On Friday March 29, a number of students from AMST418d interviewed Bob S. Bob came to Greenbelt in 1937, and was 16 when WWII begun. After he graduated from high school Bob would enlist in the army.

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Bob: ...Families lost everything during the Depression. In my case, in my family's case, we lived in Pennsylvania, my mom was a railroad worker, and my grandmother said we had to find something else to do like becoming a machinist. He came back to the Washington DC area where Roosevelt opened up the Navy yard. Since he was a machinist he fit right in; and then of course you needed to find a place to live. For the first couple years we were here, 1933 and '34, we lived in Alexandria, and then in 1937 we moved to Greenbelt. When they opened up Greenbelt, it was the first public housing project in the country. In fact, even some of the Washington papers, some of the radicals in Washington DC, said we were Communists. This was because everybody owned a part of it, and this was somewhat of a Communist way of living. Everybody was equal- there were some that never, you know, didn't have a clue, but they did make charges and there were articles in the papers about that. But Greenbelt was a federal community, everything was paid for by the government, it was only an experiment.

As you know, there were only three towns: Greenbelt, Maryland, Greendale, Wisconsin, and Greenville, Ohio, and they were called three test towns. And a guy named Guy Tugwell was in charge of the Greenbelt project. He made several trips out to Greenbelt when he first started for Roosevelt to look the area over and see how it was going. But Eleneore was the one who came more. Yeah, we got to meet Elenore several times. She took a real interest... Like I think I was telling you, we had everything in Greenbelt. This is one thing we had which Hyttatsville, Riverdale, and Beltsville, communities didn't have what we had. Because when they built the town they built athletic fields, they built tennis courts, they built swimming pools, they had a --- and for a quarter you could ride the bus to school-- it cost a quarter to ride the bus to school.

You see-- are you familiar with Greenbelt Middle School? It's right at the intersection of Kennilworth Avenue and Greenbelt Road. It wasn't that big, just a little school, which I got in some of these pictures here... We either walked to school or hitchhiked to school, and if you didn't have a quarter you could ride the school bus. But, I always thought a quarter was a lot more than, than-- we could find something else to do with a quarter rather than ride a bus. The city provided the bus. There were no county buses. Like I said, I think I was telling you, you know where the corner of Kennilworth Avenue is right? Get out of the school and go out there and we'd hitchhike and get home-- sometimes take fifteen minutes for a car to go by. That was in 1938.

Q: So how old were you when the war started?

A: Let's see, the war started in 1941, I would have been 17 in June, I was 16 actually when the war started.

Q: Were most of the homes in Greenbelt apartments, townhouses, or were they...?

A: They were called row houses, call them townhouses now. There was as many as six in a row, and as few as two, but then-- you ever see pictures of, well you've seen Greenbelt. The old thing, I'm not talking about the houses they built later aruond the edges, we called those defense houses. Because when the war started, there was a lot of people in Greenbelt. I mean there was a lot of service people that couldn't get places to live so they built what they called defense houses. And all those homes you see that are not brick or stone were built probably starting in 1943. In 1934 or '34 when they started building, the homes were all around the edges of Greenbelt. But Greenbelt was a crescent, and all the houses were built with the front of your house leading into a court. And what you see when you drive through there is the back of the houses along the road, but everything else, that was the idea, to build all those houses in a court, it was a complete crescent. You didn't have to cross the street to get to these places because you went in underpasses. There were four, five, I can't remember. There was even one up by the high school, its still there too. So you didn't even have to cross the road to get out of there.

Q: So even with the rows of houses, did that really make it feel like a community?

A: Oh yeah.

Q: I mean, I take it people moved to Greenbelt from all over the place?

A: Yeah, most of them came into Greenbelt. Now the original Greenbelt was 800 some units total. 800 some units, that includes apartments and houses, 830 or 850, something like that, and they had to be screened. You screened them according to religion. As you well know, or maybe you don't know, blacks were not allowed in Greenbelt. At that time there was segregation. It's hard to believe now if you think about it, but there were no blacks in Greenbelt. There were people that worked in Greenbelt that were black, but none of the residents were black. You see, they got you according to salary, the amount of children you had, religion-- they wanted to balance everything out. That's the way they selected. If you were in a position were you could come, if you were eligible. In other words, in my family there were four of us, four boys, mother and father, and that made six. That meant we could get in a three bedroom house: two boys, two boys, and a mother and father. But if there was a girl in there, they couldn't have but three. The two boys in one room and the girl in the other, you see, or two girls and a boy-- that's the way they set it up. For instance, if you were in an apartment, and your wife got pregnant, then they would need to move into another house, what you call a two bedroom house. There was another kind of house out there that had the lower level, what you'd call a basement, and there was a bedroom down there or something. I'll tell you who lived in them. I don't know how familiar you are with Greensbelt, but there's a guy out there named McCarl, dentist. Well, his father was the first dentist in Greenbelt-- Maryland University Graduate student. There were two McCarl brothers, one was a dentist in the Greenbelt area, and the other was in an area near here, Clayton. They got together and made their own thing after their father died. Yea, and the son of Jim McCarl, who was also one of the dentists...

Q: You were sixteen when the war started, did you have fears of getting bombed?

A: I can tell you a story, since you asked that question. You'd be surprised, the people in those days, because the places where we were attacked. Like Vietnam was a farce as far as I'm concerned. I'm not saying anything against the people that fought there, because my son could have gone there too. But, I'm just saying the way it was fought, politics. But this war here was different. When this happened, people were enraged, they all wanted to do something. They were involved in everything...

My brother that's a year older than me, graduated high school and couldn't wait until the summer was over so that he could enlist. He was one of the ones killed in the Pacific during the war. Then my older brother was working in Chicago, when he graduated eariler, and he also volunteered. And after I got out of high school in '42, then I volunteered. They wouldn't take me right away because they were only taking a certain amount of people in that area at one time so then I went in February of '43. And then my younger brother graduated in '45, left school early and went into the service. So, nobody was, it wasn't like these wars we're having now.

Let me give you a little background. After the war was over, we reorganized the National Guard in the state of Maryland. The politicians in Greenbelt said, "Well, we'll get all these ex-service men, cadres--" you know what a cadre is? That's the group that forms the unit, get's the unit together, we'll have another military unit in Greenbelt. We'll have an Armory in Greenbelt. You've been to Greenbelt. So, I went back into that, and stayed there for about eight or nine years, and then I finally got out. I was in a position where I couldn't go out to Frick's Hill (sp?) to get training... Cause this guy told us, you could just go in to form the group and then you could get out(ha), but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So all together I had about 12-15 years of service....

Q: You said it was a different kind of war...

A: When I say different kind of war I mean in the way they handled it. One thing I wanted to mention what they did was... If kids joined the National Guard, they didn't have to join the Service because they were in a military unit. We filled up our unit, we got our quota. You know all the people you could have, ours was an artillery unit and we had all the people we could handle. Cause there were kids going to school here, and there were a lot of kids at the University of Maryland who wanted to finish their education and they didn't want to get drafted so they joined the Reserves or the National Guard. And that kept them from going into the service.

Q: Do you think any of your reasons for wanting to participate had anything to do with living in Greenbelt?

A: Uh, well, you've probably heard that we were a very close group. Everybody knew, whether that's good or not, everybody knew everybody else's business. But I mean everybody was close because we can't-- we didn't have a guy over here who makes a hundred-thousand dollars and a guy over here who makes five. We were all in the same category, we were all in low income, and we all helped each other out. And uh, I think it was probably, Greenbelt was different in that way. I don't mean everybody rushed to join up right away, but it was, no question about it, it's different than it is nowadays which we would have something like that happen. And even in the Korean War, cause I was in the Reserves during the Korean War. The division I was in, the 29th division. They took the 28th division that was in Pennsylvania and sent them to Germany. They took the 32nd division, the Dixie division, and sent them to Korea.

Well you ask, "Did living it Greenbelt have anything to do with it?" I don't think so, I think media had a lot to do with it. I mean, you know, we'd get these flashes everyday about ships that were sunk, or men that were killed, like the Betan (sp?) March, things like that. Yeah you know, that charged people up. That was a massacre as far as we were concerned. But I don't know if we were any more gungho that anybody else, we were closer. I brought a tape along with a talk that I gave at the 50th anniversary and it mentioned, I think, that we had 26 boys and 32 girls in our graduating class, and out of the 26 boys, 24 were in the service within the next year. But one thing you couldn't do anything about was if they called a 4F on you, you know, physically disabled. So one guy had a problem with his eardrums. So that shows you what...

Q: So you knew in high school that you wanted to join the war?

A: Well, we started in December of'41, but we knew up to that time, before that time came, we could see what was happening in Europe. We weren't kept from that. We talked about that, we studied that; what was going on over there; what Hitler was doing and then we had that Chamberlain democ-diplomacy. Neville Chamberlain, who was the English guy that went over and said that everything was okay when he came back. Said we had Hitler under control, and then, you know what happened over there. And we kept getting all this information. We knew we'd eventually be in it, and then of course we were in it. I don't know, I'd say when I was in high school, and I didn't graduate until '42, we knew when we got out of high school we knew we'd be in it too.

Q: So what was your senior year in high school like?

A: I guess it was like any other school. It was a small school, we had our problems. We'd skip school and go downtown to see a movie and things like that, is that what you mean? (laugh)...

Q: Well, it just seems that you were cognizant of the fact that you'd eventually be participating in this war..."

A: We were looking foward to the fact that we could be eligible pretty soon to join up.

Q: But than you'd still go and play hookie every now and then too right? (laugh)

A: When I say that I mean when you asked things we did different, we did the same things a lot of schools did. We were in a small school. If we went in to town to see a movie, or something like that, that's a long way down town in those days, we'd have to hitchhike downtown. I remeber coming back on Kenilworth. There was a beer joint right on the corner of Riverdale. It had a front door here (points off to left) and a back door here (points right). When you were absent from school in those days, the principal knew it. I mean, because it wasn't a big school. Well he'd say, "Well listen, there's two basketball players, one on the soccer team not here today." And we used to hang together see. When we were coming back on Kenilworth Avenue, we saw the principal's car coming-- ducked in the beer joint, and I said, we'd go in here (points to left) and go out the back door and miss him. We went out the back door and he was sitting there waiting for us (laughs). That's how it was in those days.

To give you a little more background, after the war was over, we reorganized the National Guard in the state of Maryland. Then when this politician in Greenbelt said, well... we'll get all these ex-service men and have an academy. You know what an academy is? That's the group that forms the unit. And we'll have another military unit. In Greenbelt, we'll get an Armory in Greenbelt. If you've been to Greenbelt you know there is an armory. So, I went back into that in the state of Maryland for about eight or nine years and then I finally got out. I was in a position where I couldn't go out to Fort Sill and get training, with a family, so I figured... ?? I'd go into the unit??? ... Because this guy told us, he said, we'd just go in and form the group and then we could get out. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So all together I had twelve - fifteen years of service. That was in reserves.

Q: You said it was a different kind of war?

A: Well when I said it was a different kind of war, I mean the way they handled it, we had, that's what I meant when I met you, what they did was, if they , those kids joined the national guard they didn't have to go in the service. They wouldn't get drafted, because they were in a military unit. And we filled up our unit, we got our quota, our allowed amount, the allowed amount we could have for that unit, it was an artillary unit. And we had all the people we could handle. Because there was kids going to school here. There was at least a half dozen, in our group, of them here at Maryland, and they wanted to finish their education, and so they joined the reserves of the National Guard, and that kept them from going in the service.

Q: Do you think your reasons for wanting to participate had anything to do with living in Greenbelt?

A: Uh, well we, as probably you've heard, we were a very close group in Greenbelt. You know, everybody knew , whether that was good or bad or not, everybody knew everybody else's business, but I meant, everybody was close, because we came, we didn't have a guy over here that made a hundred thousand dollars and a guy over here who made five. We were all in the same catagory. We were all in the low income group, and we all helped each other out. And uh, I think it was probably, Greenbelt was different in that way. Uh, I'd say uh, I don't mean everybody would rush to join up right away, but, it was no question about it different than it is now days. When we have something like that happen. Even in the Korean War, cause I was in the reserves during the Korean War, and we were, the division I was in, I was in he twenty ninth division. They took the twenty eigth division of Pennsylvania and sent them to Germany. They took the thirty second division, the dixie division, and sent them to, uh, Korea, and they let us sit there. We thought we were going to get the call too. Like you say, uh, do we think Greenbelt had anything to do with the way we lived? I don't think so. The media had a lot to do with it. I mean, you know, we would get these flashes everyday about ships sunk and the men that were killed, and what is was like in the Botan March, and things like that. And that, you know, that charged people up, that was, that was a masacre as far as we were concerned. But I don't know whether we were more gung ho than anybody else. We were closer, we were definitly closer. Cause I have, I brought a tape along of a talk that I gave for the fiftieth anniversary and it mentioned that I think we had, uh, twentysix boys and thirtytwo girls in our graduating class. And of the twentysix boys, uh, twentyfour of them were in the service within six... the next year, within the next year they were all in the service. Except for only one person who couldn't go in and he was what you call 4-f then, he wasn't physically able to go. He didn't have his eardrums right, he had problems with his eardrums. I mean so that, that shows you what....

Q: So you knew in high school that you wanted to join the war?

A: What's that?

Q: You knew in high school that...

A; Well, the war started in December of 41 right, but we knew up to that time, before that time came we could see what was happening in Europe. I mean we weren't kept from that we, we, talked about that and studied that. What was going on over there, what Hitler was doing and he promised this and he would do this. You had that Chamberlin Democracy, diplomacy, that Chamberlin, the English guy who went over and said everything's okay and he'd come back and we got Hitler under control. And then you know, you know what happened there, they didn't mean any of this. And then when we, uh, we kept getting all of this information, uh, we knew eventually we'd be in it and of course, we were in it December seventh, but uh, I don't know uh, I'd say when I was in highschool then because I was still in highschool then, I didn't graduate until 42, that we knew when we got out of highschool we would be in the service. Somewhere in the service.

Q: So what was your senior year in high school like?

A: Uh, well, I guess it's like any school or small school we had our problems. Uh, what do you mean? We'd skip school and go downtown and see a movie and things like that. Is that what you mean? Ha Ha! Is that what you're talking about?

Q: Well, why, it just seems like you were cognascent of the fact that you were eventually going to participate in this war? A: We were looking forward to the fact that we could be eligible pretty soon to join up. Q: And then you would still go and play hookie every now and then too right?

A: Quite honestly when I say that, you asked if our life was any different in school we did the same things a lot of kids do. And we were in a small school, if we went in to town for a movie or something like that, and that's a long way to go downtown then in those days. We'd have to hitchhike downtown. I remember coming back from Kennilworth Avenue, Kennilworth now, right around the corner of Riverdale Road, where Riverdale comes out at Kennilworth, there was a beer joint on the corner. It had a front door here and a back door here. And when you were absent in school in those days the principal knew it. I mean because, you didn't have that big of school and he'd say well, let's see here, there is two basketball players and three guys, two of them basketball players and one's on the soccer team, not here today. And we used to hang together you see. And when we would come hitchhike back, up what we call Kennilworth Avenue know, we saw the principal's car coming. We ducked in the beer joint and I said if we go through here and we'll go out the back door, we'll miss him. And at the back door he was sitting there waiting. And that's how it was in those days. There was about five hundred people in the school, maybe four hundred. But he was tough, he's still living. He still lives down in Walberg. Roland Sliker, I'll never forget him.

Q: Did you like him?

A: Yes, he , I appreciated him later because he left and went in the service like a lot of people do, like I was telling you, that one guy went in the service and became a pilot, a B-24 pilot, and when he went in the service, he didn't come back out again, he stayed in and became a Byrd Colonal and retired and so did Sliker, he retired down at the Pentagon. They were very smart men, both of them. And, uh, so a lot of those guys, when they went in the service, they had their degrees to begin with, most of them are officers and found that they stayed in the service. In fact the one still lives down there, Bringer still lives down in the outer banks, I go see him every once in a while, right near the southern shore that's right on the outer bank of Kittyhawk and those places, Naggshead and those places. That's where he is now. But you know, you take him know, he graduated from Western Maryland and when he graduated from Western Maryland, he was three or four years older than some of our seniors in high school, so you know, it wasn't like you had someone twenty years older than you, so he could relate better. He was the science teacher. In fact a lot of the girls were falling for him too. I got his picture here if you want to see it.

Q; Do you feel the high school was more politically charged, due to the time? I mean did you spend a lot of time discussing politics and what was going on?

A: Uh, yes. We followed everything very closely and that was discussed quite a bit. This battle, we won this battle and lost this battle. That stuff was discussed. Especially by these young teachers, like the one I was telling you about Bringer. That's him on the... that's the principal and that's Bringer on the left there. And, um, they would love to talk about that stuff, especially Bringer, he was an airplane man anyway. He had the model airplane club and he talked planes and stuff all of the time, he was that kind of person you know. But you know, you were talking about the rest of the city. They were all involved in something. And this seems stupid now, because you don't hear it anymore. They would take their fat, lard and stuff like that, and take it to the ...?????????.... have you heard those stories before? You would take that stuff down and give it to the, they had a collection place. And you would take your toothpaste tube, in those times, they were made of some kind of metal, not like they are now. And they would be able to use these, recycle these. Uh, and of course, they would get together and also entertain the troops. Like Fort Meade, we didn't have Andrews Field then, we did have it, but it wasn't , we'd go to, they would send our people out to Fort Meade is one of the places, a couple of them downtown.

Q: The sugar ration?

A: Oh yeah, one of the guys has a ration book with him. He brought a ration book with him. You know a book from DC at that time. The ration book has a what you can buy. Because I was in the service and we never knew what a ration book was. The ration books came out about 1940, about the time I got out of high school, and when they started tightening up, you couldn't buy a car unless there was a reason. You could only buy so much meat, so much butter. And uh, my family had it and I don't think they ever suffered. When I say suffered, that there was any problem, you know, because, if they did, I never knew it. And of course once the war was over with, that was all over with. We didn't suffer like the people I met overseas in France.

... and you would take your toothpaste tubes, at that time they were made of some kind of metal, not like they are now, and they would recycle these toothpaste tubes, and they would get together and also entertain troops, down at Fort Meade.

Q: Were there sugar rations?

A: Oh yeah, we would have ration books, and the ration book would tell you how much you could buy. I was in the service, and we never knew what ration books were. Ration books came out in 1940, about the time I got out of high school, and it said you could only buy so much meat and so much butter. My family had it, but I dont think they ever suffered. We didnt suffer like the people I met overseas, like in France. When I went overseas, the first thing they told us was when you get on shore, you dont bother those French people for anything. If they want to give you a bottle of wine or they want to give you some of that, fine. But they dont have enough food. They had the USO over there, and we had places to eat. But you dont bother these people because they dont have food for themselves. They suffered a lot more than we did, believe me, a lot more. I dont mean that we had it easy. We mostly suffered a shortage of meat, not really milk and cheese. But if we didnUt have anything I wasnUt aware of it. Q: Did you have air raid drills?

A: Yeah, are you familiar with Greenbelt. We had air raid drills at Greenbelt High School, and we had them as a town in the center of Greenbelt, in the center by where the statue is, there was a place that opened up, on the left side, by where the Chinese restaurant is, there was a place there, people would spot planes, I dont mean these were foreign planes, but they wanted every plane spotted, you would call in and say you spotted it, they had volunteers doing to do it.

Q: Did you feel a fear that there would be an air attack?

A: Im glad you mentioned that, there was a lot of Japanese out on the west coast that got moved, they were citizens, if you had Japanese ancestry, you were moved to a camp, at that time there is no question, there was a panic, the military and Joint Chief of Staff, actually I am not sure if there was a Joint Chief of Staff then, the military and other people in charge of the defense of this country panicked. We did have a few submarines shelled out on the west coast, thats as close as they got, there was some fear since they attacked Pearl Harbor that they could invade the west coast, Oregon, Washington, and they did find, I donUt know how many, so dont quote me on this, there were people that we found to be spies for the Japs. Just like there were some for the Germans. They had these kids, and they would go to this school and be trained as Germans, you know, just like the cooks out in Montana with guns. They provided many spies.

I dont think we ever went tow to three days without hearing Axis Sally. Did you ever hear of Axis Sally? She was the woman, in this country, who was the propaganda person for the Germans. We were in France for a week, and heard that we knew the 13th Airborne Division has arrived, commanded by so and so. Everything came in because they had spies. Of course they didnt know where we were going or where we were going to be. They said you better bring two or three parachutes because we were going to get shot down. Of course it was all propaganda, it was all propaganda.

Q: Even on the east coast you had the fear...?

A: We didnt have as many problems as the west coast because we were not as vulnerable, of course because of the Japs. They could just come right across. Thats another thing I dont understand, you might disagree with me. We called the Germans Germans and the Japs Japs. Now thats offensive, we call the Japanese Japanese. Jap is just short for Japanese, thats the part I dont understand. I dont understand, is it really offensive to call a Japanese person a Jap?

A: I think what it is is that it has connotations from that era of our history. So when that is used it probably brings back the mistrust. From what Ive read, around the that time there was a lot of propaganda about Japanese inferiority. Ive read many, many articles on horrendous stuff. I would be offended by that. But I know its associations from that era and about the propaganda put out, I wish I had it but I dont ...

S: I never considered that word offensive. When we used to see the headlines in the papers "Japs Do This" and "Japs Do That". Like you said it has connotations.

Q: When did you and your family talk about the war?

A: Well, we talked about it before, because my neighbor was from England, he was in England during WWI. I remember when they invaded France he said RLook pal, they'll never get any further, and they pushed the French and British troops fight off. We used to talk about that all the time. Of course my father was making guns down at the gun factory, the 16 inch guns. You know all the ships would come in there to be refitted for guns, you know when they were out, they soot those guns and then after so many rounds they would have to send them back in there again. To put that filler back in the guns so you could shoot them again. He was very familiar with that part. We would talk about the war a lot, we talked about it before and we talked about it after. Of course we never realized then that all of us in our family would be in the service one way or another before it was all over.

Q: Now your father worked in the gun factory and your mother...

A: She had the job at home of taking care of three, four kids.

Q: They were under contract to stay home werent they?

A: Thats another thing, the mother could not work if you came to Greenbelt, unless she was the leader of the family, a widow. That was part of the deal.

Q: What do you think were some of the hardships at the time?

A: Gasoline rationing, I forgot about gasoline rationing. Some one like my father, he didnUt have a car, he didn't have a car in his life, the person who would drive would only be allowed so much gas...