Audio
Joseph M. Monks Part 1
Transcript
Martini: Today is Thursday, January 20th, 1994. This is an oral history interview tape with Mr. Joseph M. Monks, who was assigned to Battery K of the 6th Coast Artillery, and stationed here at Fort Barry during World War II.
[00:00:30] My name is Park Ranger John Martini, National Park Service. And we're in Headlands District, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I'll be the prime interviewer. Second interviewer will be Mr. Paul Curry, volunteer in parks.
This is the formal oral history segment. Second part of the interview, we will actually be going up to Battery Wallace, which was Mr. Monk's duty station. So administratively, can you give me your full name and your birthdate and where you're living now, Mr. Monks?
[00:01:00] Joseph: Full name is Joseph Mitchell Monks Jr. I was born in December the 23rd, 1918. I'm living now in Santa Rosa, California.
Martini: We were talking before the tape started. Where'd you come from and how'd you get into the Coast Artillery to begin with?
Joseph: [00:01:30] I volunteered for the draft in 1941. Actually, I volunteered in 1940, and entered in the Army in January the 6th of 1941. Went to Fort Custer, Michigan. That was one of those depos where they brought in inductees. From that place, I was separated to the 6th Coast Artillery in San Francisco, California.
Martini: Did your choice of branches to go into?
Joseph: [00:02:00] No. I was actually on the fortunate side, because there was probably around 30,000 inductees, and Fort Custer a huge group of people. One morning, they got us all out there and called names, and put about one half of them in the Infantry and the other half in the Artillery. So I don't know how my name got there but I was lucky.
Martini: Because it began with an M, huh?
Joseph: So I went into the Artillery. Probably went by the M name. Yeah, right. That's-
Martini: How-
Joseph: Go ahead.
[00:02:30] Martini: Yeah. At this point, had you ever seen the Coast Artillery?
Joseph: I had never seen anything. In fact, I had never seen anything in the Army. I had never been in an Army installation, until my induction into Fort Custer, my first experience with the Army. And it was epic at that time.
Martini: Tell me about coming out here.
[00:03:00] Joseph: We came out here on train. I believe there was around 24 cars, and we were loaded on in Fort Custer. It was very secretive. We went to Chicago. I remember that because of looking out the windows. We pulled in one of the stations in Chicago. I think it was the Dearborn Street Station.
[00:03:30] We weren't allowed out, but I could see it. I knew I was near home then, because that was my home, Chicago. We left there and we came out on unscheduled stops. We sidetracked for anything that was going through, but we never stopped at any big town or anything, until we got to just outside of Denver.
[00:04:00] That was our first stop, and we were allowed out of the train to walk around there. Quite a few of the boys ran and got into a few of the bars there. So that was our last stop. We never got out again. I remember that. They had a colonel, that was in charge of the training, quite upset.
Martini: Did you have any idea where you were headed?
Joseph: We had not idea where we were going.
Martini: Did you have any scuttlebutt?
Joseph: No scuttlebutt or nothing. We didn't know we were going to San Francisco. We just knew we were going to West Coast, actually. We knew that because of the direction. But we had no idea where we were actually going.
[00:04:30] We pulled into the Marina. They used to have tracks on the Marina down there. We pulled in there late at night. By the way, we had two engines too. We pulled into there and they unloaded us, and put us in deuce and a half trucks.
[00:05:00] They even pulled down the back covers of the truck. They wouldn't leave them open. They just pulled them down. And we didn't even know where we were going. The next morning, we woke up and we had realized we had gone over the Golden Gate Bridge, and we were in Fort Baker.
That's where we first went, to Fort Baker, because at the time, when we came in, they were still in the process of finishing Mendel for troops.
Martini: The barracks at-
Joseph: The barracks. They weren't ready for us.
Martini: Did they give you tents or something? Or did they move you into the old barracks at Baker?
Joseph: [00:05:30] We moved in the old barracks at Baker. Backer was a unique place, because the barracks there could house a complete battery. You had your artery room, your supply room, and you had your mess hall, all in one barracks.
So that was quite a place. So they had the whole group of in there, K Battery and L Battery, and C and D, and all the batteries were in Fort Baker at that time.
[00:06:00] Martini: When your train came, had you yet been broken into batteries? Did they give you that information?
Joseph: No, we didn't know what ... they probably had already broke us into batteries, but we weren't aware of it. We were not aware of it, but when we came off, when we were loaded in the trucks, when they pulled us out of the cars at the train, they called out our names, and sent you over here and sent you over there.
And then from there, we moved into the trucks, and then they took us to the battery. They knew where we were going then.
[00:06:30] Martini: When did they spring on you that you were in the Coast Artillery?
Joseph: When we left Fort Custer, we knew we were in the Artillery. We knew that.
Martini: It's when you got here, you found out exactly what your [crosstalk 00:06:49]?
Joseph: Yeah. Right.
Martini: Was everybody in that train going to be in the Coast Artillery?
Joseph: [00:07:00] Everybody on that train was in the Coast Artillery. All those cars that came here, some went actually to Fort Winfield Scott too. But we were on the Coast. We were all in this area. We all went to the 6th Coast Artillery.
Martini: How long were you at Baker?
Joseph:
[00:07:30] We were at Baker for about, to the best of my recollection, was about six months, because we took our basic training. See, in that time, when you come in the Army, you have to take your basic training. So we took our basic training right in our own unit.
We didn't go to Camp Hohn or to someplace with induction centers, where all they did was give basic training, which, later on, I was part of, so I'm familiar with it. But we didn't have that at that time. So we took it right in our own unit.
[00:08:00] And we were through the typical 16 weeks of basic training. So that's the way they did it then. So we were that long at Baker that we finished our basic training before we came out here.
Martini: Did basic consist of anymore a orientations specific to Coast Artillery, or was it general basic training for-
Joseph:
[00:08:30] Well, we were fortunate because, besides getting basic orientation ... For basic training, mainly enhances a lot of Infantry training type training, which it has to be. That's part of it. But beyond that, we did take Coast Artillery training too, with the Coast Artillery battery, so they would put some of that in there. So we were fortunate that way.
Martini: After six months, you got out here to what you call the Mendel area.
Joseph: Mendel. They called it Mendel, right.
Martini: You must've been some of the first people in those barracks.
Joseph: [00:09:00] We were the first. They were brand new when we went in. We were the first in that area. There was two batteries there, K Battery and L Battery.
Martini: What was L Battery?
Joseph: L Battery was on the 12-inch disappearing guns.
Martini: I guess in interested in the first time they actually showed you Wallace, what your reaction was?
Joseph: Well, I was in awe. Those gus really ... couldn't believe it when you see. At that time, I never saw anything so big, looking at it. God, I couldn't believe it.
[00:09:30] Martini: You said that was-
Joseph: Especially the shells too. 1000 pounds.
Martini: And that was an elite branch right? [crosstalk 00:09:37] modern guns.
Joseph: Modern guns. They were good. They were very accurate. Very good guns.
Martini: So when you got to Mendel, did they put you right to work?
Joseph: [00:10:00] Oh, yes, when we got out there, right away. You bet. We went into accelerated Coast Artillery training right away, where they start setting up the gun crews, and the plotting section, and the observation section. We have observation people out at Wolf Ridge.
We had some over by Battery C, which was in For Funston. And then we had a hill right behind us, which was our B-1 Station, primary station, in case the other two were out. So that was up in the hill right behind Battery Wallace.
Martini: You had a number of positions over the years. Remember your first one?
[00:10:30] Joseph: My first one was, I got on the ramrod crew. I don't know how I ended up on that, but I did. I got on that one. I think I got on there, because I thought it was kind of exciting. They were just letting you, more or less, volunteer for different things. And I went for the ramrod crew, the first one.
Martini: You could actually volunteer?
Joseph: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Martini: No kidding.
Joseph: I thought it would be neat to push that thing in there.
[00:11:00] Martini: Describe that.
Joseph: Well, it was quite exciting, because you had to seep the shell, to better the push you got on it, to get it riding in there, and seep the copper ring, was very important. So felt like if you get a good thing at that thing, you were really important to the outfit.
[00:11:30] Of course, everybody got that opinion, not matter what you did. And then I also got later on the shot truck, which I thought that was quite good, because you had to hit that slot.
Martini: Slot?
Joseph: Well, there's a little slot, a little track in the truck. The shot truck has a little wheel that comes down. And you hit that track, and you go right into that breech then. And if you hit it right on, there's no way for no ... because you got the ramrod crew.
[00:12:00] They've already placed their ramrod up behind the shell. So if you don't hit it exactly right, it'll throw them off.
Martini: So you guys are charging [crosstalk 00:12:06]?
Joseph: You're charging. The whole group is. The shot truck, the ramrod and everybody's running. They're running. They're not just ... they're running. And you got a thousand-pound shell there, and you want to get that thing in real solid. So everything has to be perfect, the hitting the slot, everything.
[00:12:30] So that's what you do. I got on that with another ... this is two men pushing the truck, and I got on that job too. I thought that was exciting, so I did that for a while. And then after a bit, they got into going over your different IQs and all that stuff.
[00:13:00] But I did do pretty well on my test, so they decided I should be in the plotting section. So that's where I ended up. I went into the plotting section. I stayed there. That was quite a challenge. I worked on the Fire Adjustment Board, and that has to do with making corrections to the azimuth of the weapon. The lefts and rights. It's the left and right.
If it's falling too far to the left or too far to the right, you make corrections. And after the gun starts firing, you make corrections on the first eight rounds, but after it starts firing, you're correcting every four rounds. So it gets pretty accurate.
[00:13:30] Martini: So you were plugging in all the variables, like wind and-
Joseph:
[00:14:00] Well, in Coast Artillery, our target is 300. That's the thing we'd say. If you picture a scale, and you picture 300 as the mean, the target, 310 would be to the left. 290 is to the right. [crosstalk 00:13:58]. You see if a shot falls at 290, it's right 10 degrees. If a shot falls at 310, it's left 10 degrees.
I had a board, and they would track the targets out here, with our base end station, they would've been in there reading, and they would say, "310," I would put an X on 310. And the next shot, they'd say, "390," and I would put an X ... I mean, "290," I would put an X on 290.
[00:14:30] And then they would say, " The next shot fell at ... No, put a mean in there." Between those two, it'd be 300, right? Uh-huh (affirmative). But say the next shots fell ... one fell at 270 and one shot fell at 315, then I'd have to put a mean between those two, right?
[00:15:00] Then I'd put a mean between the one at 300, and a mean between those two, and the center of that would be the correction. You see how?
Martini: Yeah.
Joseph: That's how you corrected your shots. Then that correction would go into the computer, and that would go into the guns. And that would change the arrow that the azimuth guy that's swinging it left and right out there. All he had to do was match that arrow, and he had the correction.
Martini: You said, "Computer." Did you start off with the old plotting boards and then move up to computers?
[00:15:30] Joseph: That's right. We had the old plotting boards at first. That was all done with phones, all done with manuals. You'd have to go out there and set it out here. He wouldn't be a dial out there. He'd a number out there. You'd give him 310, 320 or whatever, and he'd had to put that in there at the gun.
Martini: Physically write it or-
Joseph: No.
Martini: ... change-
[00:16:00] Joseph: No, we'd send it by phone. He had earphones on. But that's true. I would have done that before with the gun. I would be talking to the gun before. "The number one, this. The number two, this." But see, with the computer, each gun was in the computer, and each dial would be correcting each gun differently. You can do it with the computer, see.
Martini: [00:16:30] The old plans we had for Battery Wallace show that, when it was first built, and before they casemated it during the way, they had two plotting room. Was one plotting room for each weapon, or were they backups, or-
Joseph: No, they were for each weapon, because one guy couldn't handle two guys on a ... talk to two people. So it was one talking to this gun, one talking to that gun on the plotting ... So in the plotting section, you had two azimuth guys, two separate boards going.
Martini: Did they impede from the same base end stations?
[00:17:00] Joseph: They fed from the same base end stations. Right. They were just giving corrections to different guns.
Martini: Everybody is always fascinated by the size of the gun. And I was wondering, what was it like when the gun fired?
Joseph: [00:17:30] The gun was ... well, it was like, first you'd see the flash when the gun went off. You heard nothing. And then you'd see the smoke, and then you'd hear this thing going through the air. You could hear the shell. You could actually hear the shell going through the air.
And then all the sudden you get the blast. It seemed like that come about the last, the actually sound of the gun. You see the flash and the puff go out. And then you hear something going off, the shell, and then you'd get the blast.
[00:18:00] And actually, it was just a roar. It wasn't a crack. It wasn't as hard on your ears as a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun, which is very difficult on your ears, because it's a crack.
Martini: Was it a physical pressure wave that hits you?
Joseph: It was a pressure wave, yeah. You could feel it. Afterwards, it'd come back on you. It went out, and then the vacuum, and then the air coming back in. Then all the blowing around there. Oh yes. You definitely get that. A lot of it. It'll blow your hat off, you didn't have it on good.
[00:18:30] Martini: They give you any safety warnings? Or, were you supposed to stand a certain way? Or, earplugs or anything?
Joseph: Some would wear earplugs, cotton. We didn't have sophisticated earplugs then. But some would wear cotton. But the ears, it didn't bother you as much as the anti-aircraft, like I say again. That was hard on your ears.
Martini: I've heard that the smaller were [crosstalk 00:18:55].
Joseph: Much harder on your ears than these were.
[00:19:00] Martini: There wasn't an anti-aircraft battery on the hill above Wallace.
Joseph: Yes, there was.
Martini: Was that manned by Battery K too?
Joseph: Yes. That was 3-inch anti-aircraft. We fired that too.
Martini: Did you get on that gun crew?
Joseph: Yeah, I was on that.
Martini: Wow. So you [crosstalk 00:19:15].
Joseph: [00:19:30] We moved around. Yeah, I was on that for a while. I was, one time ... In 3-inch aircraft, we had a cutting mechanism on the side there. We cut the shell for the time, before it would explode in the air. And I did that. And then you passed it to the breechloader.
[00:20:00] You had to have a lot of good rhythm. All these weapons took a lot of good rhythm to fire them in those days, because everything was mechanical. On the 3-inch anti-aircraft, especially the guy that pulled the lanyard, he had to have a rhythm, because he would shove the shell in, and the breech lock would close automatically once it passed a certain thing there.
And then he would pull the lanyard. And then as the casing came out, he would kick it away, so they didn't pile up all down below. You couldn't move around that place, because you're firing these things like that. The quicker you can get them off. And then we were also on the 40 millimeters, but this was mobile 40 millimeter.
[00:20:30] Martini: We some of those around [crosstalk 00:20:32]?
Joseph:
[00:21:00] Yeah, we had them in K Battery. We have them down below, out near Mendel, out near the disappearing guns. We had those there. And we were trained on those by, believe it or not, it was an English group from Dunkirk, that had been evacuated from Dunkirk, when the English retreated out of Europe. So they came here and they trained us on the 40 millimeter. It was interesting talking to them.
Martini: Live firings, both with the 12 inch and the 3 inch and the 40 millimeters. Did you do a lot of live firings?
Joseph:
[00:21:30] Well, on the 12 inch, we did ... I'm not sure. I know we fired it twice, for sure. Fired it twice for sure, because they're a very expensive gun to fire. I forget what they used to tell us, but I thought that someone said, "It was $1,000 a round." I'm not sure.
Martini: That fits, yeah.
Joseph: Is that it? It was expensive. I think we fired around, well, 10 or 12 rounds anyhow, because you had to fire at least 4 rounds to get anything of any correction going. And then they'd fire the rest to see how efficient you were. And by the way, we got an E.
[00:22:00] Martini: For excellence?
Joseph: Yeah, we fired them for excellence. We were good.
Martini: All right.
Joseph: We were very proud of ourselves. We were very fortunate. See, most of our first group that trained us came from Hawaii, from the Artillery in Hawaii. And they were very efficient, the sergeants. They really knew their stuff. So we did become pretty good.
[00:22:30] Martini: When you were out here, you actually spent a whole lot of time, probably, just doing practice and maintenance. Describe a typical day in Battery K.
Joseph: Typical day in Battery K, huh?
Martini: Yeah, it has a ring to it.
Joseph:
[00:23:00] Well, there wasn't a day that gone by that we didn't train on the guns, and using our field manuals and things the Army provides for that, whether it be in the plotting section, whether it be in the gun section. So you spent at least a half a day going over your training on your manuals, and training on the guns, the gun crews.
And then you also were also being trained continually on small-arms fire. We also had water-cooled 38-caliber machine guns. And we had to learn how to take those apart, and how to fire them, how to use them and everything else.
[00:23:30]
[00:24:00] Plus, from when I was in, we went through the 03s to the Garand rifles. So we also had to learn how to take them apart and fire them, because when the war started, we slept with our rifles in our bed. We didn't have them in the rack. We tied a string on the bed, and hung the rife in the strings, but hanging from the bed. And we had one in the chamber with the lock on. That's the truth.
male: Okay.
Joseph: That's the truth.
male: Very unusual.
Joseph: And we had in the chamber with our lock on. That was in case there was a Japanese landing or something. We were ready to go. We didn't even have them in the rifle racks.
Martini: They weren't locked up. And you had ammo issued, right?
[00:24:30] Joseph: We had ammo issued. Yeah, right there. We had our belt. Our belt was right at the end of the bed with ammunition in it, with the bayonet and everything. And the rifle was hung on the bed. It was two strings. You put the stock in here and the end of the barrel in there.
And I could say there was one chamber, and all we had to do was take the safety off and fire. It was ready to go.
Martini: Let's talk about that. When the war broke out, where were you on December 7th, '41?
[00:25:00] Joseph: I was visiting my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife.
Martini: We didn't want to get into anything uncomfortable here. [crosstalk 00:25:09].
Joseph: That was before the days when we did anything. But anyhow, that's where I was. I went out in front to get something, and somebody across the street told me that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, that I better get back.
[00:25:30] So I did get back, actually, when I found that was true. I thought they were kidding. We went and turned the radio, and found out it was true. So I came back here. I didn't have any trouble getting back, because everybody in the city would [inaudible 00:25:47].
[00:26:00] I was in uniform, so they saw you. They picked you up and brought me right over the bridge. At that time, we went through the tunnel here. We didn't go over the top. So they had trucks out there. As you came in, they just loaded you up, and out you came. And they were looking for use anyhow out, because at that time, they were casemating Wallace, and we-
Martini: They've already started, by December of 1941, casemating?
Joseph: Right. But the problem was, we had no ammunition at the guns.
Martini: Why not?
Joseph: [00:26:30] Because of the casemating, that had us take all the ammunition and put it in the magazines down at Fort Baker. We put all our powder down there and our shells. So when we came out here on December the 7th, that's why they were waiting for us with open arms.
They had the deuce and a halfs reads, and went down the casemates ... or the magazines in Baker. And they made skids out of two-by-fours and everything. And we rolled those shells up on the deuce and a halfs. We put four on the deuce and a half and sent them out to Wallace.
[00:27:00] Plus, we had other trucks that were loading up. The powder were in big tin cans, and we loaded them up and sent them out. So we had to get the guns ready. So by the end of, I think, within 24 hours, we had everything back.
Martini: Was there really the fear that the Japanese might show up on base and everything?
Joseph: [00:27:30] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, there was a fear. They didn't know if the Japanese ... and probably if they had come, we'd've had problems. So thank goodness they didn't.
Martini: Why?
Joseph: Because we didn't have any ammunition out here.
Martini: "Can you wait a minute? [crosstalk 00:27:42]."
Joseph: "Just hold off, fellas. We're not ready yet."
Martini: [00:28:00] Let's go back for a sec, before December 7th. You, as Battery K, and you came in as draftees, the 6th Coast Artillery was already existing. That was a old Army, regular Army?
Joseph: Yeah.
Martini: Was there friction or rivalry between the old Army guys and the draftees coming in?
Joseph: [00:28:30] Not really. Not a real friction, no. Except, probably the hardest thing for some of us was, some of the people that they had in the Army at the time, we didn't feel were as well educated as we were.
Martini: Go ahead. The older [crosstalk 00:28:42] reputation.
Joseph:
[00:29:00] We would sit there and we would have a class. And you have somebody telling you, and they couldn't pronounce the word nomenclature. You'd say, "Wow." And they hit the word ballistics, and they fall all over that one.
And then the one that used to really throw them was the flight of trajectory. They had no idea what to pronounce that word. And we found sometimes that we'd have to go up and see what they're trying to say, and then tell them what the word was.
[00:29:30] Now, that wasn't all of them. There were some that were very capable. But they had to fill these slots with people. They had so many people coming in, and we were not ready to take a slot like that anyhow. But they put in people who had never been there. Had they been more people trained and ready to take us, they would never've been there.
[00:30:00] So that was a problem. That was the only problem. So there was kind of a little, between that group and the draftees, there was a little animosity, but not between the more qualified sergeants, no. There was more admiration there by the draftees.
Martini: Does it work where the regular Army and the draftees, were they mixed in the same batteries, or [crosstalk 00:30:16]?
Joseph: Oh yeah, we were mixed in the same barracks, and we got along great. They were good. We learned everything from them.
Martini: Yeah. Yeah. Some of those guys have been in for years, too.
[00:30:30] Joseph: They knew what they were doing. The professional soldiers were wonderful. You couldn't beat them. They knew their business. So that's where we learned from.
Martini: But what about life out here? This is pretty much the middle of nowhere, even today.
Joseph: Yeah.
Martini: Yeah. Did you get out of here very often?
Joseph:
[00:31:00] Oh yeah, we got out pretty regular, except when the war came. Then they restricted your leaves and your passes. We called them pass in the Army, leave. But we got out of there fine. We had not problems getting out of here. The hardest part out here was pulling guard.
Martini: Why?
Joseph:
[00:31:30] Cold. I never seen a colder place in my life, at night, at 4:00 in the morning. I'm telling you. We wore overcoats. You wouldn't think about that, but we wore overcoats out here, because it got cold, especially if you pulled a stationary guard and a machine gun, or something like that. They'd drive you up the wall, because it got really cold just standing there.
[00:32:00] Walking guard's the best guard, at least to keep warm. So we did that. There was a lot of things out here. I can remember one night when I was pulling guard. I was walking around the mess hall down around K Battery there and L Battery, and raccoons got out from underneath the mess hall and flipped a garbage can.
God, I almost jumped 6 feet in the air. It wasn't 10 feet from me. Here I am half asleep, walking. That happened, and boy, you start turning around. You don't know what it is.
Martini: That fog gets thick out here.
[00:32:30] Joseph: And it gets thick. An interesting thing one time. We had a Military exercise, and we got stationed at ... well, we were able to pick places to go, so myself and another fella decided, what we'll do is, we'll go up to Point Bonita, and we'll get underneath the lighthouse, where the lighthouse is out there.
[00:33:00] And we thought at least it's dry out there, and it's concrete. So we stationed ourselves out there to look for enemy, but we forgot that they have a fog horn. So about 2:00 in the morning, we were out there half asleep, and that thing blew, and I'm telling you, it almost shook us off there. We almost fell in the ocean. That's loud. That's loud.
Martini:
[00:33:30] Paul and I both give tours out there to the lighthouse, and they won't even let us go around outside the building. I can imagine standing underneath it with the fog horns going off. Was that one of your little spotting stations out there? Okay. Yeah. Also, they have things going on out here, entertainment and things. [crosstalk 00:33:40] those shows coming?
Joseph: Yeah. You know what we had out here? In fact, he was in K Battery [inaudible 00:33:48], was Mickey Rooney.
Martini: He performed out here?
Joseph: [00:34:00] Yeah. He performed for us. It probably was in 1942, somewhere in there. It wasn't long after we were out there, Mickey Rooney came out. That was very interesting. So we had that. We had a lot of the USO shows.
Martini: I heard Bob Hope played out here once.
Joseph: [00:34:30] Yeah, but he was mainly on, I think, over in Fort Winfield Scott, and Bing Crosby was over there once, because they played on the golf course. The Presidio Golf Course up behind Presidio there, they played there.
And that's another thing we did. K Battery got the job of defending the water tower of the Presidio, which is up there by the golf course. You know where that is? I was a corporal then. I was in charge of that defense of the water tower.
Martini: Is this during those big maneuvers or war games that you had?
[00:35:00] Joseph: Yeah, they had something going on. That was probably in 1943, sometime when I was there. I'm trying to think. Somewhere in there. They were more worried about air attack then, than they were sea attack. So then we went over there.
[00:35:30] And we had a 50-caliber machine gun there. So we had 50s too, by the way. We had 50s here too, and water cools. So I was stationed there, right by the golf course. That was very interesting duty.
Martini: It sounds like the battery at that time had the whole array. It wasn't like a specialist unit that was assigned to you to defend the guns. It was it all you guys.
Joseph: Well, yeah.
Martini: Anti-aircraft and the 50 calibers and everything else.
Joseph: [00:36:00] Well, when the war first started, we were on the guns, on the 12-inch guns. But as the war progressed, things changed because the guns, I'm sure, by the end of '41, I mean, the war started in '41, by the end of '42 anyhow, they getting to where the C Coast with airpower was kind of losing its zing. You know what I mean?
[00:36:30] So they were going more into air defenses and things like that. When the war first started here, we were really on the 12-inch guns, because they send an Infantry unit in here to take care of all the defenses of this area, so that we could be only on the gun. We had nothing to worry about.
See, when the war first started, we didn't have anybody like that here, so we had to barbwire. We barbwired all of Cronkhite. The only thing that was opened, there was some barbwire down the beach. We rolled barbwire all over this place.
[00:37:00] And we had set up machine guns on the beach, down Lagoon there, and up in the hills there, plus the ones we have behind us up here. But we had to man all that ourselves, so were draining manpower in the guns, right? Which they didn't want.
So they sent an Infantry unit in here, and they took over all that defenses, and took over the guard of the tunnel. Took over the whole complete guard of the whole area. So we no longer did that. We just were on the guns.
[00:37:30] Martini: I'd like to talk about the physical structure of the battery itself, because we've alluded to that it underwent going from guns out in the open, to being totally enclosed and casemated. So when you first arrived, the guns were just barbette batteries?
Joseph: Yeah.
Martini: At the time you got here, was there any attempt at camouflage?
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Martini: Yeah?
[00:38:00] Joseph: We started to work on physical camouflage before it was casemated, and that was before the war. We started that not long after we got here. That was part of the training. We studied camouflage in the field manuals and all that, and then we went into the physical of doing it.
[00:38:30] So we put up, like I said, the chicken wire netting, or the netting, up there. And we had burlap of different colors, and we wove it into that. And we camouflaged both guns. Both guns were actually camouflage. And they took pictures of it, and it was very successful. So it worked.
Martini: The magazines were separate, a couple-hundred yards away. I know there was the little road that connected them to the guns where the shells came out. [crosstalk 00:38:47].
Joseph: Yeah. Well, they were in between the guns.
Martini: Right. Were those camouflaged too?
Joseph: Yeah. Well, they were already under the hill.
Martini: On the backside, it was open, wasn't it?
[00:39:00] Joseph: Well, the backside was open. There was a little house there, a concrete place, and that was like a guardhouse. And we used to use that for a guard shack at the guns. The guards slept there and came out of there and all that stuff. But the magazines were in between the guns here. Yeah.
Martini: Okay. When did they start doing work on the major construction of casemating?
Joseph: [00:39:30] Well, as far as I remember, it was about the end of '41 there. Just before the war, they started, and it went into the first part of the war there.
Martini: You mentioned the first thing they had you do was take all the ammo out.
Joseph: Yeah. Right. Yeah, we were doing that. We did that. The manpower in the Army is unbelievable. I mean, getting things out isn't that bad. You get all those guys going on it, taking it out. They want to do something, they can do it fast. They did it. They got it out, and got it back quick too.
Martini: That extra incentive.
Joseph: Yeah.
[00:40:00] Martini: When they were casemating the guns, they did both of them simultaneously?
Joseph: Yeah, they [inaudible 00:40:05] both of them. Yeah.
Martini: Did they pull the guns out, or did they work around them?
Joseph: No, they worked around them. The guns were still there. Right.
Martini: But there must've been a maze of scaffolding and everything else going up.
Joseph: Yeah.
Martini: Were the guns still considered to be active? They were managing [crosstalk 00:40:19].
Joseph: [00:40:30] They were considered to be active. I mean, if they had to, they would've stopped it. At that time, they could've stopped it and still fired the guns. They were never immobile.
Martini: Okay. See, you had contractors, I guess, crawling all over the place, while you're trying to service the guns and [crosstalk 00:40:39]?
Joseph: Yeah. We took care of the guns. Right. Right. Yeah.
Martini: [00:41:00] Wow. I had always thought that maybe they did it one half at a time. Well, so much for that. When they wrapped up, the annual report said they finished sometime in '43, you were still with the K Battery?
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Martini: When we go inside, I'll have a number of questions. But the inside of the battery, those long quarters, there's how many bunk racks, Paul?
Paul Curry: Well, the entire place is 120. That includes the two stall rooms near the plot room down the hallway.
Martini: Did they move guys into the battery? Or do you know?
[00:41:30] Joseph: No, we never moved into the battery. We never lived in there. We always stayed in our barracks. We went for training, but we never actually lived in there. No.
Martini: We've always guessed that they [crosstalk 00:41:42].
Joseph:
[00:42:00] We'd have guards in there, used stay in the plotting room. They had a guard, I think, at one time, guarding Battery Wallace itself, but that's all. We never lived ... The guards lived there overnight. That may be six or eight fellas.
Martini: Looks like they had a plan for you though.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Martini: Yeah.
Joseph: They had plans for us, if they had to.
Martini: How long did you stay with K?
Joseph: Well, I went with K. I came in 1941, in about 20th of January, I stayed with them until the end of October '44. I went to OCS.
Martini: Yeah, and you became a corporal and a sergeant?
[00:42:30] Joseph: I became a corporal. That was very interesting. When I was made corporal, you got your warrant out of Washington. I lost it in a fire that we had later in San Francisco, but the warrant was not like you get in your company now or your battery now.
[00:43:00] That warrant was signed in Washington and it came to you. It was neat. I wish I would've never lost it, because they don't do that anymore. So that means that couldn't've broken in the company.
Martini: They'd have to take them in too.
Joseph: They have to go a little go a little further. Right. No, that's what was good about it. Where, now, you get made by the company commander. He could just break you right in the office. So that was what we always used to talk about anyhow.
[00:43:30] "Well, one thing. The old man can't break me. He's going to go further." Anyhow, when it came to being sergeant, myself, and we had another, Corporal [Lupo 00:43:31] was another real good friend of mine. We were made at the same time.
So they went a lot on seniority in the Army at that time. But the ranking corporal ... the sergeants were the ones that voted for you to come out, to be put forth for promotion, but they would vote for the ranker, unless there was some reason that he couldn't get it. And it would be something was obvious. Usually, they'd get it.
[00:44:00] Their opinion was that if you weren't worth being a corporal, you wouldn't get there in the first place, so you could go up, which was true. Lupo and myself were both eligible at the same time, but at that time, the Army came up with the limited service.
[00:44:30] They were bringing people they'd call limited service. People had some kind of a slight handicap, but couldn't go overseas, couldn't be general service. We were considered general service and they were considered limited service.
Well, then they came out with an order that said that no general service noncom in the United States, in the [inaudible 00:44:43] interior, could be promoted. In order for him to promoted if he was general service, he'd have to be overseas, either in the theater of operations or in the frontline.
[00:45:00] So that put me and Lupo out of it, because the promotion was there, and this was in '44, but we couldn't be promoted because we were general service. So I was on CQ, which is Charge of Quarters, and that's usually a job for a corporal.
[00:45:30] At that time, you were just on guard in the orderly room at night, what you were. I was in CQ and the old man was in the office. And he was looking over our records I guess, because at that time, '44, there was a big change out here. A lot of the general service people were being transferred out, and going to go overseas.
[00:46:00] So he was looking over the records, I guess, seeing who's going. So he called me in and he told me, he says, "Corporal," he says, "you did fairly well on your IQ." I was just a high school graduate, so he said, "You could qualify to go to OCS, even though you don't have college."
So he said, "If you want, I'd suggest you put in for it, because you have a wife and child." At that time, we were married and we had a child. And he said, "It'd be better to go overseas with a little money in your pocket than to go over like you are."
[00:46:30] So he talked to me like to a father, because I had no idea of going OCS. I hadn't really thought of it. So at the time, he was pretty nice, he's also says, "Your outfit is going to be ... There's going to be a lot of changes here."
[00:47:00] He says, "You're eligible for furlough," because, well, most of us were then. We didn't hardly get furloughs like you do now. And he said, "I can arrange for you to take a furlough. Then if you go to OCS, you go after that." So anyhow, I went over to Fort Scott, and I qualified for OCS.
Description
An interview conducted with Joseph Monks who served at Battery K, 6th Coastal Artillery Regiment, Fort Barry during World War II by John Martini, historian of the National Park Service.
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