Interview with Cyril Bushmaker [Undated]

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, this is Cyril Bushmaker. I live in Allaway, Wisconsin. In March I got a notice to go drafted. My draft number was 400 and I had -- we to be ready within a week after I got my notice, I had to quit my job and straightened out everything I had and then we had to go.

Christopher Slama:

And this was in March of 1941?

Cyril Bushmaker:

March of 1941.

Christopher Slama:

Which was approximately (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

At which time you would have been (inaudible) the draft?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

So then we -- well, I left on March 19th and went down to Milwaukee and on a train form Greenbay.

Christopher Slama:

The Northwestern?

Cyril Bushmaker:

The Northwestern Depo and we left out of that and we went to --

Christopher Slama:

With 101 people?

Cyril Bushmaker:

There was 101 fellows at that time. The first bunch of draftees. We -- I went down there and they took us and put us in a motel and then the next day they gave us everybody a physical.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And after we took a whole day to get the physical, go through the physical and I met some fellows. We got down in Milwaukee and we wanted to start drinking a little bit and we --

Christopher Slama:

Had a good time?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We had a good time. So we -- the next morning --

Christopher Slama:

What order was the draft as far as -- had the draft been going on for --

Cyril Bushmaker:

We were the first bunch of draftees to leave.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah, okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Then we left and we went to, we went down there and then the next day we all got our physical.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then they took us, put us on the train. We went down to Camp Livingston, Louisiana. It took us about three days to take the train down there because I had to go to take all the back roads, the back trains back.

Christopher Slama:

Right.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Right. Get down there and then we -- every -- a half a day or so, we had to get out and to walk around the town and get back in the train and get on our way down there again. It took us quite a while to get down there. Then we were loaded in the coaches, the old coaches, and we got some of those that like that in a museum here in Greenbay, so we took and three fellows to one double seat with our baggage and everything. All of us --

Christopher Slama:

So it was really tight, huh?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. We went down to Milwaukee and then we packed up to Milwaukee and went down to (inaudible) and we -- then we got down there and then they -- I was with the NI (ph) Tank Company when they got in there.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Camp Livingston, the headquarters first and then I was in the NI Tank Company down there, 'cause you never know where you're going to be if they transfer you.

Christopher Slama:

They didn't tell you before you went?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, they never tell you nothing. Yeah, I was at Camp Livingston. And then we, I went to Livingston, was down there for three months our basic training. We sat out in the sun and the sun beat on us. And both of us come from the north and it was pretty hot in April down there. And quite a few of us, all the skin on our faces was all peeling, because the sun was so hot down there, so we took and had our basic training down there. And then after I got done, we -- I went to school at Fort Bening, Georgia and after I got to Fort Bening, Georgia that was for nine weeks and we -- then after the nine weeks I --

Christopher Slama:

And that was for the maintenance training?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Maintenance and all the vehicles. All the vehicles for the Army.

Christopher Slama:

And that had been shrunk down from a year program?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, from a year-and-a-half down to three months so.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. And then you met up with Mr. Smith Depiere (ph)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, that was with the Fort Bening, Georgia.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Keith Smith and we went to town all night, we drank pretty good and so we didn't have any pain or -- the busses, they had busses there, and that's where we had to get back on, and I didn't know if I got off the right place or not, but I did. So we, I got back there and then we finished there and we graduated from school and then we went to Fort Evans, Massachusetts, that's where the 32nd was and they moved out there, gone to the Pacific already. And then the 45th was there, so that's where we sent in. And there were 12 or 13 of us from school there and we all got, they put us in the 45th Division, but they distributed us all over the division. So, finally we found out where each one was and we got together and we all transferred it that 700 ordinance at that time, so we, we did pretty good, and we stuck together most all the time, I still keep in contact with some of the fellows today.

Cyril Bushmaker:

What are some of their names?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Oh, Hyman Strauss, he passed away and Jim Logasson, he's still alive and John Sweeney, he's alive, and then Ed Pablokavich (ph), he was from Hobart, Indiana, and he passed away, and there was a lot of other fellows that was with us.

Christopher Slama:

And did you go to Camp Pickett?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, after we -- up at Fort Evans, Massachusetts and we went up to Pine Camp for some artillery training, because the artillery is practicing shooting and that's where we had to go up to Pine Camp, New York. That's way up in the near the Canadian boarder, so that's where we had to go for about a month or so there. And then we came back and then we got ready to go to Camp Picket, Virginia where they got ready to ship us out to all over the United States and we -- they shipped out of there and then we --

Christopher Slama:

How was the mood there knowing that everybody was soon going to be shipped off?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We all knew it. Nobody said nothing about it. We all -- everybody knew it.

Christopher Slama:

Did you know whether you were going to go to Europe or to Asia?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, it just -- we were just ready to go.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

They didn't tell you nothing. We took and we graduated and they took us --

Christopher Slama:

Africa?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We -- after we left there, we went to, you go to the right 20 minutes and to the left 20 minutes each way on the ocean, 'cause then the submarines --

Christopher Slama:

Can track you?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Submarines couldn't keep track of us.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And it took us, oh, a good two weeks to go and so then we got into over in Africa. We stayed there for a while and we grouped again and then we landed in Sicily.

Christopher Slama:

Did it take time to adjust to a different way of life in Africa?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, no, we just lived normally out of our barracks and then to the ships. And then we got there and then we took and went to --

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Went into Sicily and --

Christopher Slama:

And to India?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, we went up into, then we went to Sicily. Went up to into Italy and then we got down in southern part of Italy. One guy come up to me, this Italian, and he says, "How come it took you guys so long to get here?" "So why didn't you do something about it?" He says, "We couldn't do nothing about it," you had to put up with it.

Christopher Slama:

And this is in Salerno or Naples?

Cyril Bushmaker:

That was around Naples.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so, so then we landed in there and into Southern, into Italy. And then we stayed, stayed up far as Enzio and we went there and we shelled (ph) us 24 hours a day for six months. We were there for six months. Some of the fellows says, "If you're ever -- you had your hell on earth, you don't have to worry about going to hell," so that's just the way it was there.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so, then we stayed there and then after, because they were shooting at us from Rome with this big railroad (ph) gun, I got some pictures of that, too. And whenever they'd shoot that, just back up on a tract about two or three blocks.

Christopher Slama:

Wow.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so, I got pictures of that. So I kept those all the time, 'cause I picked up all kinds of pictures wherever I could get any and I had a camera along and I took some pictures and I had one fellow that did that on the side. He developed pictures for all of us and he --

Christopher Slama:

And then you developed them as you went along?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

And did you send them home or did you --

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, I sent some of them home, 'cause a lot of them, I didn't think they would pass. All of our stuff was censored and --

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

'Cause the stuff, I kept that with me all the time. So then we --

Christopher Slama:

Did you visit the Pope in Rome or anything?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yes, I saw the Pope at that time while I was in there and we, he handed us each a rosary and I got that yet and so we stayed there for a while. We got up a little bit above Rome and then we stopped and backed up, went down to, came back to regroup down in Naples, Italy. We regrouped down there and packed up our trucks and everything and some of our trucks, what they did, the stevedores on the ships, they was unloading, they put a sling in the front of the truck and a sling in the back and these trucks, there was no weight limit, some of them run til they're full.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then when they were letting it down, it's not the stevedores, and it bent the train right in the middle behind the cab on a lot of our trucks.

Christopher Slama:

Wow.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so I -- another fellow and I we saw that, looked at that and we said, "Lets straighten up." I said, "How are you going to straighten them?" I said, "Just the way they bent them." So we got, we had some three, four wreckers and they had real heavy chains on it, 'cause we had to pull tanks with that and everything else. So we got those and chained them underneath there and put these hydraulic jacks underneath and bent them straight (inaudible). But they tried to get some new trucks, but they wouldn't give us anymore. They said you could run them this way so, so then I straightened them and I never got any credit for it or nothing. I had Chucky Henderson, he was from down in Texas, he helped me. He's a mechanic and he didn't, he never did anything like that, nor has he.

Christopher Slama:

Wow.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, so we --

Christopher Slama:

So you guys had to get creative, huh?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. That got all straightened around and.

Christopher Slama:

You didn't -- so you brought all those on the boat then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, we put them on the boats.

Christopher Slama:

What kind of boats were you guys riding in?

Cyril Bushmaker:

A lot of them were liberty ships.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then they put the rolls down there and they put the stuff down in there.

Christopher Slama:

Was it a whole fleet of ships or did you go out like one at a time?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, no, they put a whole bunch together and then they had submarines go along with them that.

Christopher Slama:

Escort?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Escort.

Christopher Slama:

Any --

Cyril Bushmaker:

The planes were flying over. I believe I was on the Enfield (ph) for six months there. Planes flew over us 24 hours a day there.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And we took and we could see land up on some of the hills around there and whenever they'd shoot an airplane down, we could see it hit the water and pretty soon you'd see a big grease spot come up. That's all that was left of it then. So, we -- and we went up into Southern France, Marseilles, and then we went --- it went moved pretty fast there, because the tremors they had them on the run pretty much and so they, we moved pretty fast. We went up our way through Southern France and up the --

Christopher Slama:

What -- do you know what month that was?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, I don't.

Christopher Slama:

You don't know, okay. How long were you in Italy total, do you know?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Oh, I was in there about a year.

Christopher Slama:

A year?

Cyril Bushmaker:

About a year I was in Italy.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. Did you get to mingle with any of the Italians while you were there or was it strictly on the --

Cyril Bushmaker:

We -- some of them, most of us behaved ourself that stayed there.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

But there's always some that's got to be, got led astray but.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. Alright.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And we had all the smoke we wanted, cigarettes we wanted. And then unloading the ships, we'd ask the drivers what they had on there and if they had cigarettes on them, we'd tell them to throw up a couple of cases, so we'd throw up a couple of cases and we took it down. We'd sell them for $25.00 a carton for cigarettes, that's the prices today, too, so.

Christopher Slama:

(Laughter).

Cyril Bushmaker:

So, we -- then I sent money home and we got a chance to make a down payment on a house when I come home out of the service.

Christopher Slama:

The same house you're in right now?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Huh?

Christopher Slama:

The same house you have right now?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, the other one across the street from the gas station.

Christopher Slama:

Oh, okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

That's the one I bought, the one I'd come home in.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. Okay. So --

Cyril Bushmaker:

Then we got up through Southern France and there was some pretty good sized town, Bamberg, and Engweiler and a lot of these other towns that we went through there, but we didn't stay much, didn't have much time, 'cause we were on the move pretty much and we had Germans running.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then we went all the way around and we ended up in Munich, Germany and right after we got there some of the officers asked us if anybody wanted to go to Dachau concentration camp, so I said, "I'll go." And so we took and worked with, a bunch of us went in a truck over there and then these are the pictures I took there. A lot of pictures I got and I got some books from there, too, so.

Christopher Slama:

Had the Germans already left Dachau by the time you got there?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, yeah. They, didn't take any German prisoners there at all, they shot them all. They throw everybody in there and no prisoners at all. They didn't take any of the guards there, they were all SS troopers, and they killed them all. And they were all -- I got out the next day and they were all laying out there yet, all around the place, killed them.

Christopher Slama:

So how many days were you at Dachau then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I just spent a couple of hours there.

Christopher Slama:

And were all the prisoners freed then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, they were in the compound yet.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

They didn't leave them out, because they didn't have no place for them to go or anything, so they'd feed them there, and then I was getting the truck ready after so they could take them back into Poland and this is countries where they were from.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so we took them, that's how I lost my finger, getting the trucks ready. We broke one of the center poles from a spring on a truck and I was putting that in and I jacked up and the jack slipped out underneath and I looked, my finger was gone and my other fingers were all in the spring of the truck yet, so lucky I --

Christopher Slama:

So the medics fixed you up then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, I went into the hospital and they left it open for a week before they sewed it up, because they said that let the infection drain out.

Christopher Slama:

Oh, okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

So, they didn't like any operation. You went in the hospital there and I went out of the hospital there they, the fellows that were in there, we had some fellows were shot in the stomach, one fellow he had planted maggots in his stomach, it eats away the dead skin all around and they go in and depleted, keep it clean.

Christopher Slama:

Right.

Cyril Bushmaker:

The maggots and then they get so far and they stop and then they start crawling all over and then they'd take them out and let them out some other place.

Christopher Slama:

So, this was back in Munich?

Cyril Bushmaker:

This was back in -- we went to Paris, I lost my finger there.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. So right after Dachau --

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

-- and Munich, you went back to Paris?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, I was in Dachau. I was uplifted up from Munich, Germany.

Christopher Slama:

Right. And then you went to Paris?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

At the hospital?

Cyril Bushmaker:

At the hospital there. Then I stayed there and then they took me and put me on a train and brought me back to the area where and I saw one of our trucks. So I jumped off the truck I was on and went to a truck that one of our other trucks in order, then I'd go back to the old company again.

Christopher Slama:

Okay. And now you're back in Germany?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. The ship, getting ready to come home and then, Herbert Marcie and we, they put us on the ship and then they said (inaudible) exit. They put us next to 500 guys on a ship. So, you know, we all were on our way home and I didn't, I stayed right behind the cabin of the ship. It was rocking, but if you move to the end of it, you had an awful rough ride there. And we had to (inaudible) all the way back to Boston. And then we got back to Boston and then we (sic) processed us there and shipped us all different places. I saw fellows in Boston there that I did when I first got in the service, the 32 Division, and we went to the Pacific. I went over to the Atlantic and they, they got discharged at the same time as I did. We were all in (inaudible) I see him a couple of times, but he was never around there. I talked to him, the head of the bank there, I talked to him.

Christopher Slama:

What was his name?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, in the 32nd Division. It just -- then after I come out of the service, 'cause we had some reunions and fellows and then --

Christopher Slama:

Where did you go after Boston, did you go to (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

You were waiting to get discharged?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Discharged.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then we got discharged there and --

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible).

Cyril Bushmaker:

I got a leave.

Christopher Slama:

And you went up to (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible).

Cyril Bushmaker:

And they sent me back here and then they brought me back again. (Inaudible), he took one of the cars that they had up by where he lives there. It was like (inaudible) got discharged and then they took the train and went back to Milwaukee, so I get to see him quite often.

Christopher Slama:

Down in Milwaukee?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, I still see him every once in a while. I call him on the phone.

Christopher Slama:

Do you have reunions?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, he was in some of the reunions, there was a couple of guys. The officers that come to the reunion, because they just didn't want nothing to do with any type of service anymore, they had enough of that. Quit now for a while (inaudible). Sand rock and we dug a hole through the wall and we lived in that, because the shell (inaudible) was (inaudible) all the time and there was an ammunition dump right close by. It hit that ammunition dump every once in a while and then all hell would break loose.

Christopher Slama:

That's where you have a lot of your memories from (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, yeah. They didn't want us there. They didn't want to move.

Christopher Slama:

So how did you guys finally -- how did the shelling (inaudible), did another division come?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, no, they got the Germans backed off. They all got in there and made a big push and they did -- because when we moved out of there, you could see all their equipment alongside the road.

Christopher Slama:

I imagine there was quite a bit of damage?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, I talked to some people that was there not too long ago and they said that the cave where we slept in was all filled in pretty much, it's just a big dip there. It was all, they kind of (inaudible). I got pictures of all those. Just sometimes you don't care to remember a lot of the memories.

Christopher Slama:

You try to remember the good times?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We didn't have too much good times.

Christopher Slama:

No?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No. The one time we got into Bamberg, Germany and the fellows there they got in the mineral yards, all the box cars full of German booze, cognac, and all different kinds of stuff. They took and emptied it out (inaudible). They took it to a company, divided it up all the booze and stuff. We each got five bottles of booze and then a lot of cognac and lot of other good stuff. And then we, but I didn't touch much of it, I drank some, not much. And the fellows that was really alcoholics they'd come and they'd buy the bottles from me, they'd give me $25.00 a bottle for it, so I was selling the darn stuff instead of drinking it.

Christopher Slama:

You were making money off of it?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

So, was that one of the better times then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, that was.

Christopher Slama:

What was the best time you had there?

Cyril Bushmaker:

None. There wasn't really no good times.

Christopher Slama:

No, how about the worst?

Cyril Bushmaker:

The worst?

Christopher Slama:

The worst?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, you stand guard at night. You work during the day and then guard the ship at night and then you didn't get much time off. I went to Paris a couple of times.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. What did you think of Paris?

Cyril Bushmaker:

It's big.

Christopher Slama:

Big? The Eiffel Tower?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Eiffel Tower there, a lot of other buildings. A lot of fellows said they went back afterwards and said that (inaudible) pretty well --

Christopher Slama:

Yeah, I bet. So, do you think about it quite a bit still?

Cyril Bushmaker:

It runs through my mind every once in a while, some of the stuff, yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Once a week or so?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Sometimes, you never know.

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

(Inaudible) No, lately just with all this stuff over there, then the -- I get, it refreshes your memory some of that stuff. I don't think my (inaudible) some of that --

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. You _____ (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. You could figure out -- working hard to get things straightened out because of Hitler. He had so much power that what he did --

Christopher Slama:

Was there resentment towards the German military?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, we didn't have anything to do with the military, we just took some prisoners there. There were a lot of them that got away that (inaudible) the country we were in.

Christopher Slama:

I imagine everybody was very happy that you came home?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Did you have a big party or do anything like that?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, no party, nobody. We came back here and then they took us back and discharged us there. I never got nothing from the United States government, not a damned thing for all that work, nothing. The only thing is lately we got the commendation from the French government, because they came here and they wanted to know (inaudible), but we, so then the (inaudible) he wrote in and said that I was there and so we got --

Christopher Slama:

You got that at home?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I got it at home, I got it framed. The most that I ever got from anybody for the four-and-a-half years and --

Christopher Slama:

The whole time you were there?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Huh?

Christopher Slama:

Four-and-a-half years?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Four years, six months and 13 days, and never got nothing for it, I just lost that much time of my life.

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible) That much time?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, it's just -- (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

My what?

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible).

Cyril Bushmaker:

She was home.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah? She was working?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, she never worked, but that was just the end of the Depression.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And we was, we got $21.00 a month and you had to pay for your laundry and you had to pay for your insurance and you didn't have any money left. I never smoked, I sold it all. The money --

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)? [END OF SIDE ONE. SIDE TWO OF TAPE ONE]

Christopher Slama:

That whole time you were there you had your boots, your socks?

Cyril Bushmaker:

All our clothes, everything.

Christopher Slama:

How many -- did you just have fatigues or did you have any formal dress or anything?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, I had a coat and a pants and then fatigues, what you call it?

Christopher Slama:

Camouflage?

Cyril Bushmaker:

It was what do you call those --

Christopher Slama:

Wool? Flannel?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No. See, they took all our cotton clothes away from us when we went overseas because they said --

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

(Inaudible) the cotton ones.

Christopher Slama:

Cotton?

Cyril Bushmaker:

So they (inaudible) some of us kept some of the cotton clothes.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. And you had your helmets?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Those were all furnished.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And the liners.

Christopher Slama:

And a rifle?

Cyril Bushmaker:

A rifle.

Christopher Slama:

With a bayonet on it?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I didn't have no bayonet on mine. Everybody had a gun.

Christopher Slama:

And that was -- you did the training, the basic training then, the artillery training?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, infantry training.

Christopher Slama:

Infantry training?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Where was that at?

Cyril Bushmaker:

(Inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

And how was the weather while you were there?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Winter was cold.

Christopher Slama:

Winters were cold, like Wisconsin winters?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. How about in Italy?

Cyril Bushmaker:

What?

Christopher Slama:

In Italy how are the winters?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Oh, not quite as cool.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

It's cold down there, though. We lived in tents.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Pop tents, otherwise we'd find a little house and go sleep in that, tell a bunch of people to get out of the house, we're going to move in.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. And then the summers were pretty much like here, too?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, pretty much like here.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. What did you think of Southern France, you weren't there long enough to check it out?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, it was -- France was a little bit better than Italy. Germany wasn't too bad, but France was just a little bit, updated a little bit more. You know, different kinds of weather and the food wasn't too bad. We always got, we had a lot of beef and there was pork and everything else.

Christopher Slama:

And horse meat?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Some horse meat, too.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

I had that in the United States.

Christopher Slama:

You did?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

When?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Before we got ready to go overseas.

Christopher Slama:

While you were in the military?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Sure. We had beef there (inaudible). At night within your (inaudible), you'd take it and hack off a good chunk of steak and go fry it up and --

Christopher Slama:

With all the guards from Oklahoma? All the cooks are from Oklahoma you said?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, some of them, most of them were. We go there and pick up a sandwich and put a beef sandwich and fry it up with a chunk of beef, depend what kind of meat we'd have there. Sometimes you had pork and sometimes you had beef and horse meat, you know, it tasted good.

Christopher Slama:

You'd spice it up? And you had vegetables every night?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, we had some vegetables, all canned vegetables. We had a lot of canned food there, small cans were rationed for us, the Larson company made everyday.

Christopher Slama:

And any sweets? Any chocolate or anything?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, they didn't do that. You didn't get much candy, you know.

Christopher Slama:

And what did you drink everyday, water? Was it hard to find good water?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No. We had -- we had water, water containers and they got that and then what they would do if it wasn't quite right, so they'd put a little iodine in it, that will help to kill anything that was in there that you didn't need.

Christopher Slama:

Right. Did you guys ever run out of water?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No. (Inaudible) the streams were pretty clean over there.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

They ain't like here (inaudible).

Cyril Bushmaker:

And how about, did you ever run out of socks?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, we had plenty clothes.

Christopher Slama:

You had plenty of clothes?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. One time I looked up a friend of mine down in Naples, Ed (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, and he had a new pair of combat boots on and (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

(Inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

(Inaudible). He said, "I've been trying to get some for a long time," 'cause he worked on the crane loading the ships at night.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And he said the mosquitoes are so bad that they're just eating his legs all up. So I said, "Well, you got an old pair of shoes I can wear back?" He said, "I'll find a pair for you." He found a pair of shoes for me to wear back to camp and then I went and told the supply sergeant that I needed another pair of shoes. He said, "You just got three new pair," I said, "Yeah, but I gave a pair to somebody that really needed them and had some problems." "Okay," and then he gave me another pair, these combat boots are the ones that had the (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

They go up to your calf?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, up into your calf, not high, just about this high.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh. Do you have (inaudible)?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No.

Christopher Slama:

No? They're pretty comfortable?

Cyril Bushmaker:

They were decent shoes.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

They were decent ones.

Christopher Slama:

And did you ever have any interesting conversations with any troops from any other countries?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I'd talked to some of them, but we didn't have too much to talk about. It wasn't too much to talk about. Everybody does their job. You don't worry about anybody else what their job is or nothing, so just take care of what you have to, that's all.

Christopher Slama:

So, how did they communicate between what the Americans were doing, what the British were doing, things like that?

Cyril Bushmaker:

They had radio communication. And what they did over in, where was it? There was some place, some foreign country over in the southeast. What their, the Japanese and them were trying to find out what the English were talking on there, so what they did screwed them good, they got a bunch of Indians and let them talk the Indian language. They didn't know nothing, they couldn't find out nothing. They didn't -- nobody in the world knows the Indian language.

Christopher Slama:

Right.

Cyril Bushmaker:

(Inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

(Laughter).

Cyril Bushmaker:

And so, they got the Indians.

Christopher Slama:

Radio communication?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Communication, yeah, and then they afterwards they started drafting more Indians, so they could get more of Indian language used or communication. Nobody could copy that, the Germans couldn't copy it and --

Christopher Slama:

Did you have lots of people that knew German?

Cyril Bushmaker:

In our outfit, we had one fellow, he originally was born in Germany.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And he came to the United States and they drafted him and he went back over there and he would talk to the people over there. Those were all -- he was from the high Germans, your high and low Germans.

Christopher Slama:

Right.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And he was one of the fellows that could talk high German and he'd go there and talk to the people that talk this low German, he said, "You talk now." He'd talk to the high German and he'd talk decently.

Christopher Slama:

(Laughter).

Cyril Bushmaker:

He'd straighten them out.

Christopher Slama:

And did anybody speak French or Italian?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I don't know. Not that I know of.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

Once we had a bunch of Italians from New York in there with us, but they didn't know the language either.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah. What kind of vehicles did you have?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We had some Jeeps and Ford made them, too, but we didn't have any over there. And they had Dodge trucks, half tons, three-quarter-tons. And then they had some two-and-a-half-ton GMCs and (inaudible) GMC like that, too, but they didn't have any over in that area.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then they had the Diamond (ph) Ts, those are pretty good sized wreckers, bigger than the ones we got here, then we had two or three of those and then we had one Corbed, it's a wrecker.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

A big wrecker, it was a big one.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And they use that to pull the tanks around. They were all blown up and everything else. And they had 20 (inaudible) systems on there. They had regular spark plugs and then they had another set of spark plugs in there, too, that ran off of mag needle (ph).

Christopher Slama:

For what?

Cyril Bushmaker:

More power in the cylinders, put more power in there and they ran -- you turn on the mag needle with that and you had all the power you could you needed, no matter --

Christopher Slama:

Do they use that today at all?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I don't know. I don't know, but we had that (inaudilbe). There were some of those (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

Were any tanks traveling with you?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No, but if something goes wrong with some of the tanks, we had to work out to keep them running.

Christopher Slama:

Were those engines similar to car engines, truck engines?

Cyril Bushmaker:

They were pretty much truck engines in there.

Christopher Slama:

Really? But the drive system is quite different?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Well, some of the original ones had airplane engines in them (inaudible).

Christopher Slama:

From Boeing or?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I don't know whose.

Christopher Slama:

GE?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I don't know whose engines they were, but I knew they were, some of those were nine cylinder airplane engines. So just through the experience what I found out and different things.

Christopher Slama:

So, how are things different before you left for the war and after you came back? Here in the States, what was different?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Not an awful lot, because they held everything pretty down pretty much. Everything was for the war and there wasn't too much difference around there.

Christopher Slama:

But then after everybody got from the war things start changing?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Things started changing quite a bit.

Christopher Slama:

Lots of babies?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, kids' age now, yeah. Like Jennifer, that's Kathy's daughter, she's they got her to enlist in the service (inaudible) in the Reserves.

Christopher Slama:

Okay.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And then she, I said, "Did you tell them that (inaudible)?" She said, "No," I said, "Don't tell them, let them find out."

Christopher Slama:

(Laughter).

Cyril Bushmaker:

She's pretty good.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

She says when they were giving her a test they had to (inaudible). She was supposed to (inaudible). Never want to hurt them. You go in there and do what you're supposed to do.

Christopher Slama:

So did you -- did anyone fail their physical when they all went down to Milwaukee?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Some of them. Some of them didn't make it because they -- see, they give you an IQ test.

Christopher Slama:

Yeah.

Cyril Bushmaker:

And I don't know what I got on that, I don't give a damn.

Christopher Slama:

You passed?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I would say.

Christopher Slama:

So some people failed because of that?

Cyril Bushmaker:

There was a couple of them that they didn't know their right foot from their left foot, they couldn't do nothing. They tried to get them to march and they couldn't march and they couldn't do nothing, so they held them up, and I don't know what they did with them, if they discharged them or pushed them back out of service, get them at least back in the government or the States or.

Christopher Slama:

What if you had a bum leg or a bad knee or something like that?

Cyril Bushmaker:

They wouldn't take you in. They had everybody, everybody had to be right.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh. So they're pretty picky then?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah.

Christopher Slama:

Do you know how many drafts went through the Greenbay area?

Cyril Bushmaker:

I don't know. I was number 400.

Christopher Slama:

400?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. Johnny -- Joel or Ernie, Ernie got a draft, Ernie got a draft notice, I didn't know what his number was, but he and (inaudible), I don't think she'd know either.

Christopher Slama:

Did you get to talk to your brothers while you were in Europe at all?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No.

Christopher Slama:

Not at all? You couldn't write them letters or anything?

Cyril Bushmaker:

You could write them letters. I sent Ernie a bunch of guns and stuff I picked up over there.

Christopher Slama:

Oh, yeah?

Cyril Bushmaker:

We could do that. I sent Ernie some guns. Ernie would go back and he says, he said, "Do you know anything about those guns?" I said, "Nope." He says, "In one of the stocks of the guns was four shells, rifle shells." You can't send rifle ammunition through the mail, it got there.

Christopher Slama:

It got there?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah. And then they got a German shot gun and it had a rifle barrel loaded, three barrels.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.

Cyril Bushmaker:

One double barrel and a rifle barrel below.

Christopher Slama:

Wow. And Ernie got that, too?

Cyril Bushmaker:

Yeah, he got that.

Christopher Slama:

So, Ernie has got all these guns?

Cyril Bushmaker:

No. He -- I got them back after I got out of the service, then I sold them, some of them to some guys, two guys.

Christopher Slama:

Uh-huh.