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Clint Goodwin Interview- part II
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December 14, 2014 Sparks, NV Interviewed by Joshua Bell, Volunteer Oral Historian and Researcher, National Park Service This interview is part of the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area Oral History Project. The interview with Donald Brydon was recorded with his permission on a digital recorder. Copies of the audio file are preserved in mp3, wav and wma formats and are on file at the offices of the National Park Service in Anchorage, Alaska. The transcript has been lightly edited. Joshua Bell: Today is December 15, 2014. My name is Joshua Bell, volunteer oral historian and researcher with the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area. I'm joined again by Clint Goodwin. Thanks for being with us again, Clint. Clint Goodwin: [00:00:20] It's an honor, it's an honor, Josh. Joshua Bell: Honor's all mine here. It's great to talk with you again. I've looked over your last interview, and I came up with a couple of questions. These are going to be kind of random. But I'll try to put them in context as best I can as we go. When you were stationed in Seattle, before you went up to the Aleutians, did you get to see any of Seattle? Clint Goodwin: [00:00:59] Yeah, we got to go into town pretty regularly. In fact I had one of my buddies, a big Mexican guy. He boxed in the semi-wind-up on the boxing card in downtown Seattle. Joshua Bell: Really. Clint Goodwin: [00:01:23] Yeah, I can't think of his name now, big Mexican kid, tough, really tough. Joshua Bell: I want to get this, you boxed him? Clint Goodwin: [00:01:34] No. We had a nice gym at this particular fort we were stationed at. And we had a heavy bag in there and I used to work with him on the heavy bag. Getting him through his punches off it's tough. And then in the mornings sometimes if he would come by and wake me up in the barracks, I would get up and run with him. He was in better shape than me and I couldn't keep up with him. Wish I could remember his name but I can't. Joshua Bell: Oh goodness. All right what else did you do in Seattle? Clint Goodwin: [00:02:21] That was basically it. Just go into town and the bars and that was about it. Walk around down town, look at the girls, hope something would happen. That was about it though. Joshua Bell: That sounds pretty typical of a young GI out on the town. Clint Goodwin: [00:02:54] We had a hole in the fence around that particular fort we was in. There was a hole in the fence in the back. And the guys that were married would slip through the hole and get a cab, and go to wherever their wife was, hotels, I don't know about motels. But maybe evening staying with relatives, or friends, or something. We had some of them got back just in time and [slip] through the hole in the fence to get on the trucks to take us down to the docks, to take us down to the ship that took us to the Aleutians. That was something. Joshua Bell: Here's another question that we came with. When did you find out that Japan had bombed Dutch Harbor? Clint Goodwin: [00:04:01] When we were on the ship. When we were on the ship going to Dutch Harbor. I don’t remember where our position was in the Gulf of Alaska. Somewhere along in here we got word. There were rumors on the ships and a group of guys, a group of GIs the rumors would go on all the time. but this one was the real McCoy. Joshua Bell: What was the reaction to that? Clint Goodwin: [00:04:36] Well, it just kind of like, well we know what we're up against now. we know what we're facing. It's finally happening. We did all this basic training. We went across country in the train. We were at this fort in Seattle for a while, we did guard duty downtown for a while, and then we got on an old beat up ship and headed for the Aleutian Islands. We didn’t really know where we was going, but we did when they told us that they'd bombed Dutch Harbor. The rumors you know, we're going to the Aleutians, we're going here, we're going there. It just goes on and on. Joshua Bell: What was your first impression of the area? What do you remember thinking? Clint Goodwin: [00:05:35] Desolate. Really bad weather, rain, fog, wind constantly. And these places where we were landing were just wind swept places with no trees. Nothing but muskeg [00:06:04] that was it. No nothing in the way of a tree or anything. And nothing was level, it was all hilly and I was just kind of desolate Joshua Bell. It wasn’t anything to get excited about. Joshua Bell: You had said that at some point when you were at Dutch Harbor you set up a machine emplacement is that right. Clint Goodwin: [00:06:42] No I think there was one already set up. Because they loaded us on barges and took us across to Umnak Island and that's where we really started our first runway. So we didn’t really stay at Dutch Harbor very long, but I think the navy had already set up some anti-aircraft guns. Joshua Bell: Did you ever work one of those, or machine gun emplacement when they were - Clint Goodwin: [00:07:18] No. I never did, never did. We were all so busy working we didn’t have time to do any of that kind of stuff. We were working all the time, seven days a week. We was working even if it wasn’t safe, we would even work with lights on. But we didn’t do that too much because we didn’t want to give away our positions. So we were just basically work, work, work, get that runway laid out and get those site, what do you call them where they park the planes? Where the fighter planes would come in and pull you around they'd back them into these little [placements], I can't think of the name of them. Joshua Bell: Oh, I know what you're talking about and the name… what you call them escapes me too. Clint Goodwin: [00:08:19] Then later on, then the light bombers were coming in, like two engine bomber, I can't think of the name of it. The very [unintelligible 00:08:30], and the PBYs... The PBYs was really our main plane for reconnaissance and keeping an eye on what's going on around us. I think if a PBY went over right now I'd know what it was without looking out there. Can't think of anything to add to that Josh. Joshua Bell: Did you ever work under fire? Clint Goodwin: [00:09:14] Not really, we worked under the threat of it. It could happen, all the time it could happen, it could happen. Usually we would stack our M1 rifles. You know how they do that in the military, M1. We finally got M1s by then. We started out with the 03 in the First World War. I hate to shoot that thing. Oh that thing had a kick to it, something terrible. It was sure an accurate weapon I shot expertly with that. I never shot a rifle in my life. Joshua Bell: They made it easy for you. Clint Goodwin: [00:10:05] Why I shot expert because I paid attention to what the Sergeant was saying. A lot of those farm boys who'd been shooting all their lives, they thought, "Shoot I can do that." And I shot expert and a lot of them didn’t. Joshua Bell: So you got to listen to the sergeant, that's the secret. Clint Goodwin: [00:10:24] Yeah, because he knew what he was talking about. Joshua Bell: How did you and your friends pass the time? Clint Goodwin: [00:10:38] We didn’t really have a lot of time, it was work all the time, work, work, work. If we did have any time we had a still we always managed to do that. Joshua Bell: What was that? Clint Goodwin: [00:11:01] We always built a still. There was always somehow, some way, somebody would get all the stuff together and we'd make a still. And you could always count of four or five guys all sitting around with their cup out of their mess kit catching the dribbles out of that still. Joshua Bell: What do you guys call that stuff? Clint Goodwin: [00:11:35] What the heck did we call it? Oh, god, I can't remember Josh. Joshua Bell: I've heard it called a couple of things, but the one that might be sticking out is raisin jack. Clint Goodwin: [00:11:51] No, no. No we made it out of other stuff … I can't think what we called it. Joshua Bell: Maybe it will come to you. Clint Goodwin: [00:12:05] Yeah. I know one thing for us it rolled out of the little spigot, it wasn’t filtered; it wasn’t anything. It was just raw whiskey. Man, in our outfit we had a bunch of regular army guys, and Josh, I hate to say this but they were nothing but a bunch of drunks. They were a worthless bunch if I ever met. God, they were a sorry bunch. There was one of them that chewed tobacco constantly; he even had a cud in his mouth when he went to sleep. He was one of them that I know that he didn’t change his clothes. It was months went by that he didn’t change his clothes. Stump was his name, Stump. We had one his name was Riles, Jack Riles, big, big guy. He finally made sergeant, but it didn’t do anything to his conduct. And that was their main skill, wherever we landed, wherever we got established was making a still. Joshua Bell: Priority one. Clint Goodwin: [00:13:45] Yeah. Joshua Bell: I was wondering if you could tell me about some of your friends. What their names were where they were from, what they did? Clint Goodwin: [00:14:03] Herman Kingsley, he was from Arkansas originally. You know Josh - here's the thing - most of the guys that I went in with they were drafted. When we went in and we all met in those barracks back there in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, we was young guys that was already working, we were brought up, we were used to having cars. And Herman Kingsley was working in Oklahoma and he rode the bus in to the induction center. He was a young tough guy, and he turned out to be about the best bulldozer I ever seen. He was something else on a D-8. He was just a natural thing. In fact when he got out the service he worked for several construction companies. One was in Venezuela, and he went down there on a road-building job. I guess he was down there about a year. He was on a big construction job in Denver, on the dozer. He didn’t stay on it, he went into the … I'm trying to think of, air conditioning. There was Bev Lane, Bev Lane was from Minnesota. Good solid guy. Let's see who else, you know when I have to name off names I get kind of stalled on it. Lawrence Gram he was a farm boy from Burlington, Colorado. He was born, and raised, and died in the same house that he started out in. he never got married. His whole life was farming, farming and cattle. I used to stop and see him once in a while. [00:16:24] You know so many of these guys are gone now. Don Johnson was a salesman selling signs. You know in the farmers' fields you'd see these signs in the fields about certain things, billboards. And that was his business. Oh man, Ed Worth really these guys pretty much were in the trades, carpentry, and plumbing, and electrician, and welding, and heavy equipment. So I'm trying to think of some other guys, Howie Olm, Howie Olm was dragline operator - Joshua Bell: - That's O-L-M? Clint Goodwin: [00:17:21] And we did a reunion in his place in Fort Washington, Wisconsin one time. And he had worked himself up to. When he got out he was a dispatcher for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in Milwaukee. Joshua Bell: What was his last name, Clint? Clint Goodwin: [00:17:39] Ohm, OHM. Oh man, our Sergeant Rogers, you know what he had it in for me, he'd be a lot of trouble. I did a lot of extra duty on account of him, but we wound up being the best of friends. One of the last reunions of the 807th Engineers did was in Des Moines, Iowa. And it was only like six of us showed up. And on the last day everybody took off and it just left me and Roger in the front desk room. And I rented a car and drove up from Omaha, flew into Omaha and rented a car. And we were sitting there together and he turned to me and says, "Goodwin, I want you to get in that car and get on home." And I said, "What about you Sgt. what are you going to do?" He said, "Don’t you worry about I'll take care of myself. You get on home." That's the last time I saw him. He died about three months later of cancer at the VA in Florida. Joshua Bell: What kind of extra duty did he have you do? Clint Goodwin: [00:19:10] Full field pack at night. I was digging a hole, working in the kitchen. Let's see, what else did he get me doing? I ought to remember all of them. One kind of cold day I was on extra duty and he said, "There's a pick and a shovel I want you to dig that hole out there between the barracks and the kitchen. The ground was froze Joshua Bell, when I hit it with a pick it splintered, the dirt. You couldn't even pick it, you couldn't even swing a pick on it, it was froze. I messed around out there for a while. He finally sent word out, "Get back in your barracks." [00:20:19] You know Josh, I don’t think I was really a very good solider. Joshua Bell: Why do you say that? Clint Goodwin: [00:20:28] Well it seemed like I was always in trouble about something. You know when I got out I was only a corporal, everybody else had gone on to what's that first, between the corporal and a Sargent, I guess it's changed now. But I think giving me the corporal stripes was just a gift just to make me feel good. Joshua Bell: Well don’t feel too bad, my - Clint Goodwin: [00:21:11] I don’t. Joshua Bell: I say that because among my grandfather's stuff we found some sergeant stripes, but we noticed on his discharge papers that he was out as a private first class. Clint Goodwin: [00:21:29] Well that's basically what I was a private first class. Joshua Bell: So something happened somewhere. Clint Goodwin: [00:21:37] Yeah. But on our way back they put this notice on the bulletin board on the ship of the guys that were now corporals or T5s, and I happen to be one. And I thought, "My golly, am I going to go home as a T5?" I thought I was going to go home as private first class. You know after we get to talking I'll probably think of a lot of guys that I can't think of right now. Joshua Bell: You know what, that's fine. If you wouldn't mind writing those down - just the names, and if you want to write a couple of notes next to them that would be just fine. Clint Goodwin: [00:22:28] I'll try to do that. I remember one guy before we get off here. I remember one guy he was … There's always a guy in the bunch that's always cracking jokes and everybody laughs. When we went ashore in Okinawa our company commander was sick and we carried him to shore on a cot, army cot. And here we are wading ashore and these guys are carrying their company commander, Bud Wells that was his name Bud Wells. He died just a short time ago, about a year ago. His daughter sent me a note and told me he died. And he hollered out and said, "Get these troops out of this hot sun." It was really hot and humid, and there was no way we was going to get out of the hot sun. And it was so fitting here we were in a mess and he hollers out. And out company commander as sick as he was said, "I knew it. There's always somebody got to say something like that." [00:23:50] You know our company commander he was a pretty decent guy, his name was Nozick, and I always wanted to see him after we got out and we had our reunions, but he never came to any of them. But he was really a decent guy. You know when we were in Geiger Fields when we come back from the Aleutians they put us at Geiger Fields in Spokane, Washington. And we were retraining and getting equipment and stuff. And I was in a mortar crew. I was taking mortar crew training. And we had a guy in our outfit he went AWOL and he was gone, I don't know about a week. So this place where we were taking mortar training we had to get on the trucks and they would truck us to wherever this place was in Washington, just kind of like desert. And we would fire our mortars and put up buck fence and we'd sleep right there. And that's where our field ranges were, and they set us there just right out like we're in combat. Well, we all went into town one night, in this little town in Washington, and Nozick, our company commander, he was with us and in comes this guy that was AWOL. And he saw him and he called him over and he said, "You're AWOL." He said, "I know, sir." He said, "I tell you what, you get yourself back to fort and I want to see you in the barracks when I get back. And you keep your word with me and when we come back we'll forget about this whole thing." And sure enough he was, he was there waiting. Joshua Bell: How about that. Clint Goodwin: [00:26:03] So, you know it wasn’t really military wasn’t following the rules but it worked anyway. Joshua Bell: It sounded like it's what was needed. Clint Goodwin: [00:26:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Captain Nozick. Joshua Bell: What's the last name on that Clint? Clint Goodwin: [00:26:26] Nozick, NOZICK I think. I think that was the way he spelt his name. I never did know whether he was regular army or not. He was in before Pearl Harbor. See Josh, I don't know if I said this the first time we started on this, but the 807th was formed in Yacutat and it was formed of these regular army guys. And they made these concrete runways and they did it practically by hand. And he was there then, so he might have been regular army. Joshua Bell: That's a lot of work. Clint Goodwin: [00:27:29] Yeah. I've been told by private pilots that fly in the last [inaudible 00:27:35] that they still use that runway. Joshua Bell: How about that. I wanted to ask you some more about being in the islands. You said that you were stationed at Adak before the invasion of Attu, is that right? Clint Goodwin: [00:28:00] Yeah. Joshua Bell: Okay, did you go to Attu? Clint Goodwin: [00:28:06] No, they broke us up. I never could figure that out. I never thought much about it really. But they only sent I think two companies to Adak and Attu, and the rest of us didn’t go. I never could figure that out. Joshua Bell: How did you feel about that? Clint Goodwin: [00:28:30] Well, to tell you the truth I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought because I didn’t really know where those guys were going. And then when I found out where they were at, I thought to myself I was on fortunate guy. We didn’t have any casualties. It was pretty scary, pretty scary. It was a type of combat that you weren’t really trained for. If you get pinned down, you get pinned down in frozen muskeg. And if you're not dressed for it, and even if you are dressed for it, how long you going to last. Joshua Bell: Yeah, exactly. I wanted to know did you know about, where you involved in the invasion of Kiska at all, or the planned invasion of Kiska? Clint Goodwin: [00:29:33] No. I don’t know anything about that. For some reason I don’t seem to remember anything about that. Joshua Bell: Okay, all right. Let's see… What was the follow up here … Oh, I wanted to ask how did you feel about leaving he Aleutians? Clint Goodwin: [00:29:58] I was glad to leave them, but I didn’t know what was ahead of us. And when we got to Geiger Field in Spokane; we were training me for mortars, 60- millimeter mortar, and you know, there was something kind of strange happening then. There was guys in our outfit that disappeared all of a sudden, we never saw them again, and Bev Lane was one of them. I still see Bev Lane now, sometimes I go over and visit with him first a year. And he got a discharge, but it wasn’t honorable. He don’t like to talk about it, but as close as I can get to it was that he kind of lost it because he was one of the guys that went to Attu and Kiska. And he did say one time to me when I was visiting him over there that dragging those dead bodies around and burying them he said, "I didn’t want no more of that. I didn’t want any more of any of it, none of it." He still draws a pension from the VA for that. Joshua Bell: As he should. Clint Goodwin: [00:31:40] He never told me what it was, but I guess it's still with him. Joshua Bell: Yeah, yeah, that will be with him which is good. It's one of the very least with the very least -- it's something that we can do at the very least. Boy that's tough. Clint Goodwin: [00:32:05] They gave us a day in leave, it wasn’t a… What’d you call it Josh? I can't think of the name, a furlough. It wasn’t a furlough it was a delay of leave 30 days. So when we got off the ship and they took us to Geiger Field they gave us all of us this delay in leave and we all took off, we all headed home. And I was home I think for two weeks and then I had to come back. And we knew that we were in for something, we just knew it. Because the combat in Europe had changed, we were gaining in the pacific and the south pacific and the south pacific. We were beginning to come out of a lot of bad situations, and I think it was round about then wasn’t it that MacArthur was able to walk ashore in the Philippines. Joshua Bell: What month and year was that Clint, that you left? Clint Goodwin: [00:33:20] You know what I can't remember. I just can't pin it down. But anyway the notice on the bulletin board was have you barracks bag packed and be prepared to leave. And they backed a train in and loaded up on that train, took us to Seattle and put us on a brand new troop ship. And we left Seattle in one of the worst Pacific storms on record, and we fought a pacific storm for six days getting to Hawaii. And we had guys that were so sick that they hadn’t eaten for days, it was terrible, it was terrible. Some of them had diarrhea and there was no air conditioning, oh man. When we got off that ship in Hawaii we were a sorry looking bunch. We were filthy; we hadn’t bathed, we hadn’t shaved, we hadn’t changed clothes, we hadn’t eaten hardly anything, we couldn't eat, we were so sick. It was terrible. We had more time at sea than most of the crewmembers on that ship. We had more time at sea than they did, ah what a storm that was. That storm was so bad, Josh, that we would go, the ship would go into these great big enormous waves and the whole front of the ship would disappear. And then it would just slowly rise out of it again. And there was minesweepers, our escort. All we ever saw of them was their smoke stack. I don't know how those guys made it on those things. But when we left Seattle we were on LSTs and all of our bulldozers, draglines, trucks, everything was in those LSTs and we knew we were in for trouble and the rumors started. Joshua Bell: What were some of the rumors? Clint Goodwin: [00:36:01] Oh, we were going here, we were going there, we were going to Okinawa, and we did go to Okinawa, but that was after it was all secured, Guam it was secured. It took us a month, it took us a month to make it to Okinawa, you know and LSTs I don't know what their knot speed was but it wasn’t very much. We slept on the deck and when we hit that typhoon we were about two days from Okinawa we hit that big typhoon. Holy smoke I don't know how we ever got through that, I really don’t. The landing craft that was chained down on our deck was gone the next morning. Joshua Bell: What was chained down on the deck? Clint Goodwin: [00:37:02] The landing craft. Joshua Bell: A landing craft. Clint Goodwin: [00:37:08] It was changed on the top of the deck and we were sleeping underneath it. When we hit that typhoon they made us all go below and we had to stay, we just laid in the hallways on this LST. Oh man it was scary. Because those LSTs were not built for heavy seas, they're flat bottom and rough riding anyway, boy. Joshua Bell: So you must have been kind of happy to see Okinawa? Clint Goodwin: [00:37:51] Well no, because when we got to Okinawa what did we see but battle ships, destroyers, fighter planes up above us and anti-aircraft going off, and the fighter planes fighting up above us Japs and us, bang, bang, bang, and it just uproar all over. There was smoke all over the place and good god, I wasn’t happy to see that. And the Marines had already gone ashore. And our LST went right up on the shore and dropped our lid down and right away we get those things cranked up, get them out, get them on there and start building a runway. And we made a runway out of crushed coral. It's almost like concrete when you pack it down. We had bombers landing on that thing. Joshua Bell: What kind of bombers? Clint Goodwin: [00:39:07] These, what the heck you call that four engine not the 29s but the - Joshua Bell: - You had the Liberators? Clint Goodwin: [00:39:18] Yeah Liberators. Joshua Bell: And B-17s but I don't know if they were any B-29s down there. Clint Goodwin: [00:39:24] I don’t remember seeing one. I really don’t. But every night the Japs come over and drop bombs on us, every night. Joshua Bell: How did - Clint Goodwin: [00:39:44] I'm getting away from the Aleutian Islands. Joshua Bell: What's that? Clint Goodwin: [00:39:47] I said I'm getting away from the Aleutian Islands, Josh. Joshua Bell: Oh that's okay, that's okay, we're in for the whole story here. Clint Goodwin: [00:39:57] In the previous interview did I tell you about the Japanese landing on the marine runway above us with glider planes? Joshua Bell: You had mentioned it briefly. Clint Goodwin: [00:40:13] Yeah, yeah it was at night and this bomber, Japanese bomber towed those gliders all the way from Japan, and when they got in the right position he just cut them loose and they glided right smack in on that marine corps runway. Of course none of them survived it. Man that must have been an awful trip knowing you're never going to come back, for sure you aren’t going to come back. There was dead bodies lying all over that runway next morning. Oh my God. Joshua Bell: What do you remember thinking about that, how did it make you feel? Clint Goodwin: [00:41:02] How senseless the whole thing was. Guys losing their lives like that. They were our enemy that's true, but good God, Josh. You know I thought to myself how can anybody get themselves cranked up to do this kind of stuff and believe it in. Those Japanese guys they didn’t want to be taken prisoner, it was a dishonor to them. It was unbelievable. But you know what Josh? It all goes back to the same thing the American solder then was a smart kid. He knew how to work, he knew how to figure things out, he knew how to fix something so it was better, or if what he was issued didn’t work right he would figure out some way of making work better. And I still think that's how we beat them, we were smarter than them, we knew how to do things. Your company commander could tell you, "I want you guys to do so and so." "Yes sir." But then we'd say, "Hey you know what I know a better way of doing that, and that's the way we'd do it. American solder then, I don't know about now, but then he was a good solid guy. He knew how to do things. I don’t think you could compare that with now anyway because what they're doing now is totally different, and they're doing it under different circumstances. It's got a lot of hi-tech stuff connected to it. With us it was basically pretty simple, you had your M1, you had your flask on your belt with drinking water, and your barracks bag full of your stuff. And that was about it. But we were always doing stuff, we were always making something. I think that was it we were always making something. We all made a chest to put our stuff in. We'd pick up whatever we could pick up that we could make a chest out of with a lid on it. Keep our stuff clean and dry. I think everybody in the company had a chest. They'd give us those five man tents, we'd but floors in them, we'd put frames in them, we'd put doors on them, steps on them. We had regular housekeeping routine took turns keeping everything clean. I don't know if guys do that now or not. Joshua Bell: What kind of things did you do for our housekeeping routine? Clint Goodwin: [00:45:06] Just make sure the fire kept going and kind of sweep up. We didn’t have a broom but we just kind of pick up. I don’t think we had any brooms, I don’t remember any of them. Just keep things neat. Joshua Bell: Did you do that on the Aleutians and on Okinawa? Clint Goodwin: [00:45:31] Yeah. Joshua Bell: Both places. Clint Goodwin: [00:45:34] Yeah. And another thing we did in Okinawa it was kind of funny, you know the Japs left all their equipment behind when we secured the island and they had a lot of the little one and a half [ton] flatbed trucks. It was just the exact image of a Chevy and some of the guys would get them running again so if we're going to have a movie somewhere that night, they'd come through the company, "Hey we're going to the movies, you guys want to go?" And everybody would run out and jump on this flatbed truck. And we'd go steal the gas naturally. Oh man. I never will forget that. Joshua Bell: Oh goodness. I wanted to ask before and I forgot to, did you ever see any B-29s? Clint Goodwin: [00:46:43] Yeah. Joshua Bell: How did the Marston mats respond to the B-29s? Clint Goodwin: [00:46:49] How did what? Joshua Bell: The mats the Marston mats, the runways? Clint Goodwin: [00:46:57] Oh, well the runway that we built at Okinawa Josh, when you pulverize the coral, and lay it out and then roll it, and then when it rains on it it's just like concrete. Joshua Bell: There you go. Clint Goodwin: [00:47:14] And yeah it could handle probably anything. We didn’t have to lay down planks. That coral oh man that stuff was rock hard just like concrete. Joshua Bell: I wanted to ask also what were the names of the airfields you helped build or worked on later? Clint Goodwin: [00:47:42] Well, we developed all of them. There was Umnak, Fort Heiden, Adak, and then Okinawa. But Adak we did a lot of construction there, lots of construction. That was really I thought it was a masterpiece the way they did it because they didn’t have a length for the runway so they built out into the ocean. And then we laid the planks on top of that. And then on top of that we tunneled into that big hill that was over on the other side, we tunneled into that and set off our charge and broke off a lot of it so we had the rock to build out on that runway. I'm telling you some of those guys on them gag lines and Cats, and carry alls. They got really good at it. We were using equipment that was beat up. I mean it had to be patched all the time. You know we're talking way back when the D-8 had a cable operated dozer blade and you had to have a little bulky engine that started your diesel engine. First thing you did was start your little engine and then you clicked in the diesel engine and got it going. I mean a [inaudible 00:49:34] then it was a work of art because you had to reach back with your right hand or left hand, which ever worked best for you, and you had to work that lever for the dozer blade. And the other time you're pulling on the lever you're either going forward, or sideways, or whatever you were doing. It wasn’t hydraulic like it is now. Man we had guys in our outfit, Josh, that were just master mechanics they were something else. They kept that pile of junk going. You know I think I told you we took a 50-gallon drum and cut it in half and filled it with water. And we put some, I forget what we put in there so that it would keep it half-full, and we'd take the rollers off those Cats because the sand would just ground them up just right and left. And I would sit there with a welding torch hard facing those rollers day after day in a tent, with this 50-gallon drum half-full of water. And you put the rollers in the water and keep rolling them you see so it wouldn't get too hot. And then you're hard facing the surfaces, and they'd put them back on the Cats again and away they'd go. It just went on and on and on, never let up. Boy. Joshua Bell: Wow determination, determination right there. Clint Goodwin: [00:51:30] Yeah and another word for it is guts. Nobody complained. Oh, we did we complained all the time. But we went out and did it. Yeah, man. Joshua Bell: Being around airfields so much you must have had a good chance to look at some of the birds they had landing there. Clint Goodwin: [00:51:56] What was that Josh? Joshua Bell: You must have had a good view of some of the airplanes that came in on your fields? Clint Goodwin: [00:52:02] Oh yeah. Yeah P-40, P-51, P-38. There was one Martin bomber, that Martin bomber was a two engine, man that thing was fast. And that Liberator, and then there was another two engine bomber, what was it called a B-25 is that it? Joshua Bell: The Mitchell? Clint Goodwin: [00:52:26] Mitchell yeah, golly. Then we had that one pursuit plane, that fighter plane called the Air Cobra, had a .50 millimeter cannon in the propeller shaft, with a tricycle landing gear. It didn’t work out too well in the Aleutians because it didn’t have a smooth surface to land on, and that tricycle landing gear couldn't stand the banging around landing like the P-40, and P-51. P-38 was my favorite. That twin engine. Joshua Bell: Yeah, twin engine, twin the fantail yeah. Clint Goodwin: [00:53:16] That was my favorite. Joshua Bell: Yeah that's my favorite too. Clint Goodwin: [00:53:21] In Okinawa my favorite was that Marine Corps’ Corsair, that gull wing fighter plane they had. Holy smokes that was something else, man that was some plane. But I think the P-38 was my favorite. Joshua Bell: I like that one too. Clint Goodwin: [00:53:47] But Josh, we would have them come back off of a run and they would be full of holes and beat up, and how those aircraft mechanics got all that stuff fixed and got them back in the air again. You know I really used to feel, really feel for those pilots. You talk about a tough assignment. If they had to crash in the ocean their time was about five minutes, that's it. If you couldn't get to them they were gone. And if they crashed on land hitting that muskeg change of living you might have a little bit of chance, that's about it. Boy. Joshua Bell: Another thing I wanted to ask about was if you could go back again would you change the direction you went in the service? If you'd been given the choice would you change the direction you went, and which branch of the service you were in and all that? Clint Goodwin: [00:55:22] No I don’t think I would have, Josh. I didn’t really know what to expect. But the day that I was inducted my dad, my stepfather he was from Scotland. And he'd been through the First World War. And I got out the car and, we shook hands and he said, "Son if you get a chance, ask for the engineers." And I did not knowing really why. But it really turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. And then on top of that I had experience working in the oil fields so I was doing things I was familiar with. I knew how to handle rope, cable, and heavy equipment, pipe, heavy pipe. I knew how to move stuff around that was heavy, draglines. So it kind of fit in for me. No I don’t think I would have changed it Josh. Joshua Bell: I think the last question I have for you Clint; I like to ask this question? Clint Goodwin: [00:56:49] What was that Josh? Joshua Bell: I like to ask this question of all the people I interview. What, during your service, are you most proud of? Clint Goodwin: [00:57:06] I think I was proud of the guys I was with, because they did what they were asked to do and they did it better than they were asked to do it. I think that was my main thing. Joshua Bell: Well I know that the world would be a very different place if there weren’t folks like you out there who stood up and did their part. Did their part in the war effort and we really owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to you and your comrades both on the home front and on the frontlines at that time. And we want to especially thank you for sharing your stories with us. It means a lot. Clint Goodwin: [00:58:10] Thank you Josh, thank you. [End of recorded material at 00:58:28]
Description
Part II of Clint Goodwin's interview about his life and World War II.
Duration
58 minutes, 5 seconds
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