I, Raymond Reginald Stone, was born May 16, 1919 at
Hastings,
Oklahoma (
Jefferson County), the second son of Henry Luther and Annie May Stone. I had one brother older than me, Edsel Luther Stone, one sister younger than me, Celesta Audean Stone, and one brother younger than me, Wendell Leon Stone. My brother, Edsel, died in 1935 and my sister, Audean, died in 1987.
Early in my life we moved from
Hastings to a farm about five miles west in
Cotton County. It was about halfway between
Hastings and
Temple, Oklahoma. This is where we lived when I started to school at
Pleasant Ridge School, District Six. I was five years old. You see, in 1924 when Edsel was six years old and was ready to start to school Mama and Daddy made me start to school with him so he wouldn’t have to start by himself. When Edsel failed to pass the third grade Mama and Daddy made me stay in the third grade with him. We spent two years in the third grade!
We lived two miles from the schoolhouse and we had to walk both ways unless the weather was bad; then Daddy would come to pick us up in the wagon. Edsel and I graduated together from the eighth grade in 1932. When I graduated from
Pleasant Ridge School I was the salutatorian of our class. There were eight of us in the eighth grade class.
After graduating from Pleasant Ridge I entered high school as a freshman at Temple, Oklahoma, and graduated there as a senior in 1937. All the years that I was in school we continued to live on the farm and I helped Daddy with all the work on the farm. I was not an outstanding athlete but I did play basketball, baseball and track. I ran the mile and the 1/2 mile in track. In 1936, five of us boys had just graduated to the senior class and we decided to take a vacation. Walter Wilson, the mail carrier’s son, had just obtained a 1929 Model A Ford Touring Car. We put all the groceries and bedding that we could in that car and headed out for
Dallas, Texas. We planned to sleep out under the stars and cook all our own food. We all chipped in and pooled money to buy gasoline and food. We were going to the Dallas Centennial -- celebrating
Texas’ 100 year birthday. We didn’t have much money. I had $11.15. The other boys had about the same. Walter Wilson who owned the car put $5.00 in his shoe in case we had car trouble. He put a shoe heel under the foot-feed so we wouldn’t drive too fast. J.D. Bowers and myself were the only ones with much driving experience, so we did most of the driving. It didn’t take us long to get rid of the shoe heel. We couldn’t get enough power to pull a hill. We did get to
Dallas and to the celebration. We slept out under the stars at
Lake Dallas. We went to all of the free stuff. The barker on the stage outside one of the shows was trying to draw a crowd to go inside. Naturally all five of us were right in front of him just dying to get inside to see all of the dancers. He motioned us all on in for free just to help draw the crowd. We got pretty well acquainted with one of the show girl dancers. She was called “Flaming Fanny”. When we left
Dallas we named the car “Flaming Fanny” and years later I had a fox hound (and a good one) whose name was “Flaming Fanny”.
After graduation I wanted to go to college at Oklahoma A&M but I wasn’t able to afford it. So, in 1938 I joined the “CCC” camps (Civilian Conservation Corp), a program started by President Roosevelt to give young men jobs. We could enlist for six months at a time and we were paid $30.00 a month. These were regular camps. We lived in barracks and were furnished our clothing, food, and other necessities such as medical needs. The camps were commanded by and supervised by regular Army officers. We were issued army clothes and stood in formations just like army life, except we were not issued guns. There were about 200 men in each camp. We worked an eight hour day, five days a week. We did various kinds of work. We worked on farms, built tanks, lakes, etc. We did forest work, built parks, terraced fields, did contour work on grasslands; most anything that had to do with soil conservation. I was stationed at
Duncan, Oklahoma. We did a lot of work for the farmers who furnished the equipment such as plows, tractors, teams (mules or horses), whatever we might need. I was in the CCC Camps for nearly two years. My last six months I was assigned as a dental assistant. I worked for an Army dentist. We traveled from camp to camp all over
Oklahoma. We would spend two weeks in each camp. I polished lots of boy’s teeth on the side in exchange for show tickets or post exchange tickets. The machine the dentist used for filling teeth was a portable one that had to be pedaled by foot. I was the one that furnished the foot power.
In late 1939 I was back home on the farm and I was doing most of the farm work. Daddy was busy trading cattle. In 1940 I helped him plant all his crops and worked them. In late summer I laid the crops by. I was now 21 years old and decided to go on my own. Me and three other men in an old 1934 Ford headed for
California. We thought we might get rich. We didn’t. We went to work for the harvest in the peach orchards. We were paid five cents a lug (about half a bushel). We had to use 12-foot ladders to pick the peaches in most of the trees. I decided to see how much I could make in one hour. I worked as hard as I could for one hour in 113 degree heat. I gathered 13 lugs--sixty-five cents. I was wet from my head to my toes from sweat.
Next we went to work in the grape vineyards. I started boxing grapes for thirty cents an hour. I got promoted to putting lids on the boxed grapes and made thirty-five cents an hour. Then, I got promoted to swamping on trucks, loading the boxed grapes on trucks, and made forty-five cents an hour. After the grape vineyards we worked picking cotton. The fields were making two bales per acre. I don’t even know how much I made there. I do know that I heard from home that Daddy was making one bale per acre from the crop I had laid by for him.
While I was in
California the World War II draft was enacted. I was 21 years old and had to register; so I had to register in
California but had them send my registration back home to
Temple, Oklahoma. On November 22, 1940, I was drafted into the army. Five of us from
Cotton County,
Oklahoma, were drafted and sent to
Oklahoma City for physicals. Three of us passed the physical. Two did not pass. One was too short and the other had pink-eye. They sent us to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to Dodd Field. There we received what little basic training they had at the time, and then we were sent out to various army units.
They kept me in Company C of the
Reception Center where I received my basic training. Because I could type they sent me to a recruiting station in
Lubbock, Texas. I stayed there for two months. My ability to type helped me many times in respect to jobs. As recruits our pay was $21.00 a month. While I was in
Lubbock the government came out with an order that the Army would automatically promote so many draftees. I was promoted to Corporal which paid $36.00 a month. However, I still couldn’t draw but $21.00 for four more months. When I got back to Fort Sam Houston I was quarantined in a barracks with some recruits with the mumps. Then they made me a drill instructor. I remained a drill instructor until November when my year as a draftee ended. We were then offered the opportunity to re-enlist and they sent me to
Camp Wolters Reception Center as a Supply Sergeant. That was quite a promotion.
There I sat in my supply office a few days after the bombing of
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1940. I looked out of my window at the large warehouse where they issued new recruits their clothing. There was a long line of men waiting to receive their clothing, and low and behold, there was a bunch of the same men who were recruits with me at Fort Sam Houston. They had taken their discharge after one year, but here they were now coming back in. Now there was no enlistment time. My eighteen month enlistment didn’t matter. We were all in now for the duration.
Fort Wolters was a large
Infantry Training Center. Generally there were from 30,000-plus men training there at that time. They had just finished building the
Reception Center. It was doing a lot of raining about that time and we waded around in mud for quite some time. This
Reception Center received all of the draftees coming into the Army from this area of the country. The draftees would be processed into the Army here and take some training. Then they were shipped out to Army combat units. One of the enjoyable jobs of my service here was when recruits were shipped to other stations (Army units). If there were 50 or less men in a group, a non-commissioned officer (NCO) carried them. If over 50 were being shipped very far, an officer and some NCOs carried them. During my year at
Fort Wolters I made a lot of trips with recruits. I think during that time I was in or through 38 different states. My longest trip was to
Pendleton, Oregon. We weren’t allowed to tell the men where they were going because of security about troop movement. You can imagine how confused these men were about making that long trip to
Oregon and not knowing where they were going.
My largest group of recruits was from
Fort Wolters to
Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The group consisted of 200 African Americans on four Greyhound buses. We left
Fort Wolters in the morning and I had to feed the men in
Wichita Falls, Texas. I called from
Jacksboro, Texas, to a cafe there to start fixing a lunch (this was during the days of segregation). You can realize my problem. When we got there, the cafe really had the smoke rolling, cooking steak and potatoes. I paid for the meal with meal tickets ($ .75 a meal). That was what we used to pay for meals when we were transporting men unless they were being transported on the trains with
Pullmans. Then we paid $1.00 a meal.
At one point we had 125 Japanese soldiers in the
Reception Center. All Japanese people were moved away from the West Coast because of the attack on
Pearl Harbor. These soldiers and all other Japanese soldiers were finally shipped to
Mississippi where they formed a Japanese Battalion. They fought with honor in
Italy.
Well now, here in Mineral Wells (
Fort Wolters was in Mineral Wells,
Texas) is where I met and married the lovely red-haired young 19-year old Irene Gailey. Our honeymoon was spent in
Jacksboro, Texas, on November 14, 1942. Then, it was back to my Army duties. Incidentally, those Japanese boys gave me and Irene a beautiful set of dishes for our wedding. After all, I was their supply sergeant!
Well, somebody finally caught up with me. I had a 1-A physical classification, and Reception Centers were 2-B units. There was a new Battalion being formed in
Camp Campbell, Kentucky. So, they sent me there as a part of the cadre as a supply sergeant. I also carried about 30 recruits with me. We became the 782nd Tank Battalion in 1943. We took up training to become an effective combat tank battalion. I was assigned to A Company as Supply Sergeant. The company had 18 medium tanks. I think they weighed about 34 tons each. We trained there nearly a year. Irene came and we lived at
Clarksville, Tennessee, while she was there. But, Linda Kay was going to be born soon and I was going to be training in the Tennessee Maneuvers for about three months. So, we decided that Irene should go back home to Mineral Wells where Linda Kay was born on March 14, 1944, in the Norwood Clinic. I spent nearly three months of cold, wet winter in the boondocks of
Tennessee. This is when I was promoted to First Sergeant. We spent Thanksgiving dinner standing out in the cold, cold rain. Christmas was almost as bad. From there they moved us back to
Fort Knox, Kentucky, where we trained for quite a while. Irene and Linda Kay (Mrs. Gailey came with them) came to live with me. As a First Sergeant I was authorized living quarters on the post. We went to the Quartermaster warehouse and checked out some bedding and other necessities. We had a two bedroom apartment. One bedroom was upstairs and one was downstairs. Another couple lived with us. They were not supposed to; but we always referred to them as visitors. Now after a while they decided to ship our Battalion of heavy tanks to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They wouldn’t let us on their streets with these heavy tanks so we were put in an old calvary area somewhere out in the sand dunes.
Mrs. Gailey returned home and Irene and Linda Kay went to
Cleveland, Ohio, to visit a friend, Elinore Sullivan. Elinore and her husband were the ones that lived with us at
Fort Knox. They stayed about a week with Elinore then they came to where I was at
Fort Bragg. We lived in
Dunn, North Carolina. After being here for a while, they decided to ship us again all the way to
Camp Cooke, California. We rode a troop train all the way from
Fort Bragg to
California. What a long, long ride. We came across the southern part of
Texas along the way. While I was in training at Camp Cooke Irene came to be with me for a little while. She had to come out on the train. I met her about midnight in a little place called Lompac. We had a small apartment close to camp. She had to leave Linda Kay with Mrs. Gailey so she couldn’t stay very long. While she was there I took a three day pass and we went to
Los Angeles to see the sights. I rented a car and we had a most enjoyable time. She went back home and that turned out to be the last trip she would make with me (while I was in the Army).
While we were at
Camp Cooke they used some of our tanks to make a movie. It was something about the defense of
Moscow. They sent us down to
Fort Rosencranz, California. That is near
San Diego. They were giving us amphibious training, preparing to send us to the Pacific. Then they moved us from there back up to
Camp Cooke. About that time the Belgium Bulge broke out in the war in
Europe. They immediately bundled us up again and shipped us all the way back across the
USA to
Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. There they processed us for overseas shipment. They sent us to
New York and loaded us on a large transport ship. We headed across the
Atlantic as a part of a 30 ship convoy. This convoy consisted of a bunch of Army troops. The whole 10th Armored Division was a part of it. They were endeavoring to get a lot of tanks over there to head off those Germans who were attacking in the Belgium Bulge. We were 17 days crossing the ocean to
LaHarve, France. We were going in such a manner as to dodge submarines. We were escorted by some destroyers. On one occasion, they dropped a depth bomb really close to our ship. We also ran into a major storm on the way over.
Company A (my company) was assigned MP duties on the ship going over. Company B was assigned duties in the Mess Galley. I had to keep regular guards posted at all times. There was a complete hospital unit on our ship -- doctors, nurses, all hospital personnel. They were on “C” deck, about the 3rd deck up. My company was quartered on the same deck because of security. As an MP I had to keep a guard posted at the entrance to their section of the deck. We had to keep all unauthorized people away from their section. It became a real benefit to our Battalion that they were on the ship with us because they unloaded before us and were sent on to Camp Lucky Strike on the sea coast of
France before us. There were a lot of processing camps in
France all named after cigarettes.
We were unloaded on the 17th of January at
LaHarve, France, about midnight. We marched down those cobble stone streets covered with snow, carrying our full field pack to a train station. They loaded our entire battalion (about 600 men) into box cars. These were box cars with real high wheels under each end. In the First World War they acquired the name of 40 and 8 box cars. That was because they would hold 40 men or 8 horses. We put about 40 men in each car -- a pretty tight fit. The men were tired and sleepy and most of them were laying down across each other just about any way they could.
We were headed for Camp Lucky Strike on the French sea coast. This was the very dead-end of the railroad. The depot set at the end of the track. From the last water-stop for the engine, it was all down hill to Camp Lucky Strike. The brakes gave out on the train. Going down hill with no brakes! The train kept getting faster and faster waking most of us up. Finally it began to rock from side to side and then there came a big crash. Cars were thrown off the track, some turned over, and some went over the tops of others. The engine ran completely through the depot building. Some of the Frenchmen said that old train was coming down the track with the whistle wide open. It was about seven o’clock in the morning.
There were trucks there to meet us and carry us to Camp Lucky Strike. The drivers and a lot of Frenchmen were a big help. We had men pinned under cars. The cars just had a door on one side. One of “B” Company cars was turned over and they didn’t have any way out. We were really proud of our own medics who were of great help to all of the injured. Out of our entire battalion we had 58 men killed and about 150 badly injured. As I said, I was glad that the hospital unit had unloaded before us because they had already arrived at Camp Lucky Strike and were set up for business. It didn’t take them long to get busy taking care of us.
“D” Company suffered the most. Their cars were next to the engine, the “C” Company, “A” Company (my Company), “B” Company and then Headquarters. I came out fine, just got a small cut on my head and was pretty shook up. My Company, “A”, only had four men killed -- one officer and my Company Clerk. I don’t remember the others. The entire battalion had a bunch of men injured. They were sent all over to different hospitals, some were even sent back to the
USA. As First Sergeant I had a difficult time learning where all of “A” Company’s men were. This took our battalion out of action and we didn’t go to the Belgium Bulge where we were headed.
They had to replace about 200 men in our battalion, so they sent us infantry soldiers. We trained them on the tanks for about a month, and finally we were ready to go again. Our Army had already pushed the Germans back across the
Rhine River. They sent our battalion up. “A” Company was sent up by train. All the other companies “roaded” their tanks and equipment. We stopped at the
Rhine River where combat was still happening. We crossed the river at
Cologne on a pontoon bridge that the engineers had built. Since we were a small battalion of tanks, we were mostly assigned to Infantry divisions. It was hard to know who we were assigned to. It seemed like we spent most of our time chasing after Patton’s Third Army. He was going through
Germany like a storm. But sometimes we would be assigned to the Ninth Army which was in the northern part of
Germany. When the war ended in 1945, we were assigned to the Second Infantry which was a part of Patton’s Third Army. We ended up in Checozlavakia in
Sudaten Land which was the first place
Germany invaded when the war began. We were there doing occupation duties for about a month or two. We would send a tank and crew to the little villages. These people in the villages were glad to see us and treated us all real nice. Soon we were on a train on our way back to
France and from there, on our way home. We crossed the
Danube River on our way to
Frankfurt,
Germany, and then we went on to
LaHarve, France.
We were loaded on another troop ship headed back to the good old
USA. This old ship was really crowded. We didn’t have the luxury we had on the one going over. It took us only six days to get back across the ocean. We landed in
Boston, Massachusetts. Our battalion was processed and sent to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. We were all then given thirty day furloughs so we could go home. I was in charge of all the men going to
Texas. We were sent to Fort Sam Houston in
San Antonio. After our furloughs were over, we all had to report back to Fort Sam Houston where I was in charge of getting everybody back to
Fort Bragg. While we were on furlough the war ended in the Pacific and our battalion did not have to go there. The Army started discharging men based on a point system based on the length of time you had been in the service. I ended up with 80 points and was immediately eligible for discharge. They offered me the opportunity to re-enlist and they would send me to a recruiting station in
Baltimore, Maryland. But I decided to take the discharge instead. I was discharged and back in Mineral Wells by the middle of October, 1945, after serving four years and eleven months in the Army.
Back home as a civilian I went to work for General Mills in
Wichita Falls, Texas, where I packed 2-, 5- and 10-pound bags of flour. We rented a small house there but we were running up and down the road every weekend. We were either going to Mineral Wells where Irene’s folks lived, or to Walters,
Oklahoma, where my folks lived. So we decided to move to Mineral Wells where I joined Mr. Gailey in the dump truck business. In 1947 we had a little boy, but he died at birth. We saved the name we had picked out for him in case we had another son later. In 1948 I carried my truck and followed the wheat harvest up north. I ended up in
North Dakota.
Irene stayed home most of that summer. I would send home money as often as I made it, which wasn’t too regular! Irene decided she would rather I get a job where we would know how much money we would have to spend each week. I went to work for Jacques Power Saw Company as a welder. We now had another mouth to feed since our son, Reginald Ray, was born on March 25, 1950. He was born in the old
Nazareth Hospital in Mineral Wells,
Texas. Our family was now complete.
In 1951 the company I was working for went bankrupt and I was out of a job.
Fort Wolters had opened up again to be used by the Army Engineers. I decided to apply for a warehouse job and was hired the next day. This was a civil service job. I stayed with that job and advanced to warehouse foreman. I stayed employed by civil service until
Fort Wolters closed again in 1974. If we were 55 years of age or older and had 20 years service we could retire. I took my retirement with 27 years of service with the government (including my Army service).
