William Head
b. April 4, 1925
served as infantryman in United States Marine Corps; retired vice-president of Kroger Food Company
"I think it was the, uh, the fact that the Japanese, uh, had, uh, attacked, uh, the United States. Pearl Harbor. Uh. As far as I was concerned, the , uh, uh, war, the war in Europe, uh, was, uh, France and England's war. And uh, but this was our war. And that's the reason I joined the Marines." [to fight the Japanese]
"Being mentally ready [for combat], to me, meant that I was going to do the best that I could because I had reached the decision, I had reached mentally, that uh there wasn't any way that I could uh survive what was happening, uh and I was just going to do the best that I could do. I, I felt that I was going to kill as many of the enemy that I could before they killed me."
"Combat was really what I thought it would be. I, I thought it would be, uh, terrifying at times. Uh. The most helpless that I ever felt in combat was not from rifle fire, but was from shelling. Uh, because you've got no defense against that and you've got, uh, no way to fight back against that as a, uh, as a, uh, rifleman or as a you know as an infantryman."
"I think the greatest accomplishment that my age group did is...they came back, and, and they uh were not sorry for themselves. They took up life uh as uh as they should. They went either back to school or back to work. Uh. Uh. And uh went went on with life without uh without crying about it. ...I think that whole generation of people uh went back and and uh did not let it, the war, end things for 'em."