Excerpts of Mary Baldwin student interviews with World War II veterans

Interview with Aubrey M. Morrion

"We had our crew ready to go overseas so they pulled the first pilots off overseas and made us instructors so they shipped us all over the country to various airfields. Around the country they were building the planes like crazy and we started training cadets who graduated from flight school and they were commissioned. We trained them to fly these planes, their plane gliders and we were instructors. It turned out I ended up as an instructor the entire war. ..."

"ll the training in the B-25 was experimental and to see if we could speed it up it was kind of well… . While we were training we were still cadets and weren't commissioned officer and here we are flying aircrafts and doing cross country flying training and we would land in various airports across the country and these pilots and officers would see these cadets climb out of this beautiful plane. So we were kind of special group in that sense we finally got out training and shortly after we graduated and got our commission. ..."

Interview with John Huffer

"We had ration books and you got to use them for so many ounces of gasoline. ... They would mix the gas with kerosene. ... The candy was bad because [all] of the sugar went to the soldiers."

"My youngest uncle wasn’t yet 18 when he enlisted but before he left he came to visit and let my cousins and I wear his dog tags. That was the last I saw him because he was killed at the battle of Bulge. ... "

"We had a POW camp in Sherando, most of the prisoners where Germans. Every morning they would load up on a truck and go to work at the hospital. They had uniforms on with a big P written in white paint all the way down their legs. Many of them would pick apples to. They always got better cigarettes than anyone else because of the c rations. Those included gum, cigs, meats and chocolate. ... One day an older gentlemen smoking a cigarette came in the store and asked my father his name. He replied John Huffer. The gentleman went and helped us pick apples and talked with my father the whole time. When we were about to leave they shook hands and gave my father a pack of Camel cigarettes. So they where nice fellows."

"Waynesboro was a very patriotic town. ... If you saw a blue star in the middle of an American flag in someone’s window it meant that they had a son in the military. If you saw a silver one in the middle it meant that their son had been killed. ... Waynesboro had a lot of volunteer soldiers and a lot didn’t come back."

Interview with Joseph Morris

"Merchant Marines, the only thing that I could get into because of my eyes. ..."

"I was in training when the Atomic bomb was dropped. ... everybody knew that we had lost so many men but what that suddenly did was all the men would be coming home really soon. Everyone was delighted. How could we think of mass destruction when on our minds were on the idea of all our boys coming home."