Mississippi Oral History Program

World War II Veterans National WWII Museum/103rd Infantry

Oral History Project

An Oral History

with

Cranston R. Rogers

Interviewer: Aslin Clements

Volume 1272, Part 9 2015

©2016 The University of Southern Mississippi This transcription of an oral history by The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage of The University of Southern Mississippi may not be reproduced or published in any form except that quotation of short excerpts of unrestricted transcripts and the associated tape recordings is permissible providing written consent is obtained from The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. When literary rights have been retained by the interviewee, written permission to use the material must be obtained from both the interviewee and The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. This oral history is a transcript of a taped conversation. The transcript was edited and punctuation added for readability and clarity. People who are interviewed may review the transcript before publication and are allowed to delete comments they made and to correct factual errors. Additions to the original text are shown in brackets [ ]. Minor deletions are not noted. Audio and transcripts are on deposit in the McCain Library and Archives on the campus of The University of Southern Mississippi.

Kevin D. Greene, Ph.D., Co-director Heather Marie Stur, Ph.D.,Co-director

The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 118 College Drive #5175

The University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406-0001

601-266-4574

An Oral History with Cranston R. Rogers, Volume 1272, Part 9 Interviewer: Aslin Clements Transcriber: Stephanie Scull-DeArmey Editor: Stephanie Scull-DeArmey

THE CENTER FOR ORAL HISTORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE of

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI

Recording Log

Interviewee: Cranston Rogers Interviewer: Aslin Clements Date of recording: October 8, 2015 Recording format/notes: Digital Recording length: Part 1 of 1: 2 hours, 33 minutes Time stamps made by using: Express Scribe Location: University of Southern Mississippi Subject terms: World War II, Army Air Corps, Boy Scouts, maps, draft, basic training of infantryman, IQ test, ASTP, civil engineering, 103rd Infantry, shipping overseas, officer’s mess, wartime food, wartime recreation/entertainment, war in Europe, instructors, GI clothing, Russian winter, weapons/war materials, Marseilles, frontline, Operation Nordwind, Battle of the Bulge, fatalities, camps/trains of death, Dachau, Buchenwald, Siegfried Line, Russian POWs, wartime mail, wartime medical care, making friends in wartime, fear on the battlefield, war’s end, education, Army Reserve, military awards. Time/ Counter

Topic

Part 1 of 1 0:01:04.1; 0:03:38.8

Personal history

0:01:48.1; 1:28:39.9

High school; military service begins

0:02:34.9 Less than perfect eyesight precludes enlisting in Army Air Corps 0:03:14.6 Americans expected WWII to last eight years 0:03:38.8 Boy Scouts helped prepare him for military service 0:07:57.3 Map-reading for officers 0:08:37.3 Draft 0:08:37.3; 0:11:31.8; 0:23:31.5; 0:25:59.2

Basic training as infantryman

0:09:55.9 Army IQ test 0:10:49.8 ASTP, civil engineering 0:13:39.1 ASTP closed down; entry into infantry 0:14:23.2 His theory that engineers would be needed to rebuild after the war 0:17:03.6; 0:27:42.5

Texas A & M ASTP, basic civil engineering

0:18:18.5 Training with the 103rd; shipping overseas, 1944 0:19:44.1 Aboard troop transport USS Monticello

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0:20:49.8 Waiting table in the officer’s mess 0:21:43.6 Food aboard ship 0:22:27.1 Stormy seas 0:25:59.2 Recreation, entertainment, spare time in basic training 0:29:36.4 Playing tricks on fellow soldiers 0:32:16.8 Instructors at basic training 0:33:29.7 First night in Europe: heavy snowfall 0:35:00.4 GI clothing 0:36:53.1 Russian winter killed many German soldiers 0:37:59.9 Comparing Nazis’ war materials with Americans’ war materials 0:38:25.0 Unloading ships upon arrival in Marseilles 0:40:01.0 First convoy to frontline 0:41:17.9 Map-reading for his superiors 0:41:55.6; 1:05:43.2

Operation Nordwind; Battle of the Bulge

0:46:33.2 Increase in rank on battlefield 0:49:02.3 Taking mortar fire from Germans; death of radioman 0:53:42.0 Holidays, Christmas, New Year’s, Halloween, Thanksgiving 0:56:29.7 Deaths of friends 0:59:14.3 As time passes, one may become inured to deaths in war 0:59:56.3 Death camps, Dachau, Buchenwald; trains of death 1:06:46.9 Siegfried Line 1:07:52.1; 1:37:03.9

Thoughts, questions, feelings that arose upon finding death camp victims

1:10:28.9 Encounter with Nazis at death camp 1:12:41.5 Nazis’ treatments of Jews 1:14:34.2 Preventing American GIs from taking immediate revenge on perpetrators of the

Holocaust 1:17:12.4 Problems after WWII ended; Russian POWs 1:20:48.1; 1:33:14.8

Off-duty nonexistent in war

1:21:35.8 Furlough after war 1:22:08.0 Wartime mail 1:24:30.4 Communicating with brother in Navy 1:25:25.1 Brother in the Pacific 1:26:08.1 Friends in the war 1:27:16.3 Nurses sunbathing, off limits! 1:28:39.9 Dreams of being a professional athlete while in the battlefield 1:28:53.2 Making new friends in WWII 1:29:58.2 Visiting friend after the war 1:31:26.4 Earning birthday off by going on patrol 1:33:14.8; 1:34:16.8

Recreation, entertainment, spare time in war

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1:33:47.7 Joining the 45th 1:35:37.1 Fear on the battlefield 1:38:56.2 Encounter with Dutch survivors at Dachau 1:43:40.7 Anniversaries of the liberation of Dachau 1:45:51.0 Educating the public regarding liberating some of the death camps 1:47:06.8 End of WWII in Europe 1:50:01.6; 1:55:52.8

Anticipating American boots on the ground in Japan

1:50:53.4 Responsibilities of rank 1:57:40.3 Forty-five-day furlough in the States 1:59:23.0 Reunion with parents, going home to Orlando, Florida 2:01:10.6 College education after the war 2:03:52.0 Lessons learned from his experiences in WWII 2:06:48.7 Leadership in the Army Reserve 2:09:57.6 Education of GIs after WWII benefitted America 2:11:18.9 Medals, honors, awards 2:18:16.6 Coping with fear on the battlefield and after the war ended 2:19:06.0 Thoughts on war in general, circa 2015

Table of Contents Personal history ........................................................................................................... 1 Attempt to enlist in Army Air Corps .......................................................................... 2 Boy Scouts .................................................................................................................. 3 Drafted ........................................................................................................................ 3 Basic training .................................................................................................. 3-4, 6, 8 ASTP ................................................................................................................. 4, 6, 41 High school sports....................................................................................................... 4 Fort McClellan ............................................................................................................ 6 Texas A & M .............................................................................................................. 6 Camp Howze, Texas ................................................................................................... 6 103rd Infantry .............................................................................................................. 6 Going overseas on the USS Monticello ...................................................................... 7 Wartime food .............................................................................................................. 7 Showers at basic training ............................................................................................ 8 Wartime recreation/entertainment .......................................................................... 8-9 Boredom leads to solitary confinement ...................................................................... 9 “Raising hell” .............................................................................................................. 9 Memorable instructors .......................................................................................... 9-10 The Great Depression ............................................................................................... 10 France’s long nights, freezing temperatures ............................................................. 10 Assessment of American versus German equipment, World War II .................. 10-11 Russian winter defeated Nazis .................................................................................. 11 Weapons .................................................................................................................... 11 Landing in Marseilles ......................................................................................... 11-12 St. Die ....................................................................................................................... 12 Battle of the Bulge .............................................................................................. 12-13 Moving up in rank ............................................................................................... 13-14 Selestat ...................................................................................................................... 15 Fatalities .............................................................................................................. 16-18 Death camps, trains of death .................................................................... 18-21, 31-33 Institutionalized anti-Semitism ................................................................................. 21 Jewish survivors from death camps .......................................................................... 21 American GIs wanted to punish death camp guards ................................................. 22 Issues regarding Russian POWs after V-E Day ........................................................ 23 Police force of American soldiers ............................................................................. 23 Furlough ................................................................................................... 24-25, 29-30 Wartime communication ........................................................................................... 25 Wartime friends .................................................................................................. 28-29 Fear on the battlefield ............................................................................................... 31 Revisiting Dachau ............................................................................................... 33-34 Relationships with death camp survivors ................................................................. 33 War’s end .................................................................................................................. 34 Atomic bomb ............................................................................................................ 35

Wartime rape ....................................................................................................... 35-36 Stateside .................................................................................................................... 37 Readjusting to civilian life ........................................................................................ 38 Work as an engineer after World War II .................................................................. 39 His leadership style ............................................................................................. 39-40 Time in the Army Reserve ........................................................................................ 40 Wife’s illness ............................................................................................................ 41 Purple Heart .............................................................................................................. 42 Bronze Star................................................................................................................ 42 Battle Stars ................................................................................................................ 43 PTSD ......................................................................................................................... 44 Current politics and war, circa 2015 ................................................................... 44-46

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AN ORAL HISTORY

with

CRANSTON R. ROGERS

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi, National WWII Museum/103rd Infantry Project. The interview is with Cranston R. Rogers and is taking place on October 8, 2015. The interviewer is Aslin Clements. Time stamps are recorded in the manuscript and the recording log using Express Scribe. Clements: OK. And now this one is recording. So this is an interview for the University of Southern Mississippi Oral History Program. The interview is with Colonel Cranston R. Rogers and his daughter─ Ami Rogers: ─Ami(?). Clements: Ami, and son Gregory(?). It is taking place on October 8, 2015. The interviewer is Aslin Clements. OK. First I’d like to thank you, Colonel Rogers, for taking time to talk with me today, and I’ll ask you for the record to state your name. Cranston Rogers: Cranston R. Rogers. Clements: And for the record, how do you spell your name? Cranston Rogers: C-R-A-N-S-T-O-N, middle initial R, Rogers, R-O-G-E-R-S. Clements: Thank you. OK. So from there we can go into the real interview, and you can answer whatever you want. So the first question is where and when were you born? 0:01:04.1 Cranston Rogers: Charleston, South Carolina, on February 10, 1925. Clements: OK. And I read in a blurb that you moved to Orlando later on? Cranston Rogers: I moved; my family moved me with them to Orlando, Florida, in December of 1925. Clements: OK. So what were you doing just before you entered the service? You can as far as (inaudible).

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Cranston Rogers: Before I went where? Clements: Before you entered the service. Cranston Rogers: Well, I was going to high school. 0:01:48.1 I turned eighteen; I would turn eighteen before I finished high school. And on that basis I had to register for the draft because you had to register before you, by the time you turned eighteen. You were deferred to finish, and even though it was a matter of three months, I chose to be deferred for the three months. I did, however, attempt to enlist in the Army Air Corps as a cadet to fly; however, I did not pass that exam because of poor eyesight. 0:02:34.9 My left eye was not 20/20, and therefore I failed the Air Force eyesight requirement, and then waited to be drafted, but at the same time I was very much active in finishing high school. Ami Rogers: Dad, I’m going to add that you chose to defer and get your high school diploma because at that time, America thought the war was going to go on for seven or eight more years, so you thought there was plenty of time. Cranston Rogers: Well, that is a correct statement. I felt that the war would last for several years. 0:03:14.6 After I turned eighteen, then there would be plenty of time to serve, and that’s the basic reason I chose to be drafted and wait and be deferred and then serve after I had finished high school. Clements: OK. And before the interview started, you wanted to say something about the Boys Scouts? 0:03:38.8 Cranston Rogers: Well, I do, very much because there were a number of things that had a significant influence on my childhood, which then directed me in certain directions, and it was critical to me. One, I was very much active in high school athletics, although I was too small to play football. I was fast but very active in football, and I was also very much interested in athletics. Jeez, I forgot what I was going to say. Clements: That’s OK. Take your time. Ami Rogers: You were in Boy Scouts, which helped you. Clements: Oh. I happened to be very interested in Boy Scouts for the sole reason that they had a softball team at the playground in Florida where I lived. And you had to enlist in the Boy Scouts or be a Boy Scout in order to play. But then I became very interested in scouting itself. Camping was a good example; movement in the woods was another example of work. But I became very enthusiastic, interested in Boy Scouts and quickly got qualified for Eagle Scout, and in the process I also got forty-two merit badges. And some of these merit badges led me into situations like map-reading, target practice with a rifle and other situations that were activities relating to

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the military service. That’s circumstance. I eventually became a Boy Scout and with the rank of Eagle and forty-two merit badges. I was very proficient in reading maps, very proficient in firing a rifle and doing well on target practice. And those things influenced my interest in scouting, and I moved on to Eagle Scout with three palms, which meant I had roughly forty-two merit badges. And map-reading was something I learned to be very proficient at, and this has an effect later in my career in the military. But I was active in the Boy Scouts, and as a consequence I had a considerable number of camping trips and was very familiar with being able to move around in the woods without getting lost. This later had a tremendous beneficial effect on my military activities. Ami Rogers: And why was that? Senior members? Cranston Rogers: Well, there were numerous times that we were just stuck out in the woods in the Army, if not in training, actually in active [military service], when people would tend to get lost. And I always seemed to know my way around, and would have officers, when I was in the─this is now moving to when I was in the Army, but officers, knowing that I knew how to read a map well, would come to me and ask me to tell them where they were. 0:07:57.3 But all of these things were a buildup to my Boy Scout experiences. Clements: OK. So you wanted to join the Army because of your Boy Scout─ Cranston Rogers: Well, did I talk about trying to join the Air Force and failing? Clements: Yes. Cranston Rogers: Yes. OK. Once I failed the Air Force then I knew I could only do─the next opportunity was to simply be drafted. 0:08:37.3 And for the most part the draftees would be only called on to do the infantry-type assignments because you couldn’t fly, and there were no other prestigious types of service. And I became, well, ultimately, after I was drafted, I took basic training as an infantryman, and because I was a Boy Scout and a lot of experience in the woods, my basic training from my point of view was very easy. Clements: OK. That’s actually one of the questions. So you did say you were drafted. And just to clarify, what branch of the military was─ Cranston Rogers: I took basic training as an infantryman, and in that process, which ultimately developed, I was assigned to the infantry. Ami Rogers: The Army. Cranston Rogers: But before I, at the time I was inducted, I had to take the Army individual─I forget what they call it right now. 0:09:55.9 But the IQ [intelligence quotient] test, so to speak. And you only needed about 80 to serve, but you had to

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have at least 110 to qualify for OCS, Officer Candidate School. But you had to have 130 to become an ASTP student, which was Army Specialized Training Program, and simply sent all the draftees who could qualify to become civil engineers. And to this day I have no confirmation, but what was the Army going to do with 130 to 140,000 civil engineering graduates? 0:10:49.8 Well, naturally you think they were going to be used to rebuild the disaster of the war, but it could also be just to keep the colleges open. It was never clear what that was, but it ended up I did well enough to qualify for the ASTP program, and ultimately that is what happened. I went to the basic training for those that took ASTP, and you only had to go to thirteen weeks of basic training as opposed to the seventeen weeks for everybody else. 0:11:31.8 And we qualified for the ASTP program, and after I was drafted, that’s where I ended up. Clements: And so in that, did we cover what specific branch of military? The Army? That’s what we did? Cranston Rogers: The infantry. Clements: Infantry, Army. OK. So once you were drafted, you already said that you felt basic training was very easy for you. What happened when you went to train? Cranston Rogers: Well, I found basic, because I’d been an athlete in high school, I got letters in three sports. Ultimately I got, I finally got a letter in football my senior year, but I also got two letters in basketball my junior and senior year, and I got a letter in track in my junior year, but I went out for baseball for my senior year, but I fractured my ankle in baseball practice, so I didn’t do anything except walk around on crutches the last six weeks of school. But I was drafted, and I went to basic training based on my entry into the ASTP program. And the 103rd Division, when I later went into that, had a tremendous high percentage of ASTP, former ASTP students, who had taken the ASTP program, gone to ASTP, but when it was closed out, and I think it was no question it was closed because they needed, my term, the cannon fodder, many men for the infantry to serve in the replacement of men already committed in combat. 0:13:39.1 I do know that the Army was woefully short on fulfilling those requirements, and that had something to do with closing the ASTP program up. But it was never explained, and neither was it ever explained why they needed or why the goal was to have so many red-blooded Americans taking college programs unless you used the concept or go by the concept that they were being trained as engineers to help rebuild after the war. 0:14:23.2 That was never explained, and in the process, however, later on the 103rd Division had a large percentage of the total number of men that went overseas, which had been former ASTP students. Gregory Rogers: Dad, right out of high school, where did you go? Cranston Rogers: What? Gregory Rogers: Right out of high school, when you got drafted, where did you go?

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Cranston Rogers: I went to basic training at Camp─well, it was in─I was drafted from the Camp Blanding, Florida, but sent to Camp─ Ami Rogers: Howze? Gregory Rogers: Texas A & M. Ami Rogers: Howze, Camp Howze? Gregory Rogers: No. Cranston Rogers: Camp, no. Clements: I actually have it. Cranston Rogers: Camp, I’ll think of it later, but it was near Birmingham. Oh, Anniston, Alabama, but I’ve forgotten. It’s something I should remember, and Camp─ Ami Rogers: But you were there for how long? What did do there? Cranston Rogers: Basic training, thirteen weeks. Ami Rogers: And then where? Cranston Rogers: We went to Texas A & M for ASTP. That program wasn’t closed out until after the─ Ami Rogers: Blanding? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Camp Blanding? Cranston Rogers: No, that’s where I was inducted. Ami Rogers: Yeah, that was from Florida. Gregory Rogers: You (inaudible) have your glasses, Dad. This is─ Ami Rogers: Oh, McClellan, Fort McClellan. Cranston Rogers: Fort McClellan. Gregory Rogers: This is just from the 103rd; this is just─you know this.

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Clements: It was just given to me so I could learn a bit about him. Gregory Rogers: From the green book. Cranston Rogers: Well, this is interesting. This is obviously cut from one of 103rd’s─ Gregory Rogers: The green book, the cactus (inaudible). Cranston Rogers: Right. So now that I’ve been reminded, Camp─ Ami Rogers: McClellan. Cranston Rogers: Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, was where I went to basic training, and it was thirteen weeks. And when that was finished, we were then sent to Texas A & M to go to college, to go to ASTP, but ASTP at Texas A & M was simply a condensed but rapid course in basic civil engineering. 0:17:03.6 And the program only lasted for us: the basic training was thirteen weeks. Then we went to ASTP, Texas A & M, and we were only in Texas A & M from, let’s say, roughly the end of October until the middle of March. We finished one whole quarter and about two-thirds of another quarter college curricula program of three quarters, [which] made a school year. And we were then sent to 103rd Division at Camp Howze, Texas, and went right into basic training, thirteen weeks, and from there we then went to Texas A & M; we went from there into the 103rd Division, who was stationed at Camp Howze in Texas, and that was in March of [19]44. 0:18:18.5 And we trained for six months and then went overseas; we were sent in March of [19]44, and we went overseas in September of [19]44. Actually the trip overseas, we left for Camp Shanks in September. Ami Rogers: In New York, right? Cranston Rogers: Yes, Camp Shanks, New York. We left from New York on October 6 by boat to Europe. Ami Rogers: Then into Marseilles. Cranston Rogers: Landed, yes, landed in Marseilles. Clements: France. Cranston Rogers: And I was just one of many of the ASTP program people that were sent to the 103rd Division at Camp Howze, Texas in March, and we trained for six months, roughly and went overseas in September, well, went to Camp Shanks in September, and then from Camp Shanks, on October 6, we boarded the boat to go to Marseilles and landed there on the twentieth of October.

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Gregory Rogers: What was the name of the boat? Cranston Rogers: What? Gregory Rogers: What was the name? Cranston Rogers: USS Monticello. 0:19:44.1 Ami Rogers: Dad, you had an interesting time on the boat, serving the captain quarters. Cranston Rogers: Yes. I first found out that first there were 10,000 men on the ship, and we were regimented in terms of not being able to be on deck except maybe two hours a day. All the other time we were stuck in the hold where our bunks were, which were nothing but canvas, a piece of canvas slung between two hooks. And you had nothing to do except maybe gamble, playing poker or something like that. You were only on deck; got two hours on deck, and it was very frustrating. I found out that a bunch of us, that you could paint; you could chip paint and paint as a detail. And then we found out later that they wanted a group to be table waiters in the officer’s mess. 0:20:49.8 And somehow I managed to get that job. And that’s how I finished the trip, as a table waiter in the officer’s mess, which meant you got three meals a day instead of two, so. And well, there were 10,000 men on a big ocean liner, which normally only held 3000 passengers in passenger comfort, but in military posture, they had 10,000 of us. Ami Rogers: Dad, one of the interesting perks was that you got to take home the uneaten food, take back to your (inaudible) uneaten food. Cranston Rogers: It’s a good thing I brought you along. (laughter) Yes. One of the side issues were you didn’t have an opportunity to get any extra food, so to speak. 0:21:43.6 And being young kids, you were hungry. Only two meals a day is all you were given. And as table waiters in the officer’s mess, you got three meals a day, and they were really substantive meals. And one day I got the bright idea; oh, it was, the ship was in a (inaudible) storm, a lot of rocking and rolling, and of course that made everybody seasick. So there were a lot pies left over, and I brought three or four pies down to the crew, where the rest of the men were, but they were all so sick, they couldn’t eat. 0:22:27.1 But the point was that she mentioned that I had made a point of getting the pies to take them. But I didn’t have many takers because they didn’t have─I mean, they weren’t healthy enough to eat. (laughter) Ami Rogers: What’s significant about that story, Dad, is that later these men that you shared your pies with and shared the barracks and the cards and the gambling with, you then later had an incident with them in the field in France. But we’ll talk about that as, maybe, time goes on.

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Cranston Rogers: Yeah. Obviously you remember some of my stories. (laughter) But after we got to Europe, well, I don’t want to interrupt, but I’ll bring this story out later. So why don’t you go on from here? Clements: OK. A little bit more about your basic training: you already said that you feel your sports career helped you adapt to it. Do you remember any of the instructors or any of what you did during basic training, other than the college courses? 0:23:31.5 Cranston Rogers: Well, basic training was both somewhat─first I was an athlete in high school, so the twenty-five-mile hikes were not a problem for me. And a lot of the other physical- exertion-type situations in training, I responded very well and didn’t find them to be difficult. For instance on the twenty-five-mile hikes a few of us would dog-trot in. And we’d start about an hour before we were due to be in and run the last mile or at least what do you call? Fast-paced, like a trot. I don’t know. I’m losing my word here. Clements: That’s OK. Ami Rogers: Jog. Gregory Rogers: Canter. (laughter) Cranston Rogers: Dog-trot, you know, that’s a good one, dog-trot the last half-mile in because when you got it, you got the shower all to yourself; otherwise, if you go in with all the 2000, or whatever it was, the number of men, in our case 600 men, for the one shower. A shower would be a latrine that had maybe eight showerheads, but instead of eight people, it might be fifty-eight people or 108 people, whatever, all wanting to take a shower. Everybody couldn’t get in the shower at the same time, and so you’d run the last mile in, or the last hour, you would run so you could get to the shower and have a leisure, complete shower, and then you could dress and not be all sweaty and messed up for the evening, not that you were going anyplace, but it was simply comfortable. You didn’t go very far because first, you didn’t have any money to spend; second, there wasn’t anything for us young kids to do in the town because most of us didn’t drink or didn’t want a drink, anyway. So there wasn’t much a red-blooded, young kid could do. 0:25:59.2 And some of the older men would simply go to the bars and sit all night, but that didn’t appeal to a lot of us. But that was one of the issues. Ami Rogers: But you’ve got stories of gambling with the men in the barracks, and you going in town one time. Cranston Rogers: Well, that was another issue; because you were all ganged up together, you tended to, and you didn’t get paid once a month. You didn’t get much. I think you got about $40 cash is all you got. And if you did tend to save it, you had some money to waste as far as gambling, but I stayed away from that because there wasn’t any future, I mean, in it. There wasn’t any advantage; if you lose all your

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money, you don’t have anything. But those were some of the lifestyle of young kids, and when we were going to school, the six months or so that we went to Texas A & M, even that wasn’t interesting to me because I (laughter) didn’t find out until later, almost twenty-five years after I’d finished the Army and the Army was over, I went to Texas to work. And I found out that Texas didn’t have but eleven years in high school. I had twelve years. So that was why when we, at Texas A & M, the math courses were all repeats of what I had had in high school. 0:27:42.5 So I had no─what am I trying to say─demand to study, no interest in studying because I already had the mathematics, but I didn’t know that at that time. I didn’t find that out until I worked in Texas, maybe twenty years after the war ended, I found out Texas only had eleven-year high schools, and the math I had in Texas was a repeat of what I had had in Florida for a twelve-year high school. And also to make matters worse, I was very qualified or productive in math and most all other subjects, and so because I raised hell and didn’t study, because I already had all these things, I was put─(laughter) I had to spend─I don’t know─six weeks, maybe, in a room on a floor where there were no other students and was limited to staying on that floor. But this was really the fate of, in my case, for being talented, if you want to use that word as far as my studies were concerned and didn’t have to study because I’d already had the courses. Ami Rogers: When you talked about raising hell, Dad, what did you do to raise hell? Was one of those stories you going to that all-women’s college? Cranston Rogers: About what? Ami Rogers: That all-women’s college? You were friends with the dean. Was that one of those? Or give another story of your raising hell. 0:29:36.4 Cranston Rogers: Well, the raising hell was just playing tricks on other members, and I don’t know what some of them were. Short-sheeting their bed or something like that, but I don’t remember now some of the little things we did, but anything to play tricks on others, your soldier friends. Anyway I was selected to be reassigned to a room on another floor in a building that had no other occupants on, say, the third floor or that kind of thing. But these were all mainly young-kid trials and tribulations and dealt primarily with what proved to be something I didn’t find out until later, and that was that Texas only had eleven-year high schools; I had a twelve-year high school. And anyway we had to go back; we had to go to the 103rd, and that was a real sad day because now we were going back to the real Army, or going to the real Army and training to go overseas to fight and well─ Gregory Rogers: In terms of your training, Dad, what about some of your officers? Do you remember some of your officers or superiors in training? 0:31:18.7 Cranston Rogers: Well, we didn’t have a─we got along well with our officers because they didn’t sleep in our barracks or anything like that, but they were available for training. But what we used to have (inaudible) with what we called in basic

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training the permanent staff that ran the thing; [they] were frequently only Depression-era ninth-graders. During the Depression of the [19]30s a lot of men went into the [Civilian] Conservation Corps and into the Army and became soldiers in the Army, and then they were lower-ranked men in the training centers. 0:32:16.8 And some of them had low IQs, but because they were the boss at the basic training camps, they made life miserable (laughter) for those of us that had been to high school. And it was a little bit of a problem because they used to just give you a hard time, but on the other hand, none of these things lasted more than about six months before you went to the next stage. And after we were sent to the 103rd in March, we went overseas in September and went online, and the one interesting thing about our going online, we went to Europe in a location in France that was maybe as much as 2000 miles north of where we had been in the States, which meant the winter weather was much more severe in central France than it had been because in that situation we were up at the same level as central Canada. 0:33:29.7 And the first night online in Europe, I and two other guys that were sharing a station, got arguing with each other because somebody’s cheating. A night was fifteen hours long, which it really was, but we didn’t realize it. We didn’t realize that the lengths of the nights were that long at that much higher 2000-miles-north of where we were in the States. The nights were much longer. Anyway we learned the hard way that nobody was cheating on pulling guard, and also one other remarkable incident: the first afternoon and evening online it started to snow. And it snowed with twenty inches or more of snow, and I [personally] had never seen snow before because I grew up in Florida and trained in Texas, and then went overseas, and here we are in the middle of the winter with a heavy snowfall. But those were all learning. Ami Rogers: What’s your overall opinion, just your overall opinion, about the equipment that the Americans had versus the Germans? 0:35:00.4 Cranston Rogers: Well, basically I felt our clothing was much superior because it was more, use the term, engineered to be helpful, to protect you. In fact I forget the fellow’s name that did a lot of the talking; I just forget his name. Ami Rogers: Andy? Cranston Rogers: No, the one with the red, multicolored shirt. Ami Rogers: Andy. Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Andy? It’s blue and red? Cranston Rogers: Well, he and I talked a bit, and I just forget his name right now. Ami Rogers: Andy.

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Cranston Rogers: All right. Let’s say Andy. (laughter) Now, I can’t remember what I was going to say about him. But anyway, oh, I felt the Germans─we had better clothing. We had better all kinds of clothing, that was better engineered to be protective in the outdoors than the Germans did, and the proof in that was that the Germans tended to take GIs’ critical pieces of uniform away from them when they captured them. But anyway, oh, I know. The argument that I had with him, not an argument but a discussion was simply that the greatest mistake that Hitler made was the Germans’ attacking the Russians because they took the whole German Army into Russia in the wintertime. 0:36:53.1 And the Russians had better clothing, and they were able to protect themselves, and the Germans really had a lot of problems with surviving. Ami Rogers: But the Germans, they had something better. What was their better strength? Cranston Rogers: Well, the Germans had better weapons, and their long-range guns, the 88s, better tanks, and we had better rifles. We had multishot, not automatic, but you could fire them semiautomatic. Anyway I felt that the Germans had better equipment in case of tanks and guns but not rifles. We had better rifles and better clothing for individual wear. 0:37:59.9 Clements: So you said when you made it to Europe, you landed in Marseilles. Correct? Cranston Rogers: I what? Ami Rogers: You landed in Marseilles. Clements: Marseilles, I can’t speak French. Ami Rogers: That’s OK. Clements: So you started in France, essentially. Where did you go from there? Were you on the frontlines? Where did you go? 0:38:25.0 Cranston Rogers: Well, we had to act as stevedores to unload all the division’s weapons and vehicular equipment, trucks, and so we had to act as stevedores is what it amounted to. Clements: What is a stevedore? I’ve never heard that term. Cranston Rogers: Oh, he’s a dock worker; he works on the dock to unload ships or load ships. And we had to do that for our own unit. And so it took us about two weeks to unload the ships. I think there were somewhere near twelve or thirteen ships, and some of them were just passenger ships. But others were totally freighters that carried the vehicles and all the equipment, and we had to help unload that. And it was

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two weeks, two to three weeks to get─we landed on the twentieth of October. We left New York on the sixth of October; landed on the twentieth in Marseilles, and we didn’t leave to go north until around the third, second or the third of November. So after the unloading period, there was maybe two weeks to assemble it all and get it operating. And then it took us three days to convoy north to the frontline. 0:40:01.0 Ami Rogers: And where was the first place you went online? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: And where was the first─ Cranston Rogers: November 9, and we went online just east of─I’m sorry─just west of St. Die. And St. Die was the first city or big town, anyway; I would call it almost a small city. But it was the first city that we took from a military point of view although my unit was not involved in that particular thing. We were more involved with small towns, little villages, and I spent a lot of time in the early period in side issues, like reading maps for lieutenants that didn’t know how to read a map. I say that advisedly because they would simply ask, “Could you tell me where we are on this map?” And they would be lieutenants who hadn’t learned how to read a map, and they needed help. 0:41:17.9 It just happened to be as I spent a lot of time in the Boy Scouts and running around in the woods, so to speak, and so I learned how to read maps, and felt comfortable moving around without getting lost. Ami Rogers: So from St. Die, you then went east. Cranston Rogers: What? Ami Rogers: From St. Die you then went east into Germany. Cranston Rogers: Well, we really didn’t get into Germany until sometime in mid-March. 0:41:55.6 In mid-March we went into Germany in the Siegfried Line in December, but the Battle of the Bulge we got kicked out, oh, not really kicked out. We had to adjust the line, give it up because of the German north wind episode [Operation Nordwind]. They created the Battle of the Bulge. It was Germany’s last-gasp effort to retake what the Allied─the Germans to─get this right. The Germans made this last-gasp effort to produce the Bulge, and we had to straighten it out, and─ Ami Rogers: Dad, you had to straighten it out? Cranston Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: I’m going to add my personal interjection, Dad, in that you were not personally at the Battle of the Bulge, but what’s fascinating is you were about what? Forty miles just south of the Bulge, and all the work that you and your troops did aided support to that Bulge so it wasn’t just the one battle at the one location, but all of

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the surrounding towns that gave support to make the Bulge a successful battle for America. Cranston Rogers: What she’s saying is true in the sense that the Bulge really happened north of us, maybe eighty to a hundred miles north, but the effect of the German attack north of us required all along the line adjustments being made to allow us to retake the Bulge. And yes, the German Bulge and the German attempt to cause the Bulge had reaction all along the line in maybe a total distance of a hundred miles, fifty to a hundred miles in each direction. Ami Rogers: Dad, I’ve never asked you. Did you have any idea as to who gave the command for this maneuvering during that time? Cranston Rogers: Yeah. Well, Eisenhower apparently through his Army commanders required adjustments for all of the units along the line. Ami Rogers: But how did you handle those adjustments? Through your morning reports? Cranston Rogers: No. We were given orders that we had to move from where we were up into north, and we moved a hundred miles that night, but it was only ten miles an hour. We got on the trucks, and we were actually on the trucks, all night long. But we only moved about six or seven hours, and then maybe the most we ever went was fifteen miles an hour. Ami Rogers: And it was so slow because? Cranston Rogers: Well, all the traffic was on two-lane roads, country roads. And you may have had hundreds of vehicles in a line, in a convoy, to move. Anyway, we moved over sixty to eighty miles. I don’t know how far it was that night. And then we spent the next month in this new location, which ultimately did get straightened out. But the Battle of the Bulge reverberated, so to speak, throughout almost the whole front on the west. Clements: OK. Other than helping lieutenants read maps, what were some other duties that you performed while in the frontlines? Cranston Rogers: Well, I eventually, I guess you might say, responsibility for leadership and become a platoon sergeant. 0:46:33.2 Ami Rogers: What did you do that showed that you were able to move up in rank? Cranston Rogers: (laughter) I was not reticent about telling people what to do and to take people on details and get something done. Like one time, a good example, around December 10 or 12, we were moving up in northern Alsace. The move, as far as the Bulge was concerned, had already been made by this─no. It hadn’t been made.

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This was just before, and the company commander was standing off to one side as we were moving up this farm road, so to speak, with farmhouses on our right, a creek on our left, and then behind the houses that were on the right, were fields that went all the way to the top of the ridge, which were easily 300 yards wide. And he says─the company commander standing there, as I passed he says, “Rogers, get two men and go up to the top of that hill and see what the Germans are doing in the next town.” And he assigned me a─no. He said, “Get a radio.” And immediately the company radio operator that operated the company radio was standing somewhere nearby, and he volunteered to do the radio. So I just took several of the people, and we started up the hill to get behind the [farmhouses]. They were like a farmhouse every hundred yards, so to speak. But behind the farmhouses were the fields, and we got up to the top, or no. We didn’t even get anywhere near the top is what I meant to say, when the Germans fired a mortar, and the mortar almost hit us. 0:49:02.3 It did land oh, about ten feet away from the radio operator who was the company radio operator, and there was a precipitous drop-off down into a gulley. Instead of dropping down into the gulley, he sat with his─it was a pack radio. He sat on the top of the ridge with the radio on his back and looked down, and I went down into the gulley, and when the mortar went off, I looked up and found that the mortar round went off about ten feet behind the man with the radio, and the blast hit him in the back of the head and killed him. And we didn’t have a radio, either, with that. And so I brought the men─we were all in good shape because we were down in the gulley, but he was sitting up. The farm fields were up here, and the gulley was down here, and he was sitting with his feet, dangling at the point of the drop-off, and had been killed. Well, that was just one example of him telling me to get three men or four men, take them up to the top of the hill and see what the Germans are doing in the next town. But that didn’t get very far. Ami Rogers: So did you find out what they were doing in the next town? Cranston Rogers: Well, what the Germans were doing on the other side or down in the valley: we were on this valley, going up on a road with farm fields, and the farm main road was right at the low point. The stream was right next. And then we went to a ridgeline and down the ridgeline with another valley. 0:49:02.3 And it was seeing-what-the-Germans-were-doing-in-the-next-one-over situation. But we’re not getting very far in terms of (laughter) time. We’re now about a month from the time we went online until this situation happened. Gregory Rogers: But excuse me, Dad. So you went on line November 9. Cranston Rogers: Right, exactly. Gregory Rogers: In St. Die. And then St. Die was liberated on November─ Cranston Rogers: Twentieth. Gregory Rogers: Twentieth. So from there you were up in the Vosges Mountains.

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Cranston Rogers: This is now December 10 or 12. Gregory Rogers: So right. So after the liberation of St. Die, you went where? Cranston Rogers: Oh, north. Gregory Rogers: And this is to Alsace. Cranston Rogers: We moved north about fifty or sixty miles as a result of the Bulge; we were transitioning north. And that was up into Germany; that was where the German─ Gregory Rogers: So what was the day that you went to work for, when you made that big convoy, that when you traveled that distance, what dates were those, that great distance? Cranston Rogers: That would be after this incident of Atterbury(?) getting killed. That occurred around the twentieth of December when the Bulge─ Gregory Rogers: So where were you from─once you left St. Die? Cranston Rogers: We were moving steadily to the east, and then we got to─it begins with S. Ami Rogers: Selestat? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Selestat? Cranston Rogers: Selestat. When we got to Selestat, then we turned north. And we’re now moving north, and then in mid-December was when this happened that I’m talking about, Atterbury getting killed, and then after that we moved even further north to cover for the Bulge. Ami Rogers: Dad, do you remember what you did for Christmas or New Year’s? Cranston Rogers: Yes. Nothing. (laughter) 0:53:42.0 Gregory Rogers: I was going to ask you about Halloween before? Ami Rogers: Oh, yeah. What’d you do for Halloween? Wasn’t a thing, put a mask on? What about Christmas or New Year’s? Oh, you do have a Thanksgiving story. Gregory Rogers: But that’s not till later.

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Cranston Rogers: Well, the Thanksgiving wasn’t anything. I─ Ami Rogers: The turkey story. Cranston Rogers: Generally they got extra rations and a turkey. All the companies had that to serve. Ami Rogers: So you don’t remember where you were on Christmas. It was just a─or New Year’s? Cranston Rogers: Well, I remember Christmas as a event, but there wasn’t anything to mark it. Ami Rogers: There was an agreement for a cease-fire. Cranston Rogers: No. No agreement. Well, there may have been some lack of fire, but I don’t─see, right after Atterbury getting killed, that was a significant point because it was a case where our company was all involved with this, and Atterbury got killed simply because he was standing there and said, “I’ll take the radio.” And first place, he was a staff sergeant, and I didn’t think of him as somebody I would tell what to do, and I didn’t know that he just sat there with his feet dangling down the slope and the radio on his back and that when the shell went off, it caught him in the back of the head. It may have landed, maybe four or five feet further away, and the fact that the blast was significant; it caught him in the back of the head and killed him. Ami Rogers: Was that a difficult death right around Christmastime? Did that affect─ Cranston Rogers: No. By then we were all pretty immune to our people getting hurt; let me put it that way. Clements: That is actually a question that I have. The feelings of casualties, you say by that point you were immune. When you first─ Cranston Rogers: Yeah. See, like the one that you asked me about with all those men that had been─I had been (inaudible) on the boat. Gregory Rogers: (Inaudible) Cranston Rogers: And I found them all dead, and when I reported this back to the first sergeant that night, I started crying. 0:56:29.7 And then he’s telling me, “War is tough, Rogers,” or something like that. Ami Rogers: “You got to hold it together.”

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Cranston Rogers: Yeah, right. Maybe I didn’t cry again forever, but I don’t know. Thank you. Ami Rogers: I’m going to add, Dad, the story was that you were ordered to go to a farmhouse so he could get a better look at what the Nazis could have been doing, and as he’s running across the field he sees heaps of what might be hay or something in the field. And as he gets closer, he sees (inaudible). Cranston Rogers: No. I had seen them for some distance and recognized them as black lumps. But from a distance I couldn’t tell what it was, and it was intriguing enough to go in that direction and get a feel for what it was. And then when I got there I found they were all, those lumps were bodies of men, in OD [olive drab] clothing, that were dead. And then when I looked closer and found some of them are the guys I knew by bunking next to them on the boat, coming over, that’s─ Gregory Rogers: And this is Trinetrue(?). Cranston Rogers: Right, it was right close to Trinetrue. And I had been sent back to the company headquarters for some reason, to get some instructions; I don’t remember now what that was, but when I got there I was also supposed to tell the first sergeant about these casualties that I had witnessed, and I told him the story, and I started crying in the process. Ami Rogers: That was the first time you saw dead bodies. Cranston Rogers: Yes. I saw dead bodies of men that I knew. I’d seen other dead bodies, but not anybody I knew. And in the process of then telling him who they were, I did start crying. And he admonished me, in a fatherly way, (laughter) and─ Ami Rogers: I think he said to you, “It’s going to be a long, hard war if you don’t keep it together.” Something like that? Cranston Rogers: Well, more like, “War is tough. You got to get used to it.” Or something, I don’t know. Ami Rogers: That’s tough. Cranston Rogers: Yeah. Clements: But as it went on, it got easier? Cranston Rogers: What? Clements: As you went on, it got easier to see the casualties? 0:59:14.3

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Cranston Rogers: Oh, yeah, later I wouldn’t think anything of it. I accepted my friends being killed, people that I knew, friends. In a real sense you couldn’t call them friends; you didn’t know them well enough. Ami Rogers: I think you probably weren’t really emotionally devastated, again, if I can say, until you saw the travesties at Dachau. Cranston Rogers: Oh, I guess that’s it more than anything. It became emotionless in terms of─ Ami Rogers: But what I said was I don’t think you expressed real emotion again until you saw Dachau. 0:59:56.3 Cranston Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: You can talk about that. You don’t have to stay in line of your whole career. Cranston Rogers: Yeah. We seem to have not gotten very far. Ami Rogers: No, Dad. We don’t have to go through the timeline; this is more just an understanding of your emotional connection during the war. Talk about what happened at Dachau. Cranston Rogers: Well, Dachau ended up being five months later. So I’m certainly not, more or less, immune to anything. The Germans loaded up, later, near the end of the war, sometime in well, early April, I guess, they loaded up a lot of people at Buchenwald in trains and apparently were sending them someplace to hide. I don’t know what else they could have been doing, but to hide them. They were alive when they put them in the train, but because they didn’t give them anything to eat, or they didn’t give them a chance to eat or whatever, these trainloads of men, prisoners, had all died, and now the cars, the boxcars, most of them─well, there were both two kinds of cars, both, when I say both. They were like what we call freight cars; the French called them 40 and 8 cars. But they could load forty bodies, men, into a car and then pack them so tight that they ended up, they couldn’t do anything; they were stood up. Then they had what I call gravel cars, well, coal cars maybe. They were regular length cars, but the insides were three or four feet high, and those would be full of bodies. And so they loaded these prisoners that came out of Buchenwald and sent them all away to Dachau, which is outside of Munich from somewhere north of─Jeez, I can’t remember the names now. A city in Germany, I want to say Nashville; that’s not it. What was that city? Ami Rogers: That’s all right. I don’t remember either, but talk about what you saw when you saw the trains and dealing with telling your own men to stop hurting the Nazis because of the travesties that you saw. It’s a pretty significant emotional stuff you had to go through, telling your comrades to stop killing the Nazis or fighting the

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Nazis when you found them because you wanted to take them prisoner and have them serve their own─ Cranston Rogers: Well, when we went into Dachau or into the area near the camp─ Ami Rogers: What happened? Cranston Rogers: Well, we came across a whole trainload of dead bodies. Well, they had been loaded up at, say, Nuremburg. Well, Nuremberg was the N city that I was trying to think of. Ami Rogers: Right. Gregory Rogers: Right. Cranston Rogers: Nuremberg. But north of that had been a camp that begins with a B. Ami Rogers: Buchenwald. Cranston Rogers: Buchenwald, thank you. Buchenwald and─ Ami Rogers: Nuremberg. Cranston Rogers: ─Nuremberg and then Dachau was right outside of Munich. And they sent eight trains; one train would be all box cars. Another train would be all or part boxcars and part freight cars, but this is later, near the end of the war. This is in the April timeframe whereas I left off talking about December timeframe when the [communication] sergeant got killed; Atterbury got killed, who, the blast hit his head. He was sitting on the top of the bank, and the blast hit his head and killed him. And then I told the men, “Let’s go back down to the road,” or whatever because the Germans knew where we were, but we still didn’t know where they were, and the lieutenant had sent me up there to explore where they were. 1:05:43.2 And they saw us, in essence, before we saw them, so in that case we ended up going back down to the bottom of the road, joining up with the company, and the company commander kept us going into the next town. And the Germans apparently took off, but that was prior to our ultimately going up into what I’m going to call the Battle of the Bulge area, and the shifting of troops to account for the Battle of the Bulge. And it was a big shift of units because we spent, we got up to the Siegfried Line in our sector. 1:06:46.9 And we were in the Siegfried Line four days before they pulled out, and because of the Bulge, they pulled us out for maybe six weeks, and we didn’t go back up into that area until mid-March. Where are we, and what time is it? Ami Rogers: Dad, don’t worry about the time. She’s got questions to go through.

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Cranston Rogers: Well, I’m only worrying about it from your point of view. Where do we go? Clements: I’m fine. I actually was wondering how did you feel when you found the trains? Cranston Rogers: When I what? Clements: How did you feel when you found the trains with the bodies in them? Because before you said─ Cranston Rogers: Well, even though this was near the end of the war, it was a monumental revelation to understand how the Germans could have created all these dead bodies. 1:07:52.1 First, what’d they die of? And how did they kill them, or how did they get killed? And where did they come from? And what else went on? Now, these were all unanswered questions and became well, I don’t know what word to use. But even by then with us, none of these kinds of things really bothered you except they were questions. But we’re jumping three months. Gregory Rogers: No, no, no. Dad, she asked, “How did you feel?” Once these trains rolled in, and you were in Dachau─ Cranston Rogers: Well, we didn’t see the trains roll in. Gregory Rogers: Well, OK, you came─ Cranston Rogers: The trains were in a fixed location. Ami Rogers: Dad, how about you talk─ Cranston Rogers: One of them right outside of, outside of─ Gregory Rogers: Dachau. Cranston Rogers: Dachau. And they, well─ Ami Rogers: Dad, how about you talk about, remember when you got there, and there was a man up in the gun tower. Maybe you could talk about that (inaudible). There was a man in the gun tower, picking off people. Cranston Rogers: Well, it was certainly another part of maybe the next day or something that well, those were fairly easy to overcome to understand. Gregory Rogers: But what about your feelings and your comrades’ feelings and your emotions once you saw these trains and all these unanswered questions? Didn’t these emotions get a little heightened?

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Cranston Rogers: Well, yes, they did become, but by then nothing really overwhelmed you. I don’t know how to─ Ami Rogers: All right. You correct my story. I’m going to try and tell a story. You saw some Nazis that were there, and there was one of the gunmen shooting from the tower above. And your men, you ordered your men to go take him out. And then you had captured the Nazis, and these men had started to beat up and possibly shoot─I forget now what─these men. So you had to stop them from doing that. Is that correct? 1:10:28.9 Cranston Rogers: Well, yes, but I─this was─ Gregory Rogers: It doesn’t matter about the timeline, Dad. We’re just, we’re trying to figure out─ Cranston Rogers: I want to say we were at a point about a month after we went online, now in Germany, moving up, and then the concentration camps─ Gregory Rogers: About six months later, April, right. Cranston Rogers: The concentration-camp situation wasn’t until April. Gregory Rogers: Right. And we can come back to that point, but right now we’re asking about your emotions and your comrades’ emotions in terms of these trains and what you had experienced at Dachau. Cranston Rogers: Well, we were more or less emotionless; I mean, there was nothing─the only thing that was really an emotion was, “How did this happen?” I mean, “Why are there so many dead bodies?” They weren’t shot up; they were just emaciated bodies of people lying in these cars. Obviously a lot were starved, and how this happened was more of a mystery. 1:11:56.2 Gregory Rogers: Because you didn’t have any ideas of what a concentration camp was. Cranston Rogers: No. I and most of my contemporaries had never heard of this kind of thing. We knew there were concentration camps where people had been corralled and held because they were simply, they could just because they were Jews. Well, at dinner with─we saw Michael, Mike Gruenbahm(?). Michael Gruenbahm was ten years old when the Germans invaded Prague. 1:12:41.5 And they killed his father the first day in late September of 1940. His mother was arrested, but she was saved because she was needed as a mother of all these children, not all of them hers. She only had one, but she was bilingual; she was a mother. She could take care of the kids. As I said, they killed her husband the first day, but her son, Michael, eventually lived until he was fifteen, when we took Czechoslovakia, and anyway lived to be a

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graduate of MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] in a situation, which I later met him simply as a Jewish, young person who had survived World War II. But eventually it just happened that he introduced me to my wife. But that’s how they know of Michael. But─ Ami Rogers: Dad, I’m going to just─I’m going to try to answer the question for you. OK? You told me one time when you were in this situation and another situation back in Germany. I think jumping you out of the timeline is throwing you off a little bit. You had told me that you were at Dachau, and it was difficult for you because you were very angry and confused with the Nazis and that you knew when your men were attacking the Nazis, you had to stop them, which wasn’t easy for you to do, but you knew that they had to get put to trial, and that was the best thing for them, to happen to them. Is that right? 1:14:34.2 Cranston Rogers: Well, yes. And I also had to─well, in several situations I stopped American GIs from taking revenge. We didn’t know how all this got that way, so who were you going to take revenge on? Most of the people that were─there weren’t any─well, yes, there were some Germans who were still guards, but most of the guards had fled. See, we’re jumping about six months to the end of the war. Ami Rogers: So what happened with these German guards? There was somebody lower-ranking and senior-ranking in these German guards at Dachau? Do you remember that? Cranston Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: And what happened there? Cranston Rogers: Well, I─ Ami Rogers: Some of the lower-ranking guys fled and took the heat for some of the senior-ranking guys. Cranston Rogers: Well, that was: we didn’t know who was responsible, but it could be assumed that somebody else had killed them all, and others were simply taking off so they wouldn’t be accused of doing something like that. Maybe I’m missing something. Ami Rogers: No, no, no. That’s fine. So some of the senior-ranking guys did take off, and the junior guys took the heat. Did you ever find out what happened to any of those men? Cranston Rogers: No. Ami Rogers: Did you ever have any interest in trying to find out, or you just had so much other stuff going on?

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Cranston Rogers: No. We were beset with so many problems when the war ended that we didn’t have any control of, and another bad thing at the end of the war: all the Russian prisoners of war that were housed in Germany refused to go back individually, refused to go back to Russia because they would be─I don’t know what word to use─sentenced or mistreated by the Russians for simply having been captured. Because the Germans captured the Russian, the Russians then were going to take revenge on their own men for having surrendered. 1:17:12.4 And the biggest problem we had after the war in the Munich area were what to do with Russian ex-prisoners of war who did not want to be expatriated back to Russia because they knew they’d be sent to Siberia, and they would go into a German, civilian home, maybe even kill the man or kill everybody, all the Adolphs, but (inaudible) throw them out and take over the house. They thought we would allow them to be that disruptive and let them live in Germany. And we had more problems in the first few days of the end of the war with Russians that felt that they could do anything they wanted to, to Germans. Ami Rogers: So how’d you deal with them? Cranston Rogers: Well, we had to lock some of them up, treat them as (laughter) murderers, thieves, whatever, put them in jail. They didn’t understand; they thought we should be benevolent to them and allow them to rape and kill Germans. Ami Rogers: And what jail did you put them in, a German jail or an American-made, GI─ Cranston Rogers: No. They were all German jails. We, as soldiers, operated a police force. I mean, they were American GIs in uniform, but they were acting as a police force, and the biggest thieves, if you want to use that term, with police and thieves, the biggest thieves were the Russian ex-prisoners [of war]. Ami Rogers: So did you bring any of these men into the jail cells themselves? Cranston Rogers: Well, I was a higher-ranked person; I didn’t handle any of the─I gave instructions, what to do with them. But once we turned them over to the MPs [military police], we didn’t care what happened. At that point everything was so dependent upon somebody else making those decisions, and the war was over, and we were happy, and whatever we had to do to clean things up, we did it. Ami Rogers: It’s OK. I don’t want to─ Cranston Rogers: It’s somewhat of a complaint in a way but to let you know that we’ve gone about three months into the war, and now we’ve suddenly jumped to the end of the war. Gregory Rogers: Is there anything you want to say about this time gap?

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Cranston Rogers: No, because there were so many, so much, literally so much confusion and anomaly, the only word I can think of. It was totally unpredictable. It was totally─well, it wasn’t anything you could generalize. Clements: OK. A couple questions about those months: during those months that we skipped, how did you keep in contact with family, and what did you do when you were off-duty, if you had any? 1:20:48.1 Cranston Rogers: Oh, we had no off-duty. Clements: You had no off-duty. Cranston Rogers: The word off-duty was not used and didn’t even come into the picture until─I don’t think─I don’t know if it ever came into the picture. Clements: OK. So you were always─ Cranston Rogers: You were always on duty, but─ Ami Rogers: Dad, you earned yourself a night in France. Cranston Rogers: I what? Gregory Rogers: You earned a furlough. Ami Rogers: You earned a furlough in England and a night in France. Cranston Rogers: Oh, yeah, after the war. Ami Rogers: OK, but that─ Gregory Rogers: After the war. Clements: During. Cranston Rogers: I was─ Ami Rogers: Oh, during? Clements: Yeah. Ami Rogers: My bad. Nothing during the war. Cranston Rogers: I got a furlough at the end of the war because I had the longest time on line of the men in my unit, longest time online without any time off. 1:21:35.8 And that was mainly because they either got killed or─

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Gregory Rogers: Wounded. Cranston Rogers: Yeah. Ami Rogers: But during the three months─ Cranston Rogers: Yeah, wounded was another way of getting out because you went to the hospital. Gregory Rogers: So did you find out? Did people actually do that, purposely get wounded? Cranston Rogers: No. I don’t─well, there may have been one in a thousand of a self-inflicted wound, but that was unusual. Ami Rogers: Dad, during those three months, what communication? You had letters. Cranston Rogers: Oh, I exchanged letters with my mother and father. 1:22:08.0 My dad never wrote separately because my mother wrote, but then my grandmother was the one that wrote me the most mail, and I would write short, quick letters that were─I don’t know. They certainly didn’t look like an educated person wrote the letter; it was a childish kind of reaction to: “Hey, Mom, I’m OK. We went there. We went this. This happened.” And it would be one page, but they were nothing of any significant─ Ami Rogers: Nothing significant happened back home while you were overseas, that you missed out on? Cranston Rogers: Right. No, nothing happened, and I kept family more or less informed. My father─ Clements: And how often did you get─ Cranston Rogers: Pardon? Clements: How often did you get letters then? Cranston Rogers: Oh, I’d say two a month. Clements: Two a month. Cranston Rogers: Maybe three, four. Gregory Rogers: Did they have mail deliveries every day, or did they have─how did the communication happen?

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Cranston Rogers: Well, in some situations there was mail every day, but generally you got mail every three days. May you didn’t get mail every three days, but mail was delivered. And maybe every three days, no. Let’s say every week, once a week you may have gotten, not once a week rigorously but on the basis of an average, once a week you got mail. And they would always go on what the newspapers printed as to what was going on, and sometimes you could mention something in your letters home that fitted the news release for that area. And that way they knew of situations, but except for my mother being a very close friend of the society editor of the Orlando paper, there was nothing special. Ami Rogers: Now, what about your communication with your brother who was in the Navy? 1:24:30.4 Cranston Rogers: Well, we didn’t write many letters to each other. We both wrote letters home. Gregory Rogers: Did you guys skype? (laughter) Cranston Rogers: Did I what? Ami Rogers: No. Did your parents update you with what his situation was? Cranston Rogers: Yes. But the update would maybe be six weeks to two months out of sync. Ami Rogers: How long did it take for a letter that your parents would write for you to get to you? Cranston Rogers: Oh, you got letters within a week. Clements: Wow. Cranston Rogers: Sometimes, I’m not saying every letter came in a week. Ami Rogers: Wow, I’m just─OK. Clements: Did you have any other siblings? Cranston Rogers: Well, they were all air-mailed across the ocean. Ami Rogers: Right. OK. So no other siblings, just Rusty(?). Cranston Rogers: Yes. Clements: And he was in the Navy, you said? And where did he serve, your brother?

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Cranston Rogers: What? Clements: Where did he serve, your brother? Cranston Rogers: He was in the Navy, in the Pacific. 1:25:25.1 Clements: In the Pacific, OK. Cranston Rogers: And it was, in essence, a noncombative Navy operation that he was in. He may have landed a few troops, but (coughing) excuse me. My brother served on a landing ship, tank. Clements: OK. Then, only sibling. Did you make any close friends in the Army while you were across seas that you still talk to, to this day, or how did you make friends? 1:26:08.1 Cranston Rogers: Well, I ran in─well, first I visited my cousin when I got my furlough to England. I visited my cousin who was serving as an Air Force weatherperson, I guess is what it was. But I knew he was stationed in England, in London. And I looked him up, and he and I visited each other, but this was after the war ended. Generally I did not know any of my friends, although I know one of them was wounded badly, nearby where I was. And after the war I went to a hospital in England to visit him. And (laughter) when I left him, I walked through a courtyard that was supposed to be off limits because the nurses were sunbathing. (laughter) But that was just an amusing, little incident that happened. 1:27:16.3 But I did visit a high school classmate; I called him my social editor. I was more or less thought I was an athlete and didn’t do too much socializing, but frequently he and I double-dated, and he was the guy that got wounded, got badly wounded, and well, he carried a colostomy bag the rest of his life. Ami Rogers: Who is this? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Who? Cranston Rogers: Well, the name is Ted Staton(?). When I was in high school I was in kind of two worlds: I was an athlete dealing with all of the football, basketball, and track, and football, basketball, and baseball. And I was an all-state high school halfback in my last year, and the whole time I was in Europe I was thinking of having a career in college as a football player, but (laughter) that ended pretty quickly. But I did waste six months at University of Georgia when I got back, and I should have gone to Georgia Tech. 1:28:39.9 But that’s another whole world. Gregory Rogers: But you only had friends prior; you didn’t make friends─

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Ami Rogers: ─during. Gregory Rogers: ─during. Ami Rogers: Fellow soldiers that were─ Cranston Rogers: New friends? 1:28:53.2 Ami Rogers: Yes. Gregory Rogers: New friends. Ami Rogers: Within the 103rd. Cranston Rogers: Well, after the war there may be ten men, ten guys that I visit or corresponded with. It was a guy in Shreveport, Louisiana. Gregory Rogers: (Inaudible) Cranston Rogers: Huh? Gregory Rogers: Bill Hamm(?). Cranston Rogers: Right, Bill Hamm. His family owned a hardware store. Ami Rogers: Blackie(?)? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Blackie? Cranston Rogers: Blackie was the guy that took me five, no, ten, twelve years to find. He lived between where we lived in Houston─ Gregory Rogers: Shreveport. Cranston Rogers: ─and San Antonio. Gregory Rogers: Oh. Cranston Rogers: In a little farm town, but one night when I retired, and I’d spent the whole day in Fort Sam Houston in Texas, going through retirement papers, and on the way back, you were all asleep in the car, and I see this sign. I can’t remember the name of the town. 1:29:58.2 But it was the town that he lived in. And I had not been able─just a small, less than a thousand people. Blackman(?) lived there. I went off

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and went into the restaurant, and the waitress knew him (laughter) because he had a farm. Well, the farm was really a cattle─he owned cattle and a little farm. And─ Gregory Rogers: So there was about ten people. Cranston Rogers: I had a lot of friends, but a number of them never did progress too much after the war. There’s one of the fellows that comes with us, here; he and I served together, but I’ve never visited him at his home. Ami Rogers: Who was that? Cranston Rogers: What’d you ask me for? Ami Rogers: I don’t know because I forget. Cranston Rogers: I’ll think of his name in a few minutes, but I just spoke to him outside. Clements: While y’all were at war─ Cranston Rogers: Pardon? Clements: While you were at war, these people you became friends with─ Cranston Rogers: Did I believe in what? Gregory Rogers: While you were at war, these people you became friends with─ Clements: What did y’all do to pass time? Gregory Rogers: What did you do to pass time? Clements: To have fun? Cranston Rogers: Oh, we didn’t have any time. Clements: You didn’t have any? Cranston Rogers: Time off. I had one overnight, or overafternoon furlough, so to speak. 1:31:26.4 I volunteered to take a─ Gregory Rogers: Superior? Ami Rogers: No, furlough. Gregory Rogers: No, he said─

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Cranston Rogers: To take a patrol out. And if you went out on patrol, they gave you the next day off. This was in a kind of a holding pattern. It happened, (laughter) it happened in mid-February because I planned it by going out on patrol on the ninth of February, and on the tenth, which is my birthday, I got to go into town with another buddy, with a buddy of mine. And we went into town. Gregory Rogers: What town? Cranston Rogers: Luneville. I have a picture in that album (inaudible), and so far as I know, he’s still alive, living near Fort Myers in Florida, the only guy that I know that’s still around. And I timed it to take this patrol out so I would have my birthday off. Ami Rogers: And what’d you do on your birthday? Cranston Rogers: Nothing. We went into town, he and I, and well, there wasn’t much to do. Ami Rogers: So you might not remember specific details, but in general, when you were online, and the nights were slow, and it was late, and you’re not doing anything; you’re just kind of waiting around with these other comrades, what did you do? You talked? You shared stories? Did you play cards? 1:33:14.8 Cranston Rogers: We never seemed to have that kind of time. We never seemed to have that─ Gregory Rogers: Spirit? Cranston Rogers: ─opportunity to completely relax. We did get two and a half weeks off in February and early March, after I got to the 45th because the 45th had so much time online that they were taken offline for two weeks to kind of recuperate. 1:33:47.7 And by then I was a platoon sergeant and didn’t have any personal friends with any of the men in the unit; more or less a loner, I guess, if you want to call it that. Ami Rogers: Is that more because you don’t make friends with lower groups? Cranston Rogers: Well, in a way, yes, but it was also because when you had time to relax you just wanted to relax; you didn’t have any desire to do anything. There wasn’t anything to do, anyway. 1:34:16.8 Ami Rogers: Is it just speculation, Dad, or was it a lot of─for eleven months you were there, and for eleven months you only had, like you said, two weeks at the end or two weeks, three-quarters of the way through or something. Cranston Rogers: What are you saying?

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Ami Rogers: Was it just nervous energy? Was it just nervous anticipation or scared feelings while you were sitting there not doing anything? Cranston Rogers: You didn’t take any scared feelings off into your personal time. I don’t think I ever felt scared in the sense of scared, frightened. You might occasionally have a fright for the fact that, “Big artillery barrage coming in. Where do I go to get out of it?” And that takes the scare out of it. Then it’s all over, and you don’t think about it. 1:35:37.1 I don’t think I ever had any feeling or premonition of being hurt or killed or bad that lasted any time to cause any confusion. Gregory Rogers: Did religion play a role in that at all? Cranston Rogers: Pardon? Gregory Rogers: Did religion play a role in that at all? Cranston Rogers: No, because I was not very religious. Gregory Rogers: Well, you were a altar boy; you grew up Protestant. Cranston Rogers: Well, that was only my─yeah, I acted as an altar boy and acolyte, so to speak, because I was a devout─I was brought up in a devout, Episcopalian family, and I was in the boys’ choir and then later an acolyte and then a crucifer, but─ Clements: But that didn’t─ Cranston Rogers: Pardon? Clements: That didn’t have anything to do with the war? Cranston Rogers: No. I tell you honestly; right now I’m an atheist, if you want to know. Clements: Then I have one more question about the actual war, and then a few questions about after the war. This is just personal. When you got into Germany, did you do anything with the concentration camps? Did you see that part of the war? 1:37:03.9 Cranston Rogers: Oh, yes. I was involved in the consequence of one Buchenwald, not directly involved, but a side involvement. And I had a lot to do with the (inaudible) of liberating Dachau and even went back in a context of revisiting to help. And then later in life I’ve been back to Dachau on two other occasions.

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Clements: OK. Other than─you’ve already talked about the dead prisoners that you found in the trains. At those concentration camps did you find any living prisoners and help liberate them? How did you feel seeing the live prisoners? Cranston Rogers: Well, I was involved with maybe a half a dozen people that were living, and for a few hours, several Dutch prisoners who were released─well, no. What happened in their case: they got loose, but they spoke Dutch, and we spoke German, or we could speak German. But the point was we didn’t understand why we couldn’t understand them because we didn’t know at the time that they were Dutch. We did find this out later, but we had sort of a four-hour transition with them at Dachau before we sorted all this out, and we became very good friends. 1:38:56.2 He grabbed me and kissed me (laughter) when we identified ourselves as American. But we were having trouble understanding them because we were trying German, and they didn’t speak German, and we couldn’t figure out what language it was. But all of a sudden, well, it came out, and we still couldn’t communicate very well, but we did get─well, we hugged each other, and he gave me a knife, a switchblade knife that I don’t know if I’ve still got that, but anyway we found them in the basement of private homes in Dachau in an area my platoon was supposed to clear out, is what we called it. You’d shake down all the houses to look for Germans prisoners, or look for Germans. In this case we found Dutch civilians, and when they found out we were English, all of a sudden (laughter) the guy grabbed me and kissed me. And I was so taken aback, I let my guard down; that he grabbed me was upsetting to me, but it turned out that he was overjoyed. But that was the only sort of personal encounter. Ami Rogers: Dad, I’m going to add─correct me, OK? Something that’s very fascinating about this war is that the American people, when they went in─excuse me: when the American soldiers went in, there was a big mystery as to what the Nazis were actually doing, so the soldiers went in not knowing that there were these things like concentration camps and there were these other sorts of containment camps or other sorts of travesty that was happening. So each step along the way was a really big surprise to find to find these different [prisoners]. After the war, I’ve been witness with my father, and over time in the stories that he shared, men would come out of the woodworks and for example, he’s met prisoners of Dachau, later, who had said, “Oh, well, you saved my life.” And because there was so much going on at that moment, of course, you don’t know all the prisoners, but then later to be reunited with people that are once contained there. For example I had a girlfriend I lived in Germany with, who was a prisoner there, ultimately that my father saved her grandfather’s life. And it’s just these stories come out over time, and over time, because everything was such a big secret back then. Like for example, like the guy that we know in Boston─I forget what his name is─who was a prisoner of Dachau, he helped with that speeding ticket? Cranston Rogers: He what? Ami Rogers: Remember the guy? You know a prisoner from Dachau that you’ve met.

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Cranston Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: Yeah. And you met him after the war. Cranston Rogers: Yes. I forget his name right now because I’m notorious for not remembering names. Ami Rogers: Right. Well, talk about that relationship. Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Talk about that relationship. Cranston Rogers: Well, because I have been back to Dachau on several occasions that represented anniversaries of the release of Dachau, earlier I was the president of the 157th Infantry Association of the 45th Division, and we went back to Dachau on maybe the twentieth or maybe the fortieth. I don’t remember now, but we had hundreds of people that would come in to celebrate the anniversary and want to recognize us for having been liberators. And some of those visits were quite emotional, even though you didn’t know them at the time. 1:43:40.7 And some of these turned out to be people that we have become friendly with, but I think it’s more from extreme─what am I trying to say─extreme conditions under which they had to live, that we liberated them from, that is energizing their wanting to show gratitude. Well, yeah, I guess that’s the only way to explain it. And what’s his name? Michael Gruenbahm and I─ Ami Rogers: He’s one. Cranston Rogers: ─have sort of a comradeship, so to speak, but he was not somebody I knew then. We’ve come to know each other simply because he was there, and well, in this case he knew Fran, your mother, before I, yeah, before I did. Ami Rogers: Right. That’s a great example of how somebody he didn’t know during the war but he met postwar ended up introducing my dad to my mom, just these relationships that were built after the war. Cranston Rogers: And I became associated with a young─she was a writer for a Jewish newspaper, and she wrote a book. Well, she would have written a book anyway, but I gave her some encouragement and identified a number of American soldiers who acted the same as I, that she interviewed and─1:45:51.0 Ami Rogers: Suzie Davidson(?). Cranston Rogers: ─featured in her book. And then there was a period in 2005 to about 2008 that I gave maybe as many as twenty to forty lectures a year on some of

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the issues relating to liberating some of the concentration camps. So that’s another activity. Clements: OK. Then since you’ve segued into after the war, where were you when the war ended? Cranston Rogers: Well, there were two ends. I don’t know which one you’re talking about. One is the end of the fighting in Europe, and we were already in Munich by─see, we liberated Dachau on the twenty-ninth of April. 1:47:06.8 And we were still in the process of going into Munich on the thirtieth and liberating Munich on the first of May. We were there on the thirtieth but also the first of May, and there was some, you might say, exchange of gunfire in the center of Munich on the first. And then on the second of May, it was determined that the fighting in Munich had ended; the war was over. But the war in Germany wasn’t declared ended until May 8, which is a week later. And─ Ami Rogers: Do you remember that incident? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Ami Rogers: Do you remember when you found out the war ended? Cranston Rogers: Oh, yes. We, well, just the fact that we knew the war was ending on the thirtieth of April, and then the first of May, we kind of had our own celebration on the first of May because they told us we weren’t moving until the war in Europe ended. Well, it ended a week later is what happened. And I wouldn’t say we had any riotous parties, but we did have a few alcoholic drinks in the process, but mainly it was kind of a subdued celebration, and then on the thirteenth of June, a month later, I got a furlough to England because it had been identified that I had not had any furlough, and you did earn a furlough, although you may not have been given the opportunity. And I did go to England. Gregory Rogers: What happened from May to June? Cranston Rogers: What? Gregory Rogers: What happened from May to June then? Cranston Rogers: Well, we stayed in Munich. (coughs) Excuse me. Nothing happened. Ami Rogers: Can I add? It was subdued because you were preparing, and you knew that you were going to be slated to go to Japan. Cranston Rogers: Well, we knew that, but at that early time I was very positive that I fought in Germany; I sure as hell wasn’t going to go to Japan. But boy, did I get

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fooled, and part of that was really bad news for me to think that now I had to go to Japan. 1:50:01.6 Clements: So you did go to Japan after that? Ami Rogers: No, he didn’t go. I thought─ Cranston Rogers: Well, no, we didn’t have to go, but we did go home early as a result of it because that was a transition to go home. Ami Rogers: Once they dropped the [atomic] bomb, he found out then he didn’t have to go. But during that month, Dad, you thought during that month after the war ended and before you went to England, you─what happened? Cranston Rogers: Well, I was really a good boy compared to what might have been; maybe the fact that I was a leader had something to do with it. But just as one example I was now the first sergeant of the company because the─1:50:53.4 Ami Rogers: And you’re twenty years old. Cranston Rogers: And the youngest first officer in Europe, but the reason for saying this was a very important situation. We knew we were going to go home, and we were going to leave on a certain day in June, and all of the officers changed. All the combat officers went into something else, and all of a sudden, I’ve got five officers who didn’t have anything to do with fighting. And they more or less let me run the company as the first sergeant and because a lot of the old-timers had been with the 45th for years, two years, my guys moved into the mess sergeant, and I moved into the first sergeant’s job, and one of my guys became the supply sergeant, all noncombative positions. And then all of a sudden, and this─there was a very attractive, German girl living in the next town that they were all ogling or whatever, and they suggested I check her out. (laughter) And in checking her out, she sincerely told me that she had a boyfriend in the German Army, and she didn’t know whether he was alive or not, but she didn’t want to get involved with anybody, and being Jack Armstrong, I left her alone and didn’t do anything, but the reason I’m telling you this story is, the night we had a party to leave Germany, and the lieutenant said, “I’ll get the booze, and you provide all the (inaudible) and the food, for the leaving Germany party. And the next thing I know, they all decide they’re going over to this town to have a go at this girl, and I get over there, and she just comes in the door, and one big guy’s about six foot, eight, and grabs her around the body and just bodily throws her on the bed, and they start pulling her clothes off. And I said, “Wait a minute!” And told them all to go back to the other town that we lived in and leave her alone, or we would have been under the bus. But there was no point in getting into trouble at that stage, and I kept using the word, “I certainly wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my time in jail for something we didn’t have to do.” But this was an illustration of the devil may care, if you want to use that term, of the GIs themselves that were going to have to go home, actually raping or─

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Ami Rogers: Potentially. Cranston Rogers: Potentially. And here Jack Armstrong stops it. I’m not sure that’s a part I would normally play but nonetheless─ Ami Rogers: Well, you have several other stories of you helping. Cranston Rogers: Well, anyway, the next day she wouldn’t speak to me, but she did want me to tell the company commander, and I told the company commander what had happened, but I told him that nobody touched her, and nobody had touched her because they hadn’t done anything abusive. Ami Rogers: Well. Cranston Rogers: Well, they hadn’t taken her clothes off─ Ami Rogers: Well. Cranston Rogers: ─or anything like that. Ami Rogers: (Inaudible) Cranston Rogers: But the point was that she was upset with me because we pulled out and said goodbye. But you know that─I don’t know. Clements: So other than stuff like that, when did you finally get to go home, what day? Cranston Rogers: Well, we ended up being assigned to go to Japan to fight the war and finish off with the invasion of the Japanese homeland, but we would go back to the States, reorganize and train, and then make the invasion in the following late spring. 1:55:52.8 And we would go home, organize, but have a forty-five-day furlough. And they kept that schedule, and we actually landed in Boston on the second. I can’t remember now whether it was the second or the ninth of September. Gregory Rogers: That late? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Gregory Rogers: So what happened from the end of July and August? Where were you? Cranston Rogers: We left Germany on─ Gregory Rogers: Convoy? I mean, you had to─

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Cranston Rogers: We had to go by train and left somewhere around the end of June; well, let’s say the twentieth of June. No. Wait a minute. It was after the first of July. It was sometime in late July we got on a train to go to Rheims. Ami Rogers: You mean to go home? Cranston Rogers: To then go to Le Havre and get on a boat and leave Le Havre on the second of September. We landed in Boston on about the ninth of September. Clements: OK. And from there what did you do? Cranston Rogers: What? Clements: From when you got to Boston, what did you wind up doing? Cranston Rogers: What? Clements: When you got to Boston, what did you wind up doing? Cranston Rogers: Well, that was another issue because (laughter) they kept us on a train out in the railyard for three hours with all the windows in the First Naval District Headquarters on Summer Street, full of females, waving to us. 1:57:40.3 (laughter) But we then moved to Camp Myles Standish, and because I was the first sergeant and others with me had to redo the roster so that you were then reorganized as to where you were going, what state you were going to. Gregory Rogers: You went to Myles Standish down the Cape? Cranston Rogers: Huh? Gregory Rogers: Down the Cape? Cranston Rogers: No, no, Camp Myles Standish in Taunton. Gregory Rogers: Oh. Cranston Rogers: The camp was in Taunton. Gregory Rogers: Because there’s a Myles Standish Campground down─ Cranston Rogers: Yes, I know. But the one is Camp Myles Standish, and the other is (inaudible). Ami Rogers: I went to high school with a Myles Standish. Wait, so then─

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Cranston Rogers: But anyway, we had to stay up; I and the clerks, three or four clerks that were working on the rosters for all these different places literally stayed up all night, and we left the next morning, without any sleep, at nine o’clock, roughly nine o’clock, on a train to go home. Gregory Rogers: To go home to Florida. Cranston Rogers: Florida, yes. Clements: OK. And how did your family and the community in Orlando, how did they receive you like? Cranston Rogers: Well, my father was in World War I, and American Legion active person, and he and my mother drove to Camp Blanding, up near Jacksonville, from Orlando, where they lived. I live─I grew up in Orlando. And he came up to Camp Blanding to pick me up with my mother. 1:59:23.0 And I rode home in the car (laughter) like a twelve-year-old kid, but I rode home with them to Florida, to Orlando. Ami Rogers: How’d the community receive you? Cranston Rogers: Well, as time went by, by and by we would have twenty or thirty of us gathering every day down in front of one of the local buildings to communicate, and these were all ex-high-school classmates. Ami Rogers: And what about your brother? Cranston Rogers: He didn’t get home for maybe a couple of months, two or three months; I don’t know; don’t remember now. Clements: OK. And how did you readjust to being a civilian again, civilian life? Cranston Rogers: If I what? Clements: How did you readjust to civilian life after being in the war? Cranston Rogers: I don’t think there was any readjustment. If anything I was too─I should have gone to Georgia Tech instead of Georgia. I wanted to play football, and I was smitten with that, and I should have had sense that I was too small to play football and go to college to learn. But I ended up going to Georgia, a big football school, taking physical education, which was a waste of time. I should have gone to Georgia Tech to be an engineer, and I ended up transferring, after wasting a semester at Georgia. I went to the Citadel where my father and both his brothers went to college. 2:01:10.6 But I ended up doing well enough to go directly from the Citadel to MIT to get a master’s degree, and I’d finally given up on playing football, and I would be a student.

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Clements: And what did you get your master’s degree in? Cranston Rogers: Pardon? Clements: What did you get your master’s degree in? Cranston Rogers: In civil engineering, actually structural engineering. And I went to MIT; went to Boston in September of [19]49 to go to MIT and then spent the next twenty years in the Boston area before I went to Texas to design a heavy-rail system for Houston, and I found out only a few years ago that the petroleum lobby financed a referendum to shoot down the rapid transit system that we were designing for Houston, and the transit system failed by 3 percent, but it failed. So I came back to Boston to get in on the Big Dig. I don’t know if you’re from this─where are we? Ami Rogers: Mississippi, Dad. Cranston Rogers: We’re in Mississippi. Ami Rogers: Um-hm. Dad, can I make a statement and ask you a question real quick? So after the war my dad got his master’s in transportation engineering. He was integral in shaping building Boston, built an elevated structure. Gregory Rogers: (Inaudible) Ami Rogers: No, no, no, excuse me. They built an elevated structure that shaped Boston and allowed a lot of Boston to grow, and then on a lot of other smaller projects throughout, not smaller, larger, smaller-scale projects throughout Boston, and then his career kind of culminated in what became the Big Dig, which was taking down the structure and then doing this amazing feat. The first thing happened in Boston. So he’s had a very successful engineering career. Dad, how did your career in the war shape your civil engineering career? Because as an engineer, what led you to be able to be─you were always a born leader. But what led you, or how do you think it shaped you? 2:03:52.0 Cranston Rogers: Well, I was not reticent to tell people what to do. I was proficient in organizing people and leading them in the sense of, “Hey, we got to do this because of this, this, and this.” And I always, no matter whether I was with my reserve unit or my civilian workforce, I used to call them into the drafting room and explain what’s happening, and what’s going to happen, and how things are going to work out. And one guy wrote a poem─it was two pages long─about my rah-rah speeches. (laughter) Gregory Rogers: Right. Ami Rogers: My dad used to have, when he was running the Big Dig, he used to have these frequent speaks that were called the Rogers’ Talks, and my dad was very

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commanding, and he would bring people in like it was the Army, even though this was, you know, fifty years later, forty years later, and talk to everybody, and just he was very up-front, and told everybody what’s happening, what the next step of the game is, and I think that that’s why these projects were so successful. Cranston Rogers: I want to say I learned this in the last few weeks of the war. I was always─a pet peeve of mine, we never knew what the hell was going on. We didn’t know what was going to happen the next day, and you wish somebody would tell you just so you know. We were smart enough to know the world’s turning around. Now, what the hell are we going to be doing? And so I started right then and there; the last three months of the war, at night, if we were kind of in a lull, so to speak, waiting, I would call them all together and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening. This is what we’re looking for, and this is what I hope.” And ever since then I’ve always, any number of people, whether it’s ten people or 200, I would call them together to explain what’s going on and what is likely to happen the next short-term situation. Gregory Rogers: Do you want to talk about your reserve? Cranston Rogers: Wait. No. Dad, another question─ Cranston Rogers: Well, that’s good. I also was very active in the Army Reserve after World War II because I was of the age, and I would have been called to active duty if I’d not been in a unit. 2:06:48.7 This I know. But because I stayed in the reserve and assigned to a unit, I never was called to active duty. But my reserve unit had the highest rate of reenlistment of any reserve unit in the entire country. I’m telling you that only as an example of the fact that I always offered them opportunity in terms of letting them know what’s going on and presenting some kind of leadership to the point of helping people. Gregory Rogers: And when did you finally leave the reserve? Cranston Rogers: What? Gregory Rogers: When did you finally exit? Cranston Rogers: Well, I can tell you this, but I know I can’t─I don’t want your mother to know. The Chief of Army Reserve wanted me to become a general and wanted me to go to the Command and General Staff Course; the two years that they normally give, for me to do that in one year. Was I able to camp both terms in 1973? And I said yes. However, that was just before your mother got sick, and you know, she never did recover from Jack’s pregnancy. I use that as a term. Ami Rogers: Yeah, that’s OK.

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Cranston Rogers: Because it was after his pregnancy that she eventually became incapacitated. But you guys, when I─this hit me right between the eyes when we moved to Texas. Where are we now? Clements: Mississippi. Cranston Rogers: We’re in Mississippi, but in Texas, in Houston when I was down there, I─jeez, what am I saying now? Gregory Rogers: When you left the reserve? This happened in the seventies, though. Cranston Rogers: Well, [19]78. I either had to retire or move up, and I retired because I refused to get involved because your mother was now confined, more or less, to the house; she wasn’t yet in bed. But I couldn’t go off on the weekend. Gregory Rogers: At this point he had six kids. Cranston Rogers: Well, you guys needed somebody to take you to the ballgames or to coach the team or do this, that, and the other thing. It was soccer and what else? I don’t know. Ami Rogers: Well, thanks for making that decision. Gregory Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: I got a question for you, though. OK? You had mentioned something about all the men that went in (inaudible) of ASTP. And then it came out in civil engineering degrees, or whatever, or became educated. How do you feel that that shaped America? Because there was a big boom in America post-World War II. Do you think that that really helped, all that education and─2:09:57.6 Cranston Rogers: OK. First, I’m not sure the ASTP program was conjured up except to save the colleges during the early stage of World War II, or it really was civil engineering to put the world back together again. I doubt if it was the latter; I think it was more of a (inaudible) to the colleges to keep them open. But we’re never going to know that issue. But I’m glad that I took civil engineering because it seemed attractive to me. So I’m happy that I took civil engineering even though I wanted to be a football player and went off to Georgia when I got back. I felt the right thing proved to me that becoming a civil engineer was the right thing to do. So that’s where we are. Clements: OK. I wanted to ask you how you got each of your medals in turn. Cranston Rogers: How?

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Clements: How you got your medals, the Purple Heart, like, what event led to getting the Purple Heart? 2:11:18.9 Cranston Rogers: It was a very minor wound, shrapnel in the thigh area. I was lucky not to have been wounded any worse. The mortality rate on lieutenants was out of this world, and I was promoted or recommended to be an officer three times, and never got the promotion because there were too many in the pipeline coming from Fort Benning to Europe and never got promoted because of the number of lieutenants already in the pipeline. So I just─I don’t know. What was your question? (laughter) (Participants all speaking at once, inaudible.) Clements: The Purple Heart, you said you got shrapnel in your leg. Where were you when that happened? Cranston Rogers: Well, I got shrapnel in the leg, and that was all, but that was not a bad wound and─ Gregory Rogers: Where was that? Cranston Rogers: In the thigh. Gregory Rogers: No, where locationwise, in terms of the fight, and when and time? Cranston Rogers: Jeez. It was somewhere in the Siegfried Line back and forth in March of April. Well, I went through the Siegfried Line twice: once in March and once in early April. Clements: OK. What about the Bronze Star? Cranston Rogers: What? Clements: The Bronze Star, what did you do to earn that? Cranston Rogers: Well, in my case, the Bronze Star was simply because you got the combat infantry badge. I should have gotten a Silver Star; I’m not saying this out of sour grapes, but I should’ve gotten a Silver Star for a situation, which I was never recognized for. But nonetheless if I’d gotten a Silver Star, because I know what happened to other people in that same situation. It would’ve given me a lot more impetus in the reserve with a Silver Star as opposed to the Bronze Star. But I couldn’t go any higher in the reserve because I couldn’t take the weekends off to go to summer camp to become a general officer because my wife’s health, and I’m not saying that in sour grapes. I─ Gregory Rogers: Well, also you had six kids at the time, too, Dad. (Inaudible)

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Cranston Rogers: (Inaudible) because I had six, no. Gregory Rogers: Seven. Cranston Rogers: Not six, I had eight children. (laughter) Gregory Rogers: Well, right, but during the time that was [19]78 when Nick(?) was born─ Cranston Rogers: Well, the first three created the problem, anyway, in terms of being ready to go to football or not football but─ Gregory Rogers: Soccer (inaudible). Cranston Rogers: Baseball, soccer, or whatever the other sport was that I had to take them to, or they wouldn’t have been able to play simply because my wife no longer could drive the car. And I’ve not told her that, and I’m asking them now not to ever say anything. Ami Rogers: It’s a good thing it’s not recorded; it’s OK. (laughter) Cranston Rogers: I did the right thing in doing what I did. Gregory Rogers: Absolutely. Ami Rogers: Of course you did, Dad, and thank you. Clements: OK. Also this says that you got the European Theater of Operations Medal with three Battle Stars. What were the Battle Stars for? Cranston Rogers: Well, they were more or less routine setup as we progressed from France into Germany. I don’t want to─that was more of a─see, it’s just like I feel having the Silver Star would have done me more in my reserve career because I know what happened to another case, situation. So if I felt I really deserved something, and I didn’t get it, it was the Silver Star instead of the Bronze Star. (laughter) Ami Rogers: So Dad, those three stars were just offered more as like you got one for doing your training. Cranston Rogers: Yes. They were kind of automatic as the war progressed from one place to another. Clements: OK. Well, then let’s go ahead and wrap up a little bit with your reflections on the war. You’ve already talked about how you think the war affected your life in making you a leader. Did it affect you in any other ways?

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Cranston Rogers: No. I was lucky because I developed a─I wasn’t scared. Although a lot of times I was scared, but I didn’t show it, and I blamed a lot of lieutenants that would stick their heads up, and I went, “What are you going out there sticking your head up? If you’re not going to do anything, stay back here.” That kind of attitude. But obviously I was very lucky in not getting a wound, I mean a bad hit. Those are happenstance situations. Clements: Did you suffer from any PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] after the war or anything like that? Cranston Rogers: No. I don’t think so. I fortunately was able to tell myself, “Don’t get scared in the terms that”─there were one or two situations that I stuttered and stammered and was frightful in terms of really being scared but able to tell myself that that’s not going to help or whatever. 2:18:16.6 I don’t remember some of my remedies, if you want to use that. Clements: Then how did your military service impact your feelings about war and military in general? Like how do you feel about war now? Cranston Rogers: Well, unfortunately it’s getting worse in this world because instead of having large countries that you’ve got to look at that are arming, you now have literally hundreds of small groups that have no accountability for each other and want to go out and hurt somebody. And it’s tragic, I think, that we have this situation. 2:19:06.0 And while I used to think Russia was going to be a big problem because they had the bomb, it’s now proven that the Russians will kind of do anything just to create a problem, but they still have sense enough not to start the big one. And China is laying back there, [we] not knowing, I mean we not knowing, the rest of the world not knowing what their real objective is. And this is one reason I’m very pleased that our records are going to some school. I don’t know anything about this school, but what I know about it, I’m fantastically impressed, and I am one that’s very happy, I guess─I don’t know what other word─that there is a whole context of structured study to find out how we can generate opposition. This is what it’s going to come to. I mean, you’re keeping our records, and what your also doing is enticing people to study and examine and write about, to─well, all I can say is─study the world situation to find out how you can create small groups or large groups, whatever the case may be, to cause a reaction to world affairs. It’s like the German general says to me, “We need your help.” And I knew what he was talking about, and at the time that was very appropriate, but of course things change fast. Now Russia is even helping the─ Gregory Rogers: Isis. Cranston Rogers: Isis, yeah. Gregory Rogers: The general he speaks of is we were able to travel to St. Die last November for the seventieth anniversary, and we sat at a table with a German general, as well as some other leaders in Brussels and surrounding towns, and he leaned to my

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father and said, “We need your help,” meaning America. “We need to get together; we need to figure this out because it’s really these smaller people that are the issues; these smaller groups, if you will, are the issue.” Cranston Rogers: And I feel turning this thing over to, in this case, Southern Mississippi for study, for people to look at things, and maybe light a fire under country X, Y, Z, or something as we’ve got so many intricate situations like here’s the─oh, by the way, I’ve been invited to go to Palestine, not Palestine. Gregory Rogers: Israel. Cranston Rogers: Israel next May and I have no reservation about going to Israel; a lot of possibilities of bad things happening, but the point is that these are the kind of things we need to build hope that people can get involved and make things happen and prevent a bigger war. And this is where I look at this whole process of study at this institution is it could create alignment. You wonder, the civilized world; twenty years ago we were going to have to depend on the Russians being good boys. Now, it’s China, and China is worse because we don’t have as much influence with China as a country. Anyway, whatever we can do, whatever will happen to make, to have the option for change for the good is a good way to go. Ami Rogers: Dad, I want to add that you once said to me when we were talking about─you met a friend of mine who had fought in Afghanistan, and you said to him actually that you felt badly in that you felt like you had an easier time in war than he did in terms of how things are going today. I think that’s really sad to hear somebody say that. Do you remember saying that? Cranston Rogers: Yeah. But I was speaking at two different levels. Right now there seems to be multiple options in the world, all over Europe and [Western] Asia. There’s opportunities to get small countries to make a difference whereas twenty years ago you had to look at China or Russia as the big country to help save the world. So I don’t know. Anything that’s a step in the right direction has to be good. Clements: OK. Then finally what message would you like to leave for future generations who will hear this interview? Cranston Rogers: To do what? Clements: What message would you like to leave for future generations who will hear this interview? What do you want to say to them? Cranston Rogers: I’m missing the last phrase. Clements: Future generations who will hear this interview. Ami Rogers: What would you like to say to these people who hear this interview?

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Cranston Rogers: Well, it’s imperative that we all understand that we have to study and work together to help create, to make it─we can’t fight amongst ourselves; we’ve got to organize larger coalitions of groups countering other groups. 2:26:09.4 I don’t want to use the North Koreans as an example; that’s about as stupid as you can get, but yet here they are with all kinds of military might, just seemingly ready, but yet we need some way of having that used to make the world safe. And North Korea just happens to be an example of stupidity of a situation, but there are hundreds of smaller situations like, well, Isis is one on the bad side that’s an example. But I don’t know what they’ve got going that makes them so identified as leaders as far as the opposition is concerned. And so here’s Russia. What the heck does Russia want to help the Isis people for? But you never can tell, and where you’ve got now a university with a lot of people studying situations, you’ve got a better opportunity to coalesce, to get people together. Just like that one guy on the train helped a situation, and that was only an instant situation. We need─ Ami Rogers: The two soldiers in France who─ Cranston Rogers: What? Ami Rogers: I’m just saying what you meant by the one guy on the train, that you were talking about the two soldiers in France, who attacked the guy coming from Brussels. Yeah, Dad, so coming together, that’s great, a great message. And you meant by coming together, not just fight amongst yourselves America; you mean fight amongst yourselves, other countries. Cranston Rogers: Oh, yeah. Yes. I’m upset with Netanyahu and his rattling around. But people have to understand that this is going to save the world. Thirty years ago it was careless use of the atomic bomb that could have been a problem; could have been a problem. And we get that settled or calmed down, and now we got stupidity that I can’t believe that real small groups of people, like Isis, the North Korean dictator, and others are creating disruptions in the world, and our whole world depends on this because we have such bad things as atomic bombs to use, if they’re not used properly, are going to cause a lot of problems. So at least right now the choice offered, or the options offered by what is it? Southern Methodist? Not Southern Methodist. Ami Rogers: Southern Mississippi. Cranston Rogers: Southern Mississippi are significant, but the whole world is changing, and it’s changing almost daily, so. Clements: Then is there anything that you feel like we didn’t talk about that you wanted to talk about, or is there anything left unsaid that you want said now? Cranston Rogers: No. I didn’t think I’d end up being able to talk as much about that part as I did, and that’s only true out of my earlier, more or less complicated concerns

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and what’s going on today; well, time will tell, and that’s easy to say that. But if you got people studying situations that could cause unity, could develop unity, you’re certainly in a better position than a lot of people, running around, blind and not having an organized counter to what you might think is a problem. Clements: OK. Well, then if you’re ready, I think the interview can end now. If you think that you’re done, we can end the interview now, if that’s OK with you. Cranston Rogers: Yes. Ami Rogers: I’d just like to thank you for giving my dad this opportunity to speak and be heard. It’s such an important piece of our history. All these different vets you guys are interviewing is a wonderful thing. So thank you. Clements: Yes. And we thank you for being willing to give your viewpoints. So the university thanks you, and I’m sure all the museums do, too, that are involved. Cranston Rogers: Well, I also hope I can keep this association going and available because I think that it has a lot to offer in terms of getting people to look at the situation and look at problems and come up with solutions. Who knows? So. Ami Rogers: To the 103rd! Gregory Rogers: 103rd! (laughter) (end of interview)