(military-type music) (airplane propellers) - [Paul] Well, before the war, I lived on a farm.

I enlisted when I was 17 and before that, I was just living on a farm.

That was all, yeah.

I had I had some jobs, of course, like everybody else.

I went to ag school at the West Central School of Agriculture in Morris.

Yeah, that's where I went to high school at.

And I went straight from there.

I enlisted in the Navy And I went straight to bootcamp.

- [Paul] There I was on a destroyer.

So we took care of all the electrical equipment, the communications equipment, and et cetera.

Our, our living compartment was in the back of the ship, fantail.

Oh, there's probably, oh I would guess 50 guys sleeping in there in bunks that were about, I think they were four high.

There was only about that much space between each bunk, you know.

- [Paul] Yeah, it was, it was crowded.

Yeah.

- Well, we all had our battle stations.

Mine was on a 40 millimeter, and I was a first loader on the first 40 millimeter.

So, my job was, we had a second loader.

He handed me the ammunition, and I put it in the gun and - [Paul] and cocked the gun and all that stuff.

- [Paul] So - [Paul] We had, during the invasion of the Philippines, especially the, the big invasion nothing happened there really.

There was about a thousand ships in there, landing crafts and ships.

But then we went from there to a invasion of like Mindoro in the Philippines.

That's an island there.

And that's when we came under attack by the kamikazes.

- [Paul] Yeah.

It was very scary.

- [Lady] Yeah.

I bet.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- [Paul] And we had one diving straight at us, and I had a second loader.

I reached back for more ammunition, and he was gone, and (sobbing) he'd crawled under the gun because he thought we were gonna get hit.

So the gun captain took his place and handed me more ammunition, and we kept on firing.

And a few seconds later he said, cease fire.

And I turned to the gun captain, and I said, where'd he hit?

He said he didn't, he changed his mind at the very last second, and turned and hit the LST that we were escorting that was loaded with troops and mining equipment.

- [Paul] Yeah.

So then we, we were ordered to drop out of the convoy, and pick up all these survivors off the LST, picked up like, I think it was 270 some of them, and we continued on with that.

But the survivors, we picked up, we let off the next day I think we, I think we, there was seven of them that died.

And we just, we just readied for the invasion after that, the Mindoro.

Oh, we did a land invasion.

We'd go in ahead of the landing craft and bombard the beach and whatever, whatever they needed done in the Army.

So then after the initial landing, we usually had to stay behind and whatever the Army directed us to do.

We'd bombard the beach or the island for the, for the Army.

And we usually had kamikazes.

They usually came in every day just about sunset.

And you could just about set your clock by them.

Yep.

- [Paul] We did a lot of convoy duty, you know the invasion convoys and, and we and usually, after they invaded we'd have to stay behind and bombard wherever the Army or whoever it was needed bombard shells.

And, and of course every day we had the kamikaze coming in, which was scary.

- [Lady] So if you were standing and and feeding ammunition into a, into these big guns.

- [Lady] What did that do with your hearing at the time?

- Well, I didn't notice it until, - [Paul] Right now, I have a hearing aids.

(chuckles) Yeah.

So.

Yeah, it does affect them a lot.

- [Paul] Oh, I, I would do a do it over.

- [Lady] Yeah?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd go through it again if I had to.

Yes.

- [Lady] What would you say to someone who's serving in the military today?

- Oh gosh.

It's, they're, they're great people.

Very, very.

Yeah.

We owe 'em a lot.

(military music) (airplane propellers)