Paul Schaughency Interview

High winds and cold weather posed a dangerous and destructive problem for servicemen stationed in the Aleutian Islands.

Courtesy of Bill Maris

Paul Schaughency grew up during the Great Depression and joined the ROTC at the University of Pittsburg in 1940. After attending Officer Candidate School, Schaughency was assigned to the 265^th Coast Artillery, in Florida. His girlfriend at the time lived in Pittsburg, and they quickly decided to get married. Paul and Cathy have been married for over seventy years. Cathy also recorded an interview about her time in Adak with Paul, after the war was over.

Schaughency and his troops arrived at Adak Island in January of 1944. He discusses the weather in the Aleutians, as well as the treatment of the Unangax̂ people by both the Americans and Japanese. He also recounts many stories from the Aleutians, including a major rescue during a blizzard.

Listen to his interview (in two parts) below.

• Paul Schaughency Interview Part I

  
  

  Paul Schaughency and his troops arrived at Adak Island in January of 1944. He discusses the weather in the Aleutians, as well as the treatment of the Unangax by both the Americans and Japanese. He also recounts many stories from the Aleutians, including a major rescue during a blizzard. His wife Cathy also recorded an interview. This is part I of Paul's interview.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS/Joshua Bell

  Date created:

  08/05/2022

  Audio Transcript

  Interview with Lt. Col. Paul Schaughency

  Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Oral History Program

  June 1 & 15, 2016 Pittsburgh, PA

  Interviewed by Joshua Bell, Park Ranger, Aleutian World War II National Historic Area

  This interview is part of the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Oral History Project. This interview was recorded with the interviewee’s permission on a digital recorder. Copies of the audio file are preserved in wav format and are on file at the offices of the National Park Service in Anchorage, Alaska.

  The transcript has been edited by the interviewee.

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  June 1, 2016

  [Start of recorded material - 00:00:00]

  Joshua Bell: Today is June 1, 2016. I'm Joshua Bell, park ranger with the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area. Today, we have Paul Schaughency. How are you doing today, Paul?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm doing fine. Thanks, Josh.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. I just wanted to let you know this conversation is being recorded. Is that okay?

  Paul Schaughency: That's okay.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. For the record, could I have you state your name and when and where you were born?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm Paul Schaughency. The spelling sure doesn't come out anything like that. I was born in Beaver, PA, a town of about 5,000+ and a county seat.

  Joshua Bell: When were you born?

  Paul Schaughency: I was born September 14, 1921. I'm 94 and still operating under my own two feet. Joshua Bell: Excellent. I'm glad to hear it.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. I am too.

  Joshua Bell: I imagine. What were your parent's names?

  Paul Schaughency: My father was known as "C.P.", Charles Preston. My mother was Julia Rogers Schaughency.

  Joshua Bell: What did they do for work?

  Paul Schaughency: My father was a wholesale hardware salesman, and my mother was a housewife. Back then, we're talking about the '20s and the depression years, women didn't work. I mean there were a few. There was a woman doctor who came to the people across the street in her black - I don't know what kind of car it was; I've forgotten - coupe.

  Joshua Bell: That must have been quite something. Very different, I'm sure.

  Paul Schaughency: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

  Joshua Bell: Do you remember her name?

  Paul Schaughency: No. I remember our doctor's name, but I don't remember the name of my friend's doctor across the street.

  Joshua Bell: Did you have any siblings growing up?

  Paul Schaughency: Yes. I was the youngest of three boys. We were spread out pretty well. My oldest brother was seventeen years older than I. My next brother was nine and a half years older than I. Then, I came. If you'll notice, my initials are P.S (Post Script). I thought it's kind of ironic: my mother was within three days of her 41st birthday, so I almost didn't get here.

  Joshua Bell: Talk about rolling the dice. Did they join the service as well during World War II?

  Paul Schaughency: No. They were too old by then. By 1942 my mother and father were in their 60's That didn't fit.

  Joshua Bell: No. Your brothers didn't join either?

  Paul Schaughency: No. They were married with children and in their 30's.

  Joshua Bell: Yes, certainly. What was it like growing up in the '20s and '30s? Paul Schaughency: Well, it was the depression. I don't remember a whole lot about the '20s. I remember Hoover. Then, we had a Hoover button. I hung it in our canary's birdcage. Then Hoover was blamed for the Depression, and so he didn't get re-elected. That started Roosevelt's era… I remember that part. I was twelve or something like that. It was really bad. We lived in a small town… it was a residential town surrounded by lots of industry. The people worked. People were laid off. It was tough. They had to do something. Old Roosevelt came out with program after program.

  Joshua Bell: He sure did. Did the depression affect your family at all?

  Paul Schaughency: My dad lost his job with one company and went back with another company. He was working. Of course, salesmen are on commission. I can remember him saying , "I didn't make enough to pay for the gasoline today." Times were tough. He was working all through but skimping. I do remember candy bars, for a five cents and movies, ten cents. It's hard to believe with the inflation we've had. The prices of those things today are much, much, much more.

  Joshua Bell: They certainly are. I want to change gears a little bit. Where did you go to school?

  Paul Schaughency: I went to Beaver High School and graduated in 1939. Hitler was going well over in Europe. "We bailed them out once," you'd hear. "We're not going to go over there again." The president decided we'd better get some preparedness. They put the draft through, but I'll tell you how divided the country was on this question. The draft passed by congress by one vote. That's pretty close. The draft was put in. There was a song, "Good-bye, dear. I'll be back in a year, 'cause I'm in the Army now." It was a one-year draft. They activated the National Guard units and called them in. They were supposed to be called up for a year. I think there were one or two that were called in early actually got back home. Then, December 7th hit. They were called back in.

  Joshua Bell: You mentioned Hitler. What do you remember hearing about him?

  Paul Schaughency: Bad. It was awful, some of the things. We didn't know too much about the Holocaust. That was pretty well covered up by them over there. I mean covered up. There were other things. We knew about the Kristallnacht when the storm troopers broke the glass and broke windows of Jewish business people and so forth. Those things were going on either in a news reel … we didn't have television but news reels, radio or newspapers. We got the stuff. The sentiment here was as I said, "We're not going over there again."

  Joshua Bell: How did your family feel about that?

  Paul Schaughency: They were not against getting prepared. I didn't hear them saying anything against it. I guess they were all right with it. Joshua Bell: Then, Pearl Harbor was attacked.

  Paul Schaughency: Then came Pearl Harbor. I can't explain to you or the young people today how that affected all of the people. I mean the America Firsters which were the anti-going to war and helping Europe out, they weren't too much against preparing for here but, “Don't go over and do that again.” You just didn't hear anything from them. They attacked us. That was really unifying us … well, a Japanese admiral, after the war, I read a this admiral had said, "I'm afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant." No truer words were spoken because that whole country pulled together. There was no arguing, "We should have done this," or, "We should have done that." I mean we declared war … I remember listening to the radio. President Roosevelt said the Monday after Pearl Harbor and it was on a weekend, "I'm asking congress declare that a state of war has existed since December 7."

  I said to the guys around listening at the fraternity house, "It 'has existed'. I like that. We're declaring war retroactive to December 7th." It was a dastardly attack as he had said, and it was. We all pulled together and got the industry going. Pittsburgh, of course, was a big, big part of it, the steel. It got going. Of course, they had price controls and so on. Prices didn't go up terribly during the war. Pittsburgh was very, very important to the war effort. You could sense it around.

  Joshua Bell: You said that you were in the fraternity house when that happened. You were at college?

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. In '39, I graduated from high school. The depression was still on. There's no way I was going to get to go to college unless I got a scholarship, and I did. The University of Pittsburg had one scholarship for they called it their 'honor's scholarship. I did well in school. I got the scholarship that was half the tuition. Mother said, "You've got half of the tuition. I will find some way of getting the other half." Tuition was $150 a semester, $300 a year. Getting that scholarship got me in the university.

  We were registering at the beginning of my freshman year. My friend from Beaver, Bill Donaldson, (who became a doctor and later the medical director of Children's hospital here), was kind of showing me around. He had gotten the same scholarship the year before. We got to the end of the line. They had these IBM cards. I was asked, "What do want, gym or ROTC?" I turned to Bill. I said, "What did you take?" He said, "If you take gym, you've got to go up to Trees Gym. That's way up the hill over there behind the stadium. You've got to take a showerand if you have a class next period, it's bad."

  He said, "I took ROTC." I said, "What’s that?" "Reserve Officers Training Course." He said, "You go as a lieutenant if there's a war instead of a private." All I was looking at is that big climb up that hill and so I said, "I'll take ROTC." That was a great step, but I didn't know it at the time. I got into ROTC. In 1941, I got into advanced ROTC. Then, December 7th hit. The colonel came to the class and said, "Now, boys, there will be enough heroes, running off to join the Air Corps." It wasn't the Air Force at that time. It was the Army Air Corps. "Your Uncle Sam wants you boys to stay and get your education." We all looked at each other and said, "If Uncle Sam wants us to stay, I guess we better." It was a great thing! We got to finish our degree!

  Joshua Bell: What was your major?

  Paul Schaughency: Business.

  Joshua Bell: How did you feel about this idea that Uncle Sam wanted you to finish your education?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:14:42] Great! People were running off and volunteering and so forth. I was in the program. They said they wanted us to stay. I said, "Well, that's a good thing." They had a lot of programs during the war, training. They had the ASTP [Army Specialized Training Program]. They said, "We're going to need trained people. We got to start training them in technical areas." It didn't pan out too well because the Battle of the Bulge came, and they took all those guys out of ASTP there and started in the infantry and backing up the Bulge problem. ROTC got to finish and get our degree.

  Before the war, ROTC, after your junior year in the summer, you went to a six-week summer camp, but now they're training divisions. We’re getting ready for war. They couldn't be messing around with these college boys for six weeks and busting up their training schedules. They said, "No, no. We're not going to do that. You'll go to something new called OCS, Officer Candidate School." We finished college and got called to active-duty. Earlier they had asked us if we wanted to join the Enlisted Reserve. There were some wiseacres in our class that said, "Wait a minute. If you join the Reserve, you're in the Army. If you wash out of OCS, they'll soon tell you where to go. If you go as a cadet, then you have to come back home to be drafted." Some of us said, we're going to play that game, "We'll go as a cadet." But by the time '43 came, we were told, "There are some that are not in the Reserve. We want everybody in the Enlisted Reserve. You go to your draft board and tell them that you need to get drafted. Then, you'll be assigned to the Enlisted Reserve from your draft."

  That was fine except I went to my draft board. I knew the girl there. I went as a contingent of one, a draftee sent up to Pittsburgh for my physical processing just like a draftee. I get down to the end and the Sgt. said, "Do you want to go now or in two weeks?" I said, "Hold it. I'm in the ROTC out at Pitt University. I'm supposed to be drafted into the Enlisted Reserve." This sergeant didn't know what I was talking about. He said, "Do you want to go now or in two weeks?" I said, "Neither one."

  I said, "I'm supposed to go into the Enlisted Reserve and then go when I finish ROTC." He got some major. The major knew about it, thank God. They said, "Okay." I got drafted. I was assigned to the Enlisted Reserve and then went back to school and finished. I went to OCS. They'd asked us to go to summer school to get finished sooner. I said, "Well I've got to work. Can I work for my expenses?" They said, "Approved." The other guys that did go to summer school in my class went to Camp Davis Anti-Aircraft OCS

  When you went to college in those days, if you went to this college, they had this kind of ROTC, maybe infantry. Another one might have field artillery. Ours was coast artillery, and that was Seacoast and anti-aircraft. Davis was the anti-aircraft OCS. We ended up in Seacoast which was down at Fort Monroe, a beautiful fort in Virginia. The engineer on the project to build that fort was Robert E. Lee. During the Civil War, the south never took Fort Monroe. I suppose that engineer knew how it was constructed. It was pretty well-constructed so they didn't want to try, I guess. I don't know why.

  Joshua Bell: That makes sense to me.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:19:38] Yeah. We got through there. I got my choice of places. Fort Hancock, New Jersey was one of them. You got your choice based on your class ranking and what you picked. I got Fort Hancock. That was supposed to be a great assignment because they had a ferry boat "45 minutes from Broadway" as the old song went. You're sticking out from New Jersey, but you're close to New York. That sounded great to me.

  The only trouble was that they didn't tell you what unit you're going to be assigned to. I was assigned to the 265th Coast Artillery, a Florida National Guard unit. The word was they're being alerted for overseas. It was November 19th. I graduated out of OCS. I got down there in early December. Christmas time was coming. [00:20:56] I contacted my girlfriend back at Pittsburgh. We'd been dating for a couple of years. She couldn't come for Christmas. She didn't want to leave her parents alone, but she'd come for New Years. Okay!!

  She came for New Years. We decided on a Thursday to get married the following Tuesday on a three day pass and have a church wedding. Being the boy in a family, of boys, I didn't know about all the details. I've learned since. She called her father to make arrangements at the church. I said, "I guess I'm supposed to ask your father if it's all right." I talked to him. He approved. We're still married. She's still living. Seventy-two years married.

  We got back to Ft. Hancock on time. I said it was a Florida National Guard outfit that had been activated. Of course, they had changes. Some people were taken out. Other people were draftees or sent in. It was about half and half. [00:22:29 ] Before we had left the Fort, this one sergeant, a real sharp guy said, "Lieutenant, don't worry about this overseas things." He said, "This outfit's been alerted for overseas twice before. Don't worry about it. Go have yourself a nice wedding. We'll still be here when you get back." He was just a little mistaken. [00:23:10] After we got back, we were there seven days, and then my wife was on a train back to Pittsburgh. I was on a train for Fort Lawton in Seattle. Seattle, we knew was the … the port of embarkation for Alaska.

  When we were in OCS and assignments were coming up, two guys wanted to be together. They signed up for Fort Lewis, Washington. Scuttlebutt got Fort Lewis and Fort Lawton mixed up, I guess. The word was that Fort Lewis was the port of embarkation for Alaska. Instead of a "forward march", we kidded them, "You'll be saying forward mush, ho, ho, ho,” because you're going to be going to Alaska. Arriving in Seattle, I now know the difference. I called one of the two guys. The first thing thisguy says to me, "Oh, Schaughency." He says, "Forward mush! He knew that we were at the port of embarkation for Alaska."

  Joshua Bell: I want to go back for a minute and ask about the OCS. What was training like there?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:24:33] Very rigorous as far as classroom work and the gunnery part. There was marching. We did get some practical experience on some of the big guns. The classroom work was the biggest thing. You had a lot of math. They told us, "Sure, we've got base end stations where there's a telescope." They could measure the angle. You set these two stations up and site on this ship. Triangulation will tell you where to fire the guns and how far and so forth.

  They said that the data went into a plotting board. They sent the information to the big guns to shoot out into the sea. You knock off the ship. They told us, "You've got to understand this whole thing because down in the Pacific, the guys are setting these up on orange crates." They can get a triangulation and get this thing set up. There's a plotting board. There's a real nice room and fixed up pretty nice at Fort Monroe. They were telling us, "You've got to know all this stuff." It was rather rigorous in math and science.

  Joshua Bell: Did you guys get up to anything on your downtime?

  Paul Schaughency: We didn't have a lot. Our orders to go to active-duty were, "Proceed to Cumberland." That was processing-in. You got your uniform, your shots and so forth. Then, the assignment to basic training in Fort Eustis, Virginia. Those Pitt guys were really complaining. "Oh, my golly. First, they tell us we're not going to six-week summer camp. They've got this 90 days, OCS. It's been extended to four months now.

  Then, we were supposed to go to OCS. What are we doing? We're going to basic training." It was gripe, gripe, gripe. We got over to Fort Monroe. There were three groups in our class. One group was up from the ranks and passed their OCS application and go to the OCS board and the OCS examination. They had come through the ranks. The other group was our Pitt group- part of them; the rest came on in the next class.

  They said, "We'll get one class through and then start the next one." That was all it was. We were in basic training like just a couple of weeks. Then, the others came on a month later. There was a group up from the ranks, the group from Pitt who were complaining, weren’t complaining.

  The third group was from the Citadel. Those Pitt boys really quit complaining. They said, "Holy smokes. Those guys are in uniform all the time. That's the West Point of the South. They have to do this too. Oh, boy. We only go in uniform one day a week, and then we go to class. They're into this stuff. Matter of fact, they can get demerits. They're restricted for the weekend. We've got none of that. Oh, boy. I guess we don't have so much to complain about." We got along fine with the Citadel group. It was very interesting. At hindsight, you can see what was happening, we had to wait until the classes started. At the time, boy, we were really complaining.

  Joshua Bell: How did your family feel about you being activated?

  Paul Schaughency: The war was on. I think they were pleased that I was going to be an officer. That was something that they were proud of… I was the first one to go to college and graduate and with the war on go into officer school. The war being on, at my age, it was a foregone conclusion you're going to go.

  Joshua Bell: How did your wife feel about it?

  Paul Schaughency: She cried. She tells about it. She says, "I cried all the way home to Pittsburgh on the train." One other little incident: there were four trains that took our regiment from Fort Hancock out to Fort Lawton for the port of embarkation. One train went through Pittsburgh. This Major who befriended me, saying, "You catch that last ferry boat at 10:00 PM, or 11:00 PM” and "I'll sign you out after midnight." I was always happy about that and appreciative.

  This same major was on one of the other 4 trains, that went through Pittsburgh. Several of them got newspapers. He's reading one. He sees this item in the Society section. It says, "The Schaughency’s Reside at Hancock." That was the heading on the column. It told about the wedding and so on. He's showing it around, going through the car and says, "Like hell. He's on another train going up through Canada to Seattle. He's not going to reside in Hancock. "We had "resided" just seven days at Fort Hancock.

  [00:31:58] Our unit, a small, battalion headquarters battery. The whole regiment left and went we learned later up to Kodiak. The destinations and all that stuff were really kept secret. You weren't allowed to let your family know where you were. It's much, much different than today with the iPads and cellphones right on the battlefield or could be. Our battalion headquarters battery and another one didn't get sent with the regiment. We didn't know why.

  Then, we heard a story of a liberty ship that they were building there Seattle was a big ship building place. I think it was at Bremerton, Washington, right across Puget Sound The story was a liberty ship was launched, and it had a crack in the hull. They had to repair it. The rumor got around that it was supposed to be our ship, but since they had to repair it, they had to find another ship. That's why we were being delayed. Well that was bologna, but we didn't know that. We got sent out to Adak. It's one of the Aleutian Islands that's just about the middle.

  Joshua Bell: What was that trip like?

  Paul Schaughency: Sort of uneventful. We were on not a real big ship.

  Pretty soon, it was cold. It was January. It was a bit chilly in the United States. Going up there, that was even colder. The Aleutians, by January '44 when we got there had been cleared by the Japanese. Back in December 1941 the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. [00:34:25] Then not long after that, they took Attu which was the big island out on the end. There was a village there and a coast guard weather station. They took Attu and the native and weather station couple (she taught school) to Japan as prisoners

  Then, they came back and took Kiska which is the next big island coming back. They had bombed Dutch Harbor which was right at the end of the Alaskan peninsula. If you look at a map of Alaska, the peninsula comes out there sticking out into the Pacific Ocean. At the end of that peninsula was Dutch Harbor, a Navy base. The people in California and Oregon and Washington were worried., All they could see was --- when are they coming over here. In the South Pacific, nobody was stopping the Japanese.

  I mean they were coming down through the islands of Asia and the Philippians and so on down. "Where are they going to stop them? Where are they going to stop up there?" There was fear especially on the west coast. Then we went out and took Attu back. All this had happened before I got up there. Adak was a base. The Navy liked the harbor there. It was a supply base and an air field. The Air Corps could take off and bomb or strafe the Japanese on Kiska. We next attacked Kiska, but under fog, the Japanese pulled out. We had our American territory back. I didn't fight any Japanese. That all happened before we landed on Adak.

  The US was building a larger supply base there. On Armed Forces Radio, they said, "This is the Armed Forces Radio." (I think they gave the APO number, the Army post office number.) "On the northern highway to victory" that was their byline. I often wondered a little about that. I'll come back to that; “on the northern highway to victory.”

  [00:37:12] The weather, I said I didn't fight any Japanese. We fought the weather. The Japanese current is warm. It comes up by the Aleutian Islands and curves and goes down along our west coast. It warms the west coast. That's coming up warm. The Bering Sea is a little chilly coming out of the Arctic. The Bering current comes down, and they meet at the Aleutians.

  One of the terms for the Aleutians is ‘the weather kitchen' because when stuff happens up there. They can tell, some of the time, what we're going to have down here. The weather was not bitter cold. Fifteen above would be a low, not like back on the mainland where it was dry cold. They get 40-60 below. The weather was really a bad thing. The Army was not prepared for Attu, clothing & equipment. There were no trees. No trees out in the Aleutians.

  The ground is a muskeg tundra but clumps of tundra. It's difficult to walk across. You decide you're going to walk on the top on the clump. You walk on that. Then, "No. I think I'll try walking down in the little valley between the clumps." Neither is very satisfactory. We learned about it. As far as the clothing and the equipment are concerned, until, I think it was Iwo Jima, Attu had had the largest casualty numbers. A lot of it was frostbite. We didn't have the right clothing for our soldiers there. But by the time we got there, they had shoe packs which were rubber bottom and leather that would come up your legs. That was real good. I never had to use them very much.

  In certain conditions or working, you might use a shoe pack. The boots were good. We had a suit made out of raincoat material, pants and jacket and a hood on the jacket also. The cartoons in the Post newspaper we had always had a guy with a "hoodie", we call them now, but made out of raincoat material. You could work out in that kind of stuff. We had parkas and didn't need them very often. The weather in the month of July would be like a month in spring in the northern United States. The little delicate flowers would all of a sudden bloom - purple and yellow and different colors of flowers. It was real pretty.

  By the end of the month, four to six weeks of summer was about par. Then it would start … even in the summer, the word was “Williwaw.” That was the Aleutian natives, the Aleut's word for the storm.

  [00:40:36] Aleuts were different. In Alaska, you had the Eskimos. You had the American Indians or Native Americans. Out on the Aleutian chain, you had the Aleuts. They had different cultures, all three of them. When the Japanese took Attu and Kiska, they took a village of Aleuts as prisoners over to Japan and two Americans.

  When we saw what was happening, we took the native Aleuts off the islands and took them back to the mainland down along by Juneau down along the side of Alaska that goes by on the west coast from Canada. That was not a real good treatment of the Aleuts… The furnishings were not very well done. That's what happened.

  [00:42:58] The Air Base had a wind meter. It went up to 115 miles an hour. There were times those storms would, beyond that. It was tough weather, but we survived because we had good equipment by the time we got there.

  Joshua Bell: I take it the weather was the first thing you noticed.

  Paul Schaughency: Oh, yeah. In January, we had … this was a Florida National Guard outfit. It's blowing and snowing and hitting us in the face when we went down the gangplank. One of the guys was from Key West. They referred to them as 'Key West Conchs'. I never used that term because I thought it might be a derogatory slur. One of them, when going down, got off a little slur and a slap at the fact that we were Florida National Guard out here. The snow is hitting us in the face. He says, "Oh, just like Miami Beach!" [laughs] The guys laughed. Nobody did anything.

  [00:44:46] Being the young, junior officer got me some jobs. We were relieving another Battalion. They were going back to the states. They had put up pyramidal tents for us with wooden floor and sides and a stove in the center. The concept was that the coast artillery works with the Navy HECP (Harbor Entrance Control Post) … there was an HECP way out on the end of a little peninsula. That was where the Navy would flash signals to a ship coming in. If they didn't flash back the right thing, they'd say to artillery, "Fire one round over the bow." There we had 155-mm cannon, mobile and a couple of wheels on them. They fired one over the bow. The Navy said, "Wake up that captain out there." That usually did it. They'd flash back. The idea was if the Navy said, "That's an unidentified craft. Fire on them," then the coast artillery would fire on that ship and assist the Navy in protecting the harbor. The plan was that our Battalion Headquarters was to move out adjacent to the Navy Harbor Entrance Control Post. We were just temporary in the tents until we relieved the other outfit. Then, we moved out to new quarters.

  [00:47:10] Another story comes to mind, speaking of quarters. We in the Army say, "You know, the gravy's in the Navy." I never realized how that was. An officer in this coast artillery, battery that was near the Harbor Entrance Control Post, told me that when they came up there, they were in pyramidal tents just like temporary ones where we were with the wooden sides and so forth. The Navy was getting Quonset huts.

  The Harbor Entrance Control Post didn't have very many people. They contacted the Coast Artillery Captain. They said, "We'll make you a deal. You help us put up these Quonset huts. You've got men that are available, and we'll give you one large one that you can have for your mess hall." He said, "That would be great," because they were coming out of the tents, going over to the mess tent and back. The Captain agreed - "If we could have a mess hall, boy; that would be great."

  They told me this. It happened before we got there. I said, "Jeepers creepers. I could just imagine being one of those Army guys. Your work crew, today, is going up to the Navy." You get on a truck and go up there and help them put up these Quonset huts, come back to your own pyramidal tent. All you had to do was tell yourself, "We're going to get one of those buildings for our mess hall, so we've got to do this." That wouldn't be a lot of fun, I don't think.

  Joshua Bell: What was your role with the unit?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:49:16] I got transferred, being the junior lieutenant, I was in the headquarter battery as one of two officers. Then, I was moved to one of the firing units. I think we fired practice … we had dead, just you went through the motions and opened the gun up and putting in the shell, rammed it in and then put the powder in. We would go through those. … I think maybe when I was with one unit, we did fire one or two times.

  Really it was key getting your place fixed up so living would be more tolerable was one of the things we did. The unit that I was assigned to was on Shagak Bay. All these places have like Russian names. You can hardly pronounce them. The night that we arrived, Schaughency being the junior officer was told, "Tonight, you're the OD," officer of the day. "I had to go over to operations," one of the Quonset huts where information came in from the base end stations with Radar. They gave me this message, "Lieutenant, I got to notify you that there's an unidentified object off Cape Adagdak heading toward Cape Chigegak." I said, "Yeah, sergeant. Where are they?" He got the map out and showed me. I said, "What do we do now?" He said, "Nothing." He added, "It's probably something out there. They'll call back and tell us. I wouldn't worry about it. We get these all the time," or frequently. "Okay." I'll never forget that. Those two locations, I never heard those big words before. It was something.

  Joshua Bell: What about some of the guys who were in your unit? You made friends with them, obviously.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:52:59] Yeah. We made friends. You're kind of in this thing together. A lot of it was, as I said, fighting the weather. One of the firing batteries would have four guns and four gun crews and a sergeant in charge of each gun crew. Those were our work crews especially the unit out on the far side of the island at Shagak Bay. We were called an outpost unit. When a tugboat came around from the main post, we got "rations and a quarter." I mean 25 percent more rations than what the normal was.

  It was a going feature when I got there. They said, "We'll have a midnight snack at 9:30 PM." What that Mess Sergeant did was to take Spam that you heard about being "bad". He put those aside and served those at 9:30 PM. I never heard an enlisted man or officer complain about Spam because we didn't have that served for our meal out there. Psychologically, the Army owes me three meals a day. When they're giving me this extra one, so-called midnight snack, that's something extra. It was also a little social thing.

  Your guys get in there, and they have whatever the sergeant had pulled out to serve. We'd have a little something to eat and drink. It was nice. I find out that Spam, a lot of it is psychological. I'll tell you another story about that place out there. The captain was Buck Slaughter. He was from Reedville, Virginia. He had a nice, southern drawl. We were out on this outpost there. There weren't very many people around. Once in a while, we'd get an inspector. This Alaskan department inspector a colonel was out there.

  Some of our guys had been out hunting and brought back some. geese. that they'd shot with a carbine. The mess crew dressed them. The colonel comes and looks in the refrigerator, opens up both doors. There are these geese in there hanging. They're all ready to be cooked. The colonel turns to captain Slaughter and says, "Now captain, you know that it's against the Alaskan department regulations to be out hunting. You're not allowed to do that."

  Capt. Slaughter replied, "Well, sir, colonel." He says, "You know, we've got these Williwaws out here. They don't have those back on the mainland, but we've got those Williwaws. They are terrible storms. The wind blows. These geese were going by. The storm came up and blew them right up against the side of the mess hall. The sergeant here was fast thinking. He had his men clean them up, and we're going to have those for dinner one of these days." The colonel looked and shook his head and just shut the door as if to say, "If that guy can come up with that story so fast, I'm not going to fuss at him."

  Joshua Bell: That's fantastic. I think we've reached about an hour. I still have more questions.

  Paul Schaughency: What do you want to do?

  Joshua Bell: Let's look at scheduling for maybe some time that works for you.

  [End of recorded material - 00:58:21]

  June 15, 2016

  [Start of recorded material - 00:00:00]

  Joshua Bell: Today is June 15, 2016. I'm Josh Bell, park ranger with the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area. We have back with us today, Paul Schaughency, who is going to continue sharing his story with us. How are you doing today, Paul?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm doing fine, Josh.

  Joshua Bell: Just like last time -

  Paul Schaughency: And you? Joshua Bell: I'm doing well. Thank you. Just like last time, this conversation is going to be recorded. Is that okay?

  Paul Schaughency: That's okay with me.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. You had some more stories to share with us.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:00:40] Yeah. There's the story about the rescue mission. I thought it was unusual, at least for me. We were at this outpost unit on the far side of the island on Shagak Bay, away from the main base. It was in the spring with the weather up there, you can have a real nice day and bingo, it goes bad, with only a few minutes notice. The Chaplin at the main base hospital saw it was a bright, sunny day. He said, "We ought to go out to that unit out at Shagak Bay and have a mass."

  He took two or three nurses along just for the hike. Hospital motor pool drove them to the top of our trail. At the end of the road, there's a big ravine. You cross over that with a little dolly arrangement. We explained this to them and told them when they get down to the bottom of the mountain trail, at the shore of the bay, there's a telephone. "Call us, and we'll send a boat over." It all worked out very nicely. They had mass in the mess hall. We all had dinner. When, the time came for them to leave, we took them back in the boat along the shore of the bay, to the trail.

  Along the shoreline there the mountain just comes right down to the water, almost straight down. That's why the trail didn't go along the shoreline; there wasn't any shore. We had this boat to travel back and forth for this part of the way. The boat and driver returned. It was a nice day but clouds started coming in. It wasn't anything unusual for the Aleutians. We thought nothing of it. But then, we got a phone call, "Is the Chaplin still there?" "No. They left some time ago. The nurses were with him, yeah." "They're not up here;” (where you meet the transportation.) “It's blowing up here."

  The captain told them, "We checked with the guy that ran the boat." "Oh, yes, he took them over. They got out and started up the trail. Everything was fine." When we reported that, they said, "They're not here. It's really blowing snow up like a blizzard starting in up here. We're concerned about them." The time was such that they should have been up there. Sure enough, they ask us to send out a searching party. Our captain says, "Schaughency, how about you lead this party and pick a crew of volunteers?" We got plenty of volunteers.

  I selected six guys. We took the boat over. As soon as we got off, it was snowing and blowing down on that side of the mountain. The further we went, it really was coming down. With snow on the ground we could follow their tracks. You don't get training in a search party operations in any training that I received. I said, " Here's what we're going to do." By this time, we're in a low blizzard. The snow's coming down. I said, "We don't want to lose any more people. We will stay together as long as we can see their footsteps. If we can't we will spread out.”

  “You make sure you can see the person in toward me. You three guys, look to the left. You three guys, look to the right. Make sure you can see that person. We'll spread out. I'll go like this with my arms. That means spread out just as far as you can." We're combing this trail. "When you find footprints," you can't call anyone due to the howling wind. (It was a blizzard now). "Go down Whoever finds prints, stop and then you, waving your hand, pointing down like this. We'll all close in on you."

  That happened several times. It worked. Now, we're into a real blizzard. We got up in some places you couldn't … the wind would blow off on the … you couldn't see the trail, and we'd close in. Make sure you close in. We'd followed and then when we couldn't, we'd spread out as much as we could and try to find where we could find the trail again. We got up to the top, and we see these snow mobiles with their lights on. By this time, it's dark. Some were on the far side of the ravine and saw one coming on our side, they said, "Did you see anything?" I said, "We followed their trail up to right by ---," and I gave a location back of us. It was not very far. I said, "I know they're up that far because we followed their tracks, and then we saw you guys."

  He said, "They're not up here." With what we had brought up to this point, one of the guys in a snow mobile said, "You know, there's an old trapper shack just down there (pointing away from the trail.) With this snow and wind blowing like it is, coming down the mountain, there's a tendency to move away, with your back to the wind. If they did get up to where you saw their tracks and then did that after arriving up here on the level part, they could have gone down to that trapper shack. We're going down and check." Sure enough, there they were. The chaplain and the nurses had found that trapper shack. They got in the snow jeeps. The recovery was made. We all got a commendation letter from the general, commander of the island.

  Joshua Bell: That's great. They must have been real happy to see you guys.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah, they were. They were taken back "home" to the station hospital in the snow mobiles. That's the story about the search and rescue mission.

  Joshua Bell: You said something else last week about beating the Army at its own game.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:09:04] A new lieutenant came out to our unit from another battery in our battalion, as I said earlier, we were on the far side of the island. It was just that one artillery battery out there. Adak was a pretty big supply base that they were using to build up for, as the armed forces radio called it, "the northern highway to victory." (note: ration and a half explained in interview one)

  There was a Navy port and a repair base, and a Navy Air Station, an Army Base plus the Army was building great, big warehouses there. We were still out on the outpost location. We had a new battery Commander. He was an older guy, originally from the Oregon National Guard. This young lieutenant, 'Bork', we called him. The name, do you want that or not.

  Joshua Bell: Oh, sure. That'd be great.

  Paul Schaughency: Well, his last name was Boericke, B-O-E-R-I-C-K-E. He said, "Boericke, rhymes with 'America'." It was a Dutch name. His family was the Curtis Publishing, Co - (the Saturday Evening Post and several others.) He came from a wealthy family. He was the only one I had run into to, then or later, that, as I said, "beat the Army at its own game.” He graduated from Saint John's College.

  I think it's 'University' now, Saint John's in Annapolis, Maryland, a small school boasting that Francis Scott Key was a graduate. It has the Ten Great Books curriculum. When they graduate from there, they've studied the Ten Great Books series. That's a regular part of their curriculum. They’re noted for that, but it's a little different.

  "Bork" didn't like this assignment coming out there because he liked to go the PX and the post library, the theatre, and the various facilities on the main base. You could either go there or go to the Navy theatre and stuff like that. He just missed it. We'd get a guy to bring a movie out on a rucksack, a big backpack down the trail. "Oh, we got a movie tonight!" It was different. He didn't like that.

  A lot of the units on the main base, had duties and responsibilities that their table of organization or their assigned personnel didn't make quite enough. They'd bring people in from other infantry units, artillery units, and so forth to these service places over on the main base.

  We would have some of our people on special duty with these units. Back in those days, the Army paid by cash. You had to have a paying officer. We kind of took turns at that. From our place, the paying officer duty wasn't a bad … you kind of looked forward to it because you would find these people. You'd get somebody over there to get you a jeep. You'd take the pay, for example, over to the three of our guys at the quartermaster tank farm.

  Then, you'd take the two guys over to this ordinance unit and the guys at various post facilities. You had to hunt them up and then pay them in cash. Then, they signed the payroll. It took 2 or 3 days, maybe. We always thought it was all right for the pay officer to stay over a couple of days. Go to the officer's club. Go to the theatre. Go to the PX and so forth, two, three days and then come back. That was kind of the custom.

  Lt. Boericke was assigned to be the paying officer. He goes over to the main base and doing his duties there. This captain says, "Three days, four days, how long does this take?" I explained just what I told you, "Five days, six days." He says, "Isn't this getting to be unusual?" I called Bork up and said, "Hey, Boericke, the captain is getting kind of unhappy. He's making talks about putting you on the morning report as AWOL. You don't want that." I was getting concerned. He says, "Oh, the old boy is getting unhappy, is he?"

  He didn't seem to be concerned about it. Well, he did get put on the morning report for AWOL. That caused the action to take. He was put under house arrest or something and court marshaled. He was found guilty of AWOL and fined half of his pay for six months. That meant nothing to him. His family has money. Half of the pay would make little difference. Custom of the Army (and I suppose other services) is if an officer is found guilty of some minor offense he's transferred out of that unit, and automatically transferred to another unit. There weren't any other units out on the outpost area. The other units had to be over in the main base. He got just exactly what he wanted. He got an assignment, a good assignment right over in the main base. He could go to the PX and the library and all this stuff. He had a good sergeant there in the unit. They hit it off well. He got exactly what he wanted. His penalty was insignificant because it was what he wanted. That's that story. Why don't you ask me the questions? We'll make sure we get them in this time.

  Joshua Bell: I guess I'll ask this question; how did you pass your free time?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:17:20] Free time, there was Armed Forces Radio. We'd listen to that, Armed Forces Radio. It was all security, a lot more. I mean today, everybody has a cellphone. They can call home whenever they want. There would be Armed Forces Radio especially if it was bad weather and you didn't have to go out.

  I think I mentioned this about the clothing in the first part. We had good clothing unlike what they had at first. You could go out and work in the bad weather. We didn't have people out in the really, real bad stuff. You had to go out in snow and rain. You had things to do. The past time, we had our own movie projector. That was one thing. I think I mentioned the other part of it. We had the midnight snack at 9:30 PM. That helped especially being out on the outpost there. A lot of the duty time was spent in making your place better. For instance, at first, there would be Chic Sales for the latrine.

  Joshua Bell: What's that?

  Paul Schaughency: Chic Sale is from the late 1800s. He was a privy, outdoor outhouse builder. He had some great designs that he put in. Rather than say, "I'm going to the outhouse," or some other words, you'd say, "I'm going to the Chic Sale." Then for our unit, we had a shower and a water heater building. We wanted to extend that.

  Once, somebody had gotten some flushed toilets from the Navy. Boy, oh, boy. “If we could do an addition to the shower room and have warm, flushed toilets that would be really great!” That was one of our projects, putting in the toilets and putting in the drain. They had a lot of shortages during the war. They had wooden pipe that was wrapped with wire. They had a wooden mallet. You kind of put one end into the other just like terracotta or any other kind of plastic pipe. You put the small end to the big end and tap it in snug with a wooden mallet. It worked.

  We were running the drain line from the shower room down to the ocean, take it out into the ocean. It was a place that whoever selected the place was before us that was there as a unit when I got there. There was a creek going down. We had running water because they dammed up the creek beyond our unit and had water pipes coming down for the kitchen and the shower. The spare time during the day, we had four gun crews.

  Those gun crews and the sergeant in charge that made up a work team, "Gun crew #1, Sergeant Smith, you take your crew and go over here," at the formation. They get their assignments. I'd say some, unofficially, there were some guys liked hunting. The little carbine rifle would make good hunting so that, improving the roads and communication. A lot of the work had to with making your area of your unit better.

  Joshua Bell: Yeah. It sounds like it was trying to make it homey and trying to make it normal.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah, that's right. You'd keep working. In the first part, I told you the story about the Navy getting Quonset huts and Battery A was down over the hill there in the pyramidal tents winterized. When I got there, it was all Quonset huts. I guess, technically, they were Pacific huts. They were a little different competitor, but the word gets around, 'Quonset hut'.

  Joshua Bell: It was homey. Did you stay in touch with the people back home? Did you stay in touch with your family?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:17:20] Letters, v-mail, letters. As matter of fact, my wife has my letters still.

  Joshua Bell: Oh, she does? That's fantastic.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. I need to read those one of these days. She wrote every day. Of course, they didn't come every day. They'd come in batches but not too bad. The APO 980, (Army Post-office #980), that was the radio station. "The APO 980 on the northern highway to victory," they said.

  Joshua Bell: Right out of Seattle, no doubt.

  Paul Schaughency: No. The radio station was there on the island. They played transcriptions or records. Wait a minute. I need a little water. Hang on.

  Joshua Bell: Go ahead.

  Paul Schaughency: If you hear the water running, you know I'm working on it. I got a drink. Thank you. Go ahead.

  Joshua Bell: Who were your superior officers? Paul Schaughency: [00:25:28] That was Captain Rohrbach, R-O-H-R-B-A-C-H from the Oregon National Guard. That was the guy that came in. I told you the story about Buck Slaughter, didn't I and the geese?

  Joshua Bell: Oh, yeah.

  Paul Schaughency: Buck Slaughter was from Reedville, Virginia. He was Captain Slaughter. We had a provisional battalion headquarters. We were sent out to Adak to relieve another battalion headquarter. We weren't set up to be a separate battalion. All of the supply and administration and so forth was done at regimental headquarters. That was back in Kodiak. We reported in to the post commander on the island.

  We didn't report to the colonel back in Kodiak. We were a separate battalion headquarters, and we weren't set up to be one. We had a lot of people doing different things. Our adjutant, he'd been a sergeant major. He really knew administration. We didn't need a personnel officer. He had two good sergeant majors heading up the administrative part and the personnel part. We didn't need a personnel officer, so we didn't fill that position.

  [00:27:23] He was, Warrant Officer Deegan. He called one day and said, "The colonel wants to see you." "Okay." All this time, I'd been in different firing batteries. I'm the outdoor kind. I'm happy with that. We looked down our nose to those people in administration, called them 'desk jockeys'. That was not a compliment. I go to see the colonel. Since Deegan called, I went to see him first. He said, "The colonel wants you to be the new personnel officer. We're getting into a lot of stuff here with the points system."

  The Army had put in a point system for rotation. You got one point for each month in the states. You got two points for each month overseas. You got various points for battle awards and so forth. I never heard anybody complain about the point system. The point system, all those over so many points, the people that we relieved went back to the states. They started this rotation. They picked units to send back to the states. They'd take out the people with the low points and fill it up with people with high points from other units. They'd go back to the states.

  We were into this rotation thing. Then when V-E Day (Victory in Europe) hit, it escalated because we were getting ready for Japan, bringing troops back and getting them ready for Japan. They used the point system for who comes back and who stays. That was getting to be quite some duty. I had a real good personnel sergeant major. I had promoted him in the personnel section because the personnel sergeant major had rotated out. We hit it off just fine. He taught me. I'd say, "Is this right, sergeant?" and "Where do I sign," because I was just learning. I found out that this personnel job was interesting. I quickly learned my job. Rather than degrading those "desk jockeys", I was one. I said, "Look," I explained our provisional Battalion Hq setup and so forth. At this point I need to explain the Army has an MOS, Military Occupational Specialty. You had that number because of what was in the table of organization, and your assigned job within that organization. You could have more than one MOS number.

  If everything goes right, you're working on your military occupational specialty. We had people with MOSs that did not have anything to do with the actual job they were now doing, because the table didn't call for that job, but we had to have it, being out there on the island as a separate unit.

  I said, "You're reassigning people," with low points to replace higher point people. “I know what our people are doing. For instance, this guy's got MOS for mechanic, but he's working as our motor pool sergeant. If he's not going to be rotated back to the States with our unit that's leaving, he should go to the transportation corps. Similarly, we have guys working on our phone system, but the table organization does not have those jobs.”

  He said, "Schaughency," he had a nice office up at post headquarters. "Why don't you sit down at that table over there? I'll give you where we need people. You put your guys in there, what you know that they can fit." I said, "I just want to make sure our guys get assigned something that they're accustomed to rather than completely oddball jobs just because of their MOS. He handed me a pencil and said, "You go ahead and do that?" He apparently liked what I did. Pretty soon, I find myself up at post headquarters as a post personnel officer. He was being promoted to Post Adjutant.

  Joshua Bell: Where was that located?

  Paul Schaughency: In the main base of Adak. I didn't serve, other than a few months, any place other than Adak. Continuing on, now, I'm up at post headquarters and soon became a captain.

  When our unit was to be rotated back to the States, I went up to talk to personnel office [Captain Byron Ward]. The main mission was getting the boys back home, especially after V-J Day, and filling personnel needs of the units on the post.

  The post personnel officer was technically an assistant adjutant. My move to Battalion personnel office and the Post HQ job got me into personnel work. The G.I. Bill came along and I said, "I better learn more about the civilian side of personnel. This has been interesting. I'm sure there are certain things you can apply." I came back and got my master's degree at Pitt in what they called 'industry department' but all personnel courses all because the colonel pointed at me and assigned me personnel.

  Joshua Bell: Funny how that works sometimes. What was your rank during this time?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:34:37] Of course, I started as a second lieutenant when I was commissioned on the 19th of November, '43. Then, I became first lieutenant up there, then captain on the post job. I came out a captain. I signed on for one year, regardless of points, so that I could get my wife up there.

  Joshua Bell: No. You didn't tell me that.

  Paul Schaughency: Your dependents are jumped. I didn't tell you that?

  Joshua Bell: No. I don't think so.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:35:29] We're right at that point. I got in in '43, and I was working with the points all the time. I had it figured out that I would have about six to nine months to go. I got a new boss, Post Director of Personnel and Administration the General's Staff. After the war, he would make colonel. As a custom to the service, you referred to him as "general."

  My new boss was staying in. He says he was in the post-office. His seniority went on along because of the government. He says, "I've got no reason to get out. I'm going to stay in." He said, "You know those buildings over there that was the Advanced Alaskan Command?" (In case they’re moving forward, they had some real nice buildings all prepared for Alaskan headquarters to move out there.) He said, "They're going to make those into dependent housing. I'm signing up for one." He added, "You might think about that." I said, "Okay. It sounds like a good idea."

  In the regulations, first of all, they came out and said, "Unless you have at least one year of service, you can't take your overseas dependents with you." People were being sent out of the states to replace high-point people. They were taking their dependents, and pretty soon they'd be coming right back. It sounded reasonable: Unless you have one year of service, you can't take your dependents. Another regulation that I was familiar with, it said you can sign on for one year, three years or indefinitely.

  The major, my boss came in telling me he had signed on for indefinitely and sending for his dependents I signed on for one year. You don't go to the university and say, "I'm here, so I'd like to start." No. You start in September or the beginning of a semester. I would lose nothing. I signed up. I got a 45-day leave and came down and got my wife and took her back with me on the George Washington Carver, that had been a hospital ship during the war.

  We were the first boat load of troops that had dependents, - three couples of us that landed on Adak. That was interesting. One of the couples was the post engineer, Colonel Ware. His wife had been a Home Economics teacher. My wife was so well-accustomed to the kitchen. She could boil water without burning and cook grilled-cheese sandwiches. I think that's the list. You talk about the potter and the clay. They really hit it off. They lived across the road on Adak. It wasn't bad being friends of the post engineer’s wife (Peg) when you needed something done on your Quonset hut.

  My wife is a great correspondent. She would write to my parents. One time she wrote that they were going to put in flooring. I was away. I had to go back to the mainland. While I was away, she had talked to Peg. They were going to put in flooring for us, tile blocks. The flooring in a Quonset hut is four by eight sheets of plywood. What they were going to do is put this tile, I think it was wooden on top of the plywood.

  My mother wrote back and said, "Oh, you poor dears, I knew you two were having a hardship, way up there in the Aleutians, but I had no idea you had no floor in your Quonset huts."

  The Quonset hut came with a shower stall. It would take up less room than the tub. We had a shower stall. Peg was visiting us and said, "I really miss my tub. I like soaking in that tub."

  I said, "Peg, I happen to know where there's a tub way out at another unit I was in." I said, "I would suppose you could talk to somebody that could get a couple of guys to go out there and get you a tub." "Oh, that would be wonderful." I knew where this unit was. It was our headquarters unit, and it was abandoned out there. This major, who had some connections with the Navy, ended up with a bathtub, probably the only bathtub in any Army unit. Peg was real pleased. That didn't hurt relationships at all.

  Joshua Bell: No, certainly not. What year was that?

  Paul Schaughency: That would be 1946, then, '47, '48, I got my master's. We were there one year and flew back. That year was so different. You can't believe how different it was having your wife there, and having your own quarters.

  Joshua Bell: That must have been a big change.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. It was all for the better. That was our honeymoon. I told you that story about the train going west. We were married seven days, so that was our honeymoon in the Aleutian Islands.

  Joshua Bell: You didn't get home once you got up there, did you?

  Paul Schaughency: No. Cathy and I were there a year and then came back. That was it.

  Joshua Bell: I mean when you went up there with the service in '43.

  Paul Schaughency: No. The first time I got back after arriving in summer of 1944, was when I came back to get Cathy.

  Joshua Bell: Right. That was the first leave that you had.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah.

  Joshua Bell: That's a long time.

  Paul Schaughency: People were away longer than that.

  Joshua Bell: Did you ever think that you wanted to be assigned someplace else?

  Paul Schaughency: I tried to make the best of where I was. Apparently, it worked. In getting assigned to that job, that I wasn't looking forward to, was probably the best that happened. I came out with my master's degree and went on with PPG Industries. They now call it 'human resources'. I had a career with them. I'm in debt to the Army for pointing a finger at me and getting into personnel.

  I wrote a letter of gratitude to a guy that stayed in the Army. In 1941 I knew him as Lieutenant Husband, an instructor in the ROTC at Pitt. I wrote a two-page typed letter, sent it to him and a copy to each of his two daughters. I had tracked him down. He's a colonel and retired now. I wanted to thank him. Stop me if I told you this. In '41, having completed Basic ROTC, I applied for Advanced ROTC. That would be in September. (We're not to December '41 yet.) He called me at the fraternity house. He said, "Schaughency, you didn't pass the physical." He added, "I have called the hospital to find out what it was.” He told me it was a rapid heartbeat. "Here's what I want you to do. There's nothing you can do about it. You just get a good night sleep. I've arranged for you to have that physical checked again. You get a good night sleep and go up and get that rechecked." I did, and I was fine. I passed the physical. If he hadn't taken the time to check my physical and call me … WOW. The draft was on, but many weren't worrying about Hitler. That's over there. We're not going to get involved again.

  I was in Advanced ROTC. December 7th hit, and now we're at war. That was a real favor he did for me. I wouldn't have thought of having a recheck. He did that, and I really appreciated it. I sent that letter to him titled, "One Man's Caring, another Man's Career." I outlined how I got in the Army and the Army putting me into personnel and later personnel had been my career. He was real thankful and grateful that I had sent it to his kids.

  Joshua Bell: That's very nice. You went from thinking that Germany wasn't the problem and then all of a sudden, we are at war with Japan and Germany

  Paul Schaughency: We all knew as soon as we were at war with Japan, that wasn't the only one. Japan kept taking more territory in the Pacific "Somebody's got to stop them. The British will probably stop them." That didn't work. When they attacked us, that solidified the country. There were no more America firsters and German "bunders" with the people here. The whole country united. We were really united. We were then about a fourth- ranked power in the world. We came out of World War II number one or tied with Russia. We've been up on the top ever since. We can go wherever we want, but we couldn't back then.

  Joshua Bell: How did you feel on V-E Day? What were you doing when you learned about V-E Day?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:48:58] V-E Day, I was real happy about that and went out to the officer's club that evening and celebrated. I think it was the only time I got really tipsy. The bartender gave me French '75. I had asked, "What's that?" He says, "It's a kind of an amber champagne." Hell, it wasn't an amber champagne. It was champagne with brandy in it - a French 75. I wasn't completely out, but it was as far as I ever wanted to be. As for V-E Day the feeling was Oh, boy. We're done over there. You got that Hitler and he'd killed himself. That was a day of celebration, not as big as V-J Day but we celebrated.

  Joshua Bell: Tell me about V-J Day.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:50:08] V-J Day, yeah. That's the last story I've got for you. I'm up at post headquarters this time. It's up on the side of the mountain there. There's one great, big mountain, Mount Moffitt. It has a shoulder to it. Post headquarters is high up and you could see from there down to these ten huge warehouses and an airbase and Kuluk, K-U-L-U-K Bay. It's why we were there. The base was built there because of the big bay.

  The Navy liked it because there was a finger that went off of the bay in the narrow bay that they called 'Finger Bay'. They had marine repair shops there. It would accommodate ocean-going vessels. Well, three days after V-J Day, I get up the morning, go to the office and look out. That bay is absolutely peppered with Navy. This was a taskforce, not a big one but it was a taskforce. It answered my question about "the northern highway to victory" slogan.

  They had a cruiser leading it. That tells you the size. Usually it's a battleship or an aircraft carrier. Later in the war, usually it was an aircraft carrier that led it. Destroyers and other vessels protected the aircraft carrier. This was a cruiser that's a size below the battleship. It was like in the movies. “They're coming. Here come the yanks.” The bay was all peppered with destroyers, destroy escorts, supply ships. I'd never seen so many ships in one place.

  I went to the club that night and got talking with a Navy doctor and got invited down to see his office. He was on a destroyer escort. We went onboard and went in to see his operating room. He pulled down this bed. It was hanging up like in the pictures I've seen in the movies inside of a submarine. It's all compact. He pulls this down. He says, "This is my operating table," . I had a little tour of the ship. He said, "We were under sealed orders out of Pearl Harbor to come up here for three days." I never did get quite this thing of three days, something in the Navy about getting the crew off of the ship. They had three days. They could get a third of them off each day. They could go to the ship service or the PX or the theatre and get their feet on the ground and then back. "Our orders to come up here. Then, we are to meet troop transports coming out of San Francisco and escort them over to northern Japan,” Hokkaido, maybe. I forget which island it was.

  Sure, as shooting, we had been going to land there. We were on our way. This was to be a secondary attack on Japan.

  When I looked down at the bay that morning, all I could think of was that whole bay full of Navy vessels and not one of the sailors or marines injured or killed. That was just a little part of what was down south, in Okinawa, and these other islands heading for Japan. We were headed for Japan. That was going to be a slaughter. It was going to be on the Japanese soil. We would be peppering the land with all kinds of bombs and shells to prepare for the guys to land.

  [00:55:19] These people that want to rewrite history and say the atom bomb was terrible, well, of course, it was terrible. If you're standing where a 500-pound bomb goes off, it's terrible. You're dead. We'd hear in the news broadcast on the radio, "Fifty-seven sorties bombed Stuttgart,” where there are ball-bearing factories. I don't know how many times we heard that. Time after time after time We went to bomb Stuttgart. All of those people in Stuttgart are just as dead as they are in Nagasaki. There just weren't as many of them at one time. When I saw that bay full of ships, my first thought was, "Every one of those sailors and marines out there, they're all alive today." That was my atom bomb story.

  Joshua Bell: I want to ask the final question. What are you most proud of from your time in service?

  Paul Schaughency: I think that rescue mission. I think it was something that came up on the spur of the moment that we had to do. I was well-pleased with the results of that. I'll be glad that I had been up there long enough to realize what kind of equipment, what we needed to do and be careful. I guess that's it. Plus, the other thing is that I did well enough in the battalion personnel job to get advanced to post personnel and a promotion out of it. Those two things kind of hit me as accomplishments.

  Joshua Bell: I wanted to thank you very much for your contribution to our oral history project. Thank you for your contribution leading us to victory in the Second World War.

  Paul Schaughency: I don't know that I did anything leading to victory, but we were ready to go.

  Joshua Bell: I think everybody did their part. You certainly did.

  [End of recorded material - 00:57:57]

• Paul Schaughency Interview Part II

  
  

  Paul Schaughency and his troops arrived at Adak Island in January of 1944. He discusses the weather in the Aleutians, as well as the treatment of the Unangax by both the Americans and Japanese. He also recounts many stories from the Aleutians, including a major rescue during a blizzard. His wife of seventy plus years, Cathy, also has an interview about her time during World War II. This is part II of Paul's interview.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS/Joshua Bell

  Date created:

  08/05/2022

  Audio Transcript

  Interview with Lt. Col. Paul Schaughency

  Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Oral History Program

  June 1 & 15, 2016 Pittsburgh, PA

  Interviewed by Joshua Bell, Park Ranger, Aleutian World War II National Historic Area

  This interview is part of the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Oral History Project. This interview was recorded with the interviewee’s permission on a digital recorder. Copies of the audio file are preserved in wav format and are on file at the offices of the National Park Service in Anchorage, Alaska.

  The transcript has been edited by the interviewee.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  June 1, 2016

  [Start of recorded material - 00:00:00]

  Joshua Bell: Today is June 1, 2016. I'm Joshua Bell, park ranger with the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area. Today, we have Paul Schaughency. How are you doing today, Paul?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm doing fine. Thanks, Josh.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. I just wanted to let you know this conversation is being recorded. Is that okay?

  Paul Schaughency: That's okay.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. For the record, could I have you state your name and when and where you were born?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm Paul Schaughency. The spelling sure doesn't come out anything like that. I was born in Beaver, PA, a town of about 5,000+ and a county seat.

  Joshua Bell: When were you born?

  Paul Schaughency: I was born September 14, 1921. I'm 94 and still operating under my own two feet. Joshua Bell: Excellent. I'm glad to hear it.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. I am too.

  Joshua Bell: I imagine. What were your parent's names?

  Paul Schaughency: My father was known as "C.P.", Charles Preston. My mother was Julia Rogers Schaughency.

  Joshua Bell: What did they do for work?

  Paul Schaughency: My father was a wholesale hardware salesman, and my mother was a housewife. Back then, we're talking about the '20s and the depression years, women didn't work. I mean there were a few. There was a woman doctor who came to the people across the street in her black - I don't know what kind of car it was; I've forgotten - coupe.

  Joshua Bell: That must have been quite something. Very different, I'm sure.

  Paul Schaughency: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

  Joshua Bell: Do you remember her name?

  Paul Schaughency: No. I remember our doctor's name, but I don't remember the name of my friend's doctor across the street.

  Joshua Bell: Did you have any siblings growing up?

  Paul Schaughency: Yes. I was the youngest of three boys. We were spread out pretty well. My oldest brother was seventeen years older than I. My next brother was nine and a half years older than I. Then, I came. If you'll notice, my initials are P.S (Post Script). I thought it's kind of ironic: my mother was within three days of her 41st birthday, so I almost didn't get here.

  Joshua Bell: Talk about rolling the dice. Did they join the service as well during World War II?

  Paul Schaughency: No. They were too old by then. By 1942 my mother and father were in their 60's That didn't fit.

  Joshua Bell: No. Your brothers didn't join either?

  Paul Schaughency: No. They were married with children and in their 30's.

  Joshua Bell: Yes, certainly. What was it like growing up in the '20s and '30s? Paul Schaughency: Well, it was the depression. I don't remember a whole lot about the '20s. I remember Hoover. Then, we had a Hoover button. I hung it in our canary's birdcage. Then Hoover was blamed for the Depression, and so he didn't get re-elected. That started Roosevelt's era… I remember that part. I was twelve or something like that. It was really bad. We lived in a small town… it was a residential town surrounded by lots of industry. The people worked. People were laid off. It was tough. They had to do something. Old Roosevelt came out with program after program.

  Joshua Bell: He sure did. Did the depression affect your family at all?

  Paul Schaughency: My dad lost his job with one company and went back with another company. He was working. Of course, salesmen are on commission. I can remember him saying , "I didn't make enough to pay for the gasoline today." Times were tough. He was working all through but skimping. I do remember candy bars, for a five cents and movies, ten cents. It's hard to believe with the inflation we've had. The prices of those things today are much, much, much more.

  Joshua Bell: They certainly are. I want to change gears a little bit. Where did you go to school?

  Paul Schaughency: I went to Beaver High School and graduated in 1939. Hitler was going well over in Europe. "We bailed them out once," you'd hear. "We're not going to go over there again." The president decided we'd better get some preparedness. They put the draft through, but I'll tell you how divided the country was on this question. The draft passed by congress by one vote. That's pretty close. The draft was put in. There was a song, "Good-bye, dear. I'll be back in a year, 'cause I'm in the Army now." It was a one-year draft. They activated the National Guard units and called them in. They were supposed to be called up for a year. I think there were one or two that were called in early actually got back home. Then, December 7th hit. They were called back in.

  Joshua Bell: You mentioned Hitler. What do you remember hearing about him?

  Paul Schaughency: Bad. It was awful, some of the things. We didn't know too much about the Holocaust. That was pretty well covered up by them over there. I mean covered up. There were other things. We knew about the Kristallnacht when the storm troopers broke the glass and broke windows of Jewish business people and so forth. Those things were going on either in a news reel … we didn't have television but news reels, radio or newspapers. We got the stuff. The sentiment here was as I said, "We're not going over there again."

  Joshua Bell: How did your family feel about that?

  Paul Schaughency: They were not against getting prepared. I didn't hear them saying anything against it. I guess they were all right with it. Joshua Bell: Then, Pearl Harbor was attacked.

  Paul Schaughency: Then came Pearl Harbor. I can't explain to you or the young people today how that affected all of the people. I mean the America Firsters which were the anti-going to war and helping Europe out, they weren't too much against preparing for here but, “Don't go over and do that again.” You just didn't hear anything from them. They attacked us. That was really unifying us … well, a Japanese admiral, after the war, I read a this admiral had said, "I'm afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant." No truer words were spoken because that whole country pulled together. There was no arguing, "We should have done this," or, "We should have done that." I mean we declared war … I remember listening to the radio. President Roosevelt said the Monday after Pearl Harbor and it was on a weekend, "I'm asking congress declare that a state of war has existed since December 7."

  I said to the guys around listening at the fraternity house, "It 'has existed'. I like that. We're declaring war retroactive to December 7th." It was a dastardly attack as he had said, and it was. We all pulled together and got the industry going. Pittsburgh, of course, was a big, big part of it, the steel. It got going. Of course, they had price controls and so on. Prices didn't go up terribly during the war. Pittsburgh was very, very important to the war effort. You could sense it around.

  Joshua Bell: You said that you were in the fraternity house when that happened. You were at college?

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. In '39, I graduated from high school. The depression was still on. There's no way I was going to get to go to college unless I got a scholarship, and I did. The University of Pittsburg had one scholarship for they called it their 'honor's scholarship. I did well in school. I got the scholarship that was half the tuition. Mother said, "You've got half of the tuition. I will find some way of getting the other half." Tuition was $150 a semester, $300 a year. Getting that scholarship got me in the university.

  We were registering at the beginning of my freshman year. My friend from Beaver, Bill Donaldson, (who became a doctor and later the medical director of Children's hospital here), was kind of showing me around. He had gotten the same scholarship the year before. We got to the end of the line. They had these IBM cards. I was asked, "What do want, gym or ROTC?" I turned to Bill. I said, "What did you take?" He said, "If you take gym, you've got to go up to Trees Gym. That's way up the hill over there behind the stadium. You've got to take a showerand if you have a class next period, it's bad."

  He said, "I took ROTC." I said, "What’s that?" "Reserve Officers Training Course." He said, "You go as a lieutenant if there's a war instead of a private." All I was looking at is that big climb up that hill and so I said, "I'll take ROTC." That was a great step, but I didn't know it at the time. I got into ROTC. In 1941, I got into advanced ROTC. Then, December 7th hit. The colonel came to the class and said, "Now, boys, there will be enough heroes, running off to join the Air Corps." It wasn't the Air Force at that time. It was the Army Air Corps. "Your Uncle Sam wants you boys to stay and get your education." We all looked at each other and said, "If Uncle Sam wants us to stay, I guess we better." It was a great thing! We got to finish our degree!

  Joshua Bell: What was your major?

  Paul Schaughency: Business.

  Joshua Bell: How did you feel about this idea that Uncle Sam wanted you to finish your education?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:14:42] Great! People were running off and volunteering and so forth. I was in the program. They said they wanted us to stay. I said, "Well, that's a good thing." They had a lot of programs during the war, training. They had the ASTP [Army Specialized Training Program]. They said, "We're going to need trained people. We got to start training them in technical areas." It didn't pan out too well because the Battle of the Bulge came, and they took all those guys out of ASTP there and started in the infantry and backing up the Bulge problem. ROTC got to finish and get our degree.

  Before the war, ROTC, after your junior year in the summer, you went to a six-week summer camp, but now they're training divisions. We’re getting ready for war. They couldn't be messing around with these college boys for six weeks and busting up their training schedules. They said, "No, no. We're not going to do that. You'll go to something new called OCS, Officer Candidate School." We finished college and got called to active-duty. Earlier they had asked us if we wanted to join the Enlisted Reserve. There were some wiseacres in our class that said, "Wait a minute. If you join the Reserve, you're in the Army. If you wash out of OCS, they'll soon tell you where to go. If you go as a cadet, then you have to come back home to be drafted." Some of us said, we're going to play that game, "We'll go as a cadet." But by the time '43 came, we were told, "There are some that are not in the Reserve. We want everybody in the Enlisted Reserve. You go to your draft board and tell them that you need to get drafted. Then, you'll be assigned to the Enlisted Reserve from your draft."

  That was fine except I went to my draft board. I knew the girl there. I went as a contingent of one, a draftee sent up to Pittsburgh for my physical processing just like a draftee. I get down to the end and the Sgt. said, "Do you want to go now or in two weeks?" I said, "Hold it. I'm in the ROTC out at Pitt University. I'm supposed to be drafted into the Enlisted Reserve." This sergeant didn't know what I was talking about. He said, "Do you want to go now or in two weeks?" I said, "Neither one."

  I said, "I'm supposed to go into the Enlisted Reserve and then go when I finish ROTC." He got some major. The major knew about it, thank God. They said, "Okay." I got drafted. I was assigned to the Enlisted Reserve and then went back to school and finished. I went to OCS. They'd asked us to go to summer school to get finished sooner. I said, "Well I've got to work. Can I work for my expenses?" They said, "Approved." The other guys that did go to summer school in my class went to Camp Davis Anti-Aircraft OCS

  When you went to college in those days, if you went to this college, they had this kind of ROTC, maybe infantry. Another one might have field artillery. Ours was coast artillery, and that was Seacoast and anti-aircraft. Davis was the anti-aircraft OCS. We ended up in Seacoast which was down at Fort Monroe, a beautiful fort in Virginia. The engineer on the project to build that fort was Robert E. Lee. During the Civil War, the south never took Fort Monroe. I suppose that engineer knew how it was constructed. It was pretty well-constructed so they didn't want to try, I guess. I don't know why.

  Joshua Bell: That makes sense to me.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:19:38] Yeah. We got through there. I got my choice of places. Fort Hancock, New Jersey was one of them. You got your choice based on your class ranking and what you picked. I got Fort Hancock. That was supposed to be a great assignment because they had a ferry boat "45 minutes from Broadway" as the old song went. You're sticking out from New Jersey, but you're close to New York. That sounded great to me.

  The only trouble was that they didn't tell you what unit you're going to be assigned to. I was assigned to the 265th Coast Artillery, a Florida National Guard unit. The word was they're being alerted for overseas. It was November 19th. I graduated out of OCS. I got down there in early December. Christmas time was coming. [00:20:56] I contacted my girlfriend back at Pittsburgh. We'd been dating for a couple of years. She couldn't come for Christmas. She didn't want to leave her parents alone, but she'd come for New Years. Okay!!

  She came for New Years. We decided on a Thursday to get married the following Tuesday on a three day pass and have a church wedding. Being the boy in a family, of boys, I didn't know about all the details. I've learned since. She called her father to make arrangements at the church. I said, "I guess I'm supposed to ask your father if it's all right." I talked to him. He approved. We're still married. She's still living. Seventy-two years married.

  We got back to Ft. Hancock on time. I said it was a Florida National Guard outfit that had been activated. Of course, they had changes. Some people were taken out. Other people were draftees or sent in. It was about half and half. [00:22:29 ] Before we had left the Fort, this one sergeant, a real sharp guy said, "Lieutenant, don't worry about this overseas things." He said, "This outfit's been alerted for overseas twice before. Don't worry about it. Go have yourself a nice wedding. We'll still be here when you get back." He was just a little mistaken. [00:23:10] After we got back, we were there seven days, and then my wife was on a train back to Pittsburgh. I was on a train for Fort Lawton in Seattle. Seattle, we knew was the … the port of embarkation for Alaska.

  When we were in OCS and assignments were coming up, two guys wanted to be together. They signed up for Fort Lewis, Washington. Scuttlebutt got Fort Lewis and Fort Lawton mixed up, I guess. The word was that Fort Lewis was the port of embarkation for Alaska. Instead of a "forward march", we kidded them, "You'll be saying forward mush, ho, ho, ho,” because you're going to be going to Alaska. Arriving in Seattle, I now know the difference. I called one of the two guys. The first thing thisguy says to me, "Oh, Schaughency." He says, "Forward mush! He knew that we were at the port of embarkation for Alaska."

  Joshua Bell: I want to go back for a minute and ask about the OCS. What was training like there?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:24:33] Very rigorous as far as classroom work and the gunnery part. There was marching. We did get some practical experience on some of the big guns. The classroom work was the biggest thing. You had a lot of math. They told us, "Sure, we've got base end stations where there's a telescope." They could measure the angle. You set these two stations up and site on this ship. Triangulation will tell you where to fire the guns and how far and so forth.

  They said that the data went into a plotting board. They sent the information to the big guns to shoot out into the sea. You knock off the ship. They told us, "You've got to understand this whole thing because down in the Pacific, the guys are setting these up on orange crates." They can get a triangulation and get this thing set up. There's a plotting board. There's a real nice room and fixed up pretty nice at Fort Monroe. They were telling us, "You've got to know all this stuff." It was rather rigorous in math and science.

  Joshua Bell: Did you guys get up to anything on your downtime?

  Paul Schaughency: We didn't have a lot. Our orders to go to active-duty were, "Proceed to Cumberland." That was processing-in. You got your uniform, your shots and so forth. Then, the assignment to basic training in Fort Eustis, Virginia. Those Pitt guys were really complaining. "Oh, my golly. First, they tell us we're not going to six-week summer camp. They've got this 90 days, OCS. It's been extended to four months now.

  Then, we were supposed to go to OCS. What are we doing? We're going to basic training." It was gripe, gripe, gripe. We got over to Fort Monroe. There were three groups in our class. One group was up from the ranks and passed their OCS application and go to the OCS board and the OCS examination. They had come through the ranks. The other group was our Pitt group- part of them; the rest came on in the next class.

  They said, "We'll get one class through and then start the next one." That was all it was. We were in basic training like just a couple of weeks. Then, the others came on a month later. There was a group up from the ranks, the group from Pitt who were complaining, weren’t complaining.

  The third group was from the Citadel. Those Pitt boys really quit complaining. They said, "Holy smokes. Those guys are in uniform all the time. That's the West Point of the South. They have to do this too. Oh, boy. We only go in uniform one day a week, and then we go to class. They're into this stuff. Matter of fact, they can get demerits. They're restricted for the weekend. We've got none of that. Oh, boy. I guess we don't have so much to complain about." We got along fine with the Citadel group. It was very interesting. At hindsight, you can see what was happening, we had to wait until the classes started. At the time, boy, we were really complaining.

  Joshua Bell: How did your family feel about you being activated?

  Paul Schaughency: The war was on. I think they were pleased that I was going to be an officer. That was something that they were proud of… I was the first one to go to college and graduate and with the war on go into officer school. The war being on, at my age, it was a foregone conclusion you're going to go.

  Joshua Bell: How did your wife feel about it?

  Paul Schaughency: She cried. She tells about it. She says, "I cried all the way home to Pittsburgh on the train." One other little incident: there were four trains that took our regiment from Fort Hancock out to Fort Lawton for the port of embarkation. One train went through Pittsburgh. This Major who befriended me, saying, "You catch that last ferry boat at 10:00 PM, or 11:00 PM” and "I'll sign you out after midnight." I was always happy about that and appreciative.

  This same major was on one of the other 4 trains, that went through Pittsburgh. Several of them got newspapers. He's reading one. He sees this item in the Society section. It says, "The Schaughency’s Reside at Hancock." That was the heading on the column. It told about the wedding and so on. He's showing it around, going through the car and says, "Like hell. He's on another train going up through Canada to Seattle. He's not going to reside in Hancock. "We had "resided" just seven days at Fort Hancock.

  [00:31:58] Our unit, a small, battalion headquarters battery. The whole regiment left and went we learned later up to Kodiak. The destinations and all that stuff were really kept secret. You weren't allowed to let your family know where you were. It's much, much different than today with the iPads and cellphones right on the battlefield or could be. Our battalion headquarters battery and another one didn't get sent with the regiment. We didn't know why.

  Then, we heard a story of a liberty ship that they were building there Seattle was a big ship building place. I think it was at Bremerton, Washington, right across Puget Sound The story was a liberty ship was launched, and it had a crack in the hull. They had to repair it. The rumor got around that it was supposed to be our ship, but since they had to repair it, they had to find another ship. That's why we were being delayed. Well that was bologna, but we didn't know that. We got sent out to Adak. It's one of the Aleutian Islands that's just about the middle.

  Joshua Bell: What was that trip like?

  Paul Schaughency: Sort of uneventful. We were on not a real big ship.

  Pretty soon, it was cold. It was January. It was a bit chilly in the United States. Going up there, that was even colder. The Aleutians, by January '44 when we got there had been cleared by the Japanese. Back in December 1941 the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. [00:34:25] Then not long after that, they took Attu which was the big island out on the end. There was a village there and a coast guard weather station. They took Attu and the native and weather station couple (she taught school) to Japan as prisoners

  Then, they came back and took Kiska which is the next big island coming back. They had bombed Dutch Harbor which was right at the end of the Alaskan peninsula. If you look at a map of Alaska, the peninsula comes out there sticking out into the Pacific Ocean. At the end of that peninsula was Dutch Harbor, a Navy base. The people in California and Oregon and Washington were worried., All they could see was --- when are they coming over here. In the South Pacific, nobody was stopping the Japanese.

  I mean they were coming down through the islands of Asia and the Philippians and so on down. "Where are they going to stop them? Where are they going to stop up there?" There was fear especially on the west coast. Then we went out and took Attu back. All this had happened before I got up there. Adak was a base. The Navy liked the harbor there. It was a supply base and an air field. The Air Corps could take off and bomb or strafe the Japanese on Kiska. We next attacked Kiska, but under fog, the Japanese pulled out. We had our American territory back. I didn't fight any Japanese. That all happened before we landed on Adak.

  The US was building a larger supply base there. On Armed Forces Radio, they said, "This is the Armed Forces Radio." (I think they gave the APO number, the Army post office number.) "On the northern highway to victory" that was their byline. I often wondered a little about that. I'll come back to that; “on the northern highway to victory.”

  [00:37:12] The weather, I said I didn't fight any Japanese. We fought the weather. The Japanese current is warm. It comes up by the Aleutian Islands and curves and goes down along our west coast. It warms the west coast. That's coming up warm. The Bering Sea is a little chilly coming out of the Arctic. The Bering current comes down, and they meet at the Aleutians.

  One of the terms for the Aleutians is ‘the weather kitchen' because when stuff happens up there. They can tell, some of the time, what we're going to have down here. The weather was not bitter cold. Fifteen above would be a low, not like back on the mainland where it was dry cold. They get 40-60 below. The weather was really a bad thing. The Army was not prepared for Attu, clothing & equipment. There were no trees. No trees out in the Aleutians.

  The ground is a muskeg tundra but clumps of tundra. It's difficult to walk across. You decide you're going to walk on the top on the clump. You walk on that. Then, "No. I think I'll try walking down in the little valley between the clumps." Neither is very satisfactory. We learned about it. As far as the clothing and the equipment are concerned, until, I think it was Iwo Jima, Attu had had the largest casualty numbers. A lot of it was frostbite. We didn't have the right clothing for our soldiers there. But by the time we got there, they had shoe packs which were rubber bottom and leather that would come up your legs. That was real good. I never had to use them very much.

  In certain conditions or working, you might use a shoe pack. The boots were good. We had a suit made out of raincoat material, pants and jacket and a hood on the jacket also. The cartoons in the Post newspaper we had always had a guy with a "hoodie", we call them now, but made out of raincoat material. You could work out in that kind of stuff. We had parkas and didn't need them very often. The weather in the month of July would be like a month in spring in the northern United States. The little delicate flowers would all of a sudden bloom - purple and yellow and different colors of flowers. It was real pretty.

  By the end of the month, four to six weeks of summer was about par. Then it would start … even in the summer, the word was “Williwaw.” That was the Aleutian natives, the Aleut's word for the storm.

  [00:40:36] Aleuts were different. In Alaska, you had the Eskimos. You had the American Indians or Native Americans. Out on the Aleutian chain, you had the Aleuts. They had different cultures, all three of them. When the Japanese took Attu and Kiska, they took a village of Aleuts as prisoners over to Japan and two Americans.

  When we saw what was happening, we took the native Aleuts off the islands and took them back to the mainland down along by Juneau down along the side of Alaska that goes by on the west coast from Canada. That was not a real good treatment of the Aleuts… The furnishings were not very well done. That's what happened.

  [00:42:58] The Air Base had a wind meter. It went up to 115 miles an hour. There were times those storms would, beyond that. It was tough weather, but we survived because we had good equipment by the time we got there.

  Joshua Bell: I take it the weather was the first thing you noticed.

  Paul Schaughency: Oh, yeah. In January, we had … this was a Florida National Guard outfit. It's blowing and snowing and hitting us in the face when we went down the gangplank. One of the guys was from Key West. They referred to them as 'Key West Conchs'. I never used that term because I thought it might be a derogatory slur. One of them, when going down, got off a little slur and a slap at the fact that we were Florida National Guard out here. The snow is hitting us in the face. He says, "Oh, just like Miami Beach!" [laughs] The guys laughed. Nobody did anything.

  [00:44:46] Being the young, junior officer got me some jobs. We were relieving another Battalion. They were going back to the states. They had put up pyramidal tents for us with wooden floor and sides and a stove in the center. The concept was that the coast artillery works with the Navy HECP (Harbor Entrance Control Post) … there was an HECP way out on the end of a little peninsula. That was where the Navy would flash signals to a ship coming in. If they didn't flash back the right thing, they'd say to artillery, "Fire one round over the bow." There we had 155-mm cannon, mobile and a couple of wheels on them. They fired one over the bow. The Navy said, "Wake up that captain out there." That usually did it. They'd flash back. The idea was if the Navy said, "That's an unidentified craft. Fire on them," then the coast artillery would fire on that ship and assist the Navy in protecting the harbor. The plan was that our Battalion Headquarters was to move out adjacent to the Navy Harbor Entrance Control Post. We were just temporary in the tents until we relieved the other outfit. Then, we moved out to new quarters.

  [00:47:10] Another story comes to mind, speaking of quarters. We in the Army say, "You know, the gravy's in the Navy." I never realized how that was. An officer in this coast artillery, battery that was near the Harbor Entrance Control Post, told me that when they came up there, they were in pyramidal tents just like temporary ones where we were with the wooden sides and so forth. The Navy was getting Quonset huts.

  The Harbor Entrance Control Post didn't have very many people. They contacted the Coast Artillery Captain. They said, "We'll make you a deal. You help us put up these Quonset huts. You've got men that are available, and we'll give you one large one that you can have for your mess hall." He said, "That would be great," because they were coming out of the tents, going over to the mess tent and back. The Captain agreed - "If we could have a mess hall, boy; that would be great."

  They told me this. It happened before we got there. I said, "Jeepers creepers. I could just imagine being one of those Army guys. Your work crew, today, is going up to the Navy." You get on a truck and go up there and help them put up these Quonset huts, come back to your own pyramidal tent. All you had to do was tell yourself, "We're going to get one of those buildings for our mess hall, so we've got to do this." That wouldn't be a lot of fun, I don't think.

  Joshua Bell: What was your role with the unit?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:49:16] I got transferred, being the junior lieutenant, I was in the headquarter battery as one of two officers. Then, I was moved to one of the firing units. I think we fired practice … we had dead, just you went through the motions and opened the gun up and putting in the shell, rammed it in and then put the powder in. We would go through those. … I think maybe when I was with one unit, we did fire one or two times.

  Really it was key getting your place fixed up so living would be more tolerable was one of the things we did. The unit that I was assigned to was on Shagak Bay. All these places have like Russian names. You can hardly pronounce them. The night that we arrived, Schaughency being the junior officer was told, "Tonight, you're the OD," officer of the day. "I had to go over to operations," one of the Quonset huts where information came in from the base end stations with Radar. They gave me this message, "Lieutenant, I got to notify you that there's an unidentified object off Cape Adagdak heading toward Cape Chigegak." I said, "Yeah, sergeant. Where are they?" He got the map out and showed me. I said, "What do we do now?" He said, "Nothing." He added, "It's probably something out there. They'll call back and tell us. I wouldn't worry about it. We get these all the time," or frequently. "Okay." I'll never forget that. Those two locations, I never heard those big words before. It was something.

  Joshua Bell: What about some of the guys who were in your unit? You made friends with them, obviously.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:52:59] Yeah. We made friends. You're kind of in this thing together. A lot of it was, as I said, fighting the weather. One of the firing batteries would have four guns and four gun crews and a sergeant in charge of each gun crew. Those were our work crews especially the unit out on the far side of the island at Shagak Bay. We were called an outpost unit. When a tugboat came around from the main post, we got "rations and a quarter." I mean 25 percent more rations than what the normal was.

  It was a going feature when I got there. They said, "We'll have a midnight snack at 9:30 PM." What that Mess Sergeant did was to take Spam that you heard about being "bad". He put those aside and served those at 9:30 PM. I never heard an enlisted man or officer complain about Spam because we didn't have that served for our meal out there. Psychologically, the Army owes me three meals a day. When they're giving me this extra one, so-called midnight snack, that's something extra. It was also a little social thing.

  Your guys get in there, and they have whatever the sergeant had pulled out to serve. We'd have a little something to eat and drink. It was nice. I find out that Spam, a lot of it is psychological. I'll tell you another story about that place out there. The captain was Buck Slaughter. He was from Reedville, Virginia. He had a nice, southern drawl. We were out on this outpost there. There weren't very many people around. Once in a while, we'd get an inspector. This Alaskan department inspector a colonel was out there.

  Some of our guys had been out hunting and brought back some. geese. that they'd shot with a carbine. The mess crew dressed them. The colonel comes and looks in the refrigerator, opens up both doors. There are these geese in there hanging. They're all ready to be cooked. The colonel turns to captain Slaughter and says, "Now captain, you know that it's against the Alaskan department regulations to be out hunting. You're not allowed to do that."

  Capt. Slaughter replied, "Well, sir, colonel." He says, "You know, we've got these Williwaws out here. They don't have those back on the mainland, but we've got those Williwaws. They are terrible storms. The wind blows. These geese were going by. The storm came up and blew them right up against the side of the mess hall. The sergeant here was fast thinking. He had his men clean them up, and we're going to have those for dinner one of these days." The colonel looked and shook his head and just shut the door as if to say, "If that guy can come up with that story so fast, I'm not going to fuss at him."

  Joshua Bell: That's fantastic. I think we've reached about an hour. I still have more questions.

  Paul Schaughency: What do you want to do?

  Joshua Bell: Let's look at scheduling for maybe some time that works for you.

  [End of recorded material - 00:58:21]

  June 15, 2016

  [Start of recorded material - 00:00:00]

  Joshua Bell: Today is June 15, 2016. I'm Josh Bell, park ranger with the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area. We have back with us today, Paul Schaughency, who is going to continue sharing his story with us. How are you doing today, Paul?

  Paul Schaughency: I'm doing fine, Josh.

  Joshua Bell: Just like last time -

  Paul Schaughency: And you? Joshua Bell: I'm doing well. Thank you. Just like last time, this conversation is going to be recorded. Is that okay?

  Paul Schaughency: That's okay with me.

  Joshua Bell: Outstanding. You had some more stories to share with us.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:00:40] Yeah. There's the story about the rescue mission. I thought it was unusual, at least for me. We were at this outpost unit on the far side of the island on Shagak Bay, away from the main base. It was in the spring with the weather up there, you can have a real nice day and bingo, it goes bad, with only a few minutes notice. The Chaplin at the main base hospital saw it was a bright, sunny day. He said, "We ought to go out to that unit out at Shagak Bay and have a mass."

  He took two or three nurses along just for the hike. Hospital motor pool drove them to the top of our trail. At the end of the road, there's a big ravine. You cross over that with a little dolly arrangement. We explained this to them and told them when they get down to the bottom of the mountain trail, at the shore of the bay, there's a telephone. "Call us, and we'll send a boat over." It all worked out very nicely. They had mass in the mess hall. We all had dinner. When, the time came for them to leave, we took them back in the boat along the shore of the bay, to the trail.

  Along the shoreline there the mountain just comes right down to the water, almost straight down. That's why the trail didn't go along the shoreline; there wasn't any shore. We had this boat to travel back and forth for this part of the way. The boat and driver returned. It was a nice day but clouds started coming in. It wasn't anything unusual for the Aleutians. We thought nothing of it. But then, we got a phone call, "Is the Chaplin still there?" "No. They left some time ago. The nurses were with him, yeah." "They're not up here;” (where you meet the transportation.) “It's blowing up here."

  The captain told them, "We checked with the guy that ran the boat." "Oh, yes, he took them over. They got out and started up the trail. Everything was fine." When we reported that, they said, "They're not here. It's really blowing snow up like a blizzard starting in up here. We're concerned about them." The time was such that they should have been up there. Sure enough, they ask us to send out a searching party. Our captain says, "Schaughency, how about you lead this party and pick a crew of volunteers?" We got plenty of volunteers.

  I selected six guys. We took the boat over. As soon as we got off, it was snowing and blowing down on that side of the mountain. The further we went, it really was coming down. With snow on the ground we could follow their tracks. You don't get training in a search party operations in any training that I received. I said, " Here's what we're going to do." By this time, we're in a low blizzard. The snow's coming down. I said, "We don't want to lose any more people. We will stay together as long as we can see their footsteps. If we can't we will spread out.”

  “You make sure you can see the person in toward me. You three guys, look to the left. You three guys, look to the right. Make sure you can see that person. We'll spread out. I'll go like this with my arms. That means spread out just as far as you can." We're combing this trail. "When you find footprints," you can't call anyone due to the howling wind. (It was a blizzard now). "Go down Whoever finds prints, stop and then you, waving your hand, pointing down like this. We'll all close in on you."

  That happened several times. It worked. Now, we're into a real blizzard. We got up in some places you couldn't … the wind would blow off on the … you couldn't see the trail, and we'd close in. Make sure you close in. We'd followed and then when we couldn't, we'd spread out as much as we could and try to find where we could find the trail again. We got up to the top, and we see these snow mobiles with their lights on. By this time, it's dark. Some were on the far side of the ravine and saw one coming on our side, they said, "Did you see anything?" I said, "We followed their trail up to right by ---," and I gave a location back of us. It was not very far. I said, "I know they're up that far because we followed their tracks, and then we saw you guys."

  He said, "They're not up here." With what we had brought up to this point, one of the guys in a snow mobile said, "You know, there's an old trapper shack just down there (pointing away from the trail.) With this snow and wind blowing like it is, coming down the mountain, there's a tendency to move away, with your back to the wind. If they did get up to where you saw their tracks and then did that after arriving up here on the level part, they could have gone down to that trapper shack. We're going down and check." Sure enough, there they were. The chaplain and the nurses had found that trapper shack. They got in the snow jeeps. The recovery was made. We all got a commendation letter from the general, commander of the island.

  Joshua Bell: That's great. They must have been real happy to see you guys.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah, they were. They were taken back "home" to the station hospital in the snow mobiles. That's the story about the search and rescue mission.

  Joshua Bell: You said something else last week about beating the Army at its own game.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:09:04] A new lieutenant came out to our unit from another battery in our battalion, as I said earlier, we were on the far side of the island. It was just that one artillery battery out there. Adak was a pretty big supply base that they were using to build up for, as the armed forces radio called it, "the northern highway to victory." (note: ration and a half explained in interview one)

  There was a Navy port and a repair base, and a Navy Air Station, an Army Base plus the Army was building great, big warehouses there. We were still out on the outpost location. We had a new battery Commander. He was an older guy, originally from the Oregon National Guard. This young lieutenant, 'Bork', we called him. The name, do you want that or not.

  Joshua Bell: Oh, sure. That'd be great.

  Paul Schaughency: Well, his last name was Boericke, B-O-E-R-I-C-K-E. He said, "Boericke, rhymes with 'America'." It was a Dutch name. His family was the Curtis Publishing, Co - (the Saturday Evening Post and several others.) He came from a wealthy family. He was the only one I had run into to, then or later, that, as I said, "beat the Army at its own game.” He graduated from Saint John's College.

  I think it's 'University' now, Saint John's in Annapolis, Maryland, a small school boasting that Francis Scott Key was a graduate. It has the Ten Great Books curriculum. When they graduate from there, they've studied the Ten Great Books series. That's a regular part of their curriculum. They’re noted for that, but it's a little different.

  "Bork" didn't like this assignment coming out there because he liked to go the PX and the post library, the theatre, and the various facilities on the main base. You could either go there or go to the Navy theatre and stuff like that. He just missed it. We'd get a guy to bring a movie out on a rucksack, a big backpack down the trail. "Oh, we got a movie tonight!" It was different. He didn't like that.

  A lot of the units on the main base, had duties and responsibilities that their table of organization or their assigned personnel didn't make quite enough. They'd bring people in from other infantry units, artillery units, and so forth to these service places over on the main base.

  We would have some of our people on special duty with these units. Back in those days, the Army paid by cash. You had to have a paying officer. We kind of took turns at that. From our place, the paying officer duty wasn't a bad … you kind of looked forward to it because you would find these people. You'd get somebody over there to get you a jeep. You'd take the pay, for example, over to the three of our guys at the quartermaster tank farm.

  Then, you'd take the two guys over to this ordinance unit and the guys at various post facilities. You had to hunt them up and then pay them in cash. Then, they signed the payroll. It took 2 or 3 days, maybe. We always thought it was all right for the pay officer to stay over a couple of days. Go to the officer's club. Go to the theatre. Go to the PX and so forth, two, three days and then come back. That was kind of the custom.

  Lt. Boericke was assigned to be the paying officer. He goes over to the main base and doing his duties there. This captain says, "Three days, four days, how long does this take?" I explained just what I told you, "Five days, six days." He says, "Isn't this getting to be unusual?" I called Bork up and said, "Hey, Boericke, the captain is getting kind of unhappy. He's making talks about putting you on the morning report as AWOL. You don't want that." I was getting concerned. He says, "Oh, the old boy is getting unhappy, is he?"

  He didn't seem to be concerned about it. Well, he did get put on the morning report for AWOL. That caused the action to take. He was put under house arrest or something and court marshaled. He was found guilty of AWOL and fined half of his pay for six months. That meant nothing to him. His family has money. Half of the pay would make little difference. Custom of the Army (and I suppose other services) is if an officer is found guilty of some minor offense he's transferred out of that unit, and automatically transferred to another unit. There weren't any other units out on the outpost area. The other units had to be over in the main base. He got just exactly what he wanted. He got an assignment, a good assignment right over in the main base. He could go to the PX and the library and all this stuff. He had a good sergeant there in the unit. They hit it off well. He got exactly what he wanted. His penalty was insignificant because it was what he wanted. That's that story. Why don't you ask me the questions? We'll make sure we get them in this time.

  Joshua Bell: I guess I'll ask this question; how did you pass your free time?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:17:20] Free time, there was Armed Forces Radio. We'd listen to that, Armed Forces Radio. It was all security, a lot more. I mean today, everybody has a cellphone. They can call home whenever they want. There would be Armed Forces Radio especially if it was bad weather and you didn't have to go out.

  I think I mentioned this about the clothing in the first part. We had good clothing unlike what they had at first. You could go out and work in the bad weather. We didn't have people out in the really, real bad stuff. You had to go out in snow and rain. You had things to do. The past time, we had our own movie projector. That was one thing. I think I mentioned the other part of it. We had the midnight snack at 9:30 PM. That helped especially being out on the outpost there. A lot of the duty time was spent in making your place better. For instance, at first, there would be Chic Sales for the latrine.

  Joshua Bell: What's that?

  Paul Schaughency: Chic Sale is from the late 1800s. He was a privy, outdoor outhouse builder. He had some great designs that he put in. Rather than say, "I'm going to the outhouse," or some other words, you'd say, "I'm going to the Chic Sale." Then for our unit, we had a shower and a water heater building. We wanted to extend that.

  Once, somebody had gotten some flushed toilets from the Navy. Boy, oh, boy. “If we could do an addition to the shower room and have warm, flushed toilets that would be really great!” That was one of our projects, putting in the toilets and putting in the drain. They had a lot of shortages during the war. They had wooden pipe that was wrapped with wire. They had a wooden mallet. You kind of put one end into the other just like terracotta or any other kind of plastic pipe. You put the small end to the big end and tap it in snug with a wooden mallet. It worked.

  We were running the drain line from the shower room down to the ocean, take it out into the ocean. It was a place that whoever selected the place was before us that was there as a unit when I got there. There was a creek going down. We had running water because they dammed up the creek beyond our unit and had water pipes coming down for the kitchen and the shower. The spare time during the day, we had four gun crews.

  Those gun crews and the sergeant in charge that made up a work team, "Gun crew #1, Sergeant Smith, you take your crew and go over here," at the formation. They get their assignments. I'd say some, unofficially, there were some guys liked hunting. The little carbine rifle would make good hunting so that, improving the roads and communication. A lot of the work had to with making your area of your unit better.

  Joshua Bell: Yeah. It sounds like it was trying to make it homey and trying to make it normal.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah, that's right. You'd keep working. In the first part, I told you the story about the Navy getting Quonset huts and Battery A was down over the hill there in the pyramidal tents winterized. When I got there, it was all Quonset huts. I guess, technically, they were Pacific huts. They were a little different competitor, but the word gets around, 'Quonset hut'.

  Joshua Bell: It was homey. Did you stay in touch with the people back home? Did you stay in touch with your family?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:17:20] Letters, v-mail, letters. As matter of fact, my wife has my letters still.

  Joshua Bell: Oh, she does? That's fantastic.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. I need to read those one of these days. She wrote every day. Of course, they didn't come every day. They'd come in batches but not too bad. The APO 980, (Army Post-office #980), that was the radio station. "The APO 980 on the northern highway to victory," they said.

  Joshua Bell: Right out of Seattle, no doubt.

  Paul Schaughency: No. The radio station was there on the island. They played transcriptions or records. Wait a minute. I need a little water. Hang on.

  Joshua Bell: Go ahead.

  Paul Schaughency: If you hear the water running, you know I'm working on it. I got a drink. Thank you. Go ahead.

  Joshua Bell: Who were your superior officers? Paul Schaughency: [00:25:28] That was Captain Rohrbach, R-O-H-R-B-A-C-H from the Oregon National Guard. That was the guy that came in. I told you the story about Buck Slaughter, didn't I and the geese?

  Joshua Bell: Oh, yeah.

  Paul Schaughency: Buck Slaughter was from Reedville, Virginia. He was Captain Slaughter. We had a provisional battalion headquarters. We were sent out to Adak to relieve another battalion headquarter. We weren't set up to be a separate battalion. All of the supply and administration and so forth was done at regimental headquarters. That was back in Kodiak. We reported in to the post commander on the island.

  We didn't report to the colonel back in Kodiak. We were a separate battalion headquarters, and we weren't set up to be one. We had a lot of people doing different things. Our adjutant, he'd been a sergeant major. He really knew administration. We didn't need a personnel officer. He had two good sergeant majors heading up the administrative part and the personnel part. We didn't need a personnel officer, so we didn't fill that position.

  [00:27:23] He was, Warrant Officer Deegan. He called one day and said, "The colonel wants to see you." "Okay." All this time, I'd been in different firing batteries. I'm the outdoor kind. I'm happy with that. We looked down our nose to those people in administration, called them 'desk jockeys'. That was not a compliment. I go to see the colonel. Since Deegan called, I went to see him first. He said, "The colonel wants you to be the new personnel officer. We're getting into a lot of stuff here with the points system."

  The Army had put in a point system for rotation. You got one point for each month in the states. You got two points for each month overseas. You got various points for battle awards and so forth. I never heard anybody complain about the point system. The point system, all those over so many points, the people that we relieved went back to the states. They started this rotation. They picked units to send back to the states. They'd take out the people with the low points and fill it up with people with high points from other units. They'd go back to the states.

  We were into this rotation thing. Then when V-E Day (Victory in Europe) hit, it escalated because we were getting ready for Japan, bringing troops back and getting them ready for Japan. They used the point system for who comes back and who stays. That was getting to be quite some duty. I had a real good personnel sergeant major. I had promoted him in the personnel section because the personnel sergeant major had rotated out. We hit it off just fine. He taught me. I'd say, "Is this right, sergeant?" and "Where do I sign," because I was just learning. I found out that this personnel job was interesting. I quickly learned my job. Rather than degrading those "desk jockeys", I was one. I said, "Look," I explained our provisional Battalion Hq setup and so forth. At this point I need to explain the Army has an MOS, Military Occupational Specialty. You had that number because of what was in the table of organization, and your assigned job within that organization. You could have more than one MOS number.

  If everything goes right, you're working on your military occupational specialty. We had people with MOSs that did not have anything to do with the actual job they were now doing, because the table didn't call for that job, but we had to have it, being out there on the island as a separate unit.

  I said, "You're reassigning people," with low points to replace higher point people. “I know what our people are doing. For instance, this guy's got MOS for mechanic, but he's working as our motor pool sergeant. If he's not going to be rotated back to the States with our unit that's leaving, he should go to the transportation corps. Similarly, we have guys working on our phone system, but the table organization does not have those jobs.”

  He said, "Schaughency," he had a nice office up at post headquarters. "Why don't you sit down at that table over there? I'll give you where we need people. You put your guys in there, what you know that they can fit." I said, "I just want to make sure our guys get assigned something that they're accustomed to rather than completely oddball jobs just because of their MOS. He handed me a pencil and said, "You go ahead and do that?" He apparently liked what I did. Pretty soon, I find myself up at post headquarters as a post personnel officer. He was being promoted to Post Adjutant.

  Joshua Bell: Where was that located?

  Paul Schaughency: In the main base of Adak. I didn't serve, other than a few months, any place other than Adak. Continuing on, now, I'm up at post headquarters and soon became a captain.

  When our unit was to be rotated back to the States, I went up to talk to personnel office [Captain Byron Ward]. The main mission was getting the boys back home, especially after V-J Day, and filling personnel needs of the units on the post.

  The post personnel officer was technically an assistant adjutant. My move to Battalion personnel office and the Post HQ job got me into personnel work. The G.I. Bill came along and I said, "I better learn more about the civilian side of personnel. This has been interesting. I'm sure there are certain things you can apply." I came back and got my master's degree at Pitt in what they called 'industry department' but all personnel courses all because the colonel pointed at me and assigned me personnel.

  Joshua Bell: Funny how that works sometimes. What was your rank during this time?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:34:37] Of course, I started as a second lieutenant when I was commissioned on the 19th of November, '43. Then, I became first lieutenant up there, then captain on the post job. I came out a captain. I signed on for one year, regardless of points, so that I could get my wife up there.

  Joshua Bell: No. You didn't tell me that.

  Paul Schaughency: Your dependents are jumped. I didn't tell you that?

  Joshua Bell: No. I don't think so.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:35:29] We're right at that point. I got in in '43, and I was working with the points all the time. I had it figured out that I would have about six to nine months to go. I got a new boss, Post Director of Personnel and Administration the General's Staff. After the war, he would make colonel. As a custom to the service, you referred to him as "general."

  My new boss was staying in. He says he was in the post-office. His seniority went on along because of the government. He says, "I've got no reason to get out. I'm going to stay in." He said, "You know those buildings over there that was the Advanced Alaskan Command?" (In case they’re moving forward, they had some real nice buildings all prepared for Alaskan headquarters to move out there.) He said, "They're going to make those into dependent housing. I'm signing up for one." He added, "You might think about that." I said, "Okay. It sounds like a good idea."

  In the regulations, first of all, they came out and said, "Unless you have at least one year of service, you can't take your overseas dependents with you." People were being sent out of the states to replace high-point people. They were taking their dependents, and pretty soon they'd be coming right back. It sounded reasonable: Unless you have one year of service, you can't take your dependents. Another regulation that I was familiar with, it said you can sign on for one year, three years or indefinitely.

  The major, my boss came in telling me he had signed on for indefinitely and sending for his dependents I signed on for one year. You don't go to the university and say, "I'm here, so I'd like to start." No. You start in September or the beginning of a semester. I would lose nothing. I signed up. I got a 45-day leave and came down and got my wife and took her back with me on the George Washington Carver, that had been a hospital ship during the war.

  We were the first boat load of troops that had dependents, - three couples of us that landed on Adak. That was interesting. One of the couples was the post engineer, Colonel Ware. His wife had been a Home Economics teacher. My wife was so well-accustomed to the kitchen. She could boil water without burning and cook grilled-cheese sandwiches. I think that's the list. You talk about the potter and the clay. They really hit it off. They lived across the road on Adak. It wasn't bad being friends of the post engineer’s wife (Peg) when you needed something done on your Quonset hut.

  My wife is a great correspondent. She would write to my parents. One time she wrote that they were going to put in flooring. I was away. I had to go back to the mainland. While I was away, she had talked to Peg. They were going to put in flooring for us, tile blocks. The flooring in a Quonset hut is four by eight sheets of plywood. What they were going to do is put this tile, I think it was wooden on top of the plywood.

  My mother wrote back and said, "Oh, you poor dears, I knew you two were having a hardship, way up there in the Aleutians, but I had no idea you had no floor in your Quonset huts."

  The Quonset hut came with a shower stall. It would take up less room than the tub. We had a shower stall. Peg was visiting us and said, "I really miss my tub. I like soaking in that tub."

  I said, "Peg, I happen to know where there's a tub way out at another unit I was in." I said, "I would suppose you could talk to somebody that could get a couple of guys to go out there and get you a tub." "Oh, that would be wonderful." I knew where this unit was. It was our headquarters unit, and it was abandoned out there. This major, who had some connections with the Navy, ended up with a bathtub, probably the only bathtub in any Army unit. Peg was real pleased. That didn't hurt relationships at all.

  Joshua Bell: No, certainly not. What year was that?

  Paul Schaughency: That would be 1946, then, '47, '48, I got my master's. We were there one year and flew back. That year was so different. You can't believe how different it was having your wife there, and having your own quarters.

  Joshua Bell: That must have been a big change.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah. It was all for the better. That was our honeymoon. I told you that story about the train going west. We were married seven days, so that was our honeymoon in the Aleutian Islands.

  Joshua Bell: You didn't get home once you got up there, did you?

  Paul Schaughency: No. Cathy and I were there a year and then came back. That was it.

  Joshua Bell: I mean when you went up there with the service in '43.

  Paul Schaughency: No. The first time I got back after arriving in summer of 1944, was when I came back to get Cathy.

  Joshua Bell: Right. That was the first leave that you had.

  Paul Schaughency: Yeah.

  Joshua Bell: That's a long time.

  Paul Schaughency: People were away longer than that.

  Joshua Bell: Did you ever think that you wanted to be assigned someplace else?

  Paul Schaughency: I tried to make the best of where I was. Apparently, it worked. In getting assigned to that job, that I wasn't looking forward to, was probably the best that happened. I came out with my master's degree and went on with PPG Industries. They now call it 'human resources'. I had a career with them. I'm in debt to the Army for pointing a finger at me and getting into personnel.

  I wrote a letter of gratitude to a guy that stayed in the Army. In 1941 I knew him as Lieutenant Husband, an instructor in the ROTC at Pitt. I wrote a two-page typed letter, sent it to him and a copy to each of his two daughters. I had tracked him down. He's a colonel and retired now. I wanted to thank him. Stop me if I told you this. In '41, having completed Basic ROTC, I applied for Advanced ROTC. That would be in September. (We're not to December '41 yet.) He called me at the fraternity house. He said, "Schaughency, you didn't pass the physical." He added, "I have called the hospital to find out what it was.” He told me it was a rapid heartbeat. "Here's what I want you to do. There's nothing you can do about it. You just get a good night sleep. I've arranged for you to have that physical checked again. You get a good night sleep and go up and get that rechecked." I did, and I was fine. I passed the physical. If he hadn't taken the time to check my physical and call me … WOW. The draft was on, but many weren't worrying about Hitler. That's over there. We're not going to get involved again.

  I was in Advanced ROTC. December 7th hit, and now we're at war. That was a real favor he did for me. I wouldn't have thought of having a recheck. He did that, and I really appreciated it. I sent that letter to him titled, "One Man's Caring, another Man's Career." I outlined how I got in the Army and the Army putting me into personnel and later personnel had been my career. He was real thankful and grateful that I had sent it to his kids.

  Joshua Bell: That's very nice. You went from thinking that Germany wasn't the problem and then all of a sudden, we are at war with Japan and Germany

  Paul Schaughency: We all knew as soon as we were at war with Japan, that wasn't the only one. Japan kept taking more territory in the Pacific "Somebody's got to stop them. The British will probably stop them." That didn't work. When they attacked us, that solidified the country. There were no more America firsters and German "bunders" with the people here. The whole country united. We were really united. We were then about a fourth- ranked power in the world. We came out of World War II number one or tied with Russia. We've been up on the top ever since. We can go wherever we want, but we couldn't back then.

  Joshua Bell: How did you feel on V-E Day? What were you doing when you learned about V-E Day?

  Paul Schaughency: [00:48:58] V-E Day, I was real happy about that and went out to the officer's club that evening and celebrated. I think it was the only time I got really tipsy. The bartender gave me French '75. I had asked, "What's that?" He says, "It's a kind of an amber champagne." Hell, it wasn't an amber champagne. It was champagne with brandy in it - a French 75. I wasn't completely out, but it was as far as I ever wanted to be. As for V-E Day the feeling was Oh, boy. We're done over there. You got that Hitler and he'd killed himself. That was a day of celebration, not as big as V-J Day but we celebrated.

  Joshua Bell: Tell me about V-J Day.

  Paul Schaughency: [00:50:08] V-J Day, yeah. That's the last story I've got for you. I'm up at post headquarters this time. It's up on the side of the mountain there. There's one great, big mountain, Mount Moffitt. It has a shoulder to it. Post headquarters is high up and you could see from there down to these ten huge warehouses and an airbase and Kuluk, K-U-L-U-K Bay. It's why we were there. The base was built there because of the big bay.

  The Navy liked it because there was a finger that went off of the bay in the narrow bay that they called 'Finger Bay'. They had marine repair shops there. It would accommodate ocean-going vessels. Well, three days after V-J Day, I get up the morning, go to the office and look out. That bay is absolutely peppered with Navy. This was a taskforce, not a big one but it was a taskforce. It answered my question about "the northern highway to victory" slogan.

  They had a cruiser leading it. That tells you the size. Usually it's a battleship or an aircraft carrier. Later in the war, usually it was an aircraft carrier that led it. Destroyers and other vessels protected the aircraft carrier. This was a cruiser that's a size below the battleship. It was like in the movies. “They're coming. Here come the yanks.” The bay was all peppered with destroyers, destroy escorts, supply ships. I'd never seen so many ships in one place.

  I went to the club that night and got talking with a Navy doctor and got invited down to see his office. He was on a destroyer escort. We went onboard and went in to see his operating room. He pulled down this bed. It was hanging up like in the pictures I've seen in the movies inside of a submarine. It's all compact. He pulls this down. He says, "This is my operating table," . I had a little tour of the ship. He said, "We were under sealed orders out of Pearl Harbor to come up here for three days." I never did get quite this thing of three days, something in the Navy about getting the crew off of the ship. They had three days. They could get a third of them off each day. They could go to the ship service or the PX or the theatre and get their feet on the ground and then back. "Our orders to come up here. Then, we are to meet troop transports coming out of San Francisco and escort them over to northern Japan,” Hokkaido, maybe. I forget which island it was.

  Sure, as shooting, we had been going to land there. We were on our way. This was to be a secondary attack on Japan.

  When I looked down at the bay that morning, all I could think of was that whole bay full of Navy vessels and not one of the sailors or marines injured or killed. That was just a little part of what was down south, in Okinawa, and these other islands heading for Japan. We were headed for Japan. That was going to be a slaughter. It was going to be on the Japanese soil. We would be peppering the land with all kinds of bombs and shells to prepare for the guys to land.

  [00:55:19] These people that want to rewrite history and say the atom bomb was terrible, well, of course, it was terrible. If you're standing where a 500-pound bomb goes off, it's terrible. You're dead. We'd hear in the news broadcast on the radio, "Fifty-seven sorties bombed Stuttgart,” where there are ball-bearing factories. I don't know how many times we heard that. Time after time after time We went to bomb Stuttgart. All of those people in Stuttgart are just as dead as they are in Nagasaki. There just weren't as many of them at one time. When I saw that bay full of ships, my first thought was, "Every one of those sailors and marines out there, they're all alive today." That was my atom bomb story.

  Joshua Bell: I want to ask the final question. What are you most proud of from your time in service?

  Paul Schaughency: I think that rescue mission. I think it was something that came up on the spur of the moment that we had to do. I was well-pleased with the results of that. I'll be glad that I had been up there long enough to realize what kind of equipment, what we needed to do and be careful. I guess that's it. Plus, the other thing is that I did well enough in the battalion personnel job to get advanced to post personnel and a promotion out of it. Those two things kind of hit me as accomplishments.

  Joshua Bell: I wanted to thank you very much for your contribution to our oral history project. Thank you for your contribution leading us to victory in the Second World War.

  Paul Schaughency: I don't know that I did anything leading to victory, but we were ready to go.

  Joshua Bell: I think everybody did their part. You certainly did.

  [End of recorded material - 00:57:57]