Eugene Smith
b. August 4, 1919
served in 267th Field Artillery United States Army; retired farmer and salesman
"...I figured that when...when they got the draft goin' an' uh my order number was 2667 an' uh, I said, uh, boy they gonna get me pretty quick, you know, they done got to two thousand an' I said 'I'm just gonna join the national guard'...an' I just joined, you know."
"We first shot in combat 'bout August the 7th, 8th, I guess it was...But the first place we fired on was Charms, France an' the fired seven rounds an' it's a town 'bout as big as Villa Rica was 'bout ten year ago an' it wanted to hit the, if they'd shot that many times in Villa Rica there wouldn'ta been a buildin' standin' up there. All that was left in, in Charms, France, we went by there three days later an' they's one church an' that's all, the rest of the buildin's just flatted."
"This airplane flew over with pamphlets an' I run 'bout a quarter of a mile, I guess, to get one an' uh I read that thing. It said 'Germany, Unconditional Surrender' an' man you never, I come back an' told 'em, you know, an' man it was, I don't know how many hundreds were there, was at Nuremburg an' man everybody hollered. (Laughing)"