Audio
Earl Van Note
Transcript
John Martini: Today is Monday, September 13th, 2004. My name is John A. Martini. I am a historian and researcher for the National Park Service, and this is an oral history interview with Mr. Earl Van Note, who was formerly in the Coast Artillery and stationed at Muir Beach during the early days of World War II. This interview is being carried out for the Park [00:00:30] Archives of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Mr. Van Note, before we start out, I wanted to ask that you understand that this is going to be a public document, and your interview and the transcription, it will be available to researchers to use for research on the history of San Francisco, and you give up your copyright.
Earl Van Note: I do.
John Martini: Great. Sounds like we're getting married. [00:01:00] For the record, can you give me your full name and spell your last name?
Earl Van Note: Earl Van Note, V-A-N, capital N-O-T-E.
John Martini: And what's your birthday?
Earl Van Note: January 5th, 1919.
John Martini: Where were you born?
Earl Van Note: In Arkansas.
John Martini: Okay. Did you grow up in Arkansas?
Earl Van Note: No, we moved around quite a bit.
John Martini: Yeah, [00:01:30] go ahead. Where did you live?
Earl Van Note: We lived in Texas for awhile, and we moved from Texas to Oklahoma, and we moved, I don't know, I was just a baby, I don't know how long we spent in each place. Then we moved from Oklahoma to Iowa, and my dad went into farming in Iowa. [00:02:00] In 1932 or 1934 it was such a drought back there that all the farmers was losing their stock, so he sold most of the stuff we had left, and we moved to Kansas. We was there for four years. I went through high school in Soldier, Kansas.
John Martini: Soldier, Kansas?
Earl Van Note: [00:02:30] Yes.
John Martini: No kidding. That's an interesting name.
Earl Van Note: Right. It was just a small town, but my dad and mother went into the restaurant business. It didn't seem to pan out, so we went back to Iowa. Then we lived there until 1941 when I was drafted [00:03:00] into the service.
John Martini: What were you doing at the time you were drafted? You were out of high school, weren't you?
Earl Van Note: Yes, I was out of high school. I was working for a grocery store, delivery truck for groceries, then worked in the store.
John Martini: How did they tell you you’d been called up? How did they tell you you'd been drafted?
Earl Van Note: Seems to me like I got a card, [00:03:30] and I've got that card someplace, but I can't find it. I was to report to Des Moines, Iowa, at such and such a time, such and such a date. And so my dad took me to Des Moines. We was there overnight, and we was able to, at that time we could pick our branch of service. [00:04:00] When I found out, looked on the bulletin board, the whole wall was covered with places that you could pick to go. One of them was Coast Artillery in California, and I so happened to have an uncle that lived in Southern California, so [00:04:30] I thought that was a good place to start.
John Martini: When you say the branch of service, just the Army? Or was Navy and Marine Corps and those other people ...
Earl Van Note: No, it was the Army.
John Martini: Army.
Earl Van Note: Army. The Coast Artillery.
John Martini: Right. What would your second choice have been?
Earl Van Note: Well I didn't give it much thought because I knew right away that my uncle was out here, and I thought that was a good time to get out [00:05:00] and see him, which I did. I got down to see him once, I think, before the war broke out.
John Martini: When you went to Des Moines that day, did they swear you in? Were you a soldier that first day? Remember what the process was?
Earl Van Note: I really can't remember what the process was. I know that we stayed all night there, and the next morning [00:05:30] we were ... Can't even remember how we ... I'm not sure how we got down to LA, I don't remember that.
John Martini: I'm going to guess it was probably a train.
Earl Van Note: Probably was train because a lot of traveling was by train at that time.
John Martini: Do you remember, did you have uniforms yet when you got there? Did they wait until you got to LA?
Earl Van Note: [00:06:00] They waited until we got to our, I guess you'd call it induction station. I think that's where they swore us in, and we got all of our clothes.
John Martini: Were there a bunch of you guys that were traveling there?
Earl Van Note: There was umm. That day that we got into Des Moines, they had cots [00:06:30] in what seemed to be a great, great big warehouse. There was hundreds of cots in there, and that's where we stayed during the night. I don't know exactly what kind of building, but it was a big, just like a big warehouse.
John Martini: Then they shipped you out from there?
Earl Van Note: We shipped out from there. They had us going different places, [00:07:00] and that broke us down into smaller groups. I can't remember how many, there was quite a bunch that come to California with me. Course most of them I didn't know because they was from all over Iowa.
John Martini: Your destination, where you finally ended up in California?
Earl Van Note: Fort Callan?
John Martini: Camp Callan?
Earl Van Note: Camp Callan. [00:07:30] Camp Callan, yeah.
John Martini: Okay.
Earl Van Note: We were down there just a very short time. We didn't get too much training because when the war broke out, they just yanked us in and filled us full of shots, and sent us up to the Presidio in San Francisco.
John Martini: Let's kind of get the time frame down. When did you get the card saying you'd been drafted, and when did you end up reporting at Des Moines? Do you remember roughly [00:08:00] what the dates were?
Earl Van Note: Not really. Not really. It was in ... I can't remember. Probably the first, or the middle of November. I can't remember exactly.
John Martini: That's okay.
Earl Van Note: I looked for that card the other day, but somehow I think it got put into the [00:08:30] vault in the bank. I don't know why, but it did.
John Martini: Keep it. That's an important document in your history. Now you say you weren't at Camp Callan very long, but do you have any impressions of being down there at Camp Callan? What happened to you there?
Earl Van Note: I can't remember too much about it because we just took training out in, field training, actually. I can't remember [00:09:00] too much about it.
John Martini: What was field training?
Earl Van Note: Well, learning how to march ... Well, march and just getting us in shape, I guess, mostly. No, we didn't ... I don't think we even had guns. We weren't there long enough that we had guns issued to us.
John Martini: No kidding.
Earl Van Note: We didn't get [00:09:30] those until we got to Fort Barry.
John Martini: Really?
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: It was real basic stuff.
Earl Van Note: It was real basic down there. It wasn't, I can't remember even having guns until we got out there to Fort Barry.
John Martini: How did you like Army life at first, when you were drafted?
Earl Van Note: I didn't.
John Martini: You didn't like [00:10:00] living in a barracks with 50 other guys?
Earl Van Note: Well, I didn't mind that so much, but it was a lot different life than I had been used to.
John Martini: Yeah. So at this point they're not teaching you really anything advanced, nothing about being in the Coast Artillery. This is just basic GI, how to be a solider.
Earl Van Note: Yes. Yeah, just mostly service like that, [00:10:30] like you mentioned.
John Martini: Do you remember when you first heard about the Japanese attack on December 7th, 1941?
Earl Van Note: Yes, because I guess the next morning after that is when they ... We just stayed in the barracks most of the day [00:11:00] and got all the shots that we were supposed to have, and the next day, they shipped us to Fort ... The Presidio.
John Martini: That fast.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. Then the next ... Let's see, we got to Presidio, it was late at night. They took us by truck out to our [00:11:30] barracks. I'm not sure what kind of a building it was that they took us that night, it was dark and late. We went into the building, there was no lights except ... Windows were all covered and everything. We went into the ... There was about 20 of us, I guess, in the truck. [00:12:00] They unloaded us, we went into this barracks, and the first thing that we saw in that barracks was a young lion. It just scared the wits out of us. Oh, I tell you, I just about passed out.
John Martini: A real lion.
Earl Van Note: A real lion coming down the steps. [00:12:30] All of a sudden then, the trainer, he'd come out. He's at the head of the stairs, and he come down. He thought it was a big joke. It happened to be a little pet lion. Anyway. I didn't sleep too good that night.
John Martini: This was after you'd left the Presidio, or actually Fort Barry, right?
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Yeah that was the mascot, the Fort Barry lion.
Earl Van Note: Right.
John Martini: You [00:13:00] met him the first night
Earl Van Note: Right, I met him a hard way. [Laughing] Bozy. [sp?} I can't remember. Bozy? He was a staff sergeant or something, and he thought it was a great big joke to have that lion come to greet us.
John Martini: Did you know what was going on? Did you know where you were going? Were they telling you anything, or were they just …
Earl Van Note: Oh, they said we’s going to Barry, and that's all we knew. [00:13:30] I can't remember then. I don't remember the next few days. Right away after we got to Barry, they brought us back to Fort Baker, and they was putting out mines in the ocean. I don't know how many of us, but went down there, and we spent ... [00:14:00] I don't know, must have been a couple of weeks or something like that. We was living at Barry on just a field pack, and we'd go out, and when those boats would come in with the minelayers, we'd go out. They'd call us, and we'd take cable, great big cables, and we'd pull it out to the boat, and then we’d just walk [00:14:30] around in circles, and then grab this cable and keep and pull it, and they rolled it on the boat to take it out to lay the mines with. That went on for, it seems to me like it was about a couple of weeks. Matter of fact they even asked us if we wanted to go out on the boat with the laying crew. Few of the boys went out, but I didn't want any part of it. I wanted [00:15:00] to stay on dry land.
John Martini: Especially coming from Iowa, that's kind of formidable. When you say you had field packs, did they have you in tents, or in the barracks?
Earl Van Note: No, we were in the barracks there, but we just had very ... Just change of clothes, under clothes, and a couple pair of socks [00:15:30] is all we had. It was rainy, we was wet half of the time. We'd take off our socks and try to let them dry. Maybe we'd get them dry, and maybe we wouldn't before the next boat come in. We'd go down whatever time the boat got in, we got up, go out, and pulled cable.
John Martini: This is right after Pearl Harbor. We're talking only the first week or two of the war.
Earl Van Note: Right.
John Martini: Was [00:16:00] there a feeling that something might really happen, that there might really be a battle?
Earl Van Note: I can't remember, actually. We had so much on my mind, with sleeping and resting actually, because they’d … all hours, it didn't matter if you’d just got in to rest awhile, then there was another boat come in, why you went out and pulled cable.
John Martini: No time to think about [00:16:30] the enemy fleet coming.
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: When did you… How long did this continue, working at the mine detail?
Earl Van Note: I think it was about approximately two weeks. I'm not sure. Something like that. Then whenever they'd get a chance to get a break, we'd go back down to Barry to the showers, and we could [00:17:00] take a shower and go to our foot lockers and get a change of clothes. There was no hot water. It was all cold water. We had to shower in cold water. I almost froze to death, I thought.
John Martini: How long before they actually put you in a real gun battery?
Earl Van Note: Soon as we was done with the cable, a couple of weeks, [00:17:30] whatever it was. Then we went right to Smith and Guthrie. We didn't have any barracks there. We slept in, I guess you'd call them, those little square buildings that they kept the ammunition in.
John Martini: The magazines.
Earl Van Note: Magazines, yeah.
John Martini: You were sleeping in there?
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Really?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, they didn't have [00:18:00] any ammunition in there. I can't remember how big they were, but we had three tier beds, and there was maybe one, two, three, four, not more than four or five beds that would fit in there. There was, [00:18:30] I can't remember how many of those shacks there were, but that went on for a while. Then I think they put in some tents for a while so they could get us out of the ammunition bins and put in the real stuff.
John Martini: [00:19:00] Wow. It sounds like they weren't really prepared to have this many guys showing up out there.
Earl Van Note: It seemed like it, yeah. I'm sure we had, was in tents for, I don't know, for quite a little while.
John Martini: What did they have you do when you first got to Smith-Guthrie? Is this where they started to actually train you about Coast Artillery?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. We got our rifles then, and took training on the rifles. [00:19:30] Went on the range then to practice our shooting. We was then into real training, then.
John Martini: Can I ask, were those the old bolt action?
Earl Van Note: Yes, the old bolt action, and I was left handed, and it was pretty hard for me to take my gun down. It was [00:20:00] very, very difficult to shoot.
John Martini: Were you any good?
Earl Van Note: I was good. I thought I got a pretty good shot. I don't know. They give some kind of medals or something, I can't remember anymore, but I got my medals okay.
John Martini: At the battery itself, you told me you were in the range finding section. [00:20:30] Did they take different guys and give them different specialties, or was everybody cross trained to do everything?
Earl Van Note: I don't know exactly how they trained it, but there was just a few of us that was detailed to the range section. We was their main crew, just the ones that was in there. Once in a while [00:21:00] they'd bring in a different guy or something, I don't know.
John Martini: Because that was kind of a specialized, the range section.
Earl Van Note: Right.
John Martini: It was more than just humping ammunition around.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. We were on duty, I don't know, it was on eight hours or something like that. There was always somebody in that range station. At night, all night, and all day there was somebody. Matter of fact, [00:21:30] I was on one of the night crews for a while. You stayed in that little, small area there.
John Martini: Right up above the guns?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, seemed like it was right behind them.
John Martini: Yeah, sometimes that's called the battery commander's station.
Earl Van Note: Right.
John Martini: [00:22:00] What were you doing up there at night?
Earl Van Note: I can't remember. Not too much of anything, mostly, just trying to keep our eyes open, if we could see any light out or anything. Anything that was moving, why, you had to check in on it, call a guard and have them go and check on it. You couldn't leave the station. You had to stay there. You was supposed to be [00:22:30] watching.
John Martini: Watching both around the battery and out at sea?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, if you could see any lights out there, why, then you'd have to report it because you didn't know what it was.
John Martini: One of the photographs I brought, for the tape reference this is image number one, this shows a bunch of guys there in the battery [00:23:00] commander's station at Smith-Guthrie.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. I think this was Smith, wasn't it?
John Martini: Sure was.
Earl Van Note: Smith and Guthrie?
John Martini: Yeah.
Earl Van Note: This was the main station there.
John Martini: There's several guys in the photographs. Can you ...
Earl Van Note: About five. Five or six was your whole crew.
John Martini: Do you remember what the specific duties were, why there were five guys [00:23:30] up there?
Earl Van Note: I'm not sure what the technicality was of it, but they had to have five people there, or six, so that there was two on guard at night out in the base end station. There was more than that, but I can't remember exactly how many because [00:24:00] two had to be on guard at night.
John Martini: Okay. On the scope, though, there was one guy who would be looking through the scope, right?
Earl Van Note: Not necessarily, unless you'd see something that you had to really get out and look through the scope to see, if that would help.
John Martini: At a station like this one, right near the guns, [00:24:30] in the middle of night, it must have been cold and dreary up there?
Earl Van Note: It was.
John Martini: Would you be by yourself?
Earl Van Note: No. Out in the station it was always two guys there. Matter of fact, it seems to me like we had some kind of a little heat in there. We finally made a [00:25:00] little screen, not screen, but with a glass in it, and left one of the doors open so that you could see out. Then it would keep some of the heat inside, too.
John Martini: I see.
Earl Van Note: They had little doors all, individual doors, around the side of those.
John Martini: You mean like little shutters that dropped down?
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Okay. [00:25:30] So you tried to keep the heat in that way.
Earl Van Note: Keep a little bit warm that way.
John Martini: Yeah. If you were up there, basically it was a guard post, it was a lookout at the battery proper. Not talking about Muir Beach yet.
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Okay. What kind of training did they give you for this kind of technical duty? What did they have you do to learn how to actually do the range finding?
Earl Van Note: [00:26:00] They just worked us right out there on those dry runs. We'd do that all the time. That's how we'd learn to operate those.
John Martini: When you say dry runs, what do you mean?
Earl Van Note: There was no target out there, but you had to make believe there was, and turn your scope so if you had to move it around. That's [00:26:30] kind of training that we had.
John Martini: Did you ever follow fishing boats and merchant ships just for practice?
Earl Van Note: I can't remember. Not doing much while we ... Some times we'd take a look and see what we could see out there.
John Martini: How long were you physically right there at the battery before they put you in one of the remote base stations?
Earl Van Note: [00:27:00] I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that because the first sergeant come to me one day and wanted to know if I wanted to go out to base station. This was after another incident we'd had, and I said, "Well, I don't know. [00:27:30] What have I did, or what didn't I do that I should have done?" He gave me a little bit of ideas, and so I grabbed it. I went out. Before we got any barracks built, they [00:28:00] had to scoop off the side of the hill to make level places down below, behind the gun emplacements.
John Martini: Oh it’s at Barry.
Earl Van Note: It was steep there, real steep.
John Martini: This is while you were living in tents or whatever.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. One day the battery commander had everybody fall out. He had something to tell them. I had just got [00:28:30] off duty, I'd been on all night. He said, well, he says, "You guys have been working pretty hard with shoveling out there." He said, "Fort Baker has a team of mules with a scraper." He says, "Is anybody here that can handle them and will volunteer?" I [00:29:00] think it was a guy by the name of Mankie [sp?] I think, he held up his hand. "Oh yeah," he said, he was a mule skinner. "Okay," he says, "You want to try it?" "Hell yeah." So I went on down and ate breakfast, and he took the guy down to Baker. Pretty soon, he come back with the team of mules and the scraper. They hitched up the scraper. I was down [00:29:30] at the mess hall, I wanted to see what was going on if there was animals involved, so I watched. He took them down there, and there was one guy to drive, and they had two guys on the shovel handles to fill the scraper.
It went along, and he wasn't doing too good. Finally the mules went over the bank, [00:30:00] down over the bank with the scraper, driver, and the whole works. They got him back up on the ridge, and the battery commander didn't say too much about it. He just kind of ... You know. Anyway, they did it another time, and they got down again. He called [00:30:30] them up and he says, "You guys can't handle these mules. Take them back." I saw, you know, I think I'll go try that. I thought about it, and I went up, and I said, "Sir," I said, "I think I can handle that." He looked at me. I weighed about 170 pounds then, or 75. He says, "You think you can?" I said, "Yeah, I think so." "You want to try?" I says, "Yeah," and he says, " [00:31:00] Okay. Give those mules to Van Note." I went up and unhooked them, hooked them on the scraper, drove back down there to the ground, and he had me stop. "You know what to do?" I said, "Yeah, I was watching from up there. I was watching what was going on." He ...
John Martini: I got to turn the tape over. This is good.
John Martini: Continue.
Earl Van Note: I said, "Yes sir." I said, "I know." He says, "How many men do you want to help you?" I looked at him and I said, "Nobody." "Oh, okay." I drove on down to where I supposed to start scooping and [00:00:30] flipped the scoop over and took a line in each hand and a handle in each hand and I filled a scraper and filled it clear full with soft sand. I took it down and I drove it along the side. They stayed away from the banks so the mules wouldn't decide they had to go over there all the time. So I didn't get the dirt over there. I went and drove around and [00:01:00] did it a couple of times. Finally they got the idea that they were supposed to stay up on top.
I worked for a little while and I got a little bit too close to the edge with one of them. The one next to the bank, the jenny mule, she went over the bank. I let her go and went down a little ways and flipped them back and went back [00:01:30] on up and drove up. The battery commander was standing there. I stopped and I said, "Well I guess I'm not doing too good." He says, "You're doing great." He says, "Keep going." I worked for about an hour I guess and the mules got warm and stuff. He stopped me and he says, "What's your job?" I said, "In the battery commander's range section." He says, "Do you want [00:02:00] to try to take this job over?" I said, "I will." He said, "Okay." He says, "You've got nothing to do but to come out and teach these guys how to work them," but he says, "And don't try to do it yourself, all of it." He said, "Let these guys learn and do it." I said, "Yes sir."
That was what got me a few weeks later after we finished, I guess it was quite a while, but a few months [00:02:30] to scoop all that out. Then when the first sergeant come and asked me if I wanted to go to the base station. I said, "I don't know." I didn't know what I did wrong. He says, "Well," he says, "I'll tell you." He says, "The people at the restaurant has a horse out there that nobody can ride. They wanted to know if you wanted [00:03:00] to go out and try to ride him in your time off." I said, "Yeah." I said, "I'll go."
John Martini: That's how you got to Muir Beach?
Earl Van Note: That's how I got -
John Martini: They had a horse they wanted broke in?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. In my days off, or in my time off, I'd go down and I'd ride this horse. It was a wild ... It was a mustang. I rode him then til they drew us back [00:03:30] in the company to ship us out.
John Martini: You were basically being sent to Muir Beach was, kind of ... That was a reward.
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Just for the reference, when you were doing that construction with the mules and all that scraping, what were you constructing back there?
Earl Van Note: To build the barracks. They built barracks, [00:04:00] I don't know how big they ... They were long and two of them, so it took a long stretch of bank that had to be moved so that took us so long to do that.
John Martini: One guy described them as being a couple of railroad cars, long and narrow.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, right.
John Martini: Yeah, just dug in down there.
Earl Van Note: It was interesting. That part I liked.
John Martini: Had you learned how to handle animals when you were working on the farm?
Earl Van Note: [00:04:30] I worked, when I was a kid, with my dad on the farm. I guess I was driving horses when I was about two years old with my granddad, two or three years old. I'd stand in front of the wagon and he'd give me a line in each hand. I always wanted to drive. He'd give me a line in each hand and tell me how to pull which one and [00:05:00] pull the other one and let them go straight. My grandmother used to tell the story that we was just going some place and I was driving. Granddad told me to pull, pull, pull old Queen over so we're going to turn the corner. I pulled and pulled and I couldn't make it so I reached over to Granddad [00:05:30] and I said, "Granddad, you hold this line for me and while I pull the other one." She got a big kick out of telling that.
John Martini: From your description, when they first said you were going out to the base station, it sounded like you thought you were being punished. Was that not considered to be such a great place to go?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. Well that's what I was thinking, what I had done, that I didn't do right or something. [00:06:00] He says, "I'll tell you something that's off the record," but he says, "They've got this horse out there." I said, "I'll go."
John Martini: What was it like out there at Muir Beach in those days?
Earl Van Note: He had another base end station just a few hundred [00:06:30] yards from ours.
John Martini: Right.
Earl Van Note: We'd get together, the ones that's off duty, and then go down there for their meals and then they'd go back up and change, go on duty and let the other group come down.
John Martini: From what you were saying, the stations were on top of the hill where they still are today.
Earl Van Note: Right.
John Martini: There was a bar, restaurant down below?
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: That's where [00:07:00] you guys actually bunked?
Earl Van Note: Well, yeah, down in these cabins that they belonged to somebody that the government had leased them. They used one of them for a cook house and the two others, we slept in the other two. It worked out.
John Martini: Just talking about your station for Smith and Guthrie, how many guys [00:07:30] were assigned to the station, that rotated through it?
Earl Van Note: I can't remember. It was probably around six or seven guys, because we had to stay on duty, two of us at a time. I'm just guessing, but I'd say maybe six or seven of us. Then when my time was off, I'd go down to the [00:08:00] bar and get this horse out and I'd ride him. I really made a good animal for him. It was his wife's horse. From the time I left there, why she was able to ride him.
John Martini: Do you remember the name of the people that owned the horse?
Earl Van Note: No. I wished I had of. I just don't remember. That's been over 30 years ago.
John Martini: Do you remember the horse's name?
Earl Van Note: [00:08:30] No, by golly I don't. It might ... I've got a picture here someplace of the horse. It might be on the back of that, but I don't know. I'd have to go through that whole thing to find it.
John Martini: Sometimes people remember the animals’ names better than us.
Earl Van Note: It seems to me like it was ... There's a breed that has a long curly coat. I think that it seems [00:09:00] to me like they might've called him Curly because he had that long coat. It was a special, special breed.
John Martini: Was it a working horse or was it a riding horse?
Earl Van Note: Well it was a mustang, a wild mustang that they got. He probably weighed around 1,000 pounds or maybe [00:09:30] a little bit less but about 1,000 pounds.
John Martini: Were there many people, even many buildings at Muir Beach in those days?
Earl Van Note: No. There was a dairy ranch across the road. We got acquainted with some of the ... They had a couple of daughters that they'd come over once in a while and talk to the guys and stuff. I can't even remember their [00:10:00] name but the barn's still out there.
John Martini: Yes, it’s a stable.
Earl Van Note: Stable, yeah. They turned it into a boarding stable.
John Martini: Golden Gate Dairy?
Earl Van Note: What?
John Martini: Golden Gate Dairy?
Earl Van Note: That could've been. I can't remember exactly.
John Martini: Up on top of the hill at the station, a couple of questions. What did you call the place? Did you call it Frank Valley or did you call it Muir Beach?
Earl Van Note: We just called it Muir Beach. [00:10:30] Frank’s Valley, they started calling it there, I don't know, some time ago, I guess a long time ago, but we just called it Muir Beach.
John Martini: Muir Beach, yeah. For what it's worth, the official Army maps called Frank Valley, a military reservation.
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah?
John Martini: There were several stations up there. Did you hang out with the guys from the other stations?
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah. We got together. The guys that was off duty, [00:11:00] they'd get together and talk. There wasn't much to do out there.
John Martini: I was going to ask, what did you do out there? You couldn't go any place.
Earl Van Note: Well, I was busy.
John Martini: Yeah, you were.
Earl Van Note: I had a good time. I can't remember exactly, but there was quite a group of us. I don't know how many was in the other station, but I don't know, it was [00:11:30] probably 12 or so. There was several, several people over there.
John Martini: I don't know if they were all used at once but there were four stations up there.
Earl Van Note: Four?
John Martini: Yeah. That's why they might not have all been used at the same time.
Earl Van Note: No, we didn't. We just knew of two of them when we was there. Maybe they got that 12-inch emplacement down there at the bridge.
John Martini: [00:12:00] Maybe it was theirs.
Earl Van Note: They may have used that one station then got rid of some of the other ones. I didn't remember any more.
John Martini: What was it, like eight hours on a shift up there?
Earl Van Note: I think so, something like that, yeah, eight hours.
John Martini: You said two guys in the station. What did they tell you to do when there were two of you in there? What were your duties?
Earl Van Note: You had to be alert and find out if there was [00:12:30] anything moving outside or anything. Once in a while they'd send an officer out to see if we was awake or if we was sleeping or what was going on, but we kept pretty good lookout out there, because we were high. There was not much going on up there [00:13:00] on the hill or anybody around or anything. We kept pretty good look on it.
John Martini: Were you looking through the scope or were you looking just out through the big slit?
Earl Van Note: We just looking out through windows. Depending on if it wasn't too cold, we'd leave a couple more windows open. You could see easy. You could sit on that bench and lean over and just look around. [00:13:30] If you could hear something outside, well then you'd lift up the little door. There was a big iron door that you would lift up to see if you could see what was going on or what it was.
John Martini: At the stations they had a long, narrow visor with a big steel lid that was counterbalanced that opened and closed. Were there glass windows inside?
Earl Van Note: [00:14:00] No.
John Martini: That was just it?
Earl Van Note: No, we built one. I don't know, but one of the guys was kind of handy and he went down to some place and he got some boards and he got some glass of some kind and he made a glass window that fit in there. When we'd leave it open when it was cold we'd put that glass in and [00:14:30] you could see out through it.
John Martini: Most of the time you kept the visor closed?
Earl Van Note: Well, yeah. If it was cold we kept most of the others closed.
John Martini: How did you see out?
Earl Van Note: Well, we had to leave one window open. One of those little doors ...
John Martini: [00:15:00] This one in photo one?
Earl Van Note: It doesn't show any of the ... Over here where this glass is, the scope is, it was about so far from the outside wall and about, I'd say, maybe these doors [00:15:30] were two, two and a half feet. They're steel. They'd open separately.
John Martini: I know the type you mean. Some stations had little steel doors. Some had the entire front was one huge hinged piece and it just came up and down like a garage door.
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah?
John Martini: Yeah.
Earl Van Note: Ours, all of the ones that the station that I was in, was all just single doors.
John Martini: Gotcha. [00:16:00] They had bunks inside them, hanging from the walls in some pictures.
Earl Van Note: We had one small single bed in our station there. One guy could lay down for a while and then the guy that was up, he'd get sleepy, he'd call this [00:16:30] guy and he'd get up and he'd stand watch then. It was not much room. There wasn't any room actually behind there, just this little bed with a place to sleep during the day with the two men there.
John Martini: Now if you'd spotted something ... Say you looked out there and you saw a Japanese battleship showing up. What were you supposed [00:17:00] to do?
Earl Van Note: We was supposed to get on the phone and let people know there's something out there going on and find out what it was and so on.
John Martini: Would the guys that were off duty, would they come up to the station too?
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah, if there was something going on we'd send down for one of those guys and the rest of them to get up there. I can't remember [00:17:30] now. We might've had some of these portable phones down at the sleeping quarters.
John Martini: Right.
Earl Van Note: They had one up there at our station.
John Martini: Those old fashioned crank field phones?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. They're little square phones like that.
John Martini: That's when you wanted ... Seriously, if you were having target practice or if a real attack had come, you'd want [00:18:00] the entire section in there, correct?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. You want the whole crew up there.
John Martini: Right. Inside the station, do you remember how many telescopes you had?
Earl Van Note: Oh, there was only one telescope. It was a big one that ...
John Martini: The one that ... For reference we'll call this photograph number two.
Earl Van Note: Two men, yeah.
John Martini: This is one of the two men looking through the telescope.
Earl Van Note: [00:18:30] No, there's ... No. See, this is an older one, but we had bigger ones that looks like they were bigger and longer. There's only one guy that looked through the scope at a time. He'd get tired of watching and squinting and stuff, then he'd let the other guy change off with [00:19:00] him.
John Martini: You just decided on your own? It isn't like you had to be on it for ...
Earl Van Note: No, no. You were just on for a while and then you'd switch guys and stuff.
John Martini: That's good. For reference in photo number two, which shows the Swayze [00:19:17] Depression Position Finder, that's an earlier model than the one you were using. There was a later model.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. We had more equipment, or more modern equipment then in [00:19:30] those days than this was there.
John Martini: Could you see pretty well through that thing?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. Yeah, it was good. It would bring ... Then you could turn, adjust it to your eyes to see what ... Yeah, it was pretty good.
John Martini: Just because we know so little about life inside of those things, first off, we called them base [00:20:00] end stations. Did you have names for the structures?
Earl Van Note: No, that's what we called them, base end stations. That was the title that we used then. I don't know if the guys before had them or different names or what.
John Martini: You ever hear them called gopher holes?
Earl Van Note: What?
John Martini: Gopher holes?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, we've heard them called that, too.
John Martini: [00:20:30] Was it bad being inside those things or just tiresome? Did you get on each other's nerves?
Earl Van Note: Well, it wasn't too bad. We tried to change off the two of us. Maybe in the daytime we'd go out and we'd go outside too.
John Martini: Right.
Earl Van Note: We'd leave one guy there. You didn't have to sit there all day or all night and look through, but you'd [00:21:00] get up and ... You couldn't leave there. You had to be so you could get down there real quick if you had to, but with one guy or some of the rest of them, some would hang around there because there wasn't much to do.
John Martini: Did you bring chow up there and canteens for water, because there's no utilities?
Earl Van Note: We had no ... We had water. We had our canteens. We had water up there, [00:21:30] but once in a while we'd bring something up to eat. During the night or something they'd bring up a sandwich or something like that. We always went down to the cook house for our meals.
John Martini: Did you have a latrine or anything above ground?
Earl Van Note: No, I don't think. We just went out someplace.
John Martini: You [00:22:00] go out to these places and there's nothing there except little buildings.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, that's it. It wasn't too big a walk down. The hardest part was coming up the hill. That was steep. If a fella had to go to the latrine, why he'd go down to the houses down below.
John Martini: [00:22:30] How was it set up in terms of ranks? Were you guys all privates or did they have a non-com in charge of the section?
Earl Van Note: We had a non-com in charge of the section of people that was out there. One of them was a non-commissioned officer, just a sergeant or a corporal [00:23:00] or something.
John Martini: Right. How often did you get out of there? How often did they rotate you back to Fort Barry?
Earl Van Note: Well I don't think ... I can't remember taking anybody back unless something happened or somebody was sick or something went wrong. Well then they'd replace him with somebody.
John Martini: [00:23:30] Didn't you get leave or anything?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, you could have passes and go out, but then if it was just for a pass, unless I was going to be gone all night or something, then they'd probably send somebody out, but just for the day pass or something, no, they didn't bother to.
John Martini: You [00:24:00] did get a pass? You could go into San Francisco? What'd you do when you got a pass?
Earl Van Note: Well you couldn't go. You wasn't supposed to go.
John Martini: “Here, have a pass. You can't go anyplace”?
Earl Van Note: You can't go. Nobody, I don't think, checked on us very bad out there.
John Martini: What about recreation? Every few weeks, [00:24:30] would they give you a few days off to go to San Francisco or anything or were you just out there nonstop?
Earl Van Note: No, I don't remember ever having time. That was before I was married so I don't ... Some of the guys, I guess, their wives would come out to Muir Beach and they'd go down there and stuff, but I don't ... Well, when we was at the battery, [00:25:00] every Saturday we'd go to Sausalito. They'd send a truck in with the guys that wanted to go and you'd go into the, what do you call it, recreation ... I can't remember what they called it now, but they'd go in there and it had gals there and they'd dance.
John Martini: The USO Hall or something?
Earl Van Note: USO, yeah. USO, that's it.
John Martini: [00:25:30] That was only at Barry. You didn't have that luxury out at Muir Beach.
Earl Van Note: No, we didn't have that but I don't know. I never got into that. I was out there, well, several months, but I didn't remember how you did it then. If we went on furlough, I guess, they'd just send somebody out.
John Martini: [00:26:00] How long were you out there at Muir Beach?
Earl Van Note: I'm not sure, probably close to a year, pretty close I guess.
John Martini: Wow.
Earl Van Note: I was out there most of four years that I was in the service, I was out there. [00:26:30] Then when they shipped out our unit to go to Europe, that's where they was going, and they called all of ... Fell us all out. Well, they called us all out ...
John Martini: Base?
Earl Van Note: Base, send people in, called them all in there and we packed up all of our stuff. [00:27:00] The next morning they had two or three trucks out there. The captain or the commander, he called off the names and they loaded them in the truck. I don't know where they went but they was supposed to be heading for Europe. They got them all in. I was still standing out there by myself. [00:27:30] I thought, "Gee, finally." I went over and I said, "Sir," I said, "You forgot me." "Oh, Van Note, no." He said, "You go over in my jeep," he said, "You stay there." He says, "As soon as I get these trucks out here," he says, "You're going to go with me." That was Paolini [00:27:51].
John Martini: Oh, sure. He was the executive officer of the battery.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. He was the [00:28:00] top kick out there. Anyway, they went and he come over. He said, "We're going to go to the Presidio." He said, "We're going to go to Texas and start training some of the new people that comes in." "Okay." I went over and stayed there for [00:28:30] two nights, couple of days or so.
John Martini: Continue. You and Mario Paolini were ... You and Mario Paolini, he was just taking you over to Fort Scott.
Earl Van Note: Yeah. He took me to the Presidio and I don't know, I guess he got transferred someplace [00:29:00] else and I went to ... I did. I went ... From there they put us on a troop train and we went all over the country picking up recruits. Then we went to Texas to, I can't remember the name of the company or the [00:29:30] camp, but ...
John Martini: Was it Fort Bliss?
Earl Van Note: Could've been. In Texas, yeah, I guess it was Bliss, yeah.
John Martini: El Paso?
Earl Van Note: I think so, yeah.
John Martini: Yeah, it started out as Coast Artillery in Texas.
Earl Van Note: Oh, yeah. Anyway, they transferred us to Infantry. [00:30:00] Then we went out on a, I guess, an overnight bivouac, whatever you call it. I guess then I think the war was over. About that time, the war ended. Then, well I had points enough to get out, 16 points. I [00:30:30] figured, "Well, I could go home now." There was about 15 of us, I guess, that had the points. No, they wouldn't let us out. We had to go to Panama. I was over there for, I guess, a couple of months or so.
John Martini: In Panama?
Earl Van Note: In Panama.
John Martini: In the infantry now?
Earl Van Note: Yeah. I don't know what we was doing there but [00:31:00] we didn't do too much. They said that, whoever it was that told us we had to go for the … get overseas pay ... I said, "Oh, never mind." I think it was $300 for overseas pay. I said, "Just forget it." I said, "I'm ready to go home." No, we went over. [00:31:30] He says, "As soon as you get over there, if you put your feet on the ground," he says, "You can come home," but ... [tape ends]
John Martini: This is tape 2 of the Earl Van Note interview. Since you were saying that they told you when you got to Panama…
Earl Van Note: We could come back if we could get transportation. But there was nobody, no transportation there and they said there would be a ship come through such and such time and it [00:00:30] never showed up. And then there was planes come through and supposed to. They never showed up, and so finally the Navy come in there. I guess it was a small boat of some kind. [00:01:00] They said well we'll take you on that but we're going on maneuvers out in the Pacific and he says, "You can go with us but we're going to be a few days out there on maneuvers." And I said well at least we'll be on our way home.
John Martini: So you were talking about you were out on maneuvers in the Pacific?
Earl Van Note: Oh [00:01:30] yeah, well I was sicker than a dog. Oh boy. I forget what they called it. It was a small boat out on maneuvers.
John Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Earl Van Note: They had a name for it but I can't remember what it was. And so we finally got home and that was it.
John Martini: You got discharged?
Earl Van Note: [00:02:00] Yeah, we came into San Diego, I think it was. And I can't remember, we got up here on the bus or something out at this camp that's out in the desert. I can't remember what it was now, what we was discharged from. And so that was it.
John Martini: You obviously [00:02:30] decided against being a thirty-year man huh?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, I sure did. Well Paolini was, I guess was, he went in.
John Martini: I think he went into Air Defense for a while, missiles.
Earl Van Note: I forget what he said, something about you know and he come out as a major. So he should be in pretty good shape.
John Martini: What was the highest rank you achieved?
Earl Van Note: [00:03:00] I didn't, just a private first class.
John Martini: PFC?
Earl Van Note: That was far as I went.
John Martini: Couple of technical questions. I wrote up a bunch of little odds and ends. We’ve hit almost everything. But a couple of questions:
When you were at the base stations, did you guys carry side arms?
Earl Van Note: No
John Martini: 0r did you have rifles?
Earl Van Note: No, we had rifles there yeah. We had rifles but we didn't, well [00:03:30] at one time, and I can't remember why I had it. I had one of these small, not the .30 [caliber], self left-hand rifles.
John Martini: A carbine?
Earl Van Note: I had a carbine [00:04:00] for awhile and I don't know why but I got the rifle back again. I can't remember why I had it.
John Martini: Was that in case of intruders at the site? Or for security?
Earl Van Note: It could have been. I can't remember now why.
John Martini: When you went up to the site now it's just open entirely. Did you guys have a compound, were there fences or barbed wire or anything?
Earl Van Note: No, [00:04:30] Fort Barry there was barbed wired entanglement down at the bottom of the ridge. I don't know, I think it grew up in weeds and I don't know what happened to it.
John Martini: Now you said that your whole time you only fired big guns at Smith-Guthrie a couple of times right?
Earl Van Note: A couple times. We practiced everyday on them [00:05:00] for so long a time.
John Martini: How did you practice without firing on them?
Earl Van Note: Just tracking something. We'd find something to track and we'd track it and you know. Make out like we was going to shoot. And so, a lot of times they'd just send a boat out there for us to track on.
John Martini: When they actually did [00:05:30] shoot, they fired at a target being towed behind another ship, right?
Earl Van Note: Yes.
John Martini: What did they have you guys in the stations. What were you doing? What was your roll during a target practice?
Earl Van Note: Oh, well.
John Martini: How did you operate the scope and all that?
Earl Van Note: One guy would operate the scope and I think they had two guys on the arms or whatever you call them. You [00:06:00] know, to set whatever the guy on the scope, he'd take and read some numbers then you'd set your arms on those numbers. That would tell you where to direct your fire at.
John Martini: And the guys with the arms, they were back at the gun battery right? They weren't up there...
Earl Van Note: No, they were in the base and station.
John Martini: Oh, they were?
Earl Van Note: [00:06:30] Yeah, part of these..
John Martini: [Photo Reference No. 04] Go ahead.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, this guy is right in here. This is an old one, but they had, I can't even see a scope right here. But, [00:07:00] yeah this doesn't have it either. The ones that we had, the scope come out here and there was a numbers on, all around this round table.
John Martini: Around the base, yeah.
Earl Van Note: And when he read you off a number the first one would be maybe to your right and the second one would be to left and then you'd set this little [00:07:30] gadget to those numbers. And then he'd call and say "fire," that's what directed the gun out to the target. I don't know the technicalities of how it worked but that was what we did with them. And then how it transferred to the gun, I'm not sure about that.
John Martini: Those are what they call the Azimuth [00:08:00] Bearings. The angles.
Earl Van Note: I never got into that much. I was only on the gun crew once. I guess there were so many guys that was bigger and heavier than I was and those darn projectiles it took two [00:08:30] guys to carry them and put them in the shell. I guess they found out I wasn't heavy enough to carry one. It probably weighed more than I did.
John Martini: Not quite but I think it would be quite of a lift for just one guy. Living at Muir Beach out there, they were bringing food to you or [00:09:00] you were cooking down there at your own little mess hall down in the cabins?
Earl Van Note: They had cooks in there yeah.
John Martini: Real cooks?
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah, they had a real cook down there.
John Martini: That's a luxury.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, I don't know how many cooks they had but we had our station and the other base end station, the 12-inch one, all those guys went down there for their meals.
John Martini: Oh yeah, that [00:09:30] was luxurious.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, that was luxury.
John Martini: You were surrounded by dairies out there. Did you ever do, have any contact with the ranchers for fresh milk, butter, or eggs or anything?
Earl Van Note: No, not that I know of anyway. I think the jeep used to come out, as I say, everyday he'd come out and bring something or whatever.
John Martini: Who was he, in the jeep?
Earl Van Note: [00:10:00] I can't remember his name.
John Martini: He was from the battery?
Earl Van Note: He was a sergeant I think. Sergeant from the battery that went around to all of these other stations and took them to supplies I guess and stuff.
John Martini: The way that, you know how the Army is, very much [00:10:30] everything is regimented and there's rules. It turns out that every battery, if they have a base end station 5 miles away or 15 miles away some poor guy had to drive everyday with supplies.
Earl Van Note: He had to go out there to get supplies out to them.
John Martini: Could you hook a ride with him back if you were on pass?
Earl Van Note: Yeah if you wanted to go to battery or something [00:11:00] for some reason or another you could go with him. I never did do that because I have my entertainment right there. So, I never...
John Martini: What about tourists? Muir Beach today, you know, its full of sunbathers [00:11:30] and everyone else.
Earl Van Note: Well there were a few out there at the time when I was out there. But, there was very few, and Sundays and weekends there would be people out there. And I'd ride up … well the beach is long and flat. I'd ride clear up to the rock that come out. It was a long haul [00:12:00] up there. And then come back and after I got this guy working good I'd take him out in the parks in the open space. And sometimes I'd be gone most of the day and just riding. So, that's why he worked down so good because I rode every day. The [00:12:30] sergeant sent me out there. He says, we’ve talked to, whoever the guy was, I can’t remember the names anymore, told him to work out your time off so that you could go down and work with that horse. So then I took, I think I took a lot of times I’d take the night shift [00:13:00] and I'd have all day to ride.
John Martini: Did you ever cross paths with the Coast Guard Beach Patrol that was coming up on Stinson Beach?
Earl Van Note: No, I couldn't remember of any anyway.
John Martini: Yeah, they had a mounted beach patrol that covered from somewhere near Muir Beach all the way up to Point Reyes. They had a little corral and paddock down Stinson Beach but they were Coast Guard.
Earl Van Note: Oh. We [00:13:30] probably did some place along the line, but I didn't know who they were or what.
John Martini: That would have been a good job for you.
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: So what did you do after the war?
Earl Van Note: After the war well, I came home and her folks was in the gardening business. So as soon as I was home I went to work for them. I had a job [00:14:00] and so then I didn't like the garden work in the winter time when cold and stuff. So I looked for a job that was inside. I wasn't used to this cold weather stuff you know. Back in Iowa it gets cold but not damp. So, then eventually I got a job with Hill's Brothers Coffee. [00:14:30] And I was there for 28 years.
John Martini: When they were in San Francisco, South of Market?
Earl Van Note: Yeah, down there.
John Martini: And you've been living here in San Rafael for 44 years.
Earl Van Note: Since 1960. So we moved over here so we could have property to keep my horse on.
John Martini: [00:15:00] I couldn't help noticing you were wearing a ball cap that said "Marin Open Space"
Earl Van Note: Oh yeah, I patrolled for the Marin County Open Space district for about 20, a little over 25 years ago. Paolini, not the Captain the [00:15:30], the one that was … I guess was no relation or whatever. His wife, when he was superintendent in charge of the open space, his wife started … before they had kids. They had 5 boys or something like that. She rode a lot and so she [00:16:00] and another woman and myself set up a mounted patrol for the Open Space. That has worked real good.
Finally, I got run into Tony Silvera, leases it for cattle you know. And [00:16:30] my son's ex-wife's uncle owned part of Silvera ranch and he kept some steers up there. He died several years ago. I'd go up there when he was moving cattle, he was part of our family, and I'd talk with him. [00:17:00] When he got sick, I kind of took over moving the cattle. And so, then Paolini and I moved them one time and I don't know, I fell into doing that now for the last 25-30 years. And I like to ride and work with cattle. And so then [00:17:30] I start that and then when I moved over here those guys that live you can see that house right through there.
John Martini: Across the street.
Earl Van Note: Yeah, he lived there. He was with the Sheriff's posse. And he saw that I had a horse, so he came over and got acquainted with me right away and so I started riding. He says “ [00:18:00] You need to join the posse.” And I said “I just bought a house here and more money than I ever thought was in the country” so anyway, he said “I'll get you in." So, from that day in when the posse had a call out he'd call me. I didn't have a trailer or stuff like that you know. He said “you've got my trailer, just use it anytime [00:18:30] you want it." So anyway I did with all the years then that he was there. And I rode for about... I joined the posse in 1972 and finally broke down and joined ‘em. So he says, “I want you in there. We need somebody in there that can ride." And he says, “And I want [00:19:00] you there.” So I said “okay” And I rode with them all the time up until ‘72. And well I've still been riding with them.
John Martini: Have you ever patrolled for the National Park lands or anything like that?
Earl Van Note: In 1980 when that trail-side killer was there? We would patrol out there every weekend. [00:19:30] Well I was in charge of getting the crew from the posse to go out and ride. We'd take two people in our crew and for a while, it was really get riders fine to get out. They love to get out there and I guess be cops or something. Then it got so they [00:20:00] had trouble getting people to go out so I had to go Saturdays and Sundays both. I'd go out there and patrol. And let's see I can't remember the sheriff's name. I can't remember his name now. He said, “Well, you guys run this guy out of here” and they did. They caught him in San Mateo County.
John Martini: They put him away.
Earl Van Note: He said, “Yeah, [00:20:30] well you guys got the credit of running him out of Marin County.”
John Martini: I want to thank you much. This is good, I got some great stuff.
Earl Van Note: Well, I hope you got something you can use.
John Martini: You filled in some big blank spots about our knowledge there that Muir Beach and what life was like.
Earl Van Note: Yeah.
John Martini: Thank you very much and this is the end of the interview.
Earl Van Note: You're welcome.
Description
Earl Van Note Discusses his time at Muir Beach where he was stationed in the Coast Artillery Corp as part of the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco from 1941 to 1943
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