INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM E. CAMERON, JR
JAN. 10, 2003
Q: Bill, when and where were you born?
A: I was born on July 20, 1925 in Lancaster, South Carolina.
Q: What was your family like? Any siblings?
A: I had one brother and one sister, but they were never in the military at that time,
they were too young and I was the oldest. My father was a fighter pilot in World
War I. He went to ground school at Georgia Tech like all of our pilots did. He
went overseas and was trained by the French. He served at the front for a while,
then they brought him back to train the new American pilots himself. Then in
World War II they recalled him, as they did with some officers with engineering
Backgrounds. He became the engineering officer for the 386th Bomb Group, first
in Columbia, South Carolina, then sent to Lakeland, Florida, which was a sub
base out of McDill. That was back when they used to say ‘a B-26 a day in Tampa
Bay.’ The problem was cured by adding more surface to the wing, which made it
a more stable aircraft, then he went overseas with them to Colchester, England.
He was over there a long time. He mustered out after the war as a lieutenant
colonel. After the war he went in construction as a contractor, a little bit of
everything.
Q: Where did you attend school ?
A: My primary schooling was in Knoxville, Tennessee and Charlotte, North Carolina; then I went to high school at Georgia Military Academy in College Park, Georgia, where I graduated in 1942, then graduated from junior college, the Annapolis/West Point preparatory school in 1944 also at Georgia Military Academy. After the war I attended the University of Tulsa where I received my bachelors of science degree in petroleum engineering.
Q: When were you inducted into the Army?
A: I was sent by the academy to the infantry school at Fort Benning after graduation
in 1944, and I had been at Fort McPherson and had my mother send me my
diploma.
Q: Was infantry your personal choice?
A: We were in an infantry school so there was no other choice but infantry for us.
Q: Were you commissioned going in?
A: No. I went through the school as an officer candidate and commissioned as a 2nd
lieutenant out of Fort Benning on October 10, 1944.
Q: When did you ship out?
A: I shipped out in late January 1945 and I joined F Company, 242nd Infantry
Regiment at a little town called Lugg, Germany, up in the Hartz Mountains in late
February 1945. This was part of the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division, where I
immediately took over the command of a rifle platoon.
Q: What was that like for you?
A: Well, if I had not listened to my platoon sergeant, it would have been a little
Scary, as this was my first command. My platoon sergeant was a fellow named
Slinger from Tennessee, a real combat veteran.
Q: By that time in the war I guess logistics were pretty good, you could get supplies
and things pretty easily?
A: Yes, we did not have much problem there.
Q: I know that the bulk of German airpower had been eliminated, so I guess there
was little fear of enemy aerial interdiction?
A: We never had a problem with that. I do remember the first jet I ever saw in my
Life. We had just taken a German airfield, and I can’t tell you where it was, but it
was a compacted sod runway, and I remember the old man told us to dig in with
our entrenching tolls. We began digging and it rang when we struck the sod
runway. We were relaxing against some jeep tires when we heard this noise we
had never heard before. It was one of the German jets passing overhead. It made
no attempt at being belligerent; we just assumed it was a recon plane.
Q: Had you been briefed on the German jets, and did you know what it was when
you saw it?
A: Not really, we had no idea.
Q: What was your impression upon seeing that? Were you stunned?
A: Yes, it was a weird sound, a sort of drone to it, and I don’t think that it set in that
it was a jet aircraft. We didn’t even know what the name of it was. It was over us
before we could even take cover, so thank the dear Lord he was not belligerent.
Q: When was the first time you saw action in Germany?
A: The first time was during the push through the Siegfried Line, about March 1945.
Q: Anything about your first battle that sticks in your mind?
A: The first battle was to relieve a platoon that had gotten themselves into trouble at
Karlstadt, on the Rhine River. There was a road running along the river bank with
a stone wall between both, and this platoon was sent on a recon patrol to check
and see what was on the other side of the river. They got into trouble; pinned
down and not able to get out, so they sent us down with a couple of tank
destroyers to get them out, which we did.
Q: When was your next action?
A: Well, that was during the period when there was a great rat race across Europe
into Germany. The main part of our division hit Wuerzburg, and we hit to the
north and drove south, and we experienced sporadic firefights, and very minor
engagements until we got to Wuerzburg. Then we linked up with 12th Armored’s
tanks on the way to Schweinfurt, which G-2 said we were to occupy. They told us
there was nothing left over there anyway. Of course, as usual we wandered
around in the darkness for two or three days just getting there, and it was not that
far. That area was what they called the Tagayen Plain, and that afternoon we
watched P-47s heavily bombing Schweinfurt. Unknown to us at that time the
Germans had not moved any of their eighty-eights out, and we were moving into
Schwanfeld, which was a suburb, and that was when we began drawing a
Tremendous amount of eighty-eight fire. There was a church steeple there that
made a perfect observation point for the Germans. They had zeroed a certain
number of eighty-eights into that steeple, now used as a target indicator or initial
point, so we were catching hell. I happen to see a walled courtyard in what I
thought was a potato basement, and we flying through the courtyard door. When
we got into the middle of the courtyard and from on the wall we got an air burst
that just about took out the whole platoon. We secured everyone as well as we
could in that basement, and after not too long we were evacuated. My combat
medics were working, administering morphine and other things, and most of the
men were wounded in the foot. I also got wounded in the left elbow and
right leg. Of particular interest there were millions of steel splinters that fly from
those shells, and I know that they set up a battalion aid station in a beer hall back
down the street from where we were, so when they evacuated us they were
actually able to get an ambulance in there to get us out.
Q: What was your condition like?
A: This doctor knocked my helmet off and grabbed my face and he asked me where
was I hit. I told him the left elbow and right leg, and he was searching all over my
head. Unknown to me my face was a bloody mess from these little splinters. Well
we were sent to a bigger field hospital, and I’ll be danged if there weren’t tanks
right beside us in hull defilade, right next to the hospital, which wasn’t good. Of
course the Germans knew they were there, so we were pretty happy to finally get
out of there! We were sent later that night to a MASH outfit.
Q: How many men were in your platoon going in to the courtyard?
A: Normal strength for us was about forty-two then, but I was down to about thirty-
Two, and after the shelling all but six or seven were hit, including me, less than a
squad left in strength. I was patched up somewhat and sent to Reims, then I was
told that I had the ‘million dollar wound’ and that I would be evacuated to
England, which I was then to Clarkston, outside Glasgow, Scotland. Scotland did
not have the large numbers of GIs that England had, so they were a lot more
friendly towards Americans, and I loved it there. I remember that you could not
pause to even look up at a street number without someone coming up to you and
offering assistance. You didn’t get that treatment in England. I was then sent to
Prestwick to await air transportation to the States, where they were going to do an
open reduction on this elbow. I first went to Palm Springs, California to the Torney General Hospital, which was the old Elmirado Hotel, although I tried to get to Birmingham General at Van Nuys, since my father was the commanding officer of a base at Long Beach, but there was no room. They tried to get you as close to home as possible. I spent the next eleven months in hospitals before I was discharged. I stayed in California until October 1945 and then I was sent to the east coast to the convalescent hospital at Daytona Beach, Florida. Boy that was tough service! I was there till March 1946 when I went before a disposition board and was retired.
Q: What did you do after the war?
A: After that I went to Myrtle Beach, where I was in charge of water safety for the
old Ocean Forest Hotel on the north end.
Q: That was where you met your wife?
A: Yes. She came trapsing down the beach one day, and I introduced myself in some
unfashionable way and things went from there. We were married on August 23rd
1947. I have three daughters, no sons; the eldest is Catherine, then Chris two
years later, then Connie two years later.
Q: Tell us how you were awarded the Bronze Star?
A: That was at Karlstadt getting to that recon platoon that got into trouble. Wasn’t
much to it really. But I got the Bronze Star anyhow, go figure.
Q: How many grandchildren to you have?
A: I have four grand kids. Catherine has one son, Will: Chris has one son
named John Noland, and Connie has two children, Cameron and McIvor, and I
have one step great-grandchild, Kipling Noland.