Oral history interview with Thomas J. Lucas

Please Note: Due to the set-up of this video recording, the voice of the interviewer is hard to hear. The transcript reflects the best attempt to represent what is said.

Transcribed Interview:

DERKS: If I remember Jim's story correctly, you guys were in high school when Pearl Harbor happened?

LUCAS: Yeah. No, in high school, we were in the University, freshmen in '41. I think Jim was a freshman and I was a freshman. That would be, we started a fall semester.

DERKS: You remember hearing about Pearl Harbor?

LUCAS: Yeah, I was sitting in Memorial Union, down in the Rathskeller studying--when the announcement came. Course we were all in ROTC as freshmen as an alternative to gym. We were all somewhat apprehensive knowing what was going to happen. All of the Advanced Corps students who were graduated, they were 00:01:00called in and commissioned short of their graduation.

DERKS: Like Instantly? Right away?

LUCAS: I think some of them had time to finish the semester. That was what happened with me. I lived in Westmorland and that was all rural area then. We were in with all the farm boys. They were all deferred, so we came right up the top of the draft list. I went to the draft board and asked them to let me finish the semester and then I'd go peacefully.

DERKS: Was that Okay?

LUCAS: Yeah, it was. There isn't any problem there.

DERKS: Your first semester?

LUCAS: First semester.

DERKS: So you went in in January, something like that?

LUCAS: December, I think it was. I didn't take the exams at the end, and later 00:02:00on I found out the university waved them and gave me whatever my average was. I think they did that to all students.

DERKS: Was that Army?

LUCAS: I went down when Pearl Harbor first started and wanted to sign up in the Navy. I was going to go in the submarine corps. Everybody was going into the navy and nobody was going into the Army so they closed down the Navy, so I just settled back and finished out my school year. Then I went into the Army down in Fort Sheridan. That was the first time I was away from home, really. I had a couple of students along with me called Dutchy Van Kleek and Bob Johnson and some of the others. We all went about the same time.

DERKS: What was it like to be at Fort Sheridan?

LUCAS: I sort of found it sort of exciting, new experience. I was never homesick, and I looked at things as something new, something learning experience. There were things, the shots, arms are so sore and they'd have us out shoveling snow off the roads and another company behind us shoveling it back on. We just kept going around. You get your first taste of boredom, which military is ninety percent boredom; waiting. They screened us and we had exams and I signed up for the Airborne. They were looking for a quota for armored service. They kept a bunch of us standing in a Quonset hut next to a hot stove 00:04:00until we all acquiesced, and we went down in armor. I ended up in Fort Hood, Texas in a tank destroyer unit. That's my first experience in Texas also.

DERKS: Why did you want Airborne?

LUCAS: I don't know. It's just, maybe when I was a kid, jumping out of haylofts and stuff. I never had any fear of heights at all. I'm surprised sometimes I didn't break a leg, all the tree climbing that we do. We got to Fort Hood and we had a series of illnesses one after another, and our whole sixteen weeks of basic, we were quarantined to the company area, never had a pass or anything, couldn't go to a PX, couldn't go to a movie. You'd fall out in the morning with every piece of clothes on you had. In the afternoon you'd be playing basketball in your shorts. People asked me why I went in the Airborne, I tell them honestly 00:05:00to get out of Texas. One morning they announced they were taking applications for Airborne and all the requests would go forward without endorsement. That meant your commanding officer couldn't say, I want to keep this guy. I think it was in April that I got my orders to report to Fort Benning.

DERKS: Fort Benning was Airborne?

LUCAS: Um-mm [yes].

DERKS: What was that training like?

LUCAS: It was, you might say, rugged for eighteen year olds and nineteen year olds; lot of calisthenics. They had like one sergeant for every squad, and any time you did something wrong or they thought you did something wrong, they'd give you push-ups and other disciplines. One morning I fell out and they inspected me and they said I needed a shave. I had to go back to the barracks 00:06:00and shave and be back in five minutes. My clothing was dirty, my fatigues. I couldn't do it and they knew I couldn't do it. We only had one pair of fatigues. So I just went back, got under the shower. And I'd never shaved. That was the first time I ever shaved. But a lot of it was a test of fortitude of the soldiers, to see what you could take. If you couldn't take some of that, little things like cleaning the cracks of the floor Saturday night with a knife and things, you couldn't get out of that door of that airplane. It was a method of screening. But, it worked. I'd say most of our class graduated. I think I was in the twenty-sixth class. I looked at it last night. I found a copy of my orders; twenty-sixth class of company D, Fort Benning, Georgia.

DERKS: Most of the people, were they all volunteers?

LUCAS: All volunteers. And the training, it was not only physical but it was the exiting of the airplane. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat; proper exit, which is real important. Getting out of the airplane fast, because one person hesitating, you had a 120-130 mph, split second you've gone beyond. If you have three of these, you're over your drop zone. In hindsight you recognize this stuff. We packed our own chutes. And then we had three jumps, you know, you had to make three jumps, qualifying jumps. And you graduated.

DERKS: Do you remember your first jump?

LUCAS: No, I don't really. That's why I went back for the second one. I only weighed about 105-110 pounds in those days. When you get the green light to go, 00:08:00everybody pushes. So, if you're in that line, you can't get out. I know, one occasion we were jumping in Europe, one of the crew chiefs, who handles the manifest and that, got in that line. He reached for something and got in, and he went out the door with the group. Fortunately he had a parachute on. So once you go, you can't hesitate. You don't have a choice, you're gonna go.

DERKS: We talked to these bomber crew guys that had to jump, and they had never jumped. They never jumped in training. They got trained on the ground. What's 00:09:00the first jump you remember?

LUCAS: Well the second one. And the night, we had three jumps then a night jump. And the night jump was sort of exciting. When you look out, you can't see anything. We had those drop zones out over Alabama. Chattahoochee River down there, and that's what you had to worry about, coming down in water with a parachute. You gotta get out of that parachute before you hit that water. In our training jumps, all we wore was a parachute and a reserve. We didn't have any other equipment. We didn't carry a rifle or anything. The night jumps, I didn't mind them. They were nice, soft jumps. They didn't have the heat thermals; we didn't have the winds we usually have. It was sort of fun.

DERKS: What's it like when you come out of the plane with that many people? Do you hear anything? Are people saying anything?

LUCAS: We were all supposed to yell "Geronimo", most of the time you were just 00:10:00worried about getting out of the airplane. Your focus, that's the natural fear, stepping out into the unknown. When you're eighteen years old, you don't worry about those things. But I mean you still have that anxiety and you're afraid you're going to freeze in the door. That's really the only thing on your mind. Once you get out, the procedure for jumping, you jump out and you turn to your left and huddle over, and then the prop blast gets you. Really opens your parachute. Pulls it out and then your prop blast hits it and that's what opens your parachute. You get that jerk. And then you count, one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three and if it's not open by three, you should look and pull your reserve.

DERKS: When you all come out of the plane, right on somebody's tail, how far 00:11:00apart then are you in the air?

LUCAS: Oh gee, I don't know. Maybe from the door to the tail, stabilizer, that's about the distance, maybe fifteen--twenty feet. You're slightly above by then. The chute opens up over your head this way if you watch them. That really, I think it was on my second jump, it was a hot day and they were jumping about four flights, instead of coming down, I went up on a thermal current. I got in a thermal current. And they were coming down all over me. The sergeant on the ground, I could look down and he was yelling at me. I didn't know, you got 600 guys in the area, you don't know who he's yelling. And finally, some fellow got 00:12:00on my chute. Came down and he was on my chute. I looked up and I could see him walking on the chute. His chute was starting to collapse. So I slipped. And I yelled at him, "Get Off, Get Off." But I slipped the parachute and I came down. When I got on the ground the sergeant was standing right there and I got twenty-five push-ups right there on the spot. Harness on, parachute on, everything on.

DERKS: What does slip mean?

LUCAS: You get the air out of the parachute by pulling your two front risers or your back risers, and it slips and it changed direction. You don't really have a lot of leeway. Now the new chutes, they're very maneuverable. You can put 'em in a parking spot. You pull the front risers to go forward and pull the back ones to go back. That's the only navigation you have so if you're coming down and 00:13:00headed to a barn or something, you can try, it brings you down faster at a higher rate. They teach you so you can turn around, put one hand on one side and pull and you're supposed to turn yourself around. I've never been able to do it. [audio trouble]

DERKS: When you got the thermals,that must throw people all over the place?

LUCAS: Yeah, there's, wind is--in a training jump, and even a combat jump it 00:14:00could be, the wind is very critical. It's a safety factor in the states. We've had jumps cancelled because the winds were too strong. Not only coming down, because of maneuverability limitations. When you're on the ground the chute, you know, will carry you; drag you. The standard procedure in those days was to run around the chute. Just run around and get on the upwind side. They trained you if you were being dragged, how to right yourself, throw your feet over your shoulders pull you up. But when you're in combat and loaded down with equipment, you can't even hardly get out of the seat. People pull you out of the seat before you leave the plane and help you in the plane. The training was real thorough and excellent because that's what gives you confidence.

DERKS: So you can control your back and your front, so it you're heading toward 00:15:00a shed then the most you can do is land before you get to the shed?

LUCAS: Most of the times you just close your eyes and put your feet out in front of you. If you're coming down on a tree, you cross your legs and put your hands up in front of your face. In those days, you're very limited in what you could do. I remember we made a, after we got back from Europe, we made a jump up in Long Island, with some war bonds, I went through a series of war bond jumps. It was on a Sunday morning. I think it was Hempstead we were jumping at, and the Air Force base was supposed to be in preparation for attack and they were supposed to defend it. I came down through a green house. Green house in, I think it was Hempstead. Sunday morning and people were coming out of church and we were all over the city. When we went out of the airplane, we were over water. 00:16:00But you see the wind direction, things like that, we just missed everything. I come in in the green house, so I just brought my legs up and when I hit I kicked the glass out and I didn't get cut or anything. Somebody got a bill for a greenhouse roof, I imagine.

DERKS: How fast are you moving when you hit the ground?

LUCAS: Oh again, that depends on the air density. That's why night jumps are so nice. The air density is thicker. You can hit hard and you can hit easy, stand up. I was fortunate. I never broke a bone or sprained an ankle or anything. Other people weren't as fortunate.

DERKS: Even on the training jumps, were there casualties?

LUCAS: Yes, sprained ankles usually and things like that; maybe a broken leg. Part of the training was, we spent a lot of time learning how to tumble, how to 00:17:00handle hard ground. And I still do it. Recently I stepped off a ladder, ladder got shaky and I sort of fell and I hit the ground and I just rolled and these old bones didn't break. It just comes natural to me now. The training was real thorough. When you got done you had confidence in that parachute.

DERKS: Did you ever jump with equipment before you went in? The first time, I mean in training.

LUCAS: You get assigned to a unit. I went to Camp McCall, N.C. That was an artillery unit. There we took advanced training. We had the seventy-five pack howitzers. We would drop the pack howitzers in a battery and then we'd jump after it. They're French seventy-five. We'd go along the road. We'd move 'em, we 00:18:00didn't have trucks, we had harnesses and the crew would pull the gun and the sergeant would ride the tube. Give it balance. We'd come to a swamp, we'd take it apart, carry it through the swamp, put it back together, things like that.

DERKS: It would go down in chutes as well?

LUCAS: Yeah. We'd drop a battery, you know, and you get on the ground and you'd have one gun would be missing a whee, another gun would be missing a trail, so you wouldn't have your full complement of weapons. And that was the big problem in those days. They did some exploration at McCall of putting them in the gliders and then the crew would jump out of the glider and then they'd release the glider and land it with a crew. Well, most of us who were jumping out of 00:19:00C-47s and you had the prop blast opening your chute, when you jump out of the glider, there isn't any of that. We'd count our one thousand, two thousand, three thousand and we all pull our reserve because there was a longer delay of the chute opening. We made about ten--twelve jumps that way trying to find different ways of doing it with a gun. I never heard anything about it afterwards. Later on they went to 105s and 155s, heavy drop, we dropped the whole gun, the whole weapon all at once, and the truck to pull it. That's what we used in Korea.

DERKS: How do you pack a chute?

LUCAS: They have platforms and you put the jeep on it, for example. You tie the jeep down. They have special straps to tie it down. You take the steering wheel 00:20:00off. Tie it down. Then they had a box we added to the back seat of a jeep, and they put the parachutes in there. And then we loaded it on to, I think it was C-119s or 116s, on rollers. Then you tie it in the back and you just cut that and away it goes with the parachutes. And then the crew would jump out after it.

DERKS: All through your experience, did you always pack your own chute?

LUCAS: No, just after the first three jumps we packed them.

DERKS: So they had chute packers and you trusted your chute packer?

LUCAS: That was one of the trainings you could go in, you could be a rigger, or you could be a demolitionist. I went to demolition school after that. Then I went to pathfinder school after that.

DERKS: Tell me about pathfinder school?

LUCAS: They had a radio beacon in a box and an aluminum folding pole. On top of the pole they had an infrared light. The beacons were turned to--they were directional finders on airplanes. The pathfinder jumped and was supposed to set it in the drop zone. We'd have like a battalion; you'd have three of 'em; first battalion, second, third battalion. One may have a coded signal, a dot-dash, and the other one would have B C. Then when the planes came in, they would come in on those beacons. We had a little piece of plastic you'd hold up to the horizon, and you could see that beacon giving the code. The key to that is for the Pathfinders to get on the ground, get to their proper location, set it up. We'd 00:22:00jump sometimes three times a day. Pathfinders generally got lot more jumps than normally. You had to have, after you graduated you went pay jump, I think, every three months. That's what most of 'em had.

DERKS: Did you jump pretty low?

LUCAS: In the United States, I think 800 feet. was the lowest they let us jump for safety reasons. Every time you cut these things down there's a greater element of risk. Injuries you get are broken legs and things, and you can have some deaths. You have time at 800 to pull a reserve, if you do what you're trained to do. You don't count to five thousand. You count to three thousand and pull.

DERKS: Do the Pathfinders go in by themselves?

LUCAS: No, they put the Pathfinders in a plane as a unit and drop us in ahead of 00:23:00time. Normally we were on the ground maybe three--four hours before the main invasion.

DERKS: But it was a whole unit, it wasn't just one person?

LUCAS: Yeah. The zones, you have three of them in a battalion, you're all in a similar area. You wouldn't take, like in Normandy, you wouldn't take Pathfinders from 506 and the 508, put 'em into one plane cause that's a risk, the plane getting that far. The combat jumps, we used to jump about 400 feet.

DERKS: What's the difference jumping 400 feet as opposed to 800 feet?

LUCAS: Maybe one Hail Mary. It's fast, bang, bang. You're on the ground. You couldn't pull your reserve. A lot of us would have left 'em off but you were so 00:24:00tied up with the straps and that, you couldn't get it off.

DERKS: How much time are we talking about?

LUCAS: Oh gee. I don't really know; real fast. It opens and bang, you get a chance to look down and you're coming in.

DERKS: Like ten seconds?

LUCAS: Yeah. See, when you're coming down you have, when you leave the plane and the chute opens, you look down you have no indication of falling. It's all relative. When I was going up, I knew I was going up. They're coming down, I could tell. But when I looked at the ground, I couldn't tell. So when you get near the ground, it comes up pretty fast. You realize that. It's not frightening or anything else. It just gives you time to prepare yourself for a landing. If you jump from 400, if you're coming into a building, you don't have a chance to 00:25:00navigate at all. Again, I have to relate those chutes back in '41 & '42 & '43.

DERKS: How long were you at Pathfinder training, how long did that take?

LUCAS: Oh I think we were there about four weeks.

DERKS: Where are we at that point in'42?

LUCAS: Yeah. '42. And you just went back to your unit. I did that after I got out; graduate. Then I went to Camp McCall. Camp McCall, we lived in wood huts. I remember when we moved in, we walked in the barracks; the grass inside the barracks was eight inches tall, coming through the cracks; wood stoves; coal box out in front. We had to cut the grass in the winter time. It's the back end of 00:26:00Ft. Bragg. I didn't realize it yet that I was assigned to artillery; Airborne artillery unit. Then we went through a series of training, went through infantry basic training. Everybody goes through the training. Since I came from an armored unit, I never had the infantry basic. Some of the other people came from infantry units. Some came from signal units. I was looking at those orders I found last night--so we all went through infantry basic, advanced basic, platoon and squad activities, and mortars and heavy weapons, and rifle range. I think during my tour in the Army, I went, and when the Army doesn't have anything for you to do they start you through basic training again. It gets boring, gets boring. If you concentrate on the exciting parts of it, it's tolerable. If you 00:27:00focus on the things you don't like, of course, you're gonna be miserable. KP. But we were trained well. We got a lotta weapons training. I liked the weapons. I was good at taking 'em apart and putting them together; fairly good on the range. I just found that things were exciting, but when it got boring, it was boring.

DERKS: You got to do that blindfolded?

LUCAS: Yeah, we did with the M-1's. The M-1 was a real reliable weapon and it's fairly simple. The machine gun, 30 caliber machine gun. When I was in the armored unit, I was a gunner, I was in a recon unit, and was a gunner, 50 caliber machine gunner. And the gun weighed about half my weight. Then we went 00:28:00through the various basics and then we were assigned to a Replacement Center, and we shipped out. And that was the last I saw--

DERKS: Was that the reserve chute on the front?

LUCAS: Yeah, that's the reserve.

DERKS: Is it smaller than the regular chute?

LUCAS: Yeah, it's smaller. I'm just guessing, if I recall 28 feet or something like that. I think the other was thirty-two. We used to joke about it, we'd unload the truck and everybody'd grab their parachute and they'd say, "Well, that's an officer's chute, don't take that one." Because an officer's chute was bigger, and they came down slower than the enlisted men, but they're all the 00:29:00same except the reserve chute.

DERKS: So there wasn't really an officer chute?

LUCAS: No.

DERKS: You were sent to the replacement unit?

LUCAS: Yeah, we went out to the New York area. For the life of me I can't remember where it was; small place for deportation. We were replacement, went to North Africa and then we ended up in Sicily, I think when the war got down to Messina. Sicily was just closing up. I ended up in the 504th parachute infantry. When I was in there, I ran in a bar in Messina after it was taken, I ran into a student from West High. We were on the track team together, in Messina. From there we went to the Invasion of Italy.

DERKS: Was that your first jump, the invasion of Italy?

LUCAS: Yeah, combat jump, yeah. We jumped at a place called Avoleno or something like that. It was where the highways were coming down to the beach and we were supposed to hold or blow a bridge. It was a fairly rugged jump. It was mountain country, pretty rugged. When you jump low like that, you don't have time to worry about it. We held the unit for, I think, about ten days or two weeks; took some casualties. Of course the Germans wanted to take the bridge and blow it. So when they got on the beach, they got reinforcements were cleared to come up and 00:31:00relieve us. That's when I got shot the first time; sent me to a hospital.

DERKS: Holding the bridge?

LUCAS: Yeah. Near the end, we were there, I went back to the hospital and was in a medical unit and the unit went on and--then I was, went up to Ireland and I was assigned to the 508th Parachute Infantry; in Londonderry. From there we went to England, and we were in Nottingham, England. That was our base camp. We stayed there, were there when we went into Normandy on June 6th.

DERKS: So you just had the one jump in Italy? How were you wounded?

LUCAS: It was shot from a mortar, mortar shrapnel. It wasn't real bad but enough to take me out and hospitalize me for a while. They had some minor surgery and rehabilitation.

DERKS: I know this was my sense, and I'm sure a lot of people share it, but from movies and so on you think that bullets are the big problem, but most people were wounded by shrapnel.

LUCAS: Grenades and shrapnel, mortar and artillery. The Germans, they had that 88, and they could shoot that 88 with the accuracy of a rifle and it was fast and you knew the crack of the sound. In Normandy, I was walking down a road and 00:33:00the 88 landed behind me and knocked me down, and several others, right on our face. We didn't get wounded. Got up and my back hurt. I didn't think much about it. Found out years later when I came home, I go to have a chest X-ray and I'd always get a--my doctor would get a notice saying I should come in for further exploration, and it was all full of gravel, pieces of gravel that penetrated my clothing and into my skin. And I'd get a boil back there or something, I guess it's all out now. They were very accurate, very powerful.

DERKS: So that was just a percussion wave that knocked you down? When you were flying into Italy to jump, was it pretty different going in on a mission?

LUCAS: No, not really. You were, like training jumps, they'd pack ya, when we were training we jump with heavy equipment. Our rifles, they put the M-1's apart and they put 'em in a case. We didn't jump with mortars or BARs. We carried equipment, gas mask and that, but when you go into combat, you got all your equipment and then as you get on the plane they'll shove a mortar round down a jacket, they'll shove anyplace they got room. When you get on the ground you just dumped it at one spot. You couldn't get in the airplane by yourself; they had to help you in. And when you get the chute on you walk hunched over. You couldn't straighten up. But once that chute opens, the straps stretch and are loosened. You have to have your chute tight, even on a practice jump. Otherwise 00:35:00it scraps your skin; it takes a layer of skin off.

DERKS: Do you land heavier when you're weighed down with all that stuff?

LUCAS: Oh sure. It limits you on what you can do; flexibility with your body, and tumbling. You just have to close your eyes and take it. You put your feet up and hit with your feet rather than hit with your body. It makes a difference. Getting out of the plane, you don't have the agility, you sort of step out; fall out just to get out. Of course, when you're in an airplane you could be subject to ground fire when you're low. When we went from Sicily to Italy, the Navy shot down a number of our planes thinking they were German planes. I didn't hear much about it, too much about it, but they lost a number of planes from the Navy's artillery.

DERKS: How many went in on that jump in Italy?

LUCAS: I have no idea the number of planes.

DERKS: How many people in a plane?

LUCAS: In those days we were running about twenty-four. Then you would have your bundles with your ammunition and dynamite, or explosive. Extra rounds and they'd put these under the planes, under the C-47s. The crew chief would release those when you went out. When you got on the ground you'd round up your bundles and they were canisters, you know, metal canisters and you had to take 'em apart. But we did jump with our rifles. In those days they were carrying submachine guns. After a while, I think the submachine guns went out. Because we had other, the little carbine, 30 caliber; it was semi-automatic. We used to make them 00:37:00semi-automatic by filing the [?] down. We did that ourselves before the Army changed it. But it was real tricky, you never knew if it was going to go one shot or a whole clip.

DERKS: When you went into Italy and held that bridge, how many of you were there at the bridge?

LUCAS: Oh man, there was a battalion, I think, close to a battalion.

DERKS: How many is that?

LUCAS: Well, it's three companies. And you had your medics, and you have your weapons, mortars, machine gun units; standard demolitions. What we did was put 00:38:00explosives around the bridge; preparation. If it looked like we had to pull back and the Germans were going to take it, we'd blow it. Preferably to hold it because the units were moving up. It would be a barrier if it wasn't there for advanced troops as well as the enemy. We were fighting the German paratroopers there at the bridge too. We took some prisoners and they were German paratroops. They were wounded but it was--first combat jump, sound of a bullet, you know. When you're nineteen, it changes reality and life. It's really a test to your training. I think that was one of the Airborne's, I used to tell my parents, my mother worried, and I told her that I think that one of the reasons I went is 00:39:00the training was excellent. They trained you to work as a team and also to function independently. I think that gives confidence to the soldier. It was frightening. The gunfire, and coming out some planes were hit and fire. In Holland, when I was in one, our plane was hit in Holland. You have no trouble telling the men to get out of the airplane. They get out fast. The ones that were lost, I understand, they were shot down over the Mediterranean and, of course, a paratrooper with all his heavy equipment in water, you're helpless. The harness shrinks on you, you're trained to get out of it before you hit the 00:40:00water, get rid of your helmet. Your helmet is tied down when you hit. We never had any water jumps, but when we used to jump at Benning, along the Chattahoochee, once in a while somebody would drift in. Other areas later on in Korea we'd jump, they'd have boats out in the harbor to pick up anybody that landed in the water.

DERKS: That would be quite a tug if your helmet was on when you hit the water.

LUCAS: Well at night jump, one of the things, that's the way you find out, if you're not sure you're over water, you take your helmet off and drop it and listen for the splash. But you have to be out of your harness before you hit that water or you go right to the bottom. In those days we didn't have the quick release harness, where you hit the button, you had to unhook the straps and the reserve chute is hooked here but also a belt goes around in the reserve 00:41:00chute and buckles over here. When you're coming down at 400 feet, you haven't got time to get out of that stuff.

DERKS: When you were in Nottingham, did you know that this invasion was coming?

LUCAS: Yeah, when they--we went through training there too. Keep us busy we had options of doing things, go demolition and things like that. I signed up to go and pack the pathfinder. We went up to Lester airbase and did our training there. Some of them went up later on. I went to a, they had a British parachute school and we had one. We exchanged men. I went to the British parachute school 00:42:00and we jumped out of balloons. It was about seven days. They went to ours. That's how they kept us busy. Otherwise we went into Nottingham. The soldier's duty is in town.

DERKS: Got in trouble?

LUCAS: Not too much, not too much. Airborne, they're a pretty cocky bunch, their jump boots and that, but not too often. We had more trouble at Fort Benning, Georgia, when Patton and his armor units were there. Of course we were just new. Other than that it wasn't too bad.

DERKS: So tell me about Normandy?

LUCAS: They take you to the airport and they have briefing tables, and we spent all of our time looking at our missions. Although they'd give you the broad perspective, they focus on what your company's gonna do, what your battalion's gonna do. Things like that. They put you in hangers and all the cots are in there. It's a real boring time, other than the sand tables you got a chance to write letters and you got a chance to go to mass or go to church. It really was boring. Got time to think about the situation, sharpen your knives up, clean your rifle, clean your rifle, clean your--just nothing else to do. We spent a lot of time on sand tables, drop zones and assembly, which is the key to effective Airborne, is the assembly. The Pathfinders, they went through with us 00:44:00on the drop zones so we repetitiously went through the drop zones. You try to familiarize with the maps. They had huge sand tables with houses and farms. Our mission was, I think it was with the 506th around Sainte-Mère-Église ; south of Sainte-Mère-Église , in that area. We pathfinders landed up alright, fairly well, everybody was off but we got ourselves oriented. When the other troops came in, they dropped some of them in the swamps. Before the invasion, the photographs showed that this was just a swamp but between the planning and the actual job, the Germans raised the water level and it was sixteen feet deep. 00:45:00Quite a few of our men in our unit drowned in the swamps. So we took casualties that way. We really, they were spread all over the country. It just did not go as good as some of the other units. So we functioned independently. You had your clicker, little clicker they gave you, you click it and somebody else hears you they click back. That's when you find out that a German rifle, when he opens the bolt and closes it, sounds just like that clicker. Take a couple of casualties, you learn. You don't click too often. You just move around and you don't do anything aggressive. You just try to keep a low silhouette. Occasionally you meet somebody else and you got three, you got four, you got five. Some of the 00:46:00units were fourteen days later, they were still working independently, groups of fifteen--twenty. You were either with a group, they were taking lots of casualties. This is all hedgerow country and that is unique. Hundred yards field of fire; one hedgerow. Tanks couldn't even go through--these hedgerows had been there for 600 years. Cross roads and hedgerows, you blow a hole in it, take one, take a hundred yards, take a hundred yards, take a hundred yards and then you get to some open country and you got a little hill and you take a hill. That's all. You're on the ground and a paratrooper is just an infantry soldier. Fire-movement is the fundamental. You could be fighting a German enemy, and he's on one side of the hedgerow and you're on the other side.

DERKS: What was the plan? How was it supposed to work?

LUCAS: Our mission was to secure Sainte-Mère-Église. There were some causeways, we were supposed to blow the causeways to keep the troops down. I carried a lot of dynamite. Composition C-2, you put it in bags that are strapped to your legs. You pull it and release it before, you know, if you see some parachute jumps you'll see these bags swinging down below. That's usually some heavy equipment. We were supposed to blow the bridges, that was our mission, and then take Sainte-Mère-Église. I'm trying to think of the river, but there was a river there that went out to the ocean, and by taking Sainte-Mère-Église, we would secure that river. The rest of it was holding roads, cross roads to keep 00:48:00armored units and transportation to the beachhead. Giving the troops on the beach ample time to get off the beach and get some movement inland. This is what we fought until we ran into some division coming from the beach.

DERKS: So you were headed toward the beach?

LUCAS: We were headed toward our mission, Sainte-Mère-Église, these were the cities that we were, Airborne was supposed to hold. I think there was 505, 506, 508 were in that division unit there that took, and I think 504 was in it too.

DERKS: You weren't moving toward the invasion, you were holding areas--

LUCAS: People didn't know, we didn't know where we were. You spent time pretty 00:49:00much trying to get somebody that was oriented and knew which way it was. You could go north, you'd go north. The maps we had were just American maps that we had. If you came to a significant geographical point and could get yourself oriented, then you could get a direction of movement. There were the hedgerows. These are small rows between the hedgerows. Sometimes an armored tank coming down would have to jockey back and forth to make a turn. So if you get on the road, the Germans had these covered too, so you'd have to sneak across the road, go down in the ditch. You couldn't go through these hedgerows. You just couldn't go through 'em. They were just barriers, natural barriers.

DERKS: When you went in, you went in as a Pathfinder?

LUCAS: Yeah.

DERKS: That was at night?

LUCAS: They came in at daylight.

DERKS: So you were on the ground just watching them come in?

LUCAS: Yeah. They were scattered all over. They got together in units, and then units got together until you got a significant number of men that you could take more aggressive action against the enemy. You could at least hold your position. Casualties, you just couldn't do anything with casualties. If they were able to walk, you could take them along but if you had to carry somebody it would take two people to carry 'em. You can't run and dodge, you'd end up with two more casualties. That was a known fact. You just have to take care of yourself. That's what you were trained to do.

DERKS: Did you link up with a pretty large group?

LUCAS: We got in with a group of about fifteen more. There were some officers there. We just start getting a little more aggressive. One of the favorite things we do, we'd cut German communication wires and then, they had a lot of motorcycles running around and we'd put it across the road. They were all messengers, and we'd take the messages or pass it on to our intelligence. Course none of us in our unit could speak German. We'd come to these small houses, a lot of 'em were all vacated. We'd scrounge around for food. After all the excitement was over, even when you're scared, you get hungry. I don't think 00:52:00there was a live chicken in all of Normandy or a live pig. But they had a lot of big rabbits, big rabbits. Man the rabbits were fifteen pounds. We ate a lot of rabbits. But you had trouble building a fire to cook 'em.

DERKS: Were there any civilians?

LUCAS: Oh yeah, there were some around but they would always hide. They get in the middle of a fire fight, you know. Germans occupied the houses and we'd blow the houses up with bazookas and have fire fights; typical combat. Then there'd be German casualties and we couldn't take German casualties. Armor units were the ones that were difficult because we really--those big Tiger tanks. They're huge. Fortunately they were slow. They were obstructed by the hedgerows too. 00:53:00They had to stay to the roads. After we got the units and when the landing forces from the beach came through, we had land mines and things that we could, we could do. You can't jump with land mines. You use hand grenades and you use the bazookas, you know, but they're not very formidable weapon against a Tiger tank.

DERKS: How long was it before you hooked up with the invasion force.

LUCAS: I think we were, about fourteen days maybe, oh no, maybe it wasn't, maybe about eight days. But we were fairly close, once they cleared that beach, they made good headway. It got to the point we were a little worried because as the 00:54:00troops from the beach move forward, their division, the Air Force was bombing ahead of 'em. We were trying to move towards them. You're caught between the Germans and our own forces. It got a little risky. We were pretty, no shaving, nothing, no baths. Hungry, living off--what little rations we carried were gone.

DERKS: Then the Germans must have started coming back over?

LUCAS: Yeah, and they start building up their forces. They were fighting on many fronts along that beach. All the way up to the north where the British Airborne units were. And all the way down, so they were stretched. In retrospect if you read what the Germans said, they had some doubts about it too. And they were 00:55:00slow to react, which was in our favor. Even though they know you're there, they didn't know where we were any more than we knew where we were. That goes back to the fundamentals of Airborne training, they teach you to work independently and as a unit.

DERKS: Did you have German reinforcements coming up behind you as well?

LUCAS: Yes. Our mission was to hold these cities until the troops on the beach come up through and take over. That was the end of our mission. We did a little work. We got into a unit, and since we came that way they had some of us do the scouting work up ahead of them. That got a little risky. When we went through it there was nothing there but when we went back, you know-- So we just sort of 00:56:00goofed off and got around them after a while, one or two of those missions was enough. You survived this much you didn't want to do it again. They had their own troops there. We told them everything that was there when we were there. But we just sort of reported back in and we, they sent us back to Nottingham, first part of August.

DERKS: So they're telling you to go scout this and you're telling them to do it yourselves?

LUCAS: We did tell 'em that. We did it but then we start, more of our troops came through. They got heavier and heavier equipment. The Germans were more formidable then. They got organized and had an idea where we were going. It's not difficult, you follow the roads. We had all that armor and trucks and supplies, it's not like an open desert where you can just run around. We just, 00:57:00our mission was over, our officer said, "Hey come on, let's go." One of 'em was Private Ryan and that bothered me. The other one was, that one they had on the 101st Airborne, I can't think of the name of it right now.

DERKS: Was it Band of Brothers?

LUCAS: Yeah, Band of Brothers. That one there, they got too realistic.

DERKS: It just all came back?

LUCAS: Yeah. Lot of it I forgot. Really, I forgot. And of course, part of it, I did find out--I gave up hunting when I came back. I was raised up in the little town of Markesan; 800 people. I lived in Milwaukee, but I spent all my time with my grandmother. Every holiday, every summer I was running around the farms, jumping out of haylofts, riding cows. You know what I mean; unsupervised really. We used to hunt, my father and my grandfather. I just gave up hunting. I lost 00:58:00interest. I have shotguns at home and rifles and German pistols. I clean 'em and put 'em away. It wasn't til about two years ago, I was up Michigan, I have a home up there on Lake Superior, and some friends came up; Steelhead fishing, and they brought their pistols along. We're thirty-nine miles from town. It was raining and they were standing in the garage shooting out, and I came out of the kitchen door and I got a smell of that cordite, and everything just flashed right back; just flashed back. And I think that was the trigger. Some people it's what you see--your senses is a trigger and that's what really triggered it; that smell of cordite.

DERKS: So you had had it put away?

LUCAS: I didn't know why, but that cordite really triggered it; everything; just like you had a motion picture, just came back. Some of the things that weren't very attractive that you try to forget. It came back.

DERKS: Were you able to deal with that?

LUCAS: Oh sure. I just knew what it was. I just knew what it was.

DERKS: Like it waited fifty years.

LUCAS: Fifty years. It was the smell of cordite. Probably unconsciously I knew when I pulled that trigger of a hunting gun, you get cordite, the smell of cordite.

DERKS: So you didn't know that's why you had quit hunting.

LUCAS: But they were pretty realistic movies; real realistic. Even the previews they had on TV, I didn't notice but my wife said that I was sleeping, having 01:00:00trouble sleeping; restless, more or less. I didn't have any nightmares or anything; just restlessness. It would come on and I'd change the channel. Just change the channel. Those were the only two. Some of the others, they're so unrealistic. I see things that aren't realistic. Soldiers will. You desensitize. Those two movies were pretty realistic.

DERKS: Did you make it to Sainte-Mère-Église ?

LUCAS: We got there. I'm trying to think, is it the Doubs River. They put us on a barge and took out to the channel and then we went to England. Bused us from 01:01:00Southern England, trucked us up to Nottingham from Southern England.

DERKS: Then what?

LUCAS: We went back into training. We have a combat unit. One morning they came along and said, "Anybody can type?" I raised my hand and they put me up in Headquarters typing records for death and missing in action. Had a pass, I could go to town when I wanted to. We got all done I still had my pass. Everybody'd go out training, I'd go into town. That got pretty boring; Nottingham all alone. So I went back and signed up, and that's when I went up to that British school for Airborne. We went back and did some refresher on demolition training and mortar 01:02:00training. We didn't have a lot of rifle ranges around there so we're right on the edge of Nottingham. There was a castle there on a hill and a big brick wall around it; must be eight--ten miles around it. It had a lagoon. I remember we were getting ready to go to Nottingham and we were right in, like Sherwood Forest. Tents, in the middle of the night your tent was shaking and you get out and the deer feeding. King's deer would get their antlers caught in the tent ropes. Some of our replacements on guard, they'd see something move, they'd say, Halt. Ask for a password and bang and we'd have venison available. We had beautiful, and Sundays, there's a big meadow there, and the people would have dog training, with sheep dogs. They'd have the sheep and the pens. We'd just sit there for hours, lots of us, and just watch that Sunday afternoon; those dogs 01:03:00work, just beautiful to watch. One of the things getting ready for Nottingham, they wanted to find out about life preservers. They had these waistband life preservers with CO2 cartridges in 'em. The lieutenant took some of us down on this lagoon and they had a boat. Sort of shaky boat, and we put on a combat load and then we got out of the boat and we was supposed to float, and we'd go right to the bottom. And they'd pull you up and when we got to three, three of those vests, you just sort of equal your balance. I don't know what happened to him but he just kept shaking his head so we didn't have any anymore. But we went into Holland, our unit, none of us had these belt life preservers. I think they may have issued 'em, we left 'em laying someplace because it didn't do any good.

DERKS: Was that what was next, Market Gardens?

LUCAS: September 17th. That one I remember. My father was down in East Bourne at that time. He was a major, assigned to the British. He used to come up on weekends and he said to me that he got to London, coming up. He got off the train in London, looked up and he saw five thousand planes circling in the air. He just turned around and went back. He knew nobody would be in camp up there. Our training, you were limited, lot of reinforcements. We were combat experienced. We had replacements. We trained replacements; did the things that get us ready for another mission. We were supposed to have one in August, I just 01:05:00remembered it. Patton was going north. He got up in Belgium. I can't think of the name of it. He got up in Belgium and the troops couldn't keep up with him. They were thinking of dropping the Airborne, you know, ahead of him or with him so he'd have fresh troops. We were at the airport, sand tables and everything. Some of the units were already in the air and they called it off. They had fields of fire like 3000 yards; fields of fire, lot of anti-aircraft, but they called that off. It was end of August, first part of September. Tournai, Belgium, was where it was supposed to be. Tournai, Belgium. Then we went back to 01:06:00our camp in Nottingham, and then we went up for the September 17th when we went back to the airport, in the hangars, the sand tables and everything else. The Tournai one was a daylight jump, too. This was Sunday afternoon, September 17th; nice, bright, sunny day. We went into Holland. We landed outside of Nijmegen, right near the German - Holland border. The Waal and Maas Rivers go down and separate the two. We landed. There were German troops and we landed right in the middle of German troops. No large force, but there was gunfire. Then we 01:07:00assembled. I came down right next to a well and a farmhouse; right next to a well and I was just able to get some cover because it was wide open Holland, pretty flat. I heard somebody in the house yell, "Get in here." I had a straight razor. Parachutes were hard to get out of. I had a straight razor I got from my grandfather who was a barber. I kept that in my shirt pocket up here. So I just, with the razor, cut those four risers and take off with a harness on. I got in the house. We took quite a few prisoners and secured the drop zone. Then we marched to Nijmegen through a forest, and it was like going through Northern Wisconsin; pine forest. They didn't have the dikes or any of that; farmland. We 01:08:00spent the next three days fighting at Nijmegen. The mission was to hold that bridge. The Germans wanted to hold it. They were trying to blow it. We got it secured. We spent several days. Then we went back, I think three days later, and had to re-take the drop zone because the gliders were coming in. The gliders came in and then we went back to Nijmegen again, so we spent, oh--we were in Holland until the first part of October.

DERKS: That didn't go the way it was supposed to, did it?

LUCAS: Well, no. As I recall from the briefing, this was a British operation. It 01:09:00was commanded by a British general. The briefing was that we were gonna land in some heavy, concentrated forces on that side of the river. What happened is, during the interim, the Germans moved their forces on the other side, to Arnhem. And that's what the British landed into. The British jumped in Arnhem and we had jumped at Nijmegen so the British got in that, so Arnhem, you know, they took very heavy casualties there. I got shot around the 20th of September; went to a field hospital and I was there about a week. I went back--.

DERKS: How did you get wounded that time? Was it shrapnel again?

LUCAS: It was in a firefight. It was a grenade. Or a mortar, I'm not sure. It was pretty close. They sent me to a field hospital in Nijmegen. I was there about ten days; went back to duty. In the Airborne, if you can handle a gun, you go back to duty. Then I went back to duty. We did a lot of patrolling. We were right on the border, Reichwall, I think it was; the border. We'd go out on 01:11:00patrols at night. Come back and then lay in the barn. We took over some farmhouses and slept in the hay. It was getting cold. We had light snows. We were getting pretty low on food. We would scrounge in apple orchards. They'd have green apples, green tomatoes. Dug into a cabbage field and you could always--I can't eat purple cabbage to this day. Or you steal. I remember one time I was out scrounging around in a couple of houses and I found a chest in the attic. It was full of barley. And I filled my pockets and my helmets and we would cook the barley in water and we'd throw in some cabbage, you know, in our steel helmets. We never had any salt, and so British Ben Crarey [?] used to come through where our line was. We scrounged with them, and traded them something. 01:12:00They had toothpaste in a tube; powder it was, I think, ninety percent sodium, so we put that in there. But the trouble is, when it started boiling, you got a head on it like a beer. But we ate it. It was warm; we didn't have any warm food at all. I think I was probably down, when I went to England to the hospital, the last time I got shot, I think I was down to about ninety-eight pounds. The doctor wouldn't let me have any water until after I ate. They said, your stomach shrinks. We were all that way, but I came back to duty. We crossed the bridge at night at Nijmegen. We got across the bridge at Nijmegen, going toward Arnhem. We were in a Duck, a 2 1/2 ton Duck. They were transporting us and, we, we were one 01:13:00of the last ones in the line. We got to the bridge and there was something going on the other end of the bridge. So the MP's stopped us. When we got the clearance to go, they sent us to the right. At the time an artillery barrage was coming in and it was hitting the cemetery. When we went by it, it was disrupting all the graves. You had a strong odor of decomposing bodies. Well it was a nice sunny day, so we went up this road and I was sitting on the front of the 2 and 1/2 ton truck with another fella had a 30 caliber machine gun and they were, oh maybe, the rest of the platoon was in the back. This is where we sort of hit the 01:14:00dike area. The roads were built up. Apple orchards and open fields. We were going along and I looked over my shoulder and there was a farmhouse about 500 yards away on the little knoll. Somebody come running out of that farmhouse, I looked, waving their arms, yelling. I didn't pay much attention. I just turned around and I looked up the road. Just when I looked up the road, the truck stopped and there was a tank in the middle of the road; German tank. Oh maybe 150 yards away. Tanks are knocked out; I thought it was knocked out. Then the turret gun started turning and I knew it wasn't knocked out. I jumped off the right side and the machine gunner did on the right side of the road. The rest of 'em thought we were getting apples in the apple orchard. They stood up and a machine gun opened up and killed a lot of 'em. I'm laying on the side of the 01:15:00ditch in the sunshine and I had a BAR, I was carrying a Browning Automatic at that time. I just happened to look over my shoulder, and along the ditch was a whole line of foxholes. A bunch of German soldiers jumped up, they were in their underwear; you know what I mean? They were about fifty feet away, so I just turned around, the machine guns on those tanks was covering the road, so I just swung around with the BAR and gave a burst of it. One of them was shot and the rest of them put their head down in there. Somebody on the other side of the road wanted to know who was over there. I just yelled, "Two of us!" So they said, "Come on over." I told these Germans, "Kommen Zei Heir." Three of them came up, their hands in the air. I got in between them and the rest of them and I yelled out, "We're sending the Germans over." When they start going over, we 01:16:00ran over with 'em, got on the other side of the road.

DERKS: Figuring the tank would hold its fire?

LUCAS: Yeah, they did. They held their fire. Here we were in this other ditch and we had to work back. In retrospect, that farmhouse was an outpost. They came down to try and stop us. We didn't know anything about it. They misdirected us at the bridge. I found a newspaper clipping later on. Somebody took a picture of that tank in that road. It was in Newsweek or something. We were on the other side of the road and then we started getting into a firefight, from ground troops down through the orchard. So we wanted to make our way back to the outpost. It was a straight ditch. Then it came to this crossroad, the road went 01:17:00across this way. The mortars start coming down that ditch. Right down that ditch. That's when I got great respect for the German mortars. They hit that corner. They put two rounds in that corner and they made a ninety degree right turn that went down the other ditch. And while I was standing there looking at it, I got a piece of shrapnel, sent me back to the hospital.

DERKS: For the third time? Where were you getting the shrapnel?

LUCAS: In my stomach, in my legs, the shoulders. It wasn't real bad. They dug it out, gave it a couple of stitches and then sent me back, pennicilin. It just took you off the line for a while; had a warm meal. The body does wonders to you, and the mind, you know. You don't feel any of that. You don't feel, if you 01:18:00get hit with a bullet, it knocks you down. The impact, you know you've been knocked down. You don't feel any pain. I've seen men with their, holding their intestines in and walking to the aid station, you know what I mean. At that point in time, it's when the medics start working on you is when you get the pain. Like the doctors say, I'm not going try and hurt you. That sets your mind up that there's gonna be pain. We all carried in our first aid kits, we had morphine. You could really ease the pain a little bit. But we got on the wrong road and pulled back and got set up with our unit; the right one. Then on about, it was just a matter of firefight between the Germans and the British were holding that, we held the bridge and we got the bridge. I think it was in 01:19:00October, middle of October, went out on night patrol. I got shot again while on night patrol. What we'd do is go out, we'd try to get out on these low, lowlands, you know. You get out there and you make some noise, yell, you want them to open up with a machine gun or something, then you can plot it. Because you were walking on the dikes that were built up, you're limited to your access. They were easy to mine and booby trap, so you had to walk slow, you know, and be careful. This one night, one of the officers, who was leading the patrol, we 01:20:00were waiting at a ditch, he said, "Now go out and check." He came back in about fifteen minutes and he said, "There's nobody out there." Well, we went about 100 yards and some Germans were laying on the side of the dike and one of them had a machine gun, like a BAR, and when he pulled the trigger, it got me in the left leg. He couldn't depress the bolt butt any farther otherwise he'd got me in the chest or someplace else. I reacted and shot him with a BAR, and I rolled down in the ditch and I didn't remember much after that. I woke up in the morning, daylight. This was, there was a thin layer of ice and I was in a hole with a couple of dead cows and this German soldier. Then I'd pass out. Finally then, I 01:21:00don't remember it was the day I crawled back up on the dike and crawled out, went to our base point. I didn't know the password or anything. So they carried me back to the hospital and I went to England and from there, I was in England, and I came home.

DERKS: They figured you had enough. You probably felt the same way.

LUCAS: Well, they didn't break any bones but tore all the muscle out of the back of my leg and they did some preliminary surgery in England and then sent me back. I went back to duty. I went back to duty in Fort Benning. That's when we started doing these war bond jumps and things like that.

DERKS: We talked to somebody else who said they were put into a unit that was doing sham battles. Tell me about that.

LUCAS: Well, we had those when I was in the armored unit. When I was in the armored unit, we were on Tennessee maneuvers when I got my orders to go to the Airborne. They had mock battles, the blues and the reds and the umpires. So when we came back, we did the same thing. I was on the tour with the War Bonds and some of the others, and they were pretty hard on 'em. They got a little nasty and dirty. These combat veterans, you know, they had a little fun with it. They'd like to capture the officers, make 'em look sort of dumb; infiltrate. It 01:23:00was quite a break, it's hard to take things serious back in camp again. But the training, you know, when it came to the serious training, a lot of them were cadre instructors and things like that. They had points, and these fellas are just hanging around to get points. I think I had, they were letting them out with about fifty points and I think I had ninety-some points and I couldn't get out because I had a MOS as a Pathfinder, and that was a little Radar unit and they had Radar [?]. So I sat around Fort Benning; doing very little, doing some jumping, doing some training, going to town, just waiting to get out. We had one 01:24:00of these practice, I didn't have to jump, but I would jump. I sprained my left leg, that was my bad leg, and I went to the hospital at Fort Benning. All they did was put me in bed and told me to stay off my foot. One day a major came through, and he was in the Airborne. And this was infantry school. He went down the beds and we start talking it, and he wanted to check me over, he said, "What's that?" I said, "That's shrapnel." "What's that hole?" "That's a bullet." He said, "tomorrow morning you go before the board." I went before the medical board to evaluate me. Took about fifteen minutes and the major was there. He says you're going home. They gave me a medical discharge, one hundred percent disability. So I came back to Madison in February and took a job at Armed Forces 01:25:00Institute as a file clerk. I got bored after about two weeks, you know, sitting around. I had one hundred percent disability. As soon as I took the job, the VA wrote me and says, "You're no longer one hundred percent disabled." But I went through the school. I had fifty percent in the school, on the G.I. Bill. Finished up, got a bachelor's and then I got my master's degree. During the process, I had a job working for ROTC. I'd help 'em on Saturday mornings on drill; ROTC drill. And then I also had, the afternoon I'd clean the Commandant's office. Wash the floor and that and I got seventy-five dollars a month for that. Then I was in ROTC and I got paid for that. I was making pretty good money when 01:26:00I was going to school; one hundred and ninety dollary from the G.I. Bill, and seventy five dollars. I graduated and I got my commission and went to work for the state; didn't think about it anymore, until 1951, in Milwaukee, I was an agent for [?] down there. I gotta come back from vacation and my neighbor upstairs, good hearted soul, registered letter came and they signed for me. Report to Fort Benning, Fort Riley, Kansas. My wife was nine months pregnant. We headed off to Fort Benning. I got to Fort Benning. I was in the infantry, teaching basic. I did most of the weapon training, and map training, and 01:27:00somebody else had that, and you're mess officer. We were there about three months and they start calling them back to duty. The company commander got called to Korea. The exec officer took over. He was exec officer one day and then somebody else came along. I thought I was going to be a second lieutenant because every time they change they gotta do an inventory. So they came in one day and cleared us all out. During the interim, my daughter was born in Fort Riley. My wife had a sister who was down in Oklahoma--Tinker Field I think it was. Infantry officer, they need infantry. They'd poke those MOSs in there. At 01:28:00the time when I was in, I took these classes. They were exciting; demolitionist Pathfinder. Wrapping parachutes was boring; weapons stuff. I thought it was exciting, but every one, I didn't realize, was an MOS. I got called up.

DERKS: What if your neighbor hadn't signed for you?

LUCAS: I would have maybe got a week while the postman tracked me down. But I went down to Milwaukee for a physical, and the guy looked at my leg. I said I got fifty percent disability. He said, "Oh, we'll waive that." So they waived it. They gave me like seven days to report to Fort Riley. At Fort Riley we did 01:29:00basic training; ran through basic training. I taught map reading, I taught weapons and somebody else did military government. I did the things I was good at. I was mess officer so I could go in a get coffee anytime I wanted. We were living in Manhattan. My anxiety is when I left, my wife was alone and she was late with the baby. We got a flu epidemic. We had just moved in to some of this K-Mart housing; brand new housing and we were the only ones in there, except one of the other officers in my unit, his wife was there; no steps on the place and it was all mud, but it was new housing for officers and enlisted men. I got pneumonia, or I got influenza. In fact the major saw me one morning and he told 01:30:00me to report to the medics. I couldn't leave my wife alone. I couldn't go to the hospital. So I didn't go. I hung it out until she was ready to deliver, so went with her to the hospital and I stayed there until the baby was born. Then I went up and turned myself in. My daughter was born with a--delivered by a Navy doctor on an Army post because they brought Navy doctors in because of the epidemic; influenza. Then while I was in the hospital, her sister came up, down at Tinker Field, and took her down there. I was in the hospital maybe three weeks; went back to duty. Then the paper work started coming in and we started going to Korea. I got my orders. I had, I think, ten days leave. My parents came down to Manhattan and we had moved into an apartment there; downtown, a small one. They 01:31:00loaded everything, the few possessions we owned, took my daughter to-- my wife and baby up to Kansas City for a plane to Madison. Her mother and father met her. They drove up. I took the car and had to report to Fort Benning, Georgia. I was down in Fort Benning, not having seen a rifle. I didn't know what a 75 recoilless rifle was. Through an officer refresher course, I think it was three weeks, we didn't do anything on the range or anything like that, but it was classroom. I remember one class we went to was M-10 plotting board, I didn't know what M-10 plotting was, but I sat through it; didn't pay too much attention 01:32:00to be honest. It's for artillery. I came back to Madison; had my orders to report to Camp Stoneman, California. When I was in Camp Stoneman, every morning we'd look at the roster. If your name was on it, you were restricted. If your name wasn't on it, you had twenty-four hours. Again we went through that boredom period. I think we went into San Francisco one day and went to the top of the Mark and had a cocktail. When I was sitting there, this guy walked in, civilian, and sat at the bar. I went up to him and I said, "Are you from Wisconsin?" And he said, "Yes." I said, "Did you go to West High?" He said, "Yes. One of our high school students." He was an actor and he was playing in Mr. Roberts. He said," I'm waiting for some friends. Won't you join us?" I said, "Sure." I said, 01:33:00"We'll stick around." I was with another officer. In comes this group of people. One of them was, I can't think of the actor who played in that Mr--

DERKS: Jack Lemmon?

LUCAS: No. He played the part of Mr. Roberts.

DERKS: Humphrey Bogart?

LUCAS: No, no; dramatic actor. Anyhow, we sat with them. They invited us to a party that night. We said, "No, we gotta get back and check the roster." Our name was on it so they flew us to Hawaii and then to Japan. We were in Tokyo, a place they call Camp Drake. Now I was in Japan last year and I can't find Camp Drake. I can't locate it in the city. I'm still working on that. But we were there about twenty-four, oh about forty-eight hours. I went down to the City of 01:34:00Tokyo and I went to the headquarters, saw the personnel officer and I said, "You got an Airborne unit around here that I could get assigned to?" It has to be someplace. He said, "Yeah. Go back and pack your bag, you'll be leaving tonight." So I went to Korea, I joined the 187th Airborne unit. When I got there, I was assigned to an artillery unit. I said to the major, I said, "Why am I here?" He said, "You're an artillery man." I said, "I had a 75 pack howitzer I'd pull around with a harness." I said, "A six-inch gunner on a tank destroyer." I said, "That was years ago." He says, "You're artillery." So I was a forward observer. I found out that, in this particular Airborne unit, the 01:35:00philosophy was that all forward observers be with the assault units, and the last to leave the hills. I was there, I think, with them two months on the line. I was the oldest senior forward observer. The casualties were high with that philosophy, this M-10 plotting board? That's where I got my lesson. My radio operator showed me, on the whole, on the front line how to use it. My fire training was over, under. They did it all by azimuths. I'm a quick learner. I didn't have any problem. The fighting was altogether different. It was taking hill, by hill, by hill. Coldest damn place I ever saw in my life is those mountains of Korea. They called it "Frozen Chosen," and that's just about true.

DERKS: I wanted to go back to World War II a minute. When you got out and you were in college here, how old were you?

LUCAS: I think twenty-two.

DERKS: Twenty-two. You'd experienced a lot as a twenty-two year old by then hadn't you?

LUCAS: Yeah.

DERKS: Do you think you were a different person?

LUCAS: Oh yeah. I think anybody does. How it affects you is--I think it changes your value system; your value system, things that--I was in a group where all these kids were worried about fraternity. I just couldn't identify. I'd go down on campus with the football homecoming. We'd go to class at 7:45 and the teaching assistant would come in fifteen minutes late. Right away they say, 01:37:00"Listen, we're here. You get your butt in that chair in the morning." It was a little different for the TAs too. We had to catch up. We had to catch up.

DERKS: You guys were pretty focused.

LUCAS: Yeah, my value system today, things that, I react differently to. Like on September 11th; it was a tragedy. Everybody was talking about how many were dead. My thought was," Gee those that got out, how many are alive?" When you're in these combat situations, it's how many are alive, not how many are dead. That's what you gotta do. The dead are dead, you can't do anything. You know what I mean? You think about, later on, the people you lost, your buddies. You 01:38:00make, in fox holes, you make some real close friendships. Going through these pictures, I was looking for you, I can't put a name to 'em, but I know the faces and the places. People would say, like you were asking about getting out of that airplane, what happens, your fear of not getting out, of being able to conquer, that is stronger than the fear of not. Same thing in combat, you know what I mean? You have your fears of not being able to conquer that fear of going into an assault; a firefight, hand to hand combat. This is what--you sit in that hole and you pray. You pray for the courage; the strength to do it. That's what you pray for. They didn't pray, I think, our soldiers, if you could put your hand up 01:39:00and get shot, they'd do it. It wasn't getting shot, it was getting killed. Not getting shot. You get shot, you just go back and you're alive. That was the fear that people had, being able to conquer that; give the strength to do what they were supposed to do, rather than the fear of death.

DERKS: So you were just afraid that you wouldn't be behave the way you wanted to?

LUCAS: Yeah, in combat, not being able to go out. It wasn't the fear of a bullet as much as that. We'd get artillery barrages that would last four or five hours. You sit in that hole. Every shell coming in sounds like it's coming right in your hole. Some don't make it. They'd get up and run and that's when they get killed. I used to just dig that damn hole deeper. But, again, in retrospect, I 01:40:00have no trouble going to sleep. Give me a few minutes, I could lay down over there and go to sleep. What I would do when we'd get these barrages, I didn't know I was doing this, I'd put myself to sleep. One time in Holland, I was sleeping in the hole; the whole unit got up and moved out. I woke up and I was the only one there. It took me a day to find them. Psychologically, I'd put myself to sleep. I can still do that to this day. I go to bed at night and I just--psst and I'm gone. Everybody has a different way of doing it. But that was really the fear of the soldier. Didn't want to let his buddies down, you know what I mean? He had a mission to do. Fear of getting out of an airplane. Just getting out of that damn foxhole can be a threatening situation.

DERKS: Once you're in a firefight, you get scared afterwards, right?

LUCAS: Oh yeah, once it gets going it just gets going. That's when you react by instinct. That's where the training comes in, just the instinct. That's where the training really pays off. You don't have time to think. Again, I found in World War II a lot more people married; married men were there. I was just a young kid. In retrospect again, they seemed to have the highest casualties, get wounded. I found out in Korea, at that engagement, I was married and had a child. You think about, "What happens to me?" I found out you can't do that. You 01:42:00just gotta put it out of your mind. You gotta do things instantly. If you're in a firefight and you gotta move from point A to point B, you can't sit there a assess it. When the chance comes, you gotta move. When you start thinking about something else, your mind can only hold one thought at a time. You gotta focus. A lot of the fellas, again, thinking about it later in life, had families. They were worried, "What happens to me, what happens to me?" When you get in combat, you just can't do that.

DERKS: You have to get back to the immortal sense of the eighteen year old?

LUCAS: It's how people handle their control. I'm not a controlling person, but I 01:43:00can control my feelings. Overcome these things. That's something everybody has to learn or they don't learn.

DERKS: What day was it in that photo that we've got up behind you?

LUCAS: Yeah, we were getting ready to go for a jump.

DERKS: A training jump?

LUCAS: That was November. In fact it was November 8, 1952. We were in Japan; we'd come back from Korea. We were in Japan, down in Kyushu a town in [?]. We were at the airport and we were going into Japan. We were all loaded for combat. They weren't sure whether we were gonna stay or not. So we went over and we made the jump near Taegu. It was on my birthday. They marched us from the jump field 01:44:00to an airstrip. They flew us back to Japan. That was pretty good because when you go on a combat jump, anything that's missing, you can write that off. So it helped us clear up our inventory.

[End Of Interview]