A Veteran’s Voice: An interview with Roy Fox

This interview, which took place on May 30, 2002 at the Canton Public Library, was used to understand the experiences of an individual, Roy Warren Fox, during the time he served in the military during WWII. This interview will also be used to help other people understand the experiences of the individuals who participated in WWII as well as other wars.

TH: What is your full name?

RF: Roy Warren Fox

TH: What was you rank in the military?

RF: During the war?

TH Yeah

RF: First Lieutenant

TH: What branch of the military did you serve in?

RF: Army

TH: Anything more specific?

RF: Self-propelled automatic weapons

TH: What were those, can you give me an example?

RF: Anti aircraft, forty millimeter, forties, quad fifties

TH: When did you enlist?

RF: February 1^st, 1940, long before the war

TH: Why did you enlist then?

RF: I went in to become an officer in the New York National Guard and then I decided I couldn’t lie about my age.

TH: Why, how old were you then?

RF: 20, I was 20 then, you had to be 21 at the time.

TH: Oh, ok…to become an officer?

RF: A couple of years later you had to be 18

TH: Why did you want to become an officer in the national guard…just that was what you wanted to do for your career?

RF: Well, nope, it was just Hitler was obviously making moves and we were obviously gonna get involved and it seemed like a good-

TH: So you wanted to get involved?

RF: Yep

TH: I see. My next question is-

RF: See that was a whole different generation

TH: Yeah, people now probably don’t want to get involved

RF: Nope, nope

TH: So that is why you got involved? Is that what you thought that you were going to be fighting for?

RF: Yep

TH: If you enlisted, you thought that you were going to go to Europe and fight for…?

RF: Yep

TH: Did you enlist with anyone else, such as a friend or family member?

RF: Yeah, a fellow named Graham Berry and he got his commission…it was very funny. We had a class and there were ten of us in class

TH: In your class when you were training?

RF: Yep and I had the highest grades in the class and I was the only one that turned it down.

TH: You turned down the commission?

RF: I had to

TH: Why?

RF: Well, because I wasn’t 21

TH: Oh that’s right

RF: I wasn’t gonna lie about it

TH: So, you’re friend became the officer and you didn’t get to?

RF: I ended up being regimental master.

TH: What would the officer have done?

RF: Boy, you are way back…the difference between an enlisted man and an officer is that an officer can take official responsibility

TH: Oh ok

RF: It’s not so clear-cut anymore so, only officers could vouch for something and create a record and have it believed to be…it’s a legality kind of thing.

TH: Would you have rather been an officer than go out and fight? Did the officers actually fight?

RF: Well, An officer is with the men

TH: He is with the men?

RF: Oh absolutely. And in fact if he doesn’t stick his neck up to keep things organized…if he is any good he controls the action.

TH: And you would have rather been officer than a regular person?

RF: Oh yes, and then I did go to OCS[unintelligible]

TH: What is OCS?

RF: Officer camp and school

TH: And that is after you turned 21 so you could actually do it?

RF: Yep

TH: Where and when did you start your training and did you have any previous experiences with what you were being trained for?

RF: Yes, I went to Peekskill military academy from 1932 to 36

TH: What was the name of the school?

RF: Peekskill

TH: Where was that?

RF: Upstate New York…well, Westchester.

TH: And you were just training to be an officer?

RF: I had some family history with that sort of thing…I always liked the military

TH: What did your training entail, like were you in classes or something to become an officer?

RF: Yes

TH: Did you have a lot of physical training?

RF: Yes

TH: What did you start your training in…to become an officer? What kind of stuff did you do in your training? Can you name a few things?

RF: Well, it’s pretty uniform it’s…it is getting completely qualified in weapons, tactics…what can I say?

TH: What kind of stuff did you learn when you were in the classes?

RF: I’m trying to relate to…if you’re trying to take people in unmarked areas, you have to be qualified to find your way

TH: Like using a compass and navigating maps?

RF: Maps, compasses and that sort of thing and orientation and if you’ve gotta lead a column of vehicles in a blackout and no road signs, you gotta not get lost, and you not only have to not get lost, but you’ve gotta be at scheduled points at scheduled times. Because there are other troops that depend on it

TH: Did you have a hard time in the classes or was it-?

RF: it was easy…ate it up

TH: What year did you start in active duty? Did you go right to Europe once you finished the training?

RF: No, Unfortunately again, I graduated at the top of my class at OCS and they kept me there as an instructor. For almost 2 years.

TH: But you would have rather gone right to Europe once you finished your training?

RF: It turned out to be better though because I got married instead.

TH: I can imagine how that would be better.

RF: My daughter was born two weeks after I left the States.

TH: When did you leave the States?

RF: February of ‘44

TH: Where did you go from the States?

RF: Directly to the south coast of England

TH: From there, I understand you went to Normandy.

RF: Yep

TH: I understand you were anti-aircraft to begin with and you became a rifleman. Can you tell me how that came about?

RF: Well, we got sunk. The ship we were on, the Susan B. Anthony, she towed a mine. Minesweepers, they go out first, and it made us almost a day late in getting to the beach, which wasn’t so bad. Except we got sunk. What happened was we towed the mine and my platoon was down in the bow of the ship all the way down next to the chain lockers. In the middle of the night word had came over the loud hailer that there were going to be depth charges dropped around us because we had been pulled out of the convoy to let this thing that they thought was a submarine follow us and drag away from them.

TH: And you were going to drop the depth charges to try and get the sub?

RF: And they dropped the depth charges and of course, people woke up and I said, “It’s ok, it’s just depth charges.” And I meant it. They aren’t being sunk.

TH: Did they wake up thinking that they were being sunk? What were you doing at the time?

RF: I was duty officer at the time

TH: What did you have to do for that?

RF: Just keep an eye on the troops…and do what we finally did. We slowed down and turned to starboard to pick up the landing craft so we could go onto the beach and the mine swung in and blew the starboard quarter-

TH: So the boat was going forward and you had the mine in tow and when you turned around the mine drifted and hit the boat?

RF: Yep and it blew us out of the water.

TH: So did many people get rescued or did many people die?

RF: Oh…anybody in the engine room or the starboard quarter got killed, sure.

TH: And you were in the ship?

RF: Yep, I was in the starboard bow

TH: How did you get out?

RF: Walked. As a matter of fact, everything went black, no electricity, no anything and we’re down below the water line with no light, and my reaction was “OK smart ass, now what do you do?” While I was thinking about it someone had the brains to say “flashlights!” And of course we all had flashlights. So, I went up one ladder one deck and there was some daylight there and somebody coming through and I said, “are we abandoning ship?” ‘cause you know, you don’t just go runnin’ you stay where you are until somebody tells you. And he said, “Yes we are.” So I went back down to send everybody up. And there were actually two compartments, I don’t know who was in the other one but they had nobody with them so I kept my first sergeant and we checked under the bunks in both compartments to make sure nobody was cold-cocked. And then I made the mistake of my life. Sergeant said, “You wanna take this duffel bag?” And I said “no, leave it here.” I had a payroll in it. It was nothing but invasion Franks, they were printed by the American bank for us to use if we had to buy anything in Germany.

TH: So basically you left all your money on there?

RF: It wasn’t much money, each man got about 15 bucks

TH: So how was that the biggest mistake of your life?

RF: Because, I took care of them, got everybody on deck, the deck was absolutely in turmoil…not panicked, but just, nobody was in charge. So I got up on a pipe head and lined people up and got them over the side. Of course once my platoon was gone, I went too. And going down the ladder someone hollered, “look out lieutenant.” It was a cargo net, ropes, in effect a rope ladder. And I got poked right in the middle of the back, real hard, pushed up against the side of the ship. When the pressure stopped, and I moved over, and about the time my head got down that low was where this was, there was a lifeboat data by the corvette that picked us up, a corvette is a miniature destroyer, and a lifeboat data is a piece of four inch pipe that is fed into a U for lifeboats to hang onto. About the time my head got next to it, but a couple of feet away, it bumped up against the side of the ship.

TH: And what did that do?

RF: And, I said “I’m not gonna get killed in this war” it was actually a good thing. The pipe was swinging back and forth as the boat rolled and rolled and rolled, and it was very forgiving, some good angel, something, stopped it. It would have blown right through me.

TH: And you said it buckled right through the hull of the ship the next time it came around?

RF: Yep, the next roll it hit so hard the data buckled, and it’s a four-inch pipe.

TH: So what stopped it?

RF: I have no idea, shear luck, but as I say it, instead of giving you the shakes it’s the kind of thing that says “I’m not gonna get killed in this war.”

TH: So where did you go from there?

RF: I got down to the Corvette and we kind of circled around and watched the invasion for about an hour. And finally got an LCVP.

TH: What is an LCVP?

RF: It’s a Landing craft, vehicle or personnel

TH: Oh so it’s a thing that holds tanks or people or…?

RF: Excuse me, it’s the smallest one, it’ll hold a jeep and a trailer or three squads.

TH: So instead of getting rescued from your sinking ship and brought back to another boat, they just brought you right to the invasion?

RF: Well, that’s our job.

TH: Well, didn’t you lose all of your anti-aircraft things and your guns?

RF: Yeah, that all went down with the ship

TH: What did you have for that?

RF: Quadruple fifty caliber machine guns on a halftrack that you rode in. They were huge. It had a truck front and a tank rear.

TH: So you would have taken that one of those transports you mentioned before?

RF: Our unit had…each battery had two platoons, each platoon had four gun sections, each gun section had a halftrack and a forty-millimeter. Anyway, it was 168 men and six officers. Only half of us were there because the other half was on an assignment on a little island off the beach. Anyway we were a split unit so we didn’t have very high priority for accommodations.

TH: So what were the antiaircraft things have been used for?

RF: Shooting any planes that flew by, just protecting the beach. And tanks and personnel, any target that got within range.

TH: So defending it as you were going up, like offensively?

RF: Well, defending it offensively yes

TH: So since you lost that in the ship, what did you do when you got to the beach?

RF: Well, when we hit the beach, the beach master said, “you go in over there,” and we became the right flank for the whole invasion. The thing that is interesting about that is that when we got into the landing craft this kid, that couldn’t have been more than 16, I said, “We go right in over there” there was a very prominent hill line that I knew we were supposed to be next to and he said, “Sir, I haven’t been in the beach yet and I haven’t checked with my control boat yet.” I said, “It’s ok, I know where we have to go.” And he said again “I haven’t checked with the control boat yet.”

TH: Why would you check with the control boat?

RF: Because he had headings that he was given or he was supposed to land. About the second time that I said that, he said “Sir, the Navy is in command when we hit the beach.” So I shut up, because he was right. It’s a good thing to because the invasion was about a mile and a half to the left and if we had gone into where I wanted to go we would have been the only ones there. I kept on having luck.

TH: So where did you actually end up on the beach?

RF: We actually ended up on Sugared Utah beach. Which was the right flank of the entire invasion. It was the right hand beach, the beach was split into sectors all the way through. Utah beach had three sectors, Omaha beach had three sectors, the British Juno beach had three sectors and Gold beach had three sectors.

TH: And you landed on the right sector of Utah?

RF: The right sector of the right beach.

TH: And so when you landed how long had the invasion been going on for?

RF: Oh, it was quiet by the time we hit the beach.

TH: So it was somewhat finished at the time…well not quite finished…

RF: There were two situations. The British had a terrible time. Omaha beach had a terrible time because there was an exercise going up on top of the hill where the rangers had to climbed up. So they had a hell of a time for a while. ‘Cause the Germans had no idea that we were going to be there, but they were there. On a training exercise, in fact for a while they were only firing wooden bullets ‘cause that was all they had, which probably saved a lot of lives. All we had when we got in was artillery fire.

TH: You had a gun when you went in there right?

RF: Oh yeah, I had a carbine, which doesn’t do much against artillery shells.

TH: The boats behind you were still firing on the beach, right?

RF: Oh sure. A matter of fact, Walter Baker, who’s an old Canton boy who was the Chairman of the Board of Education for years, was on a ship that was firing on the beach and he saw us get sunk. We didn’t know each other, but we ended up in the same town. He came from Pennsylvania and I came from New York.

TH: So when you got on the beach, where did you go from there, did you just try and run up as far as you could?

RF: We were directed, see there was someone coordinating all this stuff all the time, we were directed to a spot up toward the sea wall at the back of the beach. And we went, just went, up to it. And the next day the engineers were in right where we’d gone through, removing mines. See, you’ve gotta have luck

TH: So once you got to the sea wall…

RF: We just dug in and…just defended the right flank

TH: How long did that go on?

RF: That went on for three or four days. And our major problem was troops landing all through the middle of the night. I had to post outposts. You might have everyone dug into an area, but you have to have people out beyond that to be watching out. And we posted them every two or three hours at a stretch. And at the middle of the night, the second night I guess it was, a barrage balloon outfit had come in

TH: What is that?

RF: That’s the thing that, the comment was that “they ought to cut all those barrage balloons and let the damn island sink” when people got to England. Their balloons, gas filled, they were a little bit like miniature blimps, they were tethered, they were an obstruction for German aircraft. When a place that was very important, they had barrage balloons up all over the place so that the fighters couldn’t come in and attack.

TH: So they had those up on the second night?

RF: Yeah, because the hospitals and dumps and what not were being set up so those lanes had to be secure. Just to keep fighter aircraft away. And anyway, so I’m posting my outposts and damn near got killed by 50-calibur machine guns about a half a dozen times. Finally got somebody to nock the silly…idiot off the gun. He was terrified, he was just shooting at anything that moved.

TH: So it was just one guy that was shooting the gun?

RF: Yeah, and unfortunately I kept having to be the guy putting my head up

TH: So when you were there, were there a lot of other troops coming in and landing all the times and did you ever think that they might be Germans coming in?

RF: No, our guys knew what they were doing. As a matter of fact, well we had to clear mines too, I must have cleared about 600 mines and booby traps myself. You do that very carefully. And by the second or third night, we had stacks of teller mines which were German anti-tank mines, pancake-shaped ones. We rigged them on a rope so the guys could pull them across the road if the Germans came. And a duck, the amphibious trucks, a DUKW…there was a black driver, and one of the guys hollard to him, one of the guys with me said “we haven’t had anything since D-Day, can you throw us some of that?” ‘Cause the guy had rations for the hospital, like canned chicken and all kinds of things like that. So the guy stopped and threw a carton over the side and it landed right on the stack of teller mines… He took out of there so fast.

TH: Did all of them explode?

RF: Well, that ones stack

TH: Was it near anyone?

RF: Well, it was fairly near, but it didn’t hurt anybody.

TH: Did you get any of the chicken?

RF: Well, no, that was the problem, he was never gonna stop again…and I don’t blame him.

TH: So from where you were dug in, where did you go from there?

RF: Well, we finally got our equipment back and then we became anti-aircraft again. And we set up defenses around the ammo dumps and hospitals. And we had a fair amount of action. There was an occasional German fighter that flew by. Our major problem was British planes that thought they were over German territory. They thought that we were Germans and they shot at us.

TH: But you didn’t want to shoot them down?

RF: Well, we finally did shoot one. It was an understandable mistake because Germans began to paint invasion stripes on their planes. See, they had black and white stripes on the wings and the ME-109 and the spitfire looked pretty similar. And a guy with stripes was attacking and one of the gun sections shot him. I hopped into a jeep to go down cause I saw it was a British plane, to see what…I guess I got a mile to a mile and a half west to the base of the Duve River where he had already been. And here was this mud ball sitting on the back of the jeep with a couple of MP’s coming my way. So I stopped him and said, “sorry, but I think we shot you down.” And he said, “Oh quite all right old man, I thought I was over Gerry territory.” I looked down to where he was and the engine and the tail and the wingtips were probably a couple of hundred feet apart and you could see the track where he had rolled when the plane broke up…that’s why he was a mud ball.

TH: Did you stay mostly around the hospitals and the ammo depots to protect areas?

RF: On the way across to Paris, we did. But then in Liege, we were protecting the Duve River and…the Germans started to use the Buzz bombs.

TH: What are those?

RF: The B-1 was a flying bomb.

TH: So it was more like a missile?

RF: It was a bomb. And it was the fuselage, and it had wings and a tail and a radio. What they did was they launched them from a place in Germany that had straight line…the same compass direction to London, Brussels, Liege, I don’t know, three or four, or very slight variations of the angle, they could all hit from the same sight. And those things only flew at a few hundred feet of altitude, maybe a couple thousand maximum. And they flew in a straight line. If they had a spy, and they did have them, in the terminal area, they could do a little bit of directing, but mostly the engines were on an automatic cut-off, and the guy could adjust that cut off to do the maximum damage. And on of them hit a day nursery, and that was awful. I think the oldest kid in it was four. That was kind of…you’re never tough enough to look at that kind of thing. Anyway, then we got relieved of that duty and up into the Grinkehook (?) Rockville half of the forest to shoot Buzz bombs down, ‘cause that was where they were launching them.

TH: Were they big enough to shoot down? Or did they go too fast or too high?

RF: No, as a matter of fact, we were sighted, our whole battalion was, we were sighted so that they had to climb over us on the way out. But it took days and days to really get a hit. And I just happened to be standing, saying “I am adjusting the case” when we started to shoot them down. Because you see they officers job is to observe fire and correct things, you know, just be able to stand back and look over the shoulder. It’s like having someone standing at a solitaire game, you have a better perspective.

TH: Not necessarily telling them what to do, but correcting them if there is something wrong?

RF: Yeah, well, not even that blatant. Anyway, I just happened to be standing where I could see the tracer, the 40’s and the 50’s, where I could see the Buzz bomb coming, and it was really missing, ‘cause it was still unstable, it hadn’t gotten fully under control. And all I said on the phone was “anybody who’s firing get 50 feet below or 50 feet above the course line and it’ll fly right into you” and we started getting hits.

TH: Wow, how many of them did you hit?

RF: Oh, I guess one of our gun sections got a dozen all by itself…or more than that…maybe twenty. Their control was unstable, so they all did wave in the beginning. Anyway, our battalion got the highest shoot down score, airplanes and bombs, in the entire European theater. And it had to be within the hundreds. And it was exciting because…when you shot a Buzz bomb down, you had a 2000-pound bomb falling at you. So you kinda had to shoot and duck

TH: Is that how big they were, how big were most of them?

RF: A thousand kilograms or two thousand pound, they were about as wide as this table (approx. 8 feet). The idea was to be a blockbuster in London. Or any city

TH: So it just shot off a place in Germany and it would just fly…like an intercontinental missile?

RF: Yeah, exactly…it was the first intercontinental missile. And the British pilots used to do all kinds of crazy brave things. They’d fly along side of them and tip the wings and knock them down. The German’s figured that out after a while and put detonators on the wingtips.

TH: Did the Germans actually hit many of the cities like London?

RF: Yep

TH: What was the furthest city that you think that they could reach?

RF: Oh, I don’t know that they got much further than London like Glosgow. London ad Brussels were the major cities that they went for.

TH: But they could only hit in a straight line?

RF: They couldn’t turn left or right, they could only vary the cut-off. Or they could dive-in in a roll. There was no way of knowing if there was something in the way. They didn’t have radar…radar was a British invention.

TH: After you finished with the Buzz bombs where did you go?

RF: We were assigned to the 99^th division who was in that area. From there on we stayed with the artillery battalions of the 99^th division.

TH: So you protected the artillery divisions from aircraft?

RF: Yes, the artillery battalions. And of course war is a very fluid thing, sometimes you’re between the artillery and the infantry and sometimes you were behind the artillery…it depends on what the situation is. And the 99^th division turned into the spearhead division of the first army that went all the way across. Of course when you’re in a column on the move, the infantry…there were some trucks but they generally combat teams with an armored division and the 14^th armored was pretty much the one that the 99^th was with. And then we would be interspersed with the column and would normally have one halftrack up at the point. That devolved into pretty much kind of gorilla warfare…course I left out the whole battle of the Bulge.

TH: You participated in that?

RF: Yes we did. We got overrun. We were cut off for a day and a half. And fell back on Elsonwood Bridge. And we became the north corner of the bulge and held that north corner with the 99^th division and the 1^st division. The 99^th was still facing east and the 1^st had gotten pushed and they were facing south and both areas were overlapping…everything was intermingled. It was a big mess.

TH: And you eventually got out of that?

RF: Yeah

TH: And where did you go from there?

RF: Well after the Bulge we got a 10 day rest pass, the whole division pulled back over to get refitted and stuff. It was the kind of thing where somebody from 1^st army came up to inspect everything. I got the chore of escorting him around through our area. And he said, “Lieutenant that gun is out of action!”

TH: Why?

RF: I said, “Yes sir, but we still fire it.” The sights had been shot off by a German machine gun.

TH: So you weren’t supposed to use it but you still fire it?

RF: Oh he was just an idiot. Anyway he said it sort of accusingly as if we had broken it and it was his good gun that we broke. Anyway from that point…

TH: What did you do on your rest days?

RF: Took Showers. The first thing.

TH: You couldn’t have jumped into a stream or pond to wash off or anything?

RF: It was the middle of winter. The battle of the Bulge started on December the 16^th. I got wounded on the 17^th.

TH: Where did you get wounded?

RF: The head. Very slightly. My carbine was over my shoulder and it got cut in half. And I didn’t get touched. And I said, I kept on getting lucky. And I only got the shakes twice in the whole 11 months. And then there was no reason. Just every once in a while it got to you. Fortunately I was alone each time.

TH: When did you get them each time?

RF: When I was off to the side, not even consciously thinking about it, it was a reaction when it occurred I said, “Damn fool what are you doing?” Once it was just going down the road toward the end of the war. I just suddenly had the shakes.

TH: What did you do for the shakes?

RF: All your muscles…the nerves just tighten

TH: From all the work you were doing during the days?

RF: Oh yeah.

TH: How many hours of sleep did you get a night?

RF: Well, for instance during the Bulge you got about eight hours a week. Fall asleep as soon as you leaned up against anything. Literally sleeping on your feet but your mind is still awake. Normally toward the end of the war it was getting dark around midnight or one o’clock in the morning. And we’d kinda sleep three or four hours of darkness there was and catch catnaps.