"Beyond Enemy Lines:

An Interview with Max Mayhew"

I met and interviewed Mr. Max Mayhew at the Canton Public Library on

Wednesday, May 23, 2001. We quickly became acquainted and proceeded with the interview. Mr. Mayhew was nice enough to allow me to videotape our interview for the sake of quality documentation. The general purpose of our meeting was for Mr. Mayhew to offer to me some anecdotal stories and accounts that he faced during his service in the United States army during World War II; from March 5, 1943, until December 4, 1945. He entered illegally at the young age of 17 and never reached an official military rank. However, he did reach the position of water purification foreman. During his time, Mr. Mayhew served as both a gasoline testing technician and a water purification technician. He carried his time in the service beginning in North Africa, and finding his way to Italy and Morocco before returning home. He returned December 1, 1945 and completed high school, receiving his diploma and gong on to college. Mr. Mayhew then went on to teach in the sciences for many years thereafter. Through Mr. Mayhew telling me his stories in his own words, I will be able to construct a fictional vignette with a base rooted in his experiences. I had strong expectations for our time together for our brief phone conversation conveyed he would have many memories of his time serving our nation. From this first impression, I figured that whatever Mr. Mayhew was willing to offer would be more than sufficient to follow through with the vignette...sure enough, our interview was a success.

Q: Ok, so, what is your name?

MM: Ok, the name is, Max Mayhew.

Q: And I understand you served in the army, correct?

MM: Yes, as a matter of fact, I joined the army when I was about 17 years old. I wasn't 18 yet, and it was kind of early to go in, but, I went in at that age.

Q: Was there any real reason you wanted to get in there?

MM: Yeah, at the time it was considered to be the patriotic thing to do. A lot of young people were joining because we were in trouble...At the time I was in Illinois, and I went into the service from out there. Actually, my service began in 1943, March 5...Ok, now, actually, I was in a rather unusual branch. I was a little inclined towards science anyway, so I went into something called the 705th Petroleum Distribution Engineers. Their job actually was to supply the American troops with all the fuel that they needed. We needed to have the right octane for the airplanes, the right octane for the automobiles and we had the diesel for the tanks. So anyway, I was with an outfit, I guess there's not too many of those outfits, whose job was to go into where there were big tanks, and we had to test any gasoline that was there, make sure it could be used. Actually, I started out testing gasoline; unfortunately, we didn't have the technology back then that we have

now. At that time I was put in a lab, and the labs didn't have good

ventilation, not like we have today. So we really worked in a "Chem Lab" trailer, and eventually you got some lead poisoning and turned white, so I turned white...

Q: Before I forget, real quickly, from when you went in till when you came out [of the army], what were those years?

MM: Ok, let's see, I got out of there, in 1945, November, actually, my discharged date was December 4. But anyway, I spent my whole time with the outfit, but not with the gasoline testing. Really, we had to do all the general training like everybody else, learning how to shoot all kinds of guns, pistols, machines guns, rifles...how to move under fire, you know, all the usual things...

Q: You said you went in at 17, which is pretty young, basically snuck in, did you basically start at the bottom rank?

MM: Yeah, well, no, I didn't have any rank at that point in the service. You had to be 21 or something like that, you know, with a little bit of maturity. I mean, heh heh, I was just a kid...

Ok, well anyway, on August 21, 1943, I boarded a boat called the Edmund Alexandria, which left from Staten Island, New York, and it took us about 11 days to get from there all the way over to North Africa. The port was called Loran, so we landed there, and of course, Uncle Rommel [referring to the German Erwin Rommel] was over there, you may have heard of him, he was very famous...

I happened to be on leave one day, and I was lucky enough to go and see General De Gaulle, you probably don't know him, but he was a very famous French General, and they had a big celebration in town for him. Basically, this huge parade, and I was fortunate enough to see that.

Ok, a short time later, actually, in that area, it was so sandy- this is interesting- that any time you went to eat something, you were also eating some sand, it was just the way it was, but it didn't kill me anyway.

...Of course, we had these little animals called jackals. Since we were in the little tents each night, they'd come and steal anything the could, if you had any food at all, they'd take it.

Q: What animal could a jackal be compared to?

MM: You could think of it is sort of like a dog...but they were very sneaky little guys. And tell you what, we also had a lot of trouble with the very, very hungry Arabs. They'd try to sneak into the tents and take what they could get.

Q: So the real problems were jackals and Arabs?

MM: Yup. yup, and then the snakes of course.

Q: Are there any real specific account that remember from any time through your service that you'd care to share? Anything at all.

MM: Well, I can give you a general story better than anything...We went to a place called Bone, and it was raining so much, that the mud was up to the top of your boots. Literally, we were wading through mud. At this point, we didn't have the larger military tents...very small tents. Two guys put their poncho together. It rained very hard while we were there and I know, I'll never forget, we thought we had it pretty well trenched around... but in the middle of the night we found a nice river running right between us. Everybody was pretty wet in the morning, let me tell you. And also, vehicles had a very difficult time, moving through the mud.

Q: ...Ok, then we got on an English ship called the Callop Strom, and we sailed to Italy. Actually, we spent about five days expecting to be hit by German torpedoes at any time, and fortunately we got through without being torpedoed...

...The people in Italy were very hungry...See, what had happened was the Nazis took everything they could lay their hands on, leaving these people with not too much food, I'll tell you. So when we came in there, they were very glad to have any kind of food.

...Since I couldn't work with gasoline anymore, because I had turned white...they put me in charge of water purification, so I started that. The water never tasted very good because of all the chlorine. You know about that from city water around here, but in the army, it's even worse. So I began as a water purification technician, and eventually they made me a water purification foreman, so I was in charge of all that kind of stuff.

Basically, my job was to locate sources of water and then monitor it and make sure it was safe, so I did... But the water did taste, I'll have to admit, pretty horrible. I'll read this [from a journal entry] just for laughs, "I found this posted on one time, when I got back from pass: 'Drink Dr. Mayhew's chlorinated H2O. It's healthful, it's sanitary, it's nauseating, but it also cures ringworm, scabies, Guinea itch, mange, kill insects, tics, roaches, and other pests. It's the water that makes you think of home.'"...

Q: So you were responsible for all this?

MM: I wasn't responsible for making this sign; I was responsible for making the water taste so good. So as you can see, I used to get ripped a little bit about the horrible tasting water, but you had no choice really.

Q: Did you ever have any personal experiences with these [chemical] types of bombs?

MM: No, no I did not. But see, we had miles and miles of pipelines and we tried to keep fuel running all the time, trying to keep it up to the troops up front. So, we used to get bombed a lot, and you know a lot of time they'd kind of destroy a lot of our equipment, so lots of us had to repair it, so that was part of the job also.

... I was always a lucky I guy; I got to go to something called, malaria control school. There, you'd become a professional killer of mosquitoes; now that was a real job...We had to spray everything that had water in it because we really did have a problem with malaria over there and those mosquitoes had to be knocked out. Really, they could do as much damage as the Nazis could, put you right out of action those mosquitoes...We also had a lot of trouble with people stealing gasoline from the lines. They realized that they could loosen a bolt in the pipe so that the gas would drip out a little bit...we had to watch out for that kind of thing.

...The Nazis bombed the gasoline pipes to keep the gas from getting to the front troops.

Q: Is there any one instance of this that you could elaborate on possibly, or was it rather commonplace?

MM: Actually, yeah, those Nazis did bomb us pretty regularly, obviously because they didn't want our troops getting that gasoline. That way our tanks couldn't advance and we couldn't transport troops nor could you get the airplanes going, so really it was absolutely essential. It wasn't a glory job, however it was a vital one.

... We had a big celebration when the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. I went on a 500-mile air flight, but I can't give any details on that even now. At this point, I was really traveling around, teaching people, you know, how to handle the water. Locating good water and how to check if it was ok, especially in the hospitals.

...On November 11, 1945, our outfit was pulled back into Naples, Italy and we boarded the USS Randolph, a huge airplane carrier. This was how we got home instead of a regular boat. And actually, we had what was basically a big Christmas dinner there, everything you'd have on your own table at home. On December 1, 1945, we arrived back in the United States, passing the Statue of Liberty, which we were all glad to see.

Q: How old were you at this point, coming out of the war?

MM: Let's put it this way, I was about three years older. ...It worked out good for me, I wouldn't regret it. But I would say, is that military experience good for a young guy? Well, let's put it this way, you

mature a lot. You got a real sense of responsibility. It's a good

experience really, if you don't get killed it's a good experience.

** Note: Now Mr. Mayhew teaches non-professionally in the field of metaphysics, which is the human spiritual relationship to the universe and to God. He has maintained the same scientific mind that he had when he made the decision to sneak into the army to defend the United States and democracy throughout the world.