, like more in Menomonee and matter of fact I think our officers -- we had officers, were World War I people that could very well be. But when I got to Sparta it was mostly young people like me. Prior to -- well after I got done with that, I went back to Rice Lake, still no work. So, I joined the -- what's called the National Youth Organization. It was an organization 00:04:00where they would put you to work. For example, I would scrub walls in public buildings for 25 cents an hour.

VAN ELLS: Keeps you off the streets.

MERCIER: That was about it, you know you couldn't get work.

VAN ELLS: Now your father owned a tavern, you said?

MERCIER: Yes. Yes.

VAN ELLS: Now one of -- one of the things we hear is that taverns do well during the Depression. Is that true in your father's case?

MERCIER: Let's put it this way, he survived, and there were a lot of people who were having trouble surviving. Of course, by this time though, you were talking about the war, Prohibition had ended, and taverns were legal. And in prohibition time he had made home brew. So, he was pretty much in that area for a long time [laughs].

VAN ELLS: He was able to scrape by and do the work--.

MERCIER: That's right, that's right.

VAN ELLS: So, you enlisted in '42?

MERCIER: What happened I went down to -- my cousin again said we had a good ride down to Norfolk, Virginia and there was a job there, so we went down there. I got a job and he got homesick for his girl, so he went 00:05:00back home again. So here I was, second time, all by myself. But I got a good job, and the war got serious after Pearl Harbor, and I decided that I think we should enlist before they call us. So, we both went to Chicago. To a -- well we went to Eau Claire first and enlisted there and then went down to the Chicago area, the Great Lakes Naval Station to enlist.

VAN ELLS: And what -- why don't you just walk me through that process and sort of -- induction into military life?

MERCIER: Yeah, I was trying that, and all I can remember is there were a lot of young guys. You were constantly going -- shifting, from one line to another. You'd get your shots, and you'd go here, and you'd get your assignment. You'd see all of these guys standing in line, most -- a lot of the time you were stripped. It was a new experience for me although you got a little bit of that in high school phys ed, you know, but still, I don't remember 00:06:00too much about that.

VAN ELLS: And after you got inducted, you had to go off to basic training somewhere.

MERCIER: Yup, I was assigned to Camp Campbell, Kentucky to the 12th Armored Division. And their cadre had come from Fort Knox but all the rest of us were raw recruits and went into training there.

VAN ELLS: And so, you got your introduction into armor at that point.

MERCIER: Right away. Right away.

VAN ELLS: Did you know that when you were going in? Did you ask for armor?

MERCIER: Nope. Nope. I thought maybe they'd use me in communications being I had this training. But no, I-I determined afterwards that they put you where they need you. What we used to say in the Army is that "Somebody who could cook they'd put into maintenance and somebody that was in maintenance they'd put in the kitchen." [Laughs] And sometimes the food verified that.

VAN ELLS: So, Camp Campbell?

MERCIER: Yup, Camp Campbell, Kentucky. It was a new camp. And like I say I 00:07:00was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 44th Armored Regiment, 12th Armored Division. And that Division was born there September 15th, 1942.

VAN ELLS: And what sort of training did you do, now you were a gunner?

MERCIER: Yeah. Well, what we started out with was World War I tanks, believe it or not; they did not have enough tanks right available for us to train with, so we had very little equipment. But gradually that was built up and over the period we were at that camp, we trained with quite a few tanks, Ford V8's.

My specialty was the medium tank; that was what my company had. We had Ford V8's, we had one double bank of cylinders. It was a Chrysler. And it was supposed to be that if one bank didn't work then the other one would, and it was very unsatisfactory so that didn't last long. Then 00:08:00we also trained with radials that had a seven-cylinder airplane engine in it, and that was air cooled. We liked the Ford the best.

VAN ELLS: This training lasted how long?

MERCIER: Well, basic training must have lasted, I don't know, maybe a good six months. Let's see, I went in in October then next spring we went into a two-week camp called Hellcat Camp. And there they'd put the men and the equipment to a test. I mean you were out there for two weeks in tents.

VAN ELLS: These were maneuvers?

MERCIER: No, this was pre-maneuvers. This was where we found out what these tanks could do. You know, you'd run them through the woods, and cross rivers, and all this kind of stuff, and you'd have night-night-night convoys, and you'd do some -- I don't recall so much there doing you know, fighting each other just for the training purposes. That was followed by maneuvers. Now maneuvers -- and well -- maneuvers 00:09:00where you -- our company would fight another company.

And I might say that our-our company -- how can I say that? I'd say the 44th Armored Regiment became well known for being very good, being a good outfit. I think that proved later on to benefit us in a way. And after maneuvers on the 11th November 1943 the 44th Armored Regiment became the 44th Tank Battalion. That means that we were a separate unit all by ourselves. We had 800 men, 48 officers, and 3 warrant officers. And although we followed the 12th Division to Camp Barkeley, Texas for further training we pretty much did our own training. We 00:10:00left Camp Barkeley, Texas in March of '43, and went to Vancouver Barracks, Washington.

VAN ELLS: I just want to go back to the basic training for just a little bit--

MERCIER: Fine. That's fine.

VAN ELLS: Did you have any trouble adjusting to military life, for example the discipline and the language and this kind of thing?

MERCIER: Well of course my -- well, actually my twelve -- or six months in the CCCs really benefited me. And I think I was much more prepared for that than a lot of the guys I were with.

VAN ELLS: Some guys had trouble? With [inaudible].

MERCIER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. One guy hated it so much that he would stand in front of the mirror every morning and say, "My gosh, I'm losing weight." And he pursued that every day and it wasn't long he was out of the Army on a medical discharge. He had convinced himself that he was not doing well.

VAN ELLS: Now was he a draftee? Or did he volunteer?

MERCIER: He was probably a draftee. 00:11:00I'd say that most volunteers did pretty good. As a matter of fact, those kind of people were the kind that would -- if there -- like a training, like if you were physically able to train for an Air Corps job they'd go, they'd go for it, where a regular guy might not.

VAN ELLS: Now I was in the service myself for a long time after you were I was in the Air Force. It wasn't anything rigorous or anything. One of the things I remember though is that people come together from all different parts of the country, and sort of the melting pot of America is oftentimes in the ranks. I'm interested in your personal experience; did you get this sort of people from all around the country?

MERCIER: Oh yes, actually where you came from didn't make a difference. The biggest uh -- you ran across the southern dialect and the people from New York, and you always kidded each other. Actually, this one guy would say tire or tie and we didn't know if he meant tire of a vehicle or the 00:12:00tie that you wear. And of course, we always would kid each other about how we spoke.

Most of our people came from the Northeast, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and there were a few of us from Wisconsin and actually some from Oregon. They come from all over. But basically, they take the most then if they can't get enough from there to fill the division, which I think was something like twelve thousand men, well they'd pull in whatever they needed.

VAN ELLS: Okay, so we've gone through your training--

MERCIER: You've mentioned basic training. Basically, basic training was learning how to follow the rules. How to take orders. You'd march everyday, you'd get up for reveille, you'd clean the barracks every so often and have inspection. I'd gone through that in the C's. And you'd go on road marches. Some 00:13:00of those would get pretty long and hard. I used to really enjoy when they went over the obstacle courses. You know, everybody has to go through that obstacle course for physical fitness if nothing else and I always enjoyed those.

VAN ELLS: That one also teaches teamwork too.

MERCIER: Absolutely, which was absolute required. I think that's one of the things that draws them in together. You become a team.

VAN ELLS: Um, so we left off in this chronological progression, you went to Washington state--

MERCIER: I want to bring up one episode we did while we were at Camp Barkeley [Texas]. Some of us, the gunners and the tank commanders, went to Camp Bliss in southern Texas, I think. And the purpose of that was to train with .50 caliber machine guns 'cause that was what we had on the top of our tanks. So, we were training there for aircraft 00:14:00training to be able to shoot down the same planes that would attack our tank. So, they had airplanes pulling targets. Well, in two days we'd shot down all the targets and we were supposed to take three days to do it in. I think we were a crack outfit, myself. So anyway, we got a day off for that.

The other thing that really happened at Camp Barkeley, which was I say extraordinary, is that we put something like four of our tanks on the train and went up there and there was a kind of a big field out there with a sand mound in the middle, and there were American and Allied Generals there. And the purpose of our mission was to prove that one 05 cannon fire with the shells exploding above us in the tanks would not hurt us in the tanks but would kill any enemy that were on the ground around us. Well, when the shells exploded, the concussion 00:15:00would -- you could feel your pants legs flap from the concussion, but other then that it didn't bother us.

Our tank threw a track in the sand and our driver was a crackerjack of a driver, one of the best in the unit, and he made a reverse turn and slipped that track back on, which normally would have to take a couple of mechanics to do. The other thing that happened is we had blank .75 [mm] shells to fire, cause it was a simulated attack. The shell in our tank backfired, and well you felt the concussion on that. It singed our eyebrows and hair, and we came out and we were black all over, and my system gunner says, "Am I dead?" [Chuckles] After that we went up to the state of Washington, Vancouver Barracks, where we got a little bit of R and R and received some summer issue, which was different then we had 00:16:00previously used for summer issue. So, that made us wonder where we were going.

VAN ELLS: I was just going to ask; at this point did you know where you were going?

MERCIER: Had no idea. The funny part of it is, we trained with the 12th Armored Division; they went to Europe. Yup, and they made names for themselves there part of the time a little bit under Patton. They became known as the "Mystery Division." We used to talk about that. We were very happy that we didn't go over there, because to maintain tanks and do that fighting in the wintertime must have been a terrible thing. So, we were happy about that. But we did get our summer issue and from there we went to -- that was the first time we'd seen WAACs [Women's Auxiliary Army Corps], first time.

From there we went to Portland, Oregon and had another couple days off and on the 22nd March 1944 we boarded the Quota Peru which is a Dutch -- 10,000-ton Dutch vessel that had been converted from a freighter to a troop carrier. I 00:17:00think it carried about 1700 men, another outfit plus ours. Cause we only had a little over, well just under 900 people. And on that the food was pretty bad. We only got two meals a day. Breakfast had wormy oatmeal. And the second meal had wormy bread, and boll weevils, and all this kind of stuff and was on short supply.

We always used to say that the officers were probably eating ice cream and having it good and here we were trying to get enough food. So, one time, you know you're in holds in the bottom of the ship where they got these steel cots that are about -- if you are a fat man you are going to have trouble getting in some of them, they're that close together. So, I was always in the top bunk being the littlest guy.

And so, this one day the guys from the supply unit or whatever came down into our hold. And there were freezers there that were locked 00:18:00and that's where they kept the food, and as they were going past our bunks to go back to the kitchen, we attacked them. And I'm not kidding, the boxes of fruit were actually torn apart right in their hand and loaves of bread; we'd grab this stuff and went back into the corner, and I suppose dared them to come and get it, and they didn't come and get it. But after that they came down with armed guards. One other incident there was -- Am I taking too long?

VAN ELLS: No -- No. No, that's what this is for.

One other incident there is in the middle of the hold, surrounded by bunks was a elevated thing that you could just sit on and eat, it was perfect and just the right height, and I had just finished eating when the guy next to me leaned over and heaved in my mess kit and he said, "Excuse me." And he says, "I'll wash it for you," and I says, "That's fine." I didn't get sick. So anyway, he washed it out, and then I must have washed it out three times besides that. Which reminds me of another thing, when we 00:19:00left Portland, Oregon we were going down the Columbia River and as you got near the ocean you could start feeling the swells. By the time we go out there, there were so many people sick from sea sickness that the head, or the bathrooms, were up in the front in the ship and there were quite a few there, and there weren't enough toilets. There were sometimes three heads above each toilet, you know, poor guy on the bottom. Some guys would actually pass out and they'd be laying in this stuff that was floating back and forth. Again, how I didn't get sick I'll never know, because just going in there was more than you could stand.

We traveled across the ocean to San Francisco, where we refueled, and then went under the Golden Gate Bridge, and that was the place where we said, "Well, where are we going? And how many are going to come back under that bridge?" That's the first thing you think of. We zigzagged across the ocean all by ourselves. 00:20:00By the time we got to our final destination we'd been fifty-two days on the water with one period of getting off, Port Moresby I think it was, for a mail call, first one in over a month. Then got back on and finally landed in Finschhaven, New Guinea. We boarded trucks with all our gear, and when we jumped off the back of the trucks, we'd sink into six to eight inches of mud and it was just pouring, pouring.

VAN ELLS: Now you got there about what time of the year?

MERCIER: Well, let's see.

VAN ELLS: Approximately. I know it's hard to tell in the tropics the time of year.

MERCIER: I'm trying to think. If we left in March, and it took fifty-two days, I think it was in May that we got there. Yup, it was in May.

VAN ELLS: Now the Japanese were still on New Guinea--

MERCIER: Oh yes, you bet they were!

VAN ELLS: It wasn't till '44 when they were cleared out.

MERCIER: Oh yeah, they were 00:21:00-- they were on New Guinea. That was the reason we were there. The Infantry was running into opposition that was really was tough for them to handle, and we were supposed to come in and support them.

VAN ELLS: So, you landed there and how long was it till you got--

MERCIER: Well, if we landed there in May. In June, my company was the first company then to go into combat. And what they'd do is load us onto LST sometimes. Sometimes they'd use cranes and load us into the Liberty ships. So, we'd travel different ways. Sometimes we'd travel on a little landing ship tank that would carry say four tanks. But the big ones could carry I think about two companies or maybe even more.

Our unit, my company, Company C, went into fighting in June and there were two 00:22:00big battles there that -- that's were I first saw the infantry in action, and I'm telling you I respected those guys. I could see them walking in. Here I am in a tank, you know? Pretty well protected, and these guys would be slogging through the mud up, fighting their way up these hills. And the Japanese built bunkers that you could fire artillery at them and bomb them with aircraft for days and days, and still an infantry unit couldn't get -- get into it. Just, it was unbelievable. So, our tanks, using our .75s at close range, could do a lot more for them with our machine guns. There was Hill 225 and Rocky Point were the two big battles for us there, and I mean they were bloody. That was terrible, that was our introduction.

The first time I saw a Jap, I had a .75 millimeter cannon and a .35 caliber machine gun, coaxial, if one went the other did and 00:23:00the machine gun every forth bullet, I think, was a tracer and in close range that was a nice way to sight you in on your target. This guy was walking in the jungle towards our tank and my tank commander said, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" And I said, "Well are you sure he's not an American?" And he says, "Yes, he's a Jap!" So, I sighted the gun at his feet and pulled the trigger on the machine gun and lifted it up like that and saw the expression on his face, and well you know, he almost disappeared. Couldn't sleep that night. I had to crawl into a bunk with another guy. Our sleeping we did, we had these jungle hammocks, it was rubberized bottom, netting on the side, and a rubberized top that you could tie to trees, or you could hang it, but usually we just set it on the ground. So, I crawled in with this other guy that night, because I couldn't sleep. I could see this guy coming all the time.

VAN ELLS: Well, that sort of gruesome nature 00:24:00of combat that you described there, as time went on, now you were in other battles too. Is it possible to get used to that?

MERCIER: No, like I mentioned I felt sorry for those infantry men. I can remember one place where we were, this wasn't jungle. That stuff that was in New Guinea was mostly jungle, jungle and big terrible hills, mountainous hills, but every once and a while you'd get into an area that was more level. I remember this one time, this could've been in the Philippines, I'm not sure, but here I am sitting in this tank, and when the bullets hit it -- it sounds like hail, now that would be machine gun fire and rifle fire and even a rifle that shot an armor piercing would make a hole almost 3/4 an inch deep in the side of your tank.

But I'm -- I saw the war through a periscope, which has a limited vision. All I can see 00:25:00is what's in front of me. If I'm on a hill, I can't even see that because my periscope won't get down. And I can remember seeing these infantry men on either side of me and they'd be, you know, trying to dash from one spot to the other and all of a sudden I'd see one keel over and I'd say to myself, "I wonder if that guy ever got home?" You know I really felt sorry for those guys, the infantry.

VAN ELLS: So, when you're fighting, you were using sort of armor, infantry all mixed together, so in a landing who'd go in first?

MERCIER: Well, really what's got to happen if you are going to make a landing is ah-- It all happens so fast you know? I'd say that the tanks don't go in first because they could have mines there that would blow your tanks up and you'd be of no use. I'd say there's infantry units of 00:26:00all different kinds that go in and secure the beach, then we'd move ashore.

VAN ELLS: So, you fought for a while in New Guinea, and the Japanese were eventually cleared out of there--

MERCIER: Yeah, that's right.

VAN ELLS: And then you were on to the Philippines eventually. How long of a gap was that?

MERCIER: Well, first of all, we fought from June-- I don't even remember when we went into our first rest camp, but it seemed like a long time. What happens is, after they secured an area, they establish a base there. And you've got rest camps where there's tents with cots which are comfortable, and you have good food, and you have a little rest but you're also in the meantime training for the next job. So, after we -- our next move from New Guinea was the Isle of Morotai [in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia]. Now our unit, I got to go back a little bit. Our unit was one company 00:27:00out of six companies in the battalion, and we were the first one to go. We never saw the rest of the battalion till the end of the war.

So, that meant every night we had to secure our own perimeter, you know, set up guards. I still as I look back don't really -- didn't realize that we must have -- we had cooks with us. Now whether they gave us some of the kitchen guys and said, "You stay with them." I don't remember that we had medics with us, but I do know I found out later that there were medics with the battalion, so we must have had a medic or two with us, but I didn't realize that. Anyway, our next step was the Island of Morotai. If you look on a Pacific map it's so small, you're not likely to see it. That island was twelve miles from the Island of Halmahera, which was supposedly a lot of Jap troops there. And 00:28:00from a distance you know, we were further away from any American troops then we'd ever been. You know, we were way out in front you might say, all by ourselves. We landed with the Marines there, but all the Stars and Stripes and newspapers published, "The Marines landed on Morotai." That was one of the bad problems of being a small unit attached to the big units, you never heard about the 44th Tank Battalion in any fighting, and that's something I've been trying to correct for many years.

So, the Island of Morotai, in New Guinea, the natives were very dark, If -- and they moved in-- A village might move in a big group you know? To go and see something or whatever it was. And you could smell them coming, they had a very distinctive odor. But in Morotai the people there were more Polynesian and lighter and attractive people. I don't recall 00:29:00how much -- It didn't seem that that landing was particularly difficult. So while we were there in Morotai we had to -- part of my tank and two, three others were put on a small landing ship and moved up to the north of the island because there was a radar station there that was important to the Japanese, and we were supposed to wipe it out.

When we got there, we couldn't get the tanks ashore because of the coral reefs. You didn't want to run into one and get stuck. So, we would dive under the water and try to find a way for the ships to get up so where we could go ashore.

VAN ELLS: So, you were actually doing the diving yourself?

MERCIER: Well, yeah.

VAN ELLS: You weren't trained for that?

MERCIER: Not really, it wasn't that big of thing. Fortunately for us there was very little opposition there, so we were able to land alright; that didn't take long. But we -- they had a whole 00:30:00bunch of boxes of tuna or something like that, but we didn't dare eat it because we thought they could have poisoned it, but we did knock that thing out of commission and then went back down.

From Morotai we went back to New Guinea and as we--the people on the ship, the sailors I suspect, told us that the place was just full of typhus, which really worried us, and that there were 30,000 imperial guards there, the elite of Japanese troops. So, we thought we were really in for trouble. It turned out it was a training and rest area again [chuckles]. so, when we landed there--it was a rest area and like I said further training. They put snorkels on our tanks. 00:31:00It was a device that was about six feet high and had an air vent at the top, and the purpose of the snorkel was to allow us to land -- make a landing on a beach head in eight feet of water and not get drowned. Turned out we never needed them. I can tell you a few stories about New Guinea too.

VAN ELLS: By all means.

MERCIER: Most of the war, almost all of the war except, especially New Guinea, was almost on the beaches. The mountains were so steep you couldn't penetrate that part. So that's were the Japanese were and that's where we did most of our fighting and also our resting. I'd say actually if you really -- when you look at it, being that there were Japs all over the place, we were hardly ever out of rifle fire or the Japs. We even had one Japanese come get in the chow line one time. [laughs] Those guys were really weird. I 00:32:00saw an infantry man again, a sergeant and another guy; we had just taken our tanks and moved up on an airstrip and found out we had gone over some buried bombs and never hit a one. Boy, I tell you there's a lot of luck involved in this. So, we were able to back out, and this one sergeant had found a dugout where there were a couple Japs in there, and he tried to get them to come out and they wouldn't. He went in after him. Well, that's got to be a lot of guts, he went in there and dragged them out.

VAN ELLS: Dead or alive?

MERCIER: No, they were alive, and he dragged them out, and then I suppose he brought them back so they could be interrogated, but the thing that amazed me was they had their rifles, but the barrels were packed full of dirt. That's why I say I could never quite understand the Japanese, they were very fanatic.

VAN ELLS: Now they didn't surrender very often and that's why I asked if they were dead or alive.

MERCIER: That's right. No, no, no. Well, he had to go in and drag them out. 00:33:00Apparently, they didn't have the means to commit -- to kill themselves, their guns didn't work. [laughs] Really weird. There was one time there that--whenever we had the chance to relax, we took full advantage of it. I can remember it was on the beaches of New Guinea when you know what -- we had mattress covers. See in those areas where there was a rest area you would have a cot with a mattress on it. And it had a cot and cover on it. You could take that cot and cover and get the thing wet and run and fill it with air and tie it shut. Now even though were -- it wasn't tied shut you could get out in the ocean and catch a big wave and surf in on those things just like an airbag, and that was fun.

The other thing is sometimes we'd like to swim a lot, but you had to be very careful because more then one man drowned by being carried out by the undertow. We'd go and swim on the beach and there was a 00:34:00big -- well, a lot of it was rocky and in this one spot there was a big hole in the rock that was pretty square. It was just like a big room that would fill with water and empty with water and fill with water and empty with water and when it emptied of course it would raise up and would flow up and that was always a nice ride. This one day we were going swimming and we heard somebody holler for help. There was another rock there, this one was above ground, and it had a big V-like crack in the side in it. And this G.I. had gone down to wash clothes and a big wave must have come in and shoved him in there and wedged him in there. And if we wouldn't have come when we did, he would have probably never made it. Okay, so now we are at New Guinea after we'd been to Morotai.

VAN ELLS: Well, I just wanted to add a couple more questions in that sort of recreational area. How did you keep in touch with folks back home and keep track of what's going on?

MERCIER: Mail, 00:35:00your letters were censored. We did a lot of writing of letters and the biggest thing to look for was mail call and you often wondered how in the heck it would keep up with you, how did it follow you?

VAN ELLS: Well, did it?

MERCIER: Yes, oh yes, we got mail from home pretty regular. Except like on Morotai, that's probably where we didn't get any mail there, we weren't there that long. But uh, one other thing that we saw there at that camp was-- There were always airstrips near those camps. And these B-25s would take off and bomb the areas around you. And they carried I think 4 to 500-pound bombs. And this one time he crash landed, and like I say we were right there so we decided to go see what had happened and as we were running towards it a fellow was running towards us from the plane and he said, "You better get back, those bombs are going to go." Apparently, I found later he was the pilot and had a bad leg, 00:36:00but he was able to get out and he was going to get out of there.

So, we did go back after it exploded and the firemen who were trying to put the fire out to save the guy in the tail or all that and putting water on it trying to put it out. When that went, they got blown up with it and their bodies were burnt to a crisp. I tell you a lot of these guys were heroes that a lot of people don't realize how some of them died. It's a terrible thing to see. I'll go back to one other thing too. When we got into this Finschhaven camp, you know the first one in New Guinea, they gave us Atabrine. Now Atabrine is supposed to be an anti-malaria pill and I took mine religiously. Maybe some of the guys didn't do it as often as I did, and they'd get malaria and when they got home, they suffered pretty bad from malaria for two or three years. 00:37:00But I felt I was one of the lucky ones.

VAN ELLS: Now, why wouldn't they take them?

MERCIER: Well that I don't know, all I know is I took mine. But you know how pills are. Or you forget or whatever, but I took mine.

VAN ELLS: Well apparently one of the things is it's supposed to turn you yellow.

MERCIER: It did. When we first got there, I decided to look up an Army buddy, well a friend from my Rice Lake High School days. He was with the 32nd Division and I found out they were there, and his name was Haudian[??]. So, I decided to look him up and I found him, and I look at him and I says, "My God, you're skinny and you're all yellow." And he says, "It won't be long you'll be the same thing." And that was from the Atabrine.

VAN ELLS: But after the war, to jump ahead a little bit, you didn't have malaria problems?

MERCIER: Uh no. I was going to tell you about one other thing. When we traveled up the coast of New Guinea doing our fighting, generally a river was the center of the battle. The Waski River and a whole bunch of other rivers, we probably fought at four different locations like that. 00:38:00And airports, too, were there. At night when we stood guard the mosquitoes were so bad that you'd put this -- DEET, I guess they had it then, it was a base anyway. You'd put that all over yourself and avoid any bare skin and over our raincoat, and in that hot weather to put on a raincoat you knew you really had to protect yourself. That's the place where I had dengue fever and I had one attack of dengue fever when I got home.

VAN ELLS: Now what are the symptoms of that?

MERCIER: Dengue fever, they called it the bone crusher. Your joints ached tremendously, just ache, ache. I think it lasted maybe a couple days and it didn't really--I wasn't bed ridden or anything. It's just that it made your life miserable for a couple days. 00:39:00From there then after we had the snorkels on our tanks, they put us aboard--I'm trying to restructure that--I think it was December. We had a good Christmas that, you know you have Spam every day about three times a day. You have these reconstituted eggs for breakfast.

VAN ELLS: Is that in the field?

MERCIER: In the field, and wherever we were. You ate better when you were in these camps because they had more food. Basically, when we were out by ourselves and waited for calls from other units, our cooks had trouble getting food. So this one time six of us, it was on the island of Morotai, and the ships would be off shore and they'd use these large army ducks [DUKWs], an amphibious vehicle, load them with supplies and run them to a ration dump, and we knew they were doing that so 00:40:00one night six of us, two of them flagged them down with flashlights, one guy on each side talking the driver and assistant driver, asking for directions. While they were doing that the other four were unloading the back end. [laughs] That was the only time we really had -- we had bacon and slab, a big slab of bacon in impacted salt. We had a case of fruit cocktail; I forget what else we had but we were really happy for a little while.

VAN ELLS: Good old American ingenuity at its best.

MERCIER: Yeah, oh yeah. I had a weird driver; you never knew what he was going to do. He got seasick and stayed in the hospital on ship there almost every day going over cause of sea sickness. But we were in New Guinea and had accumulated a few Jap rifles and sabers, so they had this big rope ladder on the side and it was quite scary going up that thing, and we had all those things strapped on our back 00:41:00and we got up onboard ship and we traded all this material for food from the sailors.

I don't remember how we got the food down, whether we strapped it to our back or threw it overboard, I don't know, but while we were up on deck he jumped over. So, he came back up, I said, "Clyde, why did you do that?" He says, "I just wanted to be sure that if we were on sea and had to abandon ship, I could do it." [Laughs] So after Morotai and then back to Sansapor for training, this Christmas we had real -- you know, real butter, real milk, turkey, gravy and potatoes, it was really something. The next day we boarded our LST this was going to be the convoy going to the Philippines. There was at least 900 ships there and as I understand it was the largest convoy in any war up to that date.

VAN ELLS: This was the Leyte Gulf? 00:42:00MERCIER: No, Leyte was a separate deal. Remember my company was in New Guinea and that area. All the rest of the battalion were being attached to other units. They were in Leyte. See they formed--Leyte had their own convoy and so they were coming from Leyte, and we were coming from New Guinea, and those convoys were going to converge in Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines. Actually, we got there I think two days before they did. It turns out that one of our tanks in B Company was the first American troops into the capitol city on Leyte, Tacloban, and that same tank was the first American troops to get into Manila. We set quite a few records actually, our outfit. But we didn't know that was going on. So, when we were onboard these ships, it was very rough seas. You could look down in a trough and see a ship, maybe it looked 00:43:00like he was a hundred feet below you and next time he'd be way up in the air, you know, on top of a wave; it was really rough. I still don't know how come we didn't get seasick.

But worse than that was the kamikaze planes. They would come in a whole lot of them at one time, and the sky would be black with exploding shells from the anti-aircraft firing from the ships. These Japs would come in and first they would machine-gun the ships, then they'd drop their bombs or their torpedoes, and then they would dive into the ship and commit hari-kari [hara-kiri], you know kill themselves, they were those kamikazes. Like I say there were a lot of them, and all this was going on all around you, and here you are on deck really no -- nothing to do but just hope nothing comes at you. But we saw a lot of that.

Then when we landed in Lingayen, we stopped out in the beach, or the water in the Gulf first and that was the first 00:44:00time I'd seen rockets. The Americans would have these ships that would have a bank of rockets and they shot those rockets and cannons from the naval vessels and aerial bombardment and strafing. They did that whole area in Lingayen Gulf while we were still out there in the water. I remember the front of our LST it was 740, the thing was open, there's a ramp that goes down and then the sides open this way.

I was standing on that ramp with my tank commander, and I don't know who else, and I saw this naval motor launch go by and MacArthur was in it. So, he -- they had pulled up to this little pier and then they backed away and they let him out so he could wade ashore because the cameras were rolling. That's the picture that shows up on the front of the Life magazine. If people remember that, and you wouldn't know that was me standing 00:45:00back there because I'm such a small figure, but I remember that.

VAN ELLS: Hmmm, interesting. Well, that sort of brings up a question I was going to have for you anyway. Your opinions on MacArthur specifically and more generally the command, that sort of thing. MacArthur is very controversial, you either love him or you hate him, and I find that with troops who were actually in the Pacific at the same time. So, you're just one guy but I'm interested in your impressions.

MERCIER: I never really thought much about it again. I saw him once in Milwaukee go by in a parade. He was controversial but the way I look at it is, he did one big job for us, and he expected a lot of his men, but on the other hand he made decisions that I think saved thousands of lives. And sure, some of these cost lives but there's [laughs] no way to fight a war without losing, but I think that he was a remarkable man. This is a story told to me by--I got to tell you this because 00:46:00it was quite important, and then I'll get back to our landing. After -- a couple days after we landed the rest of the battalion came ashore and they had moved in towards Manila, maybe thirty miles, I'm not sure, and they were bogged down there trying to-- You had to get lined up, you know, all the troops because, again, we were always attached to someone else and in this case it was the 1st Cavalry. When I say we, it happens to be the rest of the battalion because we went our own way again, which was unbelievable.

So anyway, MacArthur met the 1st Cavalry, General [Verne Donald] Mudge, I think it was, and our leading officer Colonel Ross. It would have been Colonel Ross, I think, Lieutenant Colonel, I don't know. Anyway, he was the commander of the 44th that was there. MacArthur wanted a attack made -- a surprise 00:47:00attack, he wanted a column that would go into Manila and free 3,700 plus Allied and American prisoners of war. He knew they were on the verge of starvation; he was very much in contact with these people.

I've meet a lot of those internees since and you wouldn't believe the sadness of their stories. Anyway, they were on the verge of salvation -- or starvation, and MacArthur wanted a surprise attack in there to free them up, and this was all through Jap territory. One of the captains of the light tank platoons -- or company of the 44th, told me that he was there when MacArthur was getting this lined up, and it was going to be a three-prong attack on Manila. And whoever got there first was to go directly to the Santo Tomas University and break through and rescue those guys.

This captain said to me that whenever 00:48:00MacArthur spoke, he spoke to his aide, and then the aide delivered the message, then the message would come back through the aide. In other word, MacArthur never spoke directly, now that's what he told me. In any other case I don't know but that is what happened there. And they did break through and rescue those people with a very limited amount of casualty on our side. So anyway, now to get back to my story, when we landed there, we never did see the rest of the battalion. We joined another group of infantry people and went East and then South and we did all our fighting in the mountains north and west of Manila and fought our way down that. Well, the rest of the battalion was on their way to Manila.

VAN ELLS: Now you fought the Japanese in New Guinea and then the Philippines for quite a while and of course the war is progressing, and Japanese fortunes is declining and 00:49:00I'm wondering, from your perspective, if you noticed a sort of decline in fighting capabilities in the Japanese?

MERCIER: Well, I'll say no, no they were fierce no matter where you went. Like I say, we fought our way down the mountains. I can remember some specific battles, you know there was so much of this I try to remember how I live from day to day and then I can't, but I do remember some instances. And there one of the biggest memories is, we had my platoon of five tanks, and I was always in the first platoon in the first tank. My tank commander was a lieutenant and he's the one that lead the rest of the men for you know whatever. But then sometimes you'd break apart again but still we were always up in front.

We had our five tanks and there were five -- 105 cannons on 00:50:00tracks, and I've been trying to think of the name of those vehicles, and I can't. But anyway, they were in effect armored because of the armor on the side, but they fired these--it was open on the top, not heavy-heavy steel like ours, and there were five of those guys there. For some unknown reason, a Japanese company was filing single file across a ridge about 250 yards away. Well, that's perfect for us. So, on a signal I fired the first shot and they all followed, and that column disappeared, it seemed like.

So, another sad memory for me there is that after that was done, they sent four infantry guys down to reconnoiter, and they were going down and we could see this. And we saw some Japs coming down towards them and my tank commander said, "Let us knock those Japs out." He wouldn't do it, the commander of the other guys, the infantry wouldn't let us shoot. "You 00:51:00might hit my men." Never would have happened. We saw them get killed.

VAN ELLS: The Americans?

MERCIER: Yes, I can still remember to this day, we sent a tank down, put their bodies on it, and when they came back with the bodies on the back of the tank and their feet were kind of hanging over and flopping around and I says, "For what?" To this day, I'm sorry I didn't just tell him to go to hell and shoot those Japs because I could have. Sad memory.

VAN ELLS: The Philippine campaign went on for a long, long time, they were still fighting up until August.

MERCIER: I think March, March, I don't know about August.

VAN ELLS: Well, the 32nd Division was fighting--

MERCIER: In a different part, yeah, that's possible. I'm looking only at my own little area. Well, that very night then, after we had that little battle, we were camped as usual and all of a sudden, we heard this terrible shrieking, and we knew right away that it had to be a rocket. We had 00:52:00never experienced rockets, never. But it couldn't be anything else. You could hear the shrieking as it went out of the tube and it would go up and there'd be no sound, and all of a sudden, it'd come back down and it'd go on its way down, but the explosion was awesome.

We saw shrapnel after that that would have been as big as maybe two feet long, three or four inches wide, and an inch thick; that could have cut a man in half just like nothing. Shrapnel all over the place. Everything got tore up and, boy, I tell you that day everybody was digging tunnels -- or you know ditches to hide in and every time that you could hear, they did that all day long, set those rockets up, and mess kits would fly one way and everybody would dive into a hole. They even almost buried trucks to protect themselves. That was the worst experience I really had in the whole war.

VAN ELLS: So, 00:53:00you fought until how long? I mean, the Japanese finally surrendered in August.

MERCIER: We fought I think, the battle for Manila for us ended I think in March. And we went into an area that was a rest camp again. The Filipinos had built some huts for us for, tents you know and that, and that was really nice. That was the first time we were back with the battalion. And we had it nice there, but we were thinking about what was next. We knew that if we ever had to land in Japan, it would be a fierce battle because we knew that not only the soldiers, but the civilians would take whatever they could and fight us, and we'd have to kill them too.

VAN ELLS: Now was that something you had trained for?

MERCIER: Well, I think that was our next step. I think, because I can remember August 15th we were sitting here, I 00:54:00think the day was a Sunday, and all of a sudden, we heard all this yelling and hollering and the guys running back and forth, "The Japs surrendered! The Japs surrendered!" And we hadn't been in there that long. So just prior to that we had done some fighting, so that took care of that. Then we landed, we boarded some LSTs again and landed in the Yokohama harbor and I can remember driving our tanks from the ships you know up through the streets and the Japanese were there waving little American flags and bowing as we went by.

VAN ELLS: What was your reaction or impression?

MERCIER: You wondered what was going to happen. I mean you saw all these people bowing to you, but you wondered, "How serious are ya?" We were -- they were the victims now; they were the ones that had been beaten and we were the victors.

VAN ELLS: Now this couldn't have been too long after they surrendered?

MERCIER: September 15th, I think we landed, so a whole 00:55:00 month.

VAN ELLS: So, you did some occupation of Japan.

MERCIER: Yes, yes. I had to -- I was sergeant of the guard one night, well one day and night, and my men brought in two Japanese. One young guy who was very arrogant and one little old man who kept bowing to me. And we couldn't talk, so he'd motion that it was cold out and he wanted to put wood in the stove to keep the fire going, so I said, "Fine, fine." And he had to go to the bathroom so I took him out and let him do that but I always kept the two together so I could watch them.

But anyway, we went back in and after that I put them in the back of the truck, and I didn't know what I was going to do with them, I had never been told. So, I decided, well, nobody knows but me. So, I stopped the truck. They had a ham that they had stolen, a big ham. So, I stopped the truck, and I waved my .45 and hollered at them as if to tell them don't do this again. So, I says to the young guy, "Take off," and he did, boy he disappeared in a hurry, then I gave the older man the ham. I thought these people got to be starving and 00:56:00maybe that will make them look a little better at us.

VAN ELLS: So, in the occupation you stationed where precisely?

MERCIER: Tokyo.

VAN ELLS: Right in Tokyo. Did it look devastated?

MERCIER: You wouldn't believe it. Miles and miles of nothing but rubble, you could go in town in the morning like on a pass and all of a sudden, there'd be nobody around, all of a sudden there were people all around you, how they had survived in that rubble, I'll never know.

There were some areas where there were some buildings standing but the rubble was all over. We were there from September and then in December I got my chance to go home. A two-week trip by ship, some went by plane I guess, but I had a two-week trip by ship. Went to San Francisco, spent a couple days there, got onboard a train, went to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and what surprised me is that there were German prisoners 00:57:00waiting table. Got my discharge there and I think I got home the day after Christmas, and there were my mother and my father and this tall guy standing there waiting for me, I had my duffle bag and it turned out I said hello to my mother and dad and started walking away, and this guy says, "Well, aren't you going to say hello to me?" It was my younger brother, and I hadn't recognized him.

VAN ELLS: Yeah, you had been gone quite a while, actually.

MERCIER: Well yeah, I don't even remember when I had my last pass, but I was eighteen months overseas, so it had to be, and you know all the way in Camp Barkley I don't think I had release from there.

VAN ELLS: So, you were finally discharged in January of '46?

MERCIER: I'd say December of '45.

VAN ELLS: Right around that time, huh?

MERCIER: Yeah.

VAN ELLS: So, if you've got a little bit of time, I've got some questions about the post-war period. A lot of these interviews end when the war ends--

MERCIER: Right, I can spend a few minutes 00:58:00 yet.

VAN ELLS: Once you got discharged, what were your priorities for getting your life back in order?

MERCIER: Well, at that time I didn't have any. I can remember I got one attack of dengue fever and my mother said I had nightmares, and for I don't know how long it lasted that whenever a local airplane would fly over I'd tend to dive into a ditch because when we were on Morotai, we were strafed and bombed every day three four times and at night too, so it took me a while to get adjusted.

VAN ELLS: About how long do you think?

MERCIER: Well, let's see, we got twenty bucks a week for twenty weeks from the state, nothing from the feds, so I know, well I got to start looking ahead now, what am I going to do? So, I tended bar for my dad for about six months, and I remember I asked him for 60 dollars a week and he almost fell off his chair. [laughs] But I decided I got to start going ahead so then I 00:59:00went down to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I lived in Rice Lake again and took a test to find out what I was qualified for, and in any event, I decided to go into social service, but get my schooling at the University of Wisconsin at Madison under the GI Bill of Rights.

VAN ELLS: Now the GI Bill, this is interesting. When you talk about the post-war World War II period, this one always comes up. So, I'm interested in when you first learned of the GI Bill and its educational provisions. Did you know about that before you were discharged?

MERCIER: No, not that I can recall. It was after, probably when I went to Eau Claire. Anyway, I took advantage of that and then I got married in February of '47. That was early in my schooling, so you can't survive on 100 dollars a month or whatever it was, especially if you have a family, so I had to work part time. I worked part time all the way through school. Now the funny thing was that I must not have 01:00:00applied myself the first three years and then I decided well, maybe I should apply myself a little bit, so the fourth year I did get honor roll. Then I got a job in Milwaukee. Turned out they needed somebody for a rate case that was coming up.

This was the transport, the buses and trolley cars and all that, that business, and they hired me, and they let me go.

After that rate case was over, they didn't need me so this guy, this office manager, he was something else, so he brought me to his desk one time and after ten minutes I realized he was telling me I was done. So, I says, "Can't I say I left?" He says, "No, we're letting you go." So, I started looking for another job and finally I ended up at the Schlitz Brewery, and I said to the lady there who was the public relations, or whatever, the people that hire. I told her that I had been let go, and she says, "Well that doesn't sound very 01:01:00good." "Well, what, do you want me to do, lie?" She says, "Why don't you go back and check the records." And I'll be darned if they didn't show that I had left, they hadn't fired me.

That one man -- I had tried for a job at A. O. Smith, a big company there in Milwaukee, and I had gone through everything, and they must have called him, and he gave me a bad review and I lost that job. All one man caused me a lot of misery. So then after that I finally decided Milwaukee was too big a city and I went back to Eau Claire again, which was the biggest city in the Rice Lake area and finally got a job [???] with the paper mill and after -- I was there thirty-one years and the last fifteen years I was an operations controller.

VAN ELLS: I want to go back a little bit, to life on the UW campus and the GI bill; you weren't the only veteran on campus.

MERCIER: I'll say not. 01:02:00In those days --.

VAN ELLS: Why don't you set the scene for me as you remember?

MERCIER: In those days they had to put up Quonset huts because there were not enough buildings to take care of this big input. But other than that, I had no way of judging how it compared with anything. But I do know there were a lot of us guys there and attended a lot of classes, and I think that the professors did the best they could to handle us and other then I know everybody else was struggling like me so.

Actually, I know Madison pretty well, when we were in camp here, we lived, first we couldn't find a house to live in. And I can remember every morning I'd stop in there was a non campus house that they had people in there and you could go in and see what housing was available. Well, every morning all I'd have to do, they knew me, I'd just go in and they'd either shake there heads yes or no and if it was yes, I'd go in. 01:03:00By the time I got there on the city bus it was too late, so I borrowed 400 dollars from my mother, and I bought a car. I think I pushed it further then I drove it, it was such a lemon, you know; I don't know anything about cars.

Anyway, finally I got this -- we bought this trailer, and we moved out towards the city of Oregon on a farmer's field and there was a gas station near by. We used their restroom for all our bathing purposes 'cause there was nothing there, the farmer didn't have anything. When you'd open your window, it would hit the next trailer's window it was so close. So finally, this car of mine [laughs] wasn't going anywhere so I decided I'd sell it and I remember you couldn't get the darn thing started. The Ford garage said there was something wrong with it and it would cost 250 dollars to fix it. Well, I can't do that. So, I drove into a used 01:04:00car lot and left it running and I said, "How much will you give me for it?" And he says, "50, well how much you want?" I said, "500." And he says, "That's ridiculous." And I said, "Not any more than your offer." So, I did go to another guy, and he offered me 250, I said okay. But -- so, I shut it off and went and cashed the check right away, didn't want to take any chances.

Then we moved out to this Midvale trailer camp which there were nice guys out there and we -- it wasn't too bad. We had two oil tanks on horses, you know, to provide fuel. And for some reason or another my -- you had this gas tank, you know propane tank, mine would freeze up overnight and I was working. I'd get up at midnight and Dorothy couldn't make coffee for me. So, I'd have to go out there, take it off, bring it in, warm it up, and put it back on. Nobody 01:05:00else seemed to have that. So finally, I discovered if I put a coffee can upside down over it, it took care of that. Then we had a flood one time where the fire department had to bring in row boats to get us out, and then we had to find a place to live there. I guess we could have gone to a motel but there was people I had rented with before I got married that said we could stay there for a couple weeks.

VAN ELLS: I think that's a mall now, if I'm not mistaken.

MERCIER: Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, that's right. The field across from it was a corn field in those days, right across from where we were, and now it's a big mall.

VAN ELLS: Now there were other aspects of the GI Bill, and I don't want to pry into your personal finances or anything but just out of curiosity, did you use the GI home loan at some point?

MERCIER: No, because at the time, I don't know if things were depressed or what but when I finally got to Eau Claire, I remember I had to go to one bank to 01:06:00borrow money just to survive, forget the home, that was a long way off. And they wouldn't lend me money because a cousin of mine that had the Mercier name apparently had been a bad loan risk. So, they wouldn't lend me money which didn't make sense, because I had a good credit rating at that time, so I went to another bank, and they loaned me the money. I remember my first--well about my fourth check it would have been, in December I got a big double check or something like that and I asked the boss if he made a mistake he said, "No, that's a Christmas bonus." Was I happy, boy we really had tough sledding for--eventually then our biggest problem for owning a home was I could never accumulate enough money for a down payment.

Finally, there was a fellow that came into town with 650 dollars down would do it and so we did it. And that was our first home. That was kind of a prefab type home. Then, 01:07:00my company got sold two or three times and each time things got better for me and finally built another house, and finally got old enough to retire at the age of 63 and -- about last year I got some bad news that I had a health problem and I could no longer take care of this big home, so we sold that and bought a condo and that's where we are now.

VAN ELLS: Um, just a couple last things here. Veterans' organizations on the form I had you fill out, you mentioned that you didn't join any.

MERCIER: That's right. When I was in Rice Lake after the war I went first to the American Legion and then to the VFW, and they were bickering so much between them trying to get these guys to join them that I says, "That's not for me." Well after that then I didn't think about it, but in 1978 I 01:08:00put together the first reunion for my company. We had another one in '80 and found out that the battalion had an annual reunion, if we joined them.

Since that time, I've been highly involved with military history of our organization, primarily to try to gain the credit that we should have had that we couldn't get because of being a small unit. But as of this date I've accomplished, which I think is quite a bit, we're on a memorial in Washington D.C., 44th Tank Battalion, South Pacific. One in Abilene, Texas near the entrance to Fort Dyess or Air Base Dyess that says 44th Tank Battalion. Most of the big military museums we've got stuff in. So far, I feel I've been very successful. That's a big push of mine.

VAN ELLS: Well, we are trying to do our part too.

MERCIER: That's right. I believe that. I've got records at the University of Tennessee where I did the video 01:09:00interview. And I forget where the -- I think the tape interview was with Abilene Christian University that is now going to -- Abilene is building a big military museum and 12th Armored Division, my original unit, they're going to include us in a big museum there. We've got Fort Hood, we got stuff. And the Admiral Nimitz Museum of the South Pacific we've got -- they had a tank there just like ours and they wanted to name it Battling Basic, which is the tank that broke into Santo Tomas. I says, "Fine, but you have to acknowledge it's not the original Battling Basic." So, I think we made a lot of progress.

VAN ELLS: Well, I just got one last thing and I'm not sure if its going to lead to anything, but I interviewed a veteran from Rice Lake named Herman Elwin who was a common service officer. Does it ring a bell?

MERCIER: Don't know him.

VAN ELLS: Yeah, he was a veteran's consul for the consulate.

MERCIER: Yeah, no, don't know him.

VAN ELLS: Thought maybe you ran across him.

MERCIER: No.

VAN ELLS: Well, that's all I have then do you have any questions 01:10:00or anything?

MERCIER: Well, that's fine, nope, worked out fine for me.

VAN ELLS: Me too, thanks for coming down.

MERCIER: Yeah, enjoyed it.