MF: ...no I don't have no pain no place.
AK: You were able to pass the physical and stay in the Army. You stayed in the Army 20 years?
MF: Yeah.
AK: Went to Korea and served in Korea. Were you a tanker in Korea?
MF: No, I was in amphibious trucks. I went over there as a tanker but they pulled me off in Japan and sent me to and amphibious truck company in Inchon. I stayed there for 18 months. As soon as the war was over they put me on orders and shipped me back to Fort Knox, from Fort Knox to Fort Eustess, Virginia. From there I went to school, I went to helicopter field maintenance school. I went to Fort Bragg. They reactivated the third Armor division, I said I'd like to go back... I told myself I'd like to go to Germany with the third armor division. So I went out and put in a 1049 then. They had to send me back to Fort Knox. It had priority over everything because they had tankers MOS, my primary MOS on my record, my form 20 I guess, was "Tanker". Zoom, right back to Fort Knox. So we stayed here for a year in training. I went to Germany and stayed two years.
AK: Then after you retired from service you came back here and went to work as a civil servant?
MF: Went to Fort Riley and retired. After I retired in Riley in '62 I come back.
AK: And you taught maintenance here in the Armored school.
MF: Right.
AK: So you've been a tanker since back in the 30s. Starting with Company D and all the way through, and now you're retired a second time.
MF: Right.
AK: You don't look like you're old enough to retire from the service the first time. You're health apparently wadn't permanently damaged. You lost your teeth. Did you lose them shortly after you got back?
MF: Yeah, they decided it was something between my teeth and jawbone. They all got loose, we didn't brush them for about 3 years.
AK: I lot of them did lose their teeth didn't they? The prisoners?
MF: Yeah. I had all my teeth except one jawtooth got pulled out. I got a partial plate and they worked on my teeth.
AK: Your hair isn't too gray, or it doesn't appear to be.
MF: One day they just up and, I mean they pulled _all_ my teeth out. In three weeks period they pulled ever tooth I had and put my plates in. They pulled out my teeth and put in my plates right then.
AK: You got wounded pretty early in the war, on your head there, how many purple hearts do you have? Did you get just one?
MF: Just the one. Plus I got hit up here...
AK: Do you feel like the people treated you alright? Are you proud to have been a prisoner of war?
MF: Well, yeah...
AK: To have gone through that and lived?
MF: Its not proud of being a prisoner, but I didn't, I just didn't run out and through up my arms and say I quit.
AK: I'm talking about now that its over are you kind of glad to be able to say you're in a group of distinguished people that went through that sacrifice?
MF: Thats right. I'm one of them survivors.
AK: You feel like Daniel Boone does when he went up there in the indian camp and got back.
MF: Yeah, thats right!
AK: And you wear your POW sticker on your car because you're proud of it?
MF: Yeah, I got one tag, yeah.
AK: Do you find that people give you a little extra respect because you were on the Bataan death march?
MF: I don't know.
AK: You don't measure it and aren't concerned about it one way or the other?
MF: I never took advantage of that while I was still in the Army. I never...
AK: You never mentioned it until somebody talked to you about it.
MF: Thats right, I never said nothing about it.
AK: I tell you, I'm pleased that you agreed to this, consented to this. This is a very good interview, you are a good witness and I appreciate it and it'll be a lot of help to our younger people. I would like to get, just briefly, who you married and your children and your parents.
MF: Ok. I married Maxine Milby in June 21, 1954.
AK: Did you know here before you went in? No you didn't...
MF: No I didn't know her. I met her in 1948 but we didn't get married until 1954. I went to Korea, all over here, there, and yonder. Which, like I said, I met her in 48 and I guess it took me that long to decide that she was the one I wanted to marry. Like the old saying, I played the field!
AK: You got two children, two boys?
MF: Yeah. I got two boys, Morgan Theodore, he was born 3 march 1955.
AK: And he went to college and majored in...
MF: He went to University of Kentucky, well he went to ECC in Elizabethtown, then he went to University of Kentucky, and then he finished up at UofL University of Louisville, got his masters degree in chemical engineering.
AK: And your other son...
MF: Stewart Lynn, he never did go to ECC, but he went to University of Kentucky, and finished up at UofL and he got his masters degree in computer science. And he is almost a year younger than Morgan. We decided to have our family and we wanted as many as we could and things happened, she couldn't have any more children, so we stopped.
AK: You got two good boys.
MF: We wanted 4 but we just got 2.
AK: Alright. And your parents.
MF: My mother and father, they was born and raised in Kentucky. They're both deceased. My dad, he died in 1947, and my mother died in 1967.
AK: 47, so he died shortly after you got back.
MF: Yeah.
AK: Was he in poor health when you went over?
MF: No, not when I went over. But me and my brother, both of us going overseas, it kindly got him down.
AK: Did you and your brother both get back?
MF: No, my brother got killed.
AK: Your brother did get killed.
MF: Yeah, he got killed on Bataan.
AK: Did you ever hear from your parents at all while you were in prison? Or did they ever hear from you?
MF: I got three letters and I think I wrote about three or four to them. They got all of mine, but they wrote stacks and stacks of letters to me and they got them back. Like I said, I just got about three or four letters thats all.
AK: Your daddies name then was...
MF: Clifton French. Clifton Roland French.
AK: And the French had been in Mercer county how long? Generations?
MF: Yeah, a long time.
AK: They weren't one of the pioneer group were they?
MF: I don't... Well, my dad, his people come from Missouri, and my moms people come from Tennessee.
AK: What was your mother's maiden name?
MF: Smith.
AK: What was her first name?
MF: Mary Alice. Mary Alice Smith. My dad, I never did know my grandfather on my Dad's side, but my grandmother on my... was Betsy French.
AK: You didn't actually know that your brother was gone until you got back did you?
MF: Yeah. Yeah, I found out about it after we got down to Cabanatuan, in prison camp. Our battalion motor officer was in the hospital and he told me about it, possibly the date that he got killed. Yeah, I knew about it all along.
AK: That was a tough extra burden to have to carry with you, wadn't it?
MF: Yes, it was pretty bad. Before Bataan fell I went in that field hospital. I knew he got hit in the back of the neck and he got his eardrums was bursted, and he'd been hit 3 or 4 different places.
AK: What was his job?
MF: He was tank commander.
AK: Your tank commander.
MF: Yeah. He got wounded, I don't know how many times he got wounded.
AK: He was younger than you were.
MF: No, two years older.
AK: Two years older.
MF: Yeah. He was quite a bit, he was about 6 foot 2, he was a bigger guy. I was a runt from the day I was born, I think. He got wounded and he was in the hospital. It was just freak of nature. One of the shells off of Fort Drum, short round, it fell in the ward of the hospital where we was at and killed about, somewhere around...
AK: Was this after, just at the surrender, or after?
MF: About two days before Bataan fell. It might as just been as well because I think just about all the people that was in that hospital in bed, they killed them or they died anyway.
AK: It might have been a blessing to take him out like that.
MF: Yeah. I've often thought about that. The condition he was in. It was a blessing. He never knew what hit him.
AK: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MF: Yeah. I got 6 sisters.
AK: When you came home, what kind of homecoming did you have? And where did you have the big homecoming? When did you see them all? Did they come see you?
MF: Over at Lexington. They met me at a train. I rode a train from White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia to Lexington and they was all over there.
AK: A lot of wet eyes, I guess.
MF: Oh yeah. I think _everybody_ was there.
AK: Of the family plus other friends?
MF: Yeah. my brother in laws, my sisters, my nephews and nieces.
AK: How many do you think were there?
MF: I don't know, more than ...
AK: Was it a tough adjustment coming out of the one world into the new world? All of a sudden to see all those people?
MF: Yeah, it took a long time to get myself used to it. At home I'd wake up at night, jump up and sit on the side of the bed. It took me about a year to myself used to it. Where I'd quiet down.
AK: Did you need to be off to yourself more than you did before you went in? Or was there any change in that respect?
MF: No, not necessarily.
AK: You still liked visiting and social mixing and so on and so forth. Did you do some heavy drinking after you got back?
MF: No, I never did drink heavy. I'd drink socially, but...
AK: It didn't change your drinking habits?
MF: No, no. I never did drink a lot in my whole life.
AK: I know some of the troopers came back and they felt like they had a certain amount of making up to do.
MF: I know a lot of them did. They just drank too durn much.
AK: On you money, you're going to be saving up 4 years of pay or something like that. Was you able to put that to good use?
MF: Oh yeah. I put it in the bank and I bought me a car. I bought my mother a washing machine and done a lot of work where she lived, I owned a little farm there. I had money when me and my wife got married. But you see I stayed in the Army and after I got over my leave I went right on back being in the flow of things. I never had time to sit down and think about nothing.
AK: How long do you go back to Harrodsburg now?
MF: I was up there last.. well, when we was over at Frankfort last Friday. I got a sister that lives up on Herrington lake up there. Herrington Woods, I don't know if you know where thats at or not.
AK: In Frankfort?
MF: Over there in Herrington Lake. I got a niece that runs a whiskey store out there on 68 coming out of Lexington. My sister owns it and one of here daughters runs the place. I got several nieces that live in Lexington.
AK: Well, I want to say one more time, this has been and excellent interview and I appreciate it very much, you sharing it with me and posterity.
MF: Ok, I'm glad I could help you and anything that comes up that didn't come out right, well give me a buzz and I'll see if I can help you out a little bit.
AK: Thank you. <160>