The Voices of Fort Barry

Fort Barry

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 44413

Fort Barry was an active US military post from 1908 until the Coast Gaurd turned the final lands associated with Point Bonita Lighthouse over to the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreaion Area. Even with hundreds of years of stories at this place, here are a few that have been saved. Unlike army records, and military details that are usually easy to find, these stories talk about the lives of the civilians and staff who lived and worked here, as remembered by them.

Click for more history about Fort Barry

 

Camouflage at Battery

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35301

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"We started to work on physical camouflage before it was casemated, and that was before the war. We started that not long after we got here. That was part of the training."

 

• Joseph M. Monks Part 1

  
  

  An interview conducted with Joseph Monks who served at Battery K, 6th Coastal Artillery Regiment, Fort Barry during World War II by John Martini, historian of the National Park Service.
  Audio Transcript

  Martini: Today is Thursday, January 20th, 1994. This is an oral history interview tape with Mr. Joseph M. Monks, who was assigned to Battery K of the 6th Coast Artillery, and stationed here at Fort Barry during World War II.

  [00:00:30] My name is Park Ranger John Martini, National Park Service. And we're in Headlands District, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I'll be the prime interviewer. Second interviewer will be Mr. Paul Curry, volunteer in parks.

  This is the formal oral history segment. Second part of the interview, we will actually be going up to Battery Wallace, which was Mr. Monk's duty station. So administratively, can you give me your full name and your birthdate and where you're living now, Mr. Monks?

  [00:01:00] Joseph: Full name is Joseph Mitchell Monks Jr. I was born in December the 23rd, 1918. I'm living now in Santa Rosa, California.

  Martini: We were talking before the tape started. Where'd you come from and how'd you get into the Coast Artillery to begin with?

  Joseph: [00:01:30] I volunteered for the draft in 1941. Actually, I volunteered in 1940, and entered in the Army in January the 6th of 1941. Went to Fort Custer, Michigan. That was one of those depos where they brought in inductees. From that place, I was separated to the 6th Coast Artillery in San Francisco, California.

  Martini: Did your choice of branches to go into?

  Joseph: [00:02:00] No. I was actually on the fortunate side, because there was probably around 30,000 inductees, and Fort Custer a huge group of people. One morning, they got us all out there and called names, and put about one half of them in the Infantry and the other half in the Artillery. So I don't know how my name got there but I was lucky.

  Martini: Because it began with an M, huh?

  Joseph: So I went into the Artillery. Probably went by the M name. Yeah, right. That's-

  Martini: How-

  Joseph: Go ahead.

  [00:02:30] Martini: Yeah. At this point, had you ever seen the Coast Artillery?

  Joseph: I had never seen anything. In fact, I had never seen anything in the Army. I had never been in an Army installation, until my induction into Fort Custer, my first experience with the Army. And it was epic at that time.

  Martini: Tell me about coming out here.

  [00:03:00] Joseph: We came out here on train. I believe there was around 24 cars, and we were loaded on in Fort Custer. It was very secretive. We went to Chicago. I remember that because of looking out the windows. We pulled in one of the stations in Chicago. I think it was the Dearborn Street Station.

  [00:03:30] We weren't allowed out, but I could see it. I knew I was near home then, because that was my home, Chicago. We left there and we came out on unscheduled stops. We sidetracked for anything that was going through, but we never stopped at any big town or anything, until we got to just outside of Denver.

  [00:04:00] That was our first stop, and we were allowed out of the train to walk around there. Quite a few of the boys ran and got into a few of the bars there. So that was our last stop. We never got out again. I remember that. They had a colonel, that was in charge of the training, quite upset.

  Martini: Did you have any idea where you were headed?

  Joseph: We had not idea where we were going.

  Martini: Did you have any scuttlebutt?

  Joseph: No scuttlebutt or nothing. We didn't know we were going to San Francisco. We just knew we were going to West Coast, actually. We knew that because of the direction. But we had no idea where we were actually going.

  [00:04:30] We pulled into the Marina. They used to have tracks on the Marina down there. We pulled in there late at night. By the way, we had two engines too. We pulled into there and they unloaded us, and put us in deuce and a half trucks.

  [00:05:00] They even pulled down the back covers of the truck. They wouldn't leave them open. They just pulled them down. And we didn't even know where we were going. The next morning, we woke up and we had realized we had gone over the Golden Gate Bridge, and we were in Fort Baker.

  That's where we first went, to Fort Baker, because at the time, when we came in, they were still in the process of finishing Mendel for troops.

  Martini: The barracks at-

  Joseph: The barracks. They weren't ready for us.

  Martini: Did they give you tents or something? Or did they move you into the old barracks at Baker?

  Joseph: [00:05:30] We moved in the old barracks at Baker. Backer was a unique place, because the barracks there could house a complete battery. You had your artery room, your supply room, and you had your mess hall, all in one barracks.

  So that was quite a place. So they had the whole group of in there, K Battery and L Battery, and C and D, and all the batteries were in Fort Baker at that time.

  [00:06:00] Martini: When your train came, had you yet been broken into batteries? Did they give you that information?

  Joseph: No, we didn't know what ... they probably had already broke us into batteries, but we weren't aware of it. We were not aware of it, but when we came off, when we were loaded in the trucks, when they pulled us out of the cars at the train, they called out our names, and sent you over here and sent you over there.

  And then from there, we moved into the trucks, and then they took us to the battery. They knew where we were going then.

  [00:06:30] Martini: When did they spring on you that you were in the Coast Artillery?

  Joseph: When we left Fort Custer, we knew we were in the Artillery. We knew that.

  Martini: It's when you got here, you found out exactly what your [crosstalk 00:06:49]?

  Joseph: Yeah. Right.

  Martini: Was everybody in that train going to be in the Coast Artillery?

  Joseph: [00:07:00] Everybody on that train was in the Coast Artillery. All those cars that came here, some went actually to Fort Winfield Scott too. But we were on the Coast. We were all in this area. We all went to the 6th Coast Artillery.

  Martini: How long were you at Baker?

  Joseph:

  [00:07:30] We were at Baker for about, to the best of my recollection, was about six months, because we took our basic training. See, in that time, when you come in the Army, you have to take your basic training. So we took our basic training right in our own unit.

  We didn't go to Camp Hohn or to someplace with induction centers, where all they did was give basic training, which, later on, I was part of, so I'm familiar with it. But we didn't have that at that time. So we took it right in our own unit.

  [00:08:00] And we were through the typical 16 weeks of basic training. So that's the way they did it then. So we were that long at Baker that we finished our basic training before we came out here.

  Martini: Did basic consist of anymore a orientations specific to Coast Artillery, or was it general basic training for-

  Joseph:

  [00:08:30] Well, we were fortunate because, besides getting basic orientation ... For basic training, mainly enhances a lot of Infantry training type training, which it has to be. That's part of it. But beyond that, we did take Coast Artillery training too, with the Coast Artillery battery, so they would put some of that in there. So we were fortunate that way.

  Martini: After six months, you got out here to what you call the Mendel area.

  Joseph: Mendel. They called it Mendel, right.

  Martini: You must've been some of the first people in those barracks.

  Joseph: [00:09:00] We were the first. They were brand new when we went in. We were the first in that area. There was two batteries there, K Battery and L Battery.

  Martini: What was L Battery?

  Joseph: L Battery was on the 12-inch disappearing guns.

  Martini: I guess in interested in the first time they actually showed you Wallace, what your reaction was?

  Joseph: Well, I was in awe. Those gus really ... couldn't believe it when you see. At that time, I never saw anything so big, looking at it. God, I couldn't believe it.

  [00:09:30] Martini: You said that was-

  Joseph: Especially the shells too. 1000 pounds.

  Martini: And that was an elite branch right? [crosstalk 00:09:37] modern guns.

  Joseph: Modern guns. They were good. They were very accurate. Very good guns.

  Martini: So when you got to Mendel, did they put you right to work?

  Joseph: [00:10:00] Oh, yes, when we got out there, right away. You bet. We went into accelerated Coast Artillery training right away, where they start setting up the gun crews, and the plotting section, and the observation section. We have observation people out at Wolf Ridge.

  We had some over by Battery C, which was in For Funston. And then we had a hill right behind us, which was our B-1 Station, primary station, in case the other two were out. So that was up in the hill right behind Battery Wallace.

  Martini: You had a number of positions over the years. Remember your first one?

  [00:10:30] Joseph: My first one was, I got on the ramrod crew. I don't know how I ended up on that, but I did. I got on that one. I think I got on there, because I thought it was kind of exciting. They were just letting you, more or less, volunteer for different things. And I went for the ramrod crew, the first one.

  Martini: You could actually volunteer?

  Joseph: Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Martini: No kidding.

  Joseph: I thought it would be neat to push that thing in there.

  [00:11:00] Martini: Describe that.

  Joseph: Well, it was quite exciting, because you had to seep the shell, to better the push you got on it, to get it riding in there, and seep the copper ring, was very important. So felt like if you get a good thing at that thing, you were really important to the outfit.

  [00:11:30] Of course, everybody got that opinion, not matter what you did. And then I also got later on the shot truck, which I thought that was quite good, because you had to hit that slot.

  Martini: Slot?

  Joseph: Well, there's a little slot, a little track in the truck. The shot truck has a little wheel that comes down. And you hit that track, and you go right into that breech then. And if you hit it right on, there's no way for no ... because you got the ramrod crew.

  [00:12:00] They've already placed their ramrod up behind the shell. So if you don't hit it exactly right, it'll throw them off.

  Martini: So you guys are charging [crosstalk 00:12:06]?

  Joseph: You're charging. The whole group is. The shot truck, the ramrod and everybody's running. They're running. They're not just ... they're running. And you got a thousand-pound shell there, and you want to get that thing in real solid. So everything has to be perfect, the hitting the slot, everything.

  [00:12:30] So that's what you do. I got on that with another ... this is two men pushing the truck, and I got on that job too. I thought that was exciting, so I did that for a while. And then after a bit, they got into going over your different IQs and all that stuff.

  [00:13:00] But I did do pretty well on my test, so they decided I should be in the plotting section. So that's where I ended up. I went into the plotting section. I stayed there. That was quite a challenge. I worked on the Fire Adjustment Board, and that has to do with making corrections to the azimuth of the weapon. The lefts and rights. It's the left and right.

  If it's falling too far to the left or too far to the right, you make corrections. And after the gun starts firing, you make corrections on the first eight rounds, but after it starts firing, you're correcting every four rounds. So it gets pretty accurate.

  [00:13:30] Martini: So you were plugging in all the variables, like wind and-

  Joseph:

  [00:14:00] Well, in Coast Artillery, our target is 300. That's the thing we'd say. If you picture a scale, and you picture 300 as the mean, the target, 310 would be to the left. 290 is to the right. [crosstalk 00:13:58]. You see if a shot falls at 290, it's right 10 degrees. If a shot falls at 310, it's left 10 degrees.

  I had a board, and they would track the targets out here, with our base end station, they would've been in there reading, and they would say, "310," I would put an X on 310. And the next shot, they'd say, "390," and I would put an X ... I mean, "290," I would put an X on 290.

  [00:14:30] And then they would say, " The next shot fell at ... No, put a mean in there." Between those two, it'd be 300, right? Uh-huh (affirmative). But say the next shots fell ... one fell at 270 and one shot fell at 315, then I'd have to put a mean between those two, right?

  [00:15:00] Then I'd put a mean between the one at 300, and a mean between those two, and the center of that would be the correction. You see how?

  Martini: Yeah.

  Joseph: That's how you corrected your shots. Then that correction would go into the computer, and that would go into the guns. And that would change the arrow that the azimuth guy that's swinging it left and right out there. All he had to do was match that arrow, and he had the correction.

  Martini: You said, "Computer." Did you start off with the old plotting boards and then move up to computers?

  [00:15:30] Joseph: That's right. We had the old plotting boards at first. That was all done with phones, all done with manuals. You'd have to go out there and set it out here. He wouldn't be a dial out there. He'd a number out there. You'd give him 310, 320 or whatever, and he'd had to put that in there at the gun.

  Martini: Physically write it or-

  Joseph: No.

  Martini: ... change-

  [00:16:00] Joseph: No, we'd send it by phone. He had earphones on. But that's true. I would have done that before with the gun. I would be talking to the gun before. "The number one, this. The number two, this." But see, with the computer, each gun was in the computer, and each dial would be correcting each gun differently. You can do it with the computer, see.

  Martini: [00:16:30] The old plans we had for Battery Wallace show that, when it was first built, and before they casemated it during the way, they had two plotting room. Was one plotting room for each weapon, or were they backups, or-

  Joseph: No, they were for each weapon, because one guy couldn't handle two guys on a ... talk to two people. So it was one talking to this gun, one talking to that gun on the plotting ... So in the plotting section, you had two azimuth guys, two separate boards going.

  Martini: Did they impede from the same base end stations?

  [00:17:00] Joseph: They fed from the same base end stations. Right. They were just giving corrections to different guns.

  Martini: Everybody is always fascinated by the size of the gun. And I was wondering, what was it like when the gun fired?

  Joseph: [00:17:30] The gun was ... well, it was like, first you'd see the flash when the gun went off. You heard nothing. And then you'd see the smoke, and then you'd hear this thing going through the air. You could hear the shell. You could actually hear the shell going through the air.

  And then all the sudden you get the blast. It seemed like that come about the last, the actually sound of the gun. You see the flash and the puff go out. And then you hear something going off, the shell, and then you'd get the blast.

  [00:18:00] And actually, it was just a roar. It wasn't a crack. It wasn't as hard on your ears as a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun, which is very difficult on your ears, because it's a crack.

  Martini: Was it a physical pressure wave that hits you?

  Joseph: It was a pressure wave, yeah. You could feel it. Afterwards, it'd come back on you. It went out, and then the vacuum, and then the air coming back in. Then all the blowing around there. Oh yes. You definitely get that. A lot of it. It'll blow your hat off, you didn't have it on good.

  [00:18:30] Martini: They give you any safety warnings? Or, were you supposed to stand a certain way? Or, earplugs or anything?

  Joseph: Some would wear earplugs, cotton. We didn't have sophisticated earplugs then. But some would wear cotton. But the ears, it didn't bother you as much as the anti-aircraft, like I say again. That was hard on your ears.

  Martini: I've heard that the smaller were [crosstalk 00:18:55].

  Joseph: Much harder on your ears than these were.

  [00:19:00] Martini: There wasn't an anti-aircraft battery on the hill above Wallace.

  Joseph: Yes, there was.

  Martini: Was that manned by Battery K too?

  Joseph: Yes. That was 3-inch anti-aircraft. We fired that too.

  Martini: Did you get on that gun crew?

  Joseph: Yeah, I was on that.

  Martini: Wow. So you [crosstalk 00:19:15].

  Joseph: [00:19:30] We moved around. Yeah, I was on that for a while. I was, one time ... In 3-inch aircraft, we had a cutting mechanism on the side there. We cut the shell for the time, before it would explode in the air. And I did that. And then you passed it to the breechloader.

  [00:20:00] You had to have a lot of good rhythm. All these weapons took a lot of good rhythm to fire them in those days, because everything was mechanical. On the 3-inch anti-aircraft, especially the guy that pulled the lanyard, he had to have a rhythm, because he would shove the shell in, and the breech lock would close automatically once it passed a certain thing there.

  And then he would pull the lanyard. And then as the casing came out, he would kick it away, so they didn't pile up all down below. You couldn't move around that place, because you're firing these things like that. The quicker you can get them off. And then we were also on the 40 millimeters, but this was mobile 40 millimeter.

  [00:20:30] Martini: We some of those around [crosstalk 00:20:32]?

  Joseph:

  [00:21:00] Yeah, we had them in K Battery. We have them down below, out near Mendel, out near the disappearing guns. We had those there. And we were trained on those by, believe it or not, it was an English group from Dunkirk, that had been evacuated from Dunkirk, when the English retreated out of Europe. So they came here and they trained us on the 40 millimeter. It was interesting talking to them.

  Martini: Live firings, both with the 12 inch and the 3 inch and the 40 millimeters. Did you do a lot of live firings?

  Joseph:

  [00:21:30] Well, on the 12 inch, we did ... I'm not sure. I know we fired it twice, for sure. Fired it twice for sure, because they're a very expensive gun to fire. I forget what they used to tell us, but I thought that someone said, "It was $1,000 a round." I'm not sure.

  Martini: That fits, yeah.

  Joseph: Is that it? It was expensive. I think we fired around, well, 10 or 12 rounds anyhow, because you had to fire at least 4 rounds to get anything of any correction going. And then they'd fire the rest to see how efficient you were. And by the way, we got an E.

  [00:22:00] Martini: For excellence?

  Joseph: Yeah, we fired them for excellence. We were good.

  Martini: All right.

  Joseph: We were very proud of ourselves. We were very fortunate. See, most of our first group that trained us came from Hawaii, from the Artillery in Hawaii. And they were very efficient, the sergeants. They really knew their stuff. So we did become pretty good.

  [00:22:30] Martini: When you were out here, you actually spent a whole lot of time, probably, just doing practice and maintenance. Describe a typical day in Battery K.

  Joseph: Typical day in Battery K, huh?

  Martini: Yeah, it has a ring to it.

  Joseph:

  [00:23:00] Well, there wasn't a day that gone by that we didn't train on the guns, and using our field manuals and things the Army provides for that, whether it be in the plotting section, whether it be in the gun section. So you spent at least a half a day going over your training on your manuals, and training on the guns, the gun crews.

  And then you also were also being trained continually on small-arms fire. We also had water-cooled 38-caliber machine guns. And we had to learn how to take those apart, and how to fire them, how to use them and everything else.

  [00:23:30]

  [00:24:00] Plus, from when I was in, we went through the 03s to the Garand rifles. So we also had to learn how to take them apart and fire them, because when the war started, we slept with our rifles in our bed. We didn't have them in the rack. We tied a string on the bed, and hung the rife in the strings, but hanging from the bed. And we had one in the chamber with the lock on. That's the truth.

  male: Okay.

  Joseph: That's the truth.

  male: Very unusual.

  Joseph: And we had in the chamber with our lock on. That was in case there was a Japanese landing or something. We were ready to go. We didn't even have them in the rifle racks.

  Martini: They weren't locked up. And you had ammo issued, right?

  [00:24:30] Joseph: We had ammo issued. Yeah, right there. We had our belt. Our belt was right at the end of the bed with ammunition in it, with the bayonet and everything. And the rifle was hung on the bed. It was two strings. You put the stock in here and the end of the barrel in there.

  And I could say there was one chamber, and all we had to do was take the safety off and fire. It was ready to go.

  Martini: Let's talk about that. When the war broke out, where were you on December 7th, '41?

  [00:25:00] Joseph: I was visiting my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife.

  Martini: We didn't want to get into anything uncomfortable here. [crosstalk 00:25:09].

  Joseph: That was before the days when we did anything. But anyhow, that's where I was. I went out in front to get something, and somebody across the street told me that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, that I better get back.

  [00:25:30] So I did get back, actually, when I found that was true. I thought they were kidding. We went and turned the radio, and found out it was true. So I came back here. I didn't have any trouble getting back, because everybody in the city would [inaudible 00:25:47].

  [00:26:00] I was in uniform, so they saw you. They picked you up and brought me right over the bridge. At that time, we went through the tunnel here. We didn't go over the top. So they had trucks out there. As you came in, they just loaded you up, and out you came. And they were looking for use anyhow out, because at that time, they were casemating Wallace, and we-

  Martini: They've already started, by December of 1941, casemating?

  Joseph: Right. But the problem was, we had no ammunition at the guns.

  Martini: Why not?

  Joseph: [00:26:30] Because of the casemating, that had us take all the ammunition and put it in the magazines down at Fort Baker. We put all our powder down there and our shells. So when we came out here on December the 7th, that's why they were waiting for us with open arms.

  They had the deuce and a halfs reads, and went down the casemates ... or the magazines in Baker. And they made skids out of two-by-fours and everything. And we rolled those shells up on the deuce and a halfs. We put four on the deuce and a half and sent them out to Wallace.

  [00:27:00] Plus, we had other trucks that were loading up. The powder were in big tin cans, and we loaded them up and sent them out. So we had to get the guns ready. So by the end of, I think, within 24 hours, we had everything back.

  Martini: Was there really the fear that the Japanese might show up on base and everything?

  Joseph: [00:27:30] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, there was a fear. They didn't know if the Japanese ... and probably if they had come, we'd've had problems. So thank goodness they didn't.

  Martini: Why?

  Joseph: Because we didn't have any ammunition out here.

  Martini: "Can you wait a minute? [crosstalk 00:27:42]."

  Joseph: "Just hold off, fellas. We're not ready yet."

  Martini: [00:28:00] Let's go back for a sec, before December 7th. You, as Battery K, and you came in as draftees, the 6th Coast Artillery was already existing. That was a old Army, regular Army?

  Joseph: Yeah.

  Martini: Was there friction or rivalry between the old Army guys and the draftees coming in?

  Joseph: [00:28:30] Not really. Not a real friction, no. Except, probably the hardest thing for some of us was, some of the people that they had in the Army at the time, we didn't feel were as well educated as we were.

  Martini: Go ahead. The older [crosstalk 00:28:42] reputation.

  Joseph:

  [00:29:00] We would sit there and we would have a class. And you have somebody telling you, and they couldn't pronounce the word nomenclature. You'd say, "Wow." And they hit the word ballistics, and they fall all over that one.

  And then the one that used to really throw them was the flight of trajectory. They had no idea what to pronounce that word. And we found sometimes that we'd have to go up and see what they're trying to say, and then tell them what the word was.

  [00:29:30] Now, that wasn't all of them. There were some that were very capable. But they had to fill these slots with people. They had so many people coming in, and we were not ready to take a slot like that anyhow. But they put in people who had never been there. Had they been more people trained and ready to take us, they would never've been there.

  [00:30:00] So that was a problem. That was the only problem. So there was kind of a little, between that group and the draftees, there was a little animosity, but not between the more qualified sergeants, no. There was more admiration there by the draftees.

  Martini: Does it work where the regular Army and the draftees, were they mixed in the same batteries, or [crosstalk 00:30:16]?

  Joseph: Oh yeah, we were mixed in the same barracks, and we got along great. They were good. We learned everything from them.

  Martini: Yeah. Yeah. Some of those guys have been in for years, too.

  [00:30:30] Joseph: They knew what they were doing. The professional soldiers were wonderful. You couldn't beat them. They knew their business. So that's where we learned from.

  Martini: But what about life out here? This is pretty much the middle of nowhere, even today.

  Joseph: Yeah.

  Martini: Yeah. Did you get out of here very often?

  Joseph:

  [00:31:00] Oh yeah, we got out pretty regular, except when the war came. Then they restricted your leaves and your passes. We called them pass in the Army, leave. But we got out of there fine. We had not problems getting out of here. The hardest part out here was pulling guard.

  Martini: Why?

  Joseph:

  [00:31:30] Cold. I never seen a colder place in my life, at night, at 4:00 in the morning. I'm telling you. We wore overcoats. You wouldn't think about that, but we wore overcoats out here, because it got cold, especially if you pulled a stationary guard and a machine gun, or something like that. They'd drive you up the wall, because it got really cold just standing there.

  [00:32:00] Walking guard's the best guard, at least to keep warm. So we did that. There was a lot of things out here. I can remember one night when I was pulling guard. I was walking around the mess hall down around K Battery there and L Battery, and raccoons got out from underneath the mess hall and flipped a garbage can.

  God, I almost jumped 6 feet in the air. It wasn't 10 feet from me. Here I am half asleep, walking. That happened, and boy, you start turning around. You don't know what it is.

  Martini: That fog gets thick out here.

  [00:32:30] Joseph: And it gets thick. An interesting thing one time. We had a Military exercise, and we got stationed at ... well, we were able to pick places to go, so myself and another fella decided, what we'll do is, we'll go up to Point Bonita, and we'll get underneath the lighthouse, where the lighthouse is out there.

  [00:33:00] And we thought at least it's dry out there, and it's concrete. So we stationed ourselves out there to look for enemy, but we forgot that they have a fog horn. So about 2:00 in the morning, we were out there half asleep, and that thing blew, and I'm telling you, it almost shook us off there. We almost fell in the ocean. That's loud. That's loud.

  Martini:

  [00:33:30] Paul and I both give tours out there to the lighthouse, and they won't even let us go around outside the building. I can imagine standing underneath it with the fog horns going off. Was that one of your little spotting stations out there? Okay. Yeah. Also, they have things going on out here, entertainment and things. [crosstalk 00:33:40] those shows coming?

  Joseph: Yeah. You know what we had out here? In fact, he was in K Battery [inaudible 00:33:48], was Mickey Rooney.

  Martini: He performed out here?

  Joseph: [00:34:00] Yeah. He performed for us. It probably was in 1942, somewhere in there. It wasn't long after we were out there, Mickey Rooney came out. That was very interesting. So we had that. We had a lot of the USO shows.

  Martini: I heard Bob Hope played out here once.

  Joseph: [00:34:30] Yeah, but he was mainly on, I think, over in Fort Winfield Scott, and Bing Crosby was over there once, because they played on the golf course. The Presidio Golf Course up behind Presidio there, they played there.

  And that's another thing we did. K Battery got the job of defending the water tower of the Presidio, which is up there by the golf course. You know where that is? I was a corporal then. I was in charge of that defense of the water tower.

  Martini: Is this during those big maneuvers or war games that you had?

  [00:35:00] Joseph: Yeah, they had something going on. That was probably in 1943, sometime when I was there. I'm trying to think. Somewhere in there. They were more worried about air attack then, than they were sea attack. So then we went over there.

  [00:35:30] And we had a 50-caliber machine gun there. So we had 50s too, by the way. We had 50s here too, and water cools. So I was stationed there, right by the golf course. That was very interesting duty.

  Martini: It sounds like the battery at that time had the whole array. It wasn't like a specialist unit that was assigned to you to defend the guns. It was it all you guys.

  Joseph: Well, yeah.

  Martini: Anti-aircraft and the 50 calibers and everything else.

  Joseph: [00:36:00] Well, when the war first started, we were on the guns, on the 12-inch guns. But as the war progressed, things changed because the guns, I'm sure, by the end of '41, I mean, the war started in '41, by the end of '42 anyhow, they getting to where the C Coast with airpower was kind of losing its zing. You know what I mean?

  [00:36:30] So they were going more into air defenses and things like that. When the war first started here, we were really on the 12-inch guns, because they send an Infantry unit in here to take care of all the defenses of this area, so that we could be only on the gun. We had nothing to worry about.

  See, when the war first started, we didn't have anybody like that here, so we had to barbwire. We barbwired all of Cronkhite. The only thing that was opened, there was some barbwire down the beach. We rolled barbwire all over this place.

  [00:37:00] And we had set up machine guns on the beach, down Lagoon there, and up in the hills there, plus the ones we have behind us up here. But we had to man all that ourselves, so were draining manpower in the guns, right? Which they didn't want.

  So they sent an Infantry unit in here, and they took over all that defenses, and took over the guard of the tunnel. Took over the whole complete guard of the whole area. So we no longer did that. We just were on the guns.

  [00:37:30] Martini: I'd like to talk about the physical structure of the battery itself, because we've alluded to that it underwent going from guns out in the open, to being totally enclosed and casemated. So when you first arrived, the guns were just barbette batteries?

  Joseph: Yeah.

  Martini: At the time you got here, was there any attempt at camouflage?

  Joseph: Oh yeah.

  Martini: Yeah?

  [00:38:00] Joseph: We started to work on physical camouflage before it was casemated, and that was before the war. We started that not long after we got here. That was part of the training. We studied camouflage in the field manuals and all that, and then we went into the physical of doing it.

  [00:38:30] So we put up, like I said, the chicken wire netting, or the netting, up there. And we had burlap of different colors, and we wove it into that. And we camouflaged both guns. Both guns were actually camouflage. And they took pictures of it, and it was very successful. So it worked.

  Martini: The magazines were separate, a couple-hundred yards away. I know there was the little road that connected them to the guns where the shells came out. [crosstalk 00:38:47].

  Joseph: Yeah. Well, they were in between the guns.

  Martini: Right. Were those camouflaged too?

  Joseph: Yeah. Well, they were already under the hill.

  Martini: On the backside, it was open, wasn't it?

  [00:39:00] Joseph: Well, the backside was open. There was a little house there, a concrete place, and that was like a guardhouse. And we used to use that for a guard shack at the guns. The guards slept there and came out of there and all that stuff. But the magazines were in between the guns here. Yeah.

  Martini: Okay. When did they start doing work on the major construction of casemating?

  Joseph: [00:39:30] Well, as far as I remember, it was about the end of '41 there. Just before the war, they started, and it went into the first part of the war there.

  Martini: You mentioned the first thing they had you do was take all the ammo out.

  Joseph: Yeah. Right. Yeah, we were doing that. We did that. The manpower in the Army is unbelievable. I mean, getting things out isn't that bad. You get all those guys going on it, taking it out. They want to do something, they can do it fast. They did it. They got it out, and got it back quick too.

  Martini: That extra incentive.

  Joseph: Yeah.

  [00:40:00] Martini: When they were casemating the guns, they did both of them simultaneously?

  Joseph: Yeah, they [inaudible 00:40:05] both of them. Yeah.

  Martini: Did they pull the guns out, or did they work around them?

  Joseph: No, they worked around them. The guns were still there. Right.

  Martini: But there must've been a maze of scaffolding and everything else going up.

  Joseph: Yeah.

  Martini: Were the guns still considered to be active? They were managing [crosstalk 00:40:19].

  Joseph: [00:40:30] They were considered to be active. I mean, if they had to, they would've stopped it. At that time, they could've stopped it and still fired the guns. They were never immobile.

  Martini: Okay. See, you had contractors, I guess, crawling all over the place, while you're trying to service the guns and [crosstalk 00:40:39]?

  Joseph: Yeah. We took care of the guns. Right. Right. Yeah.

  Martini: [00:41:00] Wow. I had always thought that maybe they did it one half at a time. Well, so much for that. When they wrapped up, the annual report said they finished sometime in '43, you were still with the K Battery?

  Joseph: Oh yeah.

  Martini: When we go inside, I'll have a number of questions. But the inside of the battery, those long quarters, there's how many bunk racks, Paul?

  Paul Curry: Well, the entire place is 120. That includes the two stall rooms near the plot room down the hallway.

  Martini: Did they move guys into the battery? Or do you know?

  [00:41:30] Joseph: No, we never moved into the battery. We never lived in there. We always stayed in our barracks. We went for training, but we never actually lived in there. No.

  Martini: We've always guessed that they [crosstalk 00:41:42].

  Joseph:

  [00:42:00] We'd have guards in there, used stay in the plotting room. They had a guard, I think, at one time, guarding Battery Wallace itself, but that's all. We never lived ... The guards lived there overnight. That may be six or eight fellas.

  Martini: Looks like they had a plan for you though.

  Joseph: Oh yeah.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Joseph: They had plans for us, if they had to.

  Martini: How long did you stay with K?

  Joseph: Well, I went with K. I came in 1941, in about 20th of January, I stayed with them until the end of October '44. I went to OCS.

  Martini: Yeah, and you became a corporal and a sergeant?

  [00:42:30] Joseph: I became a corporal. That was very interesting. When I was made corporal, you got your warrant out of Washington. I lost it in a fire that we had later in San Francisco, but the warrant was not like you get in your company now or your battery now.

  [00:43:00] That warrant was signed in Washington and it came to you. It was neat. I wish I would've never lost it, because they don't do that anymore. So that means that couldn't've broken in the company.

  Martini: They'd have to take them in too.

  Joseph: They have to go a little go a little further. Right. No, that's what was good about it. Where, now, you get made by the company commander. He could just break you right in the office. So that was what we always used to talk about anyhow.

  [00:43:30] "Well, one thing. The old man can't break me. He's going to go further." Anyhow, when it came to being sergeant, myself, and we had another, Corporal [Lupo 00:43:31] was another real good friend of mine. We were made at the same time.

  So they went a lot on seniority in the Army at that time. But the ranking corporal ... the sergeants were the ones that voted for you to come out, to be put forth for promotion, but they would vote for the ranker, unless there was some reason that he couldn't get it. And it would be something was obvious. Usually, they'd get it.

  [00:44:00] Their opinion was that if you weren't worth being a corporal, you wouldn't get there in the first place, so you could go up, which was true. Lupo and myself were both eligible at the same time, but at that time, the Army came up with the limited service.

  [00:44:30] They were bringing people they'd call limited service. People had some kind of a slight handicap, but couldn't go overseas, couldn't be general service. We were considered general service and they were considered limited service.

  Well, then they came out with an order that said that no general service noncom in the United States, in the [inaudible 00:44:43] interior, could be promoted. In order for him to promoted if he was general service, he'd have to be overseas, either in the theater of operations or in the frontline.

  [00:45:00] So that put me and Lupo out of it, because the promotion was there, and this was in '44, but we couldn't be promoted because we were general service. So I was on CQ, which is Charge of Quarters, and that's usually a job for a corporal.

  [00:45:30] At that time, you were just on guard in the orderly room at night, what you were. I was in CQ and the old man was in the office. And he was looking over our records I guess, because at that time, '44, there was a big change out here. A lot of the general service people were being transferred out, and going to go overseas.

  [00:46:00] So he was looking over the records, I guess, seeing who's going. So he called me in and he told me, he says, "Corporal," he says, "you did fairly well on your IQ." I was just a high school graduate, so he said, "You could qualify to go to OCS, even though you don't have college."

  So he said, "If you want, I'd suggest you put in for it, because you have a wife and child." At that time, we were married and we had a child. And he said, "It'd be better to go overseas with a little money in your pocket than to go over like you are."

  [00:46:30] So he talked to me like to a father, because I had no idea of going OCS. I hadn't really thought of it. So at the time, he was pretty nice, he's also says, "Your outfit is going to be ... There's going to be a lot of changes here."

  [00:47:00] He says, "You're eligible for furlough," because, well, most of us were then. We didn't hardly get furloughs like you do now. And he said, "I can arrange for you to take a furlough. Then if you go to OCS, you go after that." So anyhow, I went over to Fort Scott, and I qualified for OCS.

 

NIKE Missile Site SF-88

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35301

---

"I definitely was very fearful at that time that we would be at war, and then you start thinking of San Francisco would have been gone if we don't do our job." -Ron Parshall

 

• Ron Parshall Part 1

  
  

  An Interview with Ron Parshall, a guided missile electronic equipment repairman, served at Nike Missile Site SF-88L at Fort Barry between 1960-1961 by John Martini the Curator of Military History for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area
  Audio Transcript

  MARTINI: (001) Today is Thursday, July 19, 1997. My name is John Martini. I am Curator of Military History for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This is an oral history tape of Mr. Ron Parshall who served as an Air Defense artilleryman at Nike Site 88L at Fort Barry, in the Marin Headlands. We are at the Nike Site and this oral history tape is being done for the Archives and library of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Ron, you understand that by doing this oral history tape this is going to become part of the collection for the public to use and you give up copyright for anything that we say today?

  PARSHALL: (008) Yes, I do.

  MARTINI: (008) All right. Introduce yourself, give me your full name.

  PARSHALL: (009) My name is Ronald Wells Parshall.

  MARTINI: (009) Where were you born?

  PARSHALL: (010) Elyria(?), Ohio.

  MARTINI: (010) What's your birthday?

  PARSHALL: (010) 1934.

  MARTINI: (011) Okay. Can I ask ... what were your parent’s names?

  PARSHALL: (011) Alice ... and Wilbert Parshall. (Chuckles).

  MARTINI: (012) You had to think about that one. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

  PARSHALL: (013) I have two sisters. Jean and Betty.

  MARTINI: (014) Did you grow up in Ohio or where?

  PARSHALL: (014) Very little in Ohio. I grew up in San Francisco mainly. We came out here during the war in 1943.

  MARTINI: (015) What brought you out?

  PARSHALL: (016) My health. Bad asthma and pneumonia twice before I was seven years old. So, they told me to get out of the cold weather. (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (017) Did it get better when you got to San Francisco?

  PARSHALL: (018) Oh yeah. I am still living. (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (018) Now. When you came out to San Francisco during the war, do you remember much about the war, you were young at the time?

  PARSHALL: (020) Quite a bit, yes.

  MARTINI: (020) Yes?

  PARSHALL: (020) All of my ... a lot of my uncles were in the war. One was, you know, and they would write home and write to us because my mother was, they were my mother's brothers. So, we would get a lot of information on what's happening here and there. Had one in the Air Force and three in the Army. So, we did good.

  MARTINI: (023) What part of the City?

  PARSHALL: (024) San Francisco?

  MARTINI: (024) Yes.

  PARSHALL: (024) It's called Candlestick Cove. It's no longer there.

  MARTINI: (025) Right where the park is? In that area?

  PARSHALL: (025) Right where the, actually where the three new buildings that they built there that was right where the houses were.

  MARTINI: (026) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (026) There was no housing in San Francisco at ‘43 and ‘44. So the Navy ... my father worked for the shipyards ... so the Navy arranged for housing in Candlestick Cove which was great because there were always kids to play with all the time. It was great.

  MARTINI: (029) Uh huh. I have to ask. Where did you go to school in the City?

  PARSHALL: (029) I went to Denman Junior High School and Balboa High School.

  MARTINI: (030) Balboa. Okay. What made you get into the Army? Did you enlist?

  PARSHALL: (031) No. I was drafted.

  MARTINI: (031) You were drafted?

  PARSHALL: (031) Mm hmm.

  MARTINI: (032) What year were you drafted?

  PARSHALL: (032) I was drafted in 1959.

  MARTINI: (033) When you were drafted, had you considered going into the military?

  PARSHALL: (033) I almost left high school to join the Navy at one time. My father said, well, if you do that you will have to make a career out of it. So that made me think twice, and so I finished my high school and did other things. I was about twenty-four before I was drafted so I was an old man. (Chuckles).

  MARTINI: (037) How old were they drafting men at that time?

  PARSHALL: (037) Eighteen.

  MARTINI: (038) Eighteen.

  PARSHALL: (038) In fact, when I was in high school the Korean War was going on in the ‘50s and they were drafting right out of high school. I just happened to not turn eighteen until I graduated so I missed that draft.

  MARTINI: (040) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (040) And then when I graduated the War was over the next year.

  MARTINI: (041) Were a lot of guys getting drafted at that time?

  PARSHALL: (041) Yes.

  MARTINI: (042) And at that time did people think anything like, later, during the ‘60s, a lot of ideas were: ‘how can I get out of the draft’?

  PARSHALL: (043) Never.

  MARTINI: (043) How did they feel at that time?

  PARSHALL: (044) Never.

  MARTINI: (044) Never?

  PARSHALL: (044) Never heard that. Everybody once they got drafted they just showed up and went and did what they had to do.

  MARTINI: (045) Did you have any choice of branches of service?

  PARSHALL: (046) No. No, they needed people in the Army. The Vietnam War was not started yet at '59, but they were still shy in the Army so that is where you went. The main draftees went to the Army.

  MARTINI: (049) Did you know what specialty you were going to have?

  PARSHALL: (049) No. I did not until I finished basic and they sent me to engineering school in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

  MARTINI: (051) Engineering school?

  PARSHALL: (051) Right.

  MARTINI: (051) Uh huh. What did you think you were going to be going into?

  PARSHALL: (052) Well, they told us missiles, but I did not know what I was going to be doing. I had an extensive electrical background before I went into the Army and it just patterned out to be an electronic equipment repairman which, that's the course they were teaching.

  MARTINI: (055) Did you like missiles?

  PARSHALL: (055) I loved the ... I did, I never saw a missile until I got there and they had one on display in which we were formed in front of, and we had our picture taken and that perked my interest. Then going to school and studying about the missiles, everything you studied was all this machinery was something that you wouldn't get on the outside. It was unbelievable, you know. The technologies were way in advance of anything that I had ever seen. MARTINI: (061) Even before you got into the Army the ‘50s were really the ... everyone was really getting hyped up about space travel and SPUTNIK and all that. Did you have any interest in rocketry or ...?

  PARSHALL: (063) Well, yeah, space travel really excited me I think the only books that I ever read in high school were on space, Jules Verne type things.

  MARTINI: (064) Mm. Hmm.

  PARSHALL: (065) Yeah. And sports. The two things that really perked my memory.

  MARTINI: (066) Did you follow any of the military technology like a lot of kids do? Build models or stuff like that?

  PARSHALL: (067) I built models, I built the B-52 Hustler before I went in the Army. I built the Hercules while I was in the Army and I had a plane, a motorized plane being built when I went in the Army, and my brother-in-law finished that for me and crashed it.

  (070-071)[Laughter].

  MARTINI: (071) What did you know about Nike’s before you got to Belvoir?

  PARSHALL: (071) Not a thing.

  MARTINI: (071) Really?

  PARSHALL: (072) No. Not a thing. It was top secret, that’s all I knew, and it was the elite part of the Army. Everybody ... when I got my assignment to go to Fort Belvoir, everybody, all of my buddies and that, were going into the infantry and they were all very envious because they said if they could they would sure want to be in that because the field that you are in was way advanced.

  MARTINI: (076) I have heard that. I have heard that there is a special esprit in Air Defense.

  PARSHALL: (077) Oh yeah. Everybody wanted to get into it, but which is hard because you had to have a certain background, something that would fit into this program.

  MARTINI: (078) Give me a time frame here. This would be about what time?

  PARSHALL: (079) 1959. The latter part of ‘59 and first about first four months of 1960.

  MARTINI: (080)Was it ... it was called ARADCOM [NB: Army Air Defense Command] at that time?

  PARSHALL: (081) ARADCOM.

  MARTINI: (081) Okay. ARADCOM. They had gotten rid of those Anti-Aircraft [Artillery] ... ?

  PARSHALL: (082) I never even seen those patches, the double “A” patches.

  MARTINI: (082) The double “A” patches?

  PARSHALL: (082) They were gone.

  MARTINI: (083) Fort Belvoir during training or engineer school, were you officially in ARADCOM at that time?

  PARSHALL: (084) Yeah. I was officially TDY to ARADCOM, in other words, going to school but I was a member of the ARADCOM at that time.

  MARTINI: (086) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (086) Although I had never been on a base.

  MARTINI: (086) Were you working on missiles or additional electronics?

  PARSHALL: (087) All of the associated parts of the missile were, not the actual missile itself, but like the HPU unit, hydraulic pumping unit or something like that would be broken down and things would be wrong with it and at school they taught you how to fix it. Electronic parts worked on things like air conditioning. Things like the generators, the motors themselves, and the injectors stuff like that and how to repair them, but you never saw them all together, so it was really a puzzle, until you actually got onto a Nike base. It was, you really didn’t know what you were doing. You were studying and learning, but at the same time you wondered where it all fit.

  MARTINI: (095) Did you know while going through training where it would end up? Or is this all just sort of decided when you finished courses?

  PARSHALL: (096) It was a real blank thing. I thought half of the, we knew, at half way through the schooling, the upper half was going to Nike, the other half would be going, with some leaders, to the Hawk system at the same time so they split the class at half times and sent the other class to study Hawks in El Paso and kept us in Fort Belvoir.

  MARTINI: (101) Was any special interest or expertise, was one system considered more cutting edge than the other? Hawk or Nike?

  PARSHALL: (103) No. They were both, they were both on the cutting, really similar missiles, so to speak, I mean the systems are much bigger, but than the Hawk, they are a lot smaller. We were kind of envious because these guys were going to get to go down to Texas and be in California and we were back in the Washington, DC area and now they are going to go down to Texas, we thought that was pretty special. Thank goodness we never went, the Hawk was strictly a field missile and most of those guys ended up in Germany, not in the town, but in the field so it wasn't a good ...?

  MARTINI: (108) Literally in the field. (109) [Laughter].

  MARTINI: (109) So, where after Fort Belvoir.

  PARSHALL: (110) Fort Belvoir. My first assignment was in Fort Niagara, New York. Buffalo air defense. I got there, I was just at Niagara site for about one week and then they sent me on to an actual missile site.

  MARTINI: (113) What went on at Fort Niagara?

  PARSHALL: (114) More shots, you know. It was the headquarters, that was the headquarters, the working part of the headquarters. Nothing to do with missiles but the, all the paper had to be done there and so you were stationed there for at least a week until you got assigned to where you were going and then they, our class went up there, there was about seven of us from that class and only two of us ended out at the same site and never saw the rest of the people again.

  MARTINI: (119) Ahhh. Really? Just to the wind?

  PARSHALL: (120) They split you, and I saw some of my orders that shows some guy going down to Georgia or Cleveland or whatever. In fact, when I was going to the class in Fort Belvoir I don't think two of us were of the same, there was only two of us from the whole state, same state, everybody else was from a different state. A lot of people from that had gone into air defense from something else were there training at the same time and we had sergeants in the class and higher ranking people than what we were, all privates at that time so.

  MARTINI: (126) Yes, I was going to ask. The ranking was it private or was it specialist?

  PARSHALL: (127) Most of us were private. Oh, no, specialist after private, I would have been a specialist, yes. I never reached that high, but private first class (something seemed high?).

  MARTINI: (129) So you did not go to Fort Bliss right away?

  PARSHALL: (129) No. I never. It would have probably, to me, it would have been more advantageous to start out at Fort Bliss see what the system was then go to school and know what you are studying but at the same time we learned our jobs so you know, like you drive a car, you want to know all about the car, well if you go to do something with a missile you would like to see it and see what it worked like I guess the Army's plans were not that way and it worked out just as well it made us study harder I think, I really do. Everybody that went to class was really, there was a private studying, in other words, you just didn't fall asleep in class you studied and we tested each other each night and at the same time did our Army routine of cleaning, and exercised marching and KP.

  MARTINI: (139) Could you have theoretically have washed out of Fort Belvoir?

  PARSHALL: (140) Oh yeah. There were a few people that did that. They were people that wouldn't make it anywhere and people that borderlined. You had to have more than a high school education, like I had over a year and a half in college, trade college. Four years in trade school and another year and a half in trade college. So, I think that helped. We had a lot of brand new people in our class, brilliant people. Not myself included, but ... (Laughs) I was always amazed at what these guys knew and it was helpful for me too. Just smart people.

  MARTINI: (147) So, you are at Fort Niagara and they assign you to your first actual missile battery.

  PARSHALL: (148) Yes.

  MARTINI: (148) Do you remember the name of it?

  PARSHALL: (148) It was A Battery. It was Model City and Ajax. Strictly Ajax. What the Army was doing at that particular time, this was 1960, we were turning over the battery to the National Guard, so, I had enough training without seeing a missile to train National Guard into my job.

  MARTINI: (153) Really?

  PARSHALL: (153) So, I actually went out there as a trainer. I didn't do anything with the missiles, but more, just showed the people what my job would have been. I stayed there about two months or so and then I was only, and then I went to Battery B which was a combination of Hercules and Ajax site that had three rows of four. So, it had twelve launchers. It was a big site, there was close to 400 people on that site.

  MARTINI: (159) Wow.

  PARSHALL: (160) Yeah, you ate in shifts and you got out of there as soon as possible and it was a very busy base.

  MARTINI: (161) When you got there, what was your unit assignment?

  PARSHALL: (162) When I got to B Battery. When I got to Grand Island let's call it.

  MARTINI: (164) Uh huh.

  PARSHALL: (164) My job? I was still a launcher crewman and trained that way, but I was assigned to the IFC.

  MARTINI: (165) IFC?

  PARSHALL: (165) Yeah. I did a lot of painting and stuff like that. I did not know that job whatsoever, but I could handle the generators in the IFC and I could handle cutting lawn and painting and so that is what they put me to.

  MARTINI: (168) IFC is ...? For the tape.

  PARSHALL: (168) Yes. Integrated Fire Controls.

  MARTINI: (169) Radars and?

  PARSHALL: (169) Radars and radar vans.

  MARTINI: (170) What specific ARADCOM unit was this?

  PARSHALL: (171) How do you mean?

  MARTINI: (171) Whatever artillery, what was the unit number?

  PARSHALL: (172) Well, it was the 44th and then they got changed to the same one that Ezio [Nurisio] was in. I can't remember. No, I can't remember. I skidded half the week. (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (176) Afterward we will write it down.

  PARSHALL: (176) Yeah. Yeah. I'll get it for you.

  MARTINI: (176) So when, so you were only there at Fort Niagara rather than Niagara sites for a matter of months?

  PARSHALL: (177) That's it. And then it became December, uh, it became, you know in the Army you can get thirty days off a year. It became time where I could hitch a ride back east, I mean back to San Francisco. So, I came back on a visit for a week. I heard about this site for somehow. I don't know how I knew about it, but I heard about this site. It just befuddles me how I knew about it. And I drove out here and I parked right up at the top gate there at the building within two seconds I had two MPs on me, and I was in uniform, and they were asking me what I was doing there and I told them. Well, while they're talking to me, a fella from Georgia comes running up the hill to see what I was doing there too and he happened to be the same type of job I was, a 3-5-7, and I told him what I was here for. I says “You know, I just looking around to see if anyone was interested in swapping with me.” He said “Sure.” And all we did was exchange names and I went back to Niagara Falls and started processing paper and within twenty days we were given orders to swap. We paid our own transportation, and I just walked onto this base doing the same job. It was great.

  MARTINI: (194) Was that unusual, could a lot of guys do that?

  PARSHALL: (195) I could have, yeah, I think the Battery Officer would have complained a lot if I had a position, I was just filling in time there until they were going to put me down in the launching area. I'm sure there was probably somebody retiring or something or moving on, and they needed a hole and they just stuck me up in the IFC until they had room for me. When I was at Battery A I had not had my secret clearance yet, but I was allowed in the pit because that was really not a, you know, like a, like the Hercules. It was fairly well known what they were about and so by the time I was at Battery B, I was given my secret clearance and I think that's what they were mainly were waiting for to send me down into the pit. And in between that time, the officer approved the swap and I got out of there. Well, being so far away from home. It was ridiculous. I mean they send you, not ridiculous, but I mean they send you from San Francisco to Niagara Falls, you throw a rock you would have been overseas, collecting overseas payment, it just didn't make any, I just was not comfortable there. When we got to, when we got to Battery A in Model City, snow was above the barracks. You couldn't get down to the missile. They had just had one of those big Buffalo storms. Could not get down to the missile it was just, I developed an attitude right away. This wasn't for me because I came to the West Coast because, you know, and I was willing to go anywhere the Army was going to send me, but if I had a chance to do something different that's what I did. Talking it over with other guys and what, you know, I really don't know how I knew this base was out here because nobody else did, but I lucked out.

  MARTINI: (217) You said the other guy that was here was the same job series, you said a 3-5-7? What's that?

  PARSHALL: (219) That's a class. A “guided missiles electronic equipment repairman.”

  MARTINI: (220) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (220) And point ten was what I was and which meant school trained. He was not schooled trained, he was job trained but still they let it go and they did the transfer. He liked it because on a weekend pass you could make it to Georgia and back where in California, it takes an airplane and you got more than a weekend pass to make it back. So, he was like, you know a few hundred miles away from home.

  MARTINI: (225) And you ended up just a few miles from home.

  PARSHALL: (225) Yeah right. (Laughter).

  MARTINI: (226) When you got here, obviously you were pretty happy because you are home again.

  PARSHALL: (227) Very happy.

  MARTINI: (228) Give me the, so I can keep the time frame going, about what month would you have gotten here? I think this is 1960 now we are talking?

  PARSHALL: (230) Towards October or November of 19..., maybe a little early in October, September, or July of 1960.

  MARTINI: (233) July of 1960? Fog months.

  PARSHALL: (233) Yeah. I remember the weather because back there we were in khakis. We got out here, we were in overcoats. Not overcoats, but you know always wearing a field jacket at all times, not lined. Everyday I stood I'd get this field jacket and the weather was not like it is now it has changed, very definitely has changed.

  MARTINI: (239) Today, this is summer. Brilliant sun.

  PARSHALL: (240) Never happened here for me.

  MARTINI: (241) Did certain [Nike] sites, say right around San Francisco, have reputations of being good sites and others sites being sort of mediocre or were they ...?

  PARSHALL: (242) The worst site that I could remember to be stationed was Angel Island. Only because if you were on a pass or if you were out for, if you got allowed to go somewhere for the day, you had to travel by boat. It was a Navy boat, I believe a Navy boat, leaving for Angel Island and the last trip was twelve o'clock, and if you had forgotten yourself and missed that last trip then you were AWOL automatically and Articles got thrown at you. I remember a couple of times we were in Sausalito and we started knowing the other guys in a different Batteries because we would all hang around the pizza place down there and talk about, not talk about what we were doing, but just talk that we were in the Army, yeah, what are you doing?, we're in missiles, oh, we're in this, oh yeah? da da da da da. Anyway, I can remember, I had a car, you know, and not many people on these bases had cars, except the officers. At $78.00 a month, you really cannot afford it, but I had had a car before I went in so, I had a car. I remember about three times having to rush these guys down to catch that last boat. Whereas, we would did not have to show up until five o'clock, but there was no way they could make it there by five, because they were stuck. Unbelievable.

  MARTINI: (258) So that was it's really only drawback.

  PARSHALL: (259) Yeah. Pacifica was a drawback in even in worse weather than here, but nobody I have ... uh ... I had the luck of, just before I got out, of driving a Major around to inspect all of the bases, and when you get out you talk to the other guys. I never heard any bad talk about any of these bases. They were all spic and span. It was a real good duty, it was long hours and you did not get a lot of time off, but it was very, it was always interesting, something new. And a new directive would come out and you got to change this part, or change that part, or stuff like that. Always something to do, so your day was full.

  MARTINI: (268) So, what was your MOS here at this Battery?

  PARSHALL: (269) I was a, when I first got here I was a Generator Operator, they called them Generator Operators and Launcher Crewmen.

  MARTINI: (270) Launcher Crewmen.

  PARSHALL: (270) And then towards the end of, about three months before I got out, I was doing that but they had checked our hearing and found out that I could not go near the generators anymore. So, I was still a Launcher Crewmen, but they made me in charge of the IFCs generators up there, so I could take care of those because they did not have the air starters on it. They didn't go inside or hurt your ears, they were just forty KWs. They were very small generators, they purred, they didn't make any noise at all, they were electric starts too. Our generators were 250 hp Cummins, air-started, goes up to high decibels and at that time you did not have to wear ear muffs, and but by the time we found out about it all of our Generator Operators had to do some other job. (Chuckles). Lost now.

  MARTINI: (283) Really. You have hearing loss?

  PARSHALL: (284) Yeah. The whole ear is gone, that ear is gone, and the high range on this one, I got ringing in my ears all the time now. So, I am just like, ever fired an M-1? it sounds just like that to me all the time, that ring that goes.

  MARTINI: (286) Wow.

  PARSHALL: (287) Yeah. What was ... I would like to mention this ... what was good about taking care of those generators, I liked it because, it was a way of filling in a day. I would have to go to the Presidio and check out a truck and then bring the truck over here and, only Army personnel were allowed, Army trucks were allowed up there. I couldn't take my own car up there unless you were in that, then you could take your own car so, anybody else had to bring an Army car up there so you made you go all the way to the Presidio, check out a car, go up there and do what I had to do, then take the truck all the way back into here. By then it was supper. (Laughs) It was kind of a nice day. I didn't do that everyday of the week and the other days we would practice launching.

  MARTINI: (296) Yeah. Let's come back to that later, because I know that vehicles here, there was a small fleet of vehicles assigned to this site.

  PARSHALL: (298) Yes. Right. Definitely was.

  MARTINI: (299) Give me a basic layout of the different parts of the Battery when you were here, the components?

  PARSHALL: (301) It started where you slept. That was the Admin area. All of the office work up there. There were wooden buildings at that time, two story high, easy to keep care of because the newer buildings you had to polish the floors all of the time because they had floor tile. These wooden floors all they wanted was them swept. They didn't so, that's all you had to do. So, that was kind of easy to take care of and you would walk into that or walk into any place and everything would be spic and span. Your bed had to be made properly and all your uniforms had to be lined up ready for inspection at all times. In fact, you even hated sleeping on your bed because you had it made in the morning and there is not that much time to make it. It had a little, just a little small area that they had for like, you could buy Coke's or candy, writing paper, stuff like that. That's where we assembled in the morning. Everyone assembled there and a few stories like that of the fog coming down when you are assembling, while you are assembling out there you could not see the guy next to you. We had a fire drill there a couple of times. You actually had to bring out a fire extinguisher and stand there and like you are fire drilling. The road up there where, it is still there, had a big chain over it with "Coast Guard - No Admittance." You could not go past that. Orders on this, at the base at all times, you could not go into any of the bunkers except for the ones we were using.

  MARTINI: (324) Like Battery Alexander?

  PARSHALL: (324) Battery Alexander. We could go in only certain parts of that. Our office, the motor pool, there was a little bathroom up above there, I don't know if we used that or not, but that's all. You could not go into the big room because it was sealed.

  MARTINI: (328) Yeah?

  PARSHALL: (328) Yeah. There was only a couple of little, small offices that we used and then the motor pool used that other section. So, there was a ballfield, we used that as a ballfield and a parking lot on the other side [of Btry. Alexander] and we played baseball there a few times. It was hard to get the guys to get out after they, after a day of working to play ball. We had a basketball team here. We played the Russians one time.

  MARTINI: (333) From where?

  PARSHALL: (333) Just from San Francisco. There was a Russian team there and we played them ...

  MARTINI: (334) Uh. Huh.

  PARSHALL: (334) ... A little grudge fight. (Laughs). A few fists were flashed. But we had the, we had the height though, we had a man here named Rombowski who was a Lieutenant in charge of our launching area. He was about 6'4" or so. He was a, he helped us and that was good. Out of that same area, towards the end, we had a, oh, two people from each Battery, we were selected for an Honor Guard. So that was another thing that I got onto because I was a very good marcher, evidently. I could take orders and march and that kind of stuff so I got onto the Honor Guard. That was another nice thing because one day a week, all your duties are gone and you go over there and get dressed up and practice. We presented, we had a couple of parades. Dwight Minnich, who was in charge of guard dogs over in Site 87, participated in the same parade I did. There was a missile out there and all that. It was kind of nice.

  MARTINI: (350) When you say "go over there", you are talking about ...?

  PARSHALL: (350) At the Presidio.

  MARTINI: (350) The Presidio.

  PARSHALL: (351) Yeah. Right where the Honor Guard was at the Presidio. Right up, boy I don't know if it was where the Log Cabin is, up there or if it was down on the main parade field. I think it was down on the main parade field. The very first house was the Honor Guard.

  MARTINI: (355) Yes. Near the National Cemetery?

  PARSHALL: (355) Right.

  MARTINI: (356) Yes. So up there at the barracks area, the Admin?

  PARSHALL: (357) Mm. Hmm.

  MARTINI: (358) Did the guys at the IFC and the Launcher sections, were they housed in separate barracks?

  PARSHALL: (359) What they did I didn't know about. I was only in with Launcher crewmen and motor pool. I believe they slept up top. I never saw too many IFC people.

  MARTINI: (362) Did IFC and the launcher section, did they socialize a lot or was there rivalry?

  PARSHALL: (363) I think there was a lot of rivalry. I never even met half of them until we went down to fire a missile one time and then I met all of these guys that I had never seen before. (Laughs) I wondered where they had come from.

  MARTINI: (366) Up there, up in the fog.

  PARSHALL: (366) I had been up to the IFC, but most of, when you go up, being on this base it's just like if you were to ask me. Our office was the second office over there under, what did you call it, Fort ...?

  MARTINI: (370) Battery Alexander.

  PARSHALL: (370) Battery Alexander. If you look at it there are two offices on the right side. Ours was on the right side. I don't know what was next door. I don't know what was in that, now I do, but that big open space. I don't know what was in there. I know what was in the motor pool because I a few times I had an association, I got a close friend there and, but ...

  MARTINI: (375) It was very specialized, I don't say compartmentalized information. You really knew what you had to know.

  PARSHALL: (376) Yeah. This paint (something)(?), I never had anything to do with. Though, I did a lot of painting. There wasn't only paint(something)(?) but the paint was brought to you. You know. That is kind of you know pushing it, I never was but once was in the A-pit, I mean, the B-pit never but was once was down there.

  MARTINI: (382) But, you were in A-pit a lot?

  PARSHALL: (382) A-pit was my ...

  MARTINI: (382) That was your pit?

  PARSHALL: (382) That was my station, yeah.

  MARTINI: (384) Okay, the Admin area, and then the IFC on top of the hill we call Hill 88. This is the Launcher area. Technology: were there still Ajax here? Was this Hercules and Ajax, or just all Ajax?

  PARSHALL: (387) No. There was no Ajax when I was here.

  MARTINI: (388) Okay. It was Hercules.

  PARSHALL: (388) It was the ‘60s. It was gone.

  MARTINI: (388) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (389) Not even looking like there was any Ajax here. They were all gone. Definitely Hercules. Bright and shiny too. Pretty missiles.

  MARTINI: (390) Mm Hmm.

  PARSHALL: (390) Very pretty.

  MARTINI: (391) Obviously we don't have a full battery of guys to do maintenance around here but does the site generally look as it did at that time or are there ...

  PARSHALL: (393) Oh, except for the building we are in, except for that building, everything looks the same.

  MARTINI: (394) Mm Hmm.

  PARSHALL: (395) There was no grass to cut. It was all brown. The only grass we cut was up by the upper fence above the launching area. For some reason we cut some grass up there, it was kind of like a hill. In fact, the last I was here. I was cutting grass up there. (Laughs). Everything was in top shape though. There was no cracks on the floor like down now in A-pit there's cracks. You could eat off that floor. It was in very good shape.

  MARTINI: (404) What about the people that were here, do you remember the names of like the Commanding Officer and your Section Chief?

  PARSHALL: (406) I remember our Section Chief was Bohan.

  MARTINI: (406) Peter Bohan?

  PARSHALL: (407) Peter Bohan.

  MARTINI: (407) Right.

  PARSHALL: (407) And over him, not over him, but in conjunction with a Lieutenant named Rombowski(?). He was in charge. The Sergeant that was in charge of me I can't remember his last name and that's about ... Yeah. I can't remember the officers. I got it at home but I didn't have much to do with officers. (Chuckles). I think I told you, but I am officer shy.

  MARTINI: (416) Do you remember how many guys would have been assigned down here to the launcher?

  PARSHALL: (418) Right. Just in the launching area, seven per unit with a Sergeant in charge.

  MARTINI: (419) With a Sergeant in charge. What was the total, fourteen with a Sergeant? Sixteen, for both pits?

  PARSHALL: (420) Two Sergeants. Excuse me. One in each pit. One in charge of each pit.

  [FIRST TAPE - SIDE TWO]

  Interviewer: John Martini, Curator of Military History, Golden Gate National Recreation Area

  MARTINI: (000) This is side two of the Ron Parshall interview. Just before we ran out of tape on the other side we were talking about the people who lived inside here at the launcher section. There were the launcher... the missilemen?

  PARSHALL: (002) Mm Hmm.

  MARTINI: (002) Is that the correct terminology?

  PARSHALL: (003) Mm. Hmm.

  MARTINI: (003) Missilemen. Then there was the MP section, right?

  PARSHALL: (003) Mm. Hmm.

  MARTINI: (004) Yeah, and how many of them would there have been on a given day?

  PARSHALL: (004) Two.

  MARTINI: (004) Two?

  PARSHALL: (005) One would take care of the front gate and one would take care of the launcher area. And at night, the two would join together at the launching area, or take turns.

  MARTINI: (006) With the dog?

  PARSHALL: (007) Yeah. They were not part of our outfit, though. They had nothing to do with us.

  MARTINI: (007) Did they have barracks up in the same complex?

  PARSHALL: (008) I don't know where they slept. (Laughs). They probably did to tell you the truth, but they were probably not sleeping when we were sleeping or maybe they were, yeah, they stayed up all night.

  MARTINI: (010) If the battery had the Duty, what would the timetable be? How many hours, here, at the site? You rotate crews, how would that work?

  PARSHALL: (012) We would be here all the time until we were off duty. It would be a full crew. Both sections would be ready to operate and that was a problem too because at night we would have to be close enough to the missiles so we slept in that little building across the, above the launching area and when you have two crews in there and you only got like five beds there's not enough room. So, everybody else sleeps on the couch. And the cops, not the cops, the MPs from the Presidio used to patrol out here all the time so they would be in there too half the time because they had coffee and doughnuts. We had a very good cook on when I was here that when we were on ‘hot’ he would always arrange you know about eleven, twelve o'clock to take some cakes, cookies or something like that, plus the coffee. It was very nice. He didn't have to, you know. (Chuckles).

  MARTINI: (021) Let's pause. We will go outside and we'll walk around.

  PARSHALL: (022) Sure.

  MARTINI: (024) We are, theoretically, just standing inside the main gate. When you guys were taking over the Duty, did you enter through the main gate, or through the upper gate at the ‘three sisters’ [NB: indicates the three warehouses on Field Road], or Battery Alexander? Logistically, how did it work out?

  PARSHALL: (027) Battery Alexander, generally. Yeah. First thing you did was Assembly up in the [Administration] area. Then when they released you from there, you had breakfast and then you went, you go to your assigned position which is always Battery Alexander. You got your daily trip tickets there. The typewriter was there, the table was there, you did all that kind of work and then you went down and did, and presented yourself at what you had to do at the table then you went down, like we first show up at the generators and switch them over they had been on all night long so we would phase them out and switch them over for the day. They could probably run on one generator instead of two.

  MARTINI: (034) So, every time that the Battery had the Duty, the generators were running?

  PARSHALL: (035) Mm Hmm. When I was here. We had no PG&E power. So, the generator was going night and day. So, being a generator operator, that was a big deal because you had to be there night and day. Somebody had to be around this area at all times, in other words, you had to sleep in here and there because if the generators went down there was nobody here. The MPs did not know how to turn them on or off so a generator operator. I believe there was about three of us here and we did the shift here.

  MARTINI: (041) So, when the Battery had the duty, the MPs might be the only people down here and everybody else would be up in the ready room?

  PARSHALL: (042) If it happened at night it would all depend, if we were on fifteen minute alert, we would be up there watching television or something and if the alarm did go on, the MPs would just raise the dogs and get rid of them and open the gates for us. That upper gate, we, the Sergeant in charge had the key to that one, but everything else they had to let us in because they were armed and (something) plus themselves and the guard dogs.

  MARTINI: (049) Yeah. Let's talk about security at the site and the double fences. If someone were entering this site on official duty, but they were not part of the battery, what would the procedure be?

  PARSHALL: (051) They would have to come through the main gate and they would get a pass there to put on there, and from that point on there was always a guard with them. Whether they were President of the United States or whatever, they had to have a guard with them. So, one of the guards would be with this group, or one person, and he would only be allowed in this first area, he would not be allowed in the exclusion area until he went through the second MP who took that badge and gave him another badge to wear inside the exclusion area. Never be alone, never allowed down in the pits alone or anything like that. In fact, the rule of the day was: two people in the pits at all times. Never could go down there by yourself.

  MARTINI: (058) Was that for safety or to ...?

  PARSHALL: (059) For everything. Yeah. Safety and that you didn't sabotage or take pictures or whatever. Whatever was necessary.

  MARTINI: (060) I understand smoking was prohibited?

  PARSHALL: (061) That was death. Smoking was death. I imagine you could smoke, I never smoked at all, but I imagine you could smoke in this area [NB: indicates the area outside the Assembly Building], but once you got towards the guardhouse, you had to put all, anything that would light a fire, in a bucket that they had there right next to the gate and then you could walk in. But, if you ever got caught with a Zippo [lighter] or anything like that, that is just as about as bad as being AWOL. You’re gonna serve some time doing something. They would KP you. Whatever they got for you. Plus it would go on your record.

  MARTINI: (067) You used the term "a guard with you."

  PARSHALL: (067) Mm Hmm.

  MARTINI: (068) MP or someone from the ...?

  PARSHALL: (068) MP. Not us, no. no. It would be one of these MPs like I told you before. The MPs were not part of our unit they were separate MPs. Up in the IFC it was a different arrangement. They each took care of being a guard, and down here because, of the weapons, they had to have professional MPs down here.

  MARTINI: (072) And ...?

  PARSHALL: (073) They’re always 6-foot, 8-foot tall, 400 pounds and mean.

  MARTINI: (074) What were relations like with the MPs?

  PARSHALL: (074) Very bad.

  MARTINI: (074) Really?

  PARSHALL: (075) We didn't talk to them, they didn't talk to us. They were a snotty group of people. They were doing their job, I imagine, (Laughing) but I always thought they were pretty ... well, just doing their job. They did it well, too.

  MARTINI: (078) Tell me about the dogs. I keep hearing about the dogs.

  PARSHALL: (078) The dogs. German Shepherds, we had four of them, at least, four of them. Each dog weighed over ninety pounds and they would snarl at even their own people. If you go anywhere near the back gate, you would get attacked probably. They would want to come right through that fence at you. Whenever they were in training, they [NB: the MPs] would come to the launching area, and grab one of us. Put us in the padding and get us some stick and all, we'd all get tossed down and be very scared of those dogs after that. You would get a good fear of those dogs. Respect.

  MARTINI: (086) Were the dogs out during the day?

  PARSHALL: (086) Out during the day? Yeah. But I think they put all but what was on duty that night, one or two of them at a time, and the rest would be locked in their cages. But during the day, they roamed free. The handlers were always working with the dogs or the MPs that were on duty that day. Not that day, but I mean, but the dogs would be with them. During the day we had no dogs in this area, thank goodness. (Laughs). Yeah, when you come down that hill and the siren goes off and you are in that status of going downhill, you can see it is exactly like it is right today. It is terrible. It is very dangerous running down there. The only thing you worry about, not falling or anything, is hopefully they put those guard dogs away. (chuckling) Because they would go right after you. They don't like people (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (096) The building here, the Warhead Building ...? Did you have any access to this?

  PARSHALL: (096) Yes. I did.

  MARTINI: (097) Uh huh.

  PARSHALL: (097) Yes. The period of time I was here, we took one missile off-line and assembled a new missile inside the warhead building. We did not have the assembly building that is there now. It was just this building, everything was done outside, assembling it, bringing it in, and then the warhead would be delivered and installed. It was picked up at the front gate. There was armed guards and at least six people with rifles going all the way in one (something) and back, going in through there, and (something)(?) and guards were there. (Something) take off(?)

  MARTINI: (104) So you guys at the Battery would be under during this?

  PARSHALL: (106) Yeah. They issued us weapons and with orders to shoot to kill. It looked like a parade, you are marching with this thing on rollers. Actually push it down. There is ... no vehicle from that gate forward came in here. So, we pushed it down and ring the building while they are carrying it inside and then after that they send us back what we were doing.

  MARTINI: (110) Did it arrive in a special security convoy?

  PARSHALL: (111) No. It was just a regular Army truck. I imagine it was delivered over to the Presidio and convoyed over here, but when it got to this station, it was just in one truck and lowered down at the gate. They picked it up off (something) carried it (something)(?)

  MARTINI: (115) Did it come in one of the “case ballistic - inert” type canisters?

  PARSHALL: (116) Yes. And that was what was wheeled inside, and then the doors closed.

  MARTINI: (117) At this time were people allowed out here? Were tourists and visitors running around at all?

  PARSHALL: (118) Never. All the time that I was here. No. They had a lot of visitors from the Presidio, a lot of visitors from Washington, a lot of scientists would show up on special tours. This was the show site of the Bay Area. They could fly the helicopter up in the IFC and they could land the helicopter down here if they wanted to. It was easy access and it was beautiful. I mean, it was plain but it was beautiful. This is one of the prettiest sites I was ever on. Niagara Falls was nice, but it was flat, barren land. You were two miles away from the nearest people or highway. So, it was like being stuck on a rock. You couldn't do much. Here, you have a lot of viewsheds, you had a lot of deer at that time. I loved animals.

  MARTINI: (128) When you are talking about moving the canister?

  PARSHALL: (128) Mm Hmm.

  MARTINI: (129) What kept tourists from stopping and taking pictures?

  PARSHALL: (129) They would be never. There are signs posted. In fact, I remember the first sign I saw was up right about at the open spot. That is where I parked my car and got out and then the MPs got me, that sign right in front of me "No unauthorized photography whatsoever, do not stop here, keep going." They faced them each way, they got me. (Laughs) Yeah, and they were up there so fast. When I drove up here, I didn't drive slow and I knew I had to get up to where I could park. I couldn't park on this road, you can't park on this road. So, I got up to this parking area and pulled in and boom! (Laughs). They must have been watching me all along.

  MARTINI: (137) Do you remember any non-official people trying to get in? Any security threats or ...?

  PARSHALL: (138) Never. No, I think this was pretty tight. The only way to get in here at that time was through the tunnels. You could not get in from the upper [Conzelman] road. That was either off limits or not usable or whatever it was. So when you get through the tunnel there was a guard dog and guard on one side, two guards on the other side so, you were either stopped going each way. They would ask you what you were doing and I just told them I was in here looking and so, they let me in. I was in uniform. But I actually told them what I was doing so they said okay, but uh.

  MARTINI: (145) Were civilians running around the Headlands like they do today?

  PARSHALL: (145) No. They could go to Baker Beach or they could go visit anybody in the other, all of those buildings were still there. The Coast Guard was right up in the Admin area so they were like civilians and to me they weren’t in uniform either, but they were not even allowed to stop and we were not allowed in their area either, so it was. No. I never saw any cars stop, I never saw any civilians up this high. Probably a few Congressmen that's as close as it comes.

  MARTINI: (153) What are the different kind of designations for the security fences?

  PARSHALL: (154) Exclusion areas. That's around the launching area only. The outer perimeter fence goes around, right completely around the launching area but on the other side it is just where the missiles are stored. That requires a separate pass. There was actually a gate in the back [NB: indicates Btry. Alexander] that we came in through and then you would walk right in. There were MPs back there too.

  MARTINI: (159) Oh yeah?

  PARSHALL: (159) Yeah. Some guards, very small house back there.

  MARTINI: (161) So, there was actually a structure back there?

  PARSHALL: (161) Mm hmm. Right.

  [Sounds of a gate opening. Ron and John going through it]

  MARTINI: (164) When going in and out of the launcher area itself, would the small personnel gate or the big gate be used?

  PARSHALL: (165) Cars went in the big gate, and the side gate was over here and that was a double gate. See as that ... Where they boarded with the wood [NB: indicates wooden foot bridge]. It was the same across there, right in front, where they could drive in. It was a double gate. That gate would always be open when we came down. And so all I had to do was run across there and run down the ladder.

  MARTINI: (170) Okay. So the gate that is now missing?

  PARSHALL: (170) Yeah.

  MARTINI: (170) It was ... that was the one?

  PARSHALL: (170) Yeah. This was not there [NB: indicates personnel gate].

  MARTINI: (171) Really?

  PARSHALL: (171) Yeah. I never saw this. Either that double gate there or the double gate over here.

  [Discussion fades out]

  MARTINI: (175) We are in the [A] pit, we had a little problem, but we are back on the air. Ron, do what you did before and describe what it looked like, and what feelings there were, when you first entered this?

  PARSHALL: (178) As you came down, the first time that I came down here was through that steep ladder through the safety corridor, you came out here and there is six brand new missiles standing in front of you look like a shiny new car. You are just awed by the feeling that, all this big power and everything that you have been studying about was right here. The floors you could eat off, they were very clean, everything was in its place. All of the machinery was like brand new so, I mean it, it was unbelievable. It still is spectacular to see them sitting here even though you know they can't do anything.

  MARTINI: (186) And there would have been six, three on each side?

  PARSHALL: (186) There would have been six. Three on each side. Higher power on the left and the standards would have been on the right.

  MARTINI: (188) How could you tell them apart?

  PARSHALL: (188) Well they had, the higher power had the flags in front of them: red, green, yellow. Red, green, yellow. The red being the highest, the yellow being the lowest, and the ones on the right side were standard 1100 pound [TNT] warheads.

  MARTINI: (192) When you came down, what was the job of the crewmen when you got an alert, whichever?

  PARSHALL: (194) My first job, I was supposed to be the first man down the ladder and to go all the way over to the left side, slide underneath the missile because when there are six missiles there is no room to walk down between them so you would go over to the side, slide down the missile, get in the back side. My job was to pick out a missile, with another crewman, and slide it on to the elevator and the Sergeant would ride up to the top and then slide it over, I would be on the back side sliding it over to the number three position on the right side. Then while we were moving the missile over, if there was a call for more than one missile, the other two crewmen would then slide another missile on and bring it up. We would take it down the rail where it went, and they would be going down again looking for another missile, if it was being called for. When I was here, the most we had up above was two missiles. So, it ... we ran that drill hundreds of times so everybody knew their position. Plus the motor pool used to fill in if somebody was on vacation or something so, we also trained them in moving the missiles around and what position they would take. In fact, our panel operator was the head of the motor pool. That was his job, yeah. He was the head of the motor pool. He was the head of the motor pool but he was in charge of the panel.

  MARTINI: (212) The room back here, I have heard called the panel room, sometimes called it the crew safety room?

  PARSHALL: (213) We call it the crew safety room, But it was actually where the panel was.

  MARTINI: (214) If you had gone to a real launch, that is where everybody would have retreated?

  PARSHALL: (215) Correct. Yeah. You would have not been in here in case there was a problem. It was a lot safer back there plus they had the air conditioner, I mean the exhaust fans going, if you did have a launch you would probably get a lot of smoke down here. So, they had a way of getting it out. It was a lot safer than being up above, if you are up above you are considered dead because of the flame coming out.

  MARTINI: (219) Where would the MPs go?

  PARSHALL: (219) I don't know where they went. Well, they were safe in their area. They were far enough out of the exclusion area unless we had a misfire. They probably just stayed in the building at the post. (Laughs). I wouldn't want to have been there.

  MARTINI: (223) Did anyone ever say what would have happened if you had gone into action and fired of the entire pit full of missiles?

  PARSHALL: (224) Yeah. We would have probably have been the first target that they would have taken out of us. So, we probably, between the two Batteries, enough planes were coming we would have been eliminated.

  MARTINI: (226) Really?

  PARSHALL: (227) There was no guns in our possession, here whatsoever. So, we couldn't fire back. Our job was over.

  MARTINI: (229) And you knew when you were at these sites that you were targets?

  PARSHALL: (230) Yeah. You just figured it out. You are the target. If they want to get rid of you, get rid of this so they can come through. We figured it would be close to impossible, they would have to fight the Navy first, then the Air Force and then us. So, unless they sent over a lot of planes, I doubt if they would have got through.

  MARTINI: (234) What did they tell you about the reality of the level of threat at that time? This is even before the Cuban missile crisis?

  PARSHALL: (236) We figured that any time we had a fifteen minute warning, every time we were called down here to get a missile out, that we were actually at war. It just felt that way. All of the publicity was that way. Russia was not cooperating on the table as they talked to us they were very aggressive, they were infringing on our air space everyday, so it was a threat. Once they hit up Alaska or come even further into Canada, the whole United States was put on alert, not knowing which direction they were coming. Because they could come through Cuba in the south or wherever, so every time we had a practice we figured we were at war, and it felt like that because nobody would tell you anything until it was over. And then you would say, 'Wow that was just a practice? Okay. Thank you'. (Laughter). It kept you prepared. We were over prepared, not over prepared, but we knew our job and knew what to do and were very confident and had a lot of competent people so. The officers especially that I met on these sites were a step above anything. They were great. They knew everybody's job not only their own job, but they knew everybody else's job. We had a lot of confidence in them too.

  MARTINI: (253) Tell the story again about the night when the IFC acquired something.

  PARSHALL: (255) Okay. We were at fifteen minute alert and we got the siren go off and we are running down, and the call was for one missile at that time. We got the missile up in position and run all of your checks to make sure you could plug in the squib, and the last thing you do is plug in the squib but you don't actually do that. About that time you get a call from the IFC saying that it was just a test, everything is fine, da da da. We never got that, we got the command to plug it in. Our Sergeant in charge that night says ... I was standing next to, behind him ... and he had the earphones on. I didn't hear what was said to him but he kept on saying "Are you sure, sir?", "Are you sure, sir?" He repeated it five or six times and he was practically screaming it the last time making sure this man was telling him the right thing and the command was to plug it in which meant that we were going to fire it. Because that was the end result. You never plugged it in. It was too dangerous to plug it in.

  MARTINI: (269) Who told him to actually plug it in?

  PARSHALL: (269) Umm. The man in charge of the IFC for that night. It was the night shift. It was about three o'clock in the morning, actually. And so after we plugged it in we're, the sergeant and I, both are running down here. He put the keys in the console back there. We got in contact with them. It took at least five minutes before we phoned out, and then it was finally said, that ‘this is just a test.’ They never for the whole five minutes ... all we would have had to do was just shut up and fire it. We were never given that command, but they were going through other tests at the same time. We thought waiting for the target to come closer. That's all we thought we were doing. And well, that fifteen minute alert generally means that a plane will be here in fifteen minutes, but we had that missile up in less than five minutes, so we got ten minutes to spare by the time you got everything down here. And it’s “tick, tick, tick,” waiting for something to happen. We thought we were at war. I definitely was very fearful at that time that we would be at war, and then you start thinking of San Francisco would have been gone if we don't do our job. You start wondering, there is nothing more that you can do because it's all in their hands then. The missile is plugged in and ready to go and you are ... what I would be wondering ... why they had only called for one missile, you know. Didn't make any sense to me. If we are at war, let's get them up there! (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (287) So, what was the story, why did he call it in?

  PARSHALL: (287) Uh. It was a Lieutenant in charge of that and he was using the wrong command. The problem in that day, well, it wasn't a problem, but you had to know the code of the day. There was always a two word like “sling shot” or something like that. Two word for the day. And it was universal in the Bay Area. So, that same code would be for everybody. So when he sent it down, that means plug it in. We're at war, we got to go. And at that time, that is why he kept on asking and asking is to clarify between him and them. When you plug in a missile it could go off at that time, not firing, but you could have some problem even though you had checked it out.

  MARTINI: (298) I guess that the code word, was that throughout all of the sites and that was used ...?

  PARSHALL: (300) Eleven Bay Area sites. Back east they used the same two words. They used two words.

  MARTINI: (301) Was there a target out there?

  PARSHALL: (301) There was a target. It turned out to be an airliner coming in. At that time you had to approach our mainland at a certain angle you couldn't just come in at any angle, you had a certain angle, the responder box was supposed to be responding. I don't know if it did or not. The IFC would have been the only one to know that, and this guy is giving us the orders that this is the wrong thing. We would have shot it out of the sky. We would have had to, you know, because why take a chance? But luckily something got straightened out there and we got called down. Had an entire [required?] meeting the next day as to “what did you do,” “why did you keep repeating that, Sergeant?” “Why did you keep repeating, why did you keep repeating?” And then he kept on telling his story that that's not proper. What the man was doing. The Lieutenant was gone the next day. He was no longer on site. He probably went through basic training again. (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (315) What happened?

  PARSHALL: (316) It's the checks and balances on this system that are supposed to be the safety of this system and unfortunately the Sergeant should have not said that. He should have just plugged it in and left. He got reprimanded, but he was very good at his job. I knew he was doing the right thing because this guy up there was not, he did not know. He should have said this a test or he should have used a different code word which meant, you know, if you want us to plug it in, we're not at war. But that is what you want to happen.

  MARTINI: (323) Okay. That's what it would have simulated.

  PARSHALL: (323) Yeah. Because. Because.

  MARTINI: (324) He just let you guys, like, mentally go to war.

  PARSHALL: (325) During the day when we were running tests and had a missile upstairs so they could operate the ailerons or the, anything that they wanted to operate here. The same situation would go. We wouldn't be as fast running, but we would get the missile up and get it in position and would be ready to fire, do our test, plug it in and they would run the test, actually, on the missile and it would take about fifteen minutes. That's where this air conditioning came from [NB: indicates hose to guidance section] after we burned out several of the, because there was no air going in there, and after fifteen minutes, these things, they are only meant for a flight of less than five minutes. Three minutes, actually. They, they invented this little air conditioning unit to keep the guidance system cool.

  MARTINI: (335) Okay. So, you would bring a missile up and they would actually acquire it with the IFC?

  PARSHALL: (336) Yeah, like they would fire it and they would be giving it the match and making sure that their equipment was fine.

  MARTINI: (337) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (337) It, the wings would go “flip, flip.” You would hear them or be standing next to them, watching the test. After they were finished you would unplug it. It was dangerous, plugging it in and dangerous unplugging it, but still, if you had done your test right, which is a test in itself, there should be no problem.

  MARTINI: (342) What would like daily routine be aside from the drills like that? What did they have you doing?

  PARSHALL: (343) I was generator operator and launcher crewman so my first duty was the generators, make sure they had, here, we had no public power, so we were on our own power, even the Admin area was our power, and we powered it all the way up to there. So, we would, there would be like two generators on at night, and we had three generators so we would be switching one of them off or two of them off and just running on a normal one generator. 250 horsepower creates a lot of electricity at 440 volts. So it would take care of this. The two or three were for extra safety in case one went out or something. Like again, they were brand new at that time, I mean, you know, they had only a few hours on them. (Laughs). So, that was our first step and then the second step was to come down here and do our daily shift, mainly checking for, they are always under hydraulics, so you test them under hydraulics. Hydraulics had a tendency to spring a few leaks. So, you are checking for oil on the ground, make sure everything is working. The doors, you would run the doors a few times, make sure they are not jamming. Make sure the elevator goes up and down and there is nothing underneath. Make sure the floor is as clean as it was when you took over and then checking the missiles out. Whatever the daily, these, at least, three times a month a new directive would come down and you would have a check and change a screw or torque to the screw or something like that.

  MARTINI: (366) That is what I heard that these missiles were not just static, unchanged for years. They are always being tweaked and upgraded?

  PARSHALL: (368) Right. And you had an engineer with you, generally, when you are doing that or the fellow, like Mr. Bohan, would be down helping you do it or doing it yourself and you would get it all ready and then he would come in and do it and that would be the end of it. Or replacing the part.

  MARTINI: (372) If we wanted to make this place look as much as we could like it did when you were here, what changes would we do in this room?

  PARSHALL: (374) Hmm. I don't believe the ceilings were painted, but that's. Well, we’d get the streamers. They make the missiles look a little better.

  MARTINI: (377) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (378) We'd connect all of the electricity to how it was so you could actually do your daily checks down here. Have the equipment sheets right here in the corner ready for checking. Everything else is pretty much ... you know what is throwing you off is the wear and tear in this building, but everything is just about how it was. It was very scary, to tell you the truth, to walk past these missiles, at that time, it was like, I don't know, something would break. (Laughs). You always feared it, but they were solid missiles, but you were always scared something was going to happen to the missile. You were overly protective of it.

  MARTINI: (389) I understand that they, some of them had those big probes on the front that could impale you.

  PARSHALL: (390) Well, not in, we never, probably at other sites, and at this site too, but when I was here the, those would have had probes on them and you would be going that way unless it, and they had the mailboxes on them anyway so ...

  MARTINI: (394) Those were the plastic covers?

  PARSHALL: (394) Yeah. Well, they had the round type and we had the old mail... and it looked like a mailbox. It had, slipped right over it. Just something to keep, the probes are very, like barbs, they, you just go near them and they'd cut you.

  MARTINI: (398) Wow.

  PARSHALL: (398) Not, they were dangerous.

  MARTINI: (399) There is a lot of respect for the technology here.

  PARSHALL: (400) Well, you were, A lot of pride, too. You heard of service pride or shining your shoes out of pride or whatever it is. You always, always were. The engineers were the only ones allowed to go without shiny shoes, and that was my duty because we dealt a lot with hydraulic fluids and but everybody else, you know, they were ready for parade at all times.

  [FIRST TAPE - SIDE THREE]

  Interviewer: John Martini, Curator of Military History, Golden Gate National Recreation Area

  MARTINI: (001) Why didn't you stay in?

  PARSHALL: (002) Well, I, before I got out, I had a child. I already had two children before I went in and I had another one in and the Army decided that I was, that when I was in the reserves they decided I should get out. (Laughs). They ran into, they had some trouble, you know, Kennedy, they had trouble in Germany, and then they had trouble in Cuba so, they were ready to step up ... This was after I got out of the Army. They were ready to step up my reserve unit, which was a medical unit, taught me how to kill with ease without a care in the world. It was unbelievable. So, they asked how many kids you had and everybody, all these young kids, you know, they had no kids and I stood up, and stood up there and finally they decided hey, they got me out within a month. That was a mistake, I should have stayed in that would have, the stuff that is still going on with these missiles is unbelievable and I liked to have been apart of it, but you don't make wise choices all the time. Maybe it was a wise choice. Who knows?

  MARTINI: (014) When you were, were you married when you were here?

  PARSHALL: (014) Mm Hmm.

  MARTINI: (014) So, where was your wife living?

  PARSHALL: (014) San Francisco. That's where, that is one of the main, it's that my children were here and everything was here. My family was here. I had nobody in New York. So, that is why I wanted to get back here.

  MARTINI: (017) Did you have to stay in barracks or could you go home?

  PARSHALL: (017) I stayed in barracks most of the time, but I could have gone home, too, but it was easier, during the week, to stay in the barracks. We practically had a couple of weekends off a month, not the full Saturday, Sunday, but half a day Saturday and Sunday be back in the morning Monday. It was much easier staying here during the week, the hours, I would be here until eight o'clock at night, and then you got to get up at five. So, if you try and go over, the bridge was not that bad at that time, but.

  MARTINI: (023) So, how long were you actually there at Site 88?

  PARSHALL: (023) Probably about eight months.

  MARTINI: (024) About eight months.

  PARSHALL: (024) Yeah.

  MARTINI: (024) Okay. So, did you ever go on a high degree of real alert aside from that incident?

  PARSHALL: (025) No. It's just a fifteen minute status. We never had to sleep with the missiles, no.

  MARTINI: (027) Now I have heard that expression. What is that “to sleep with the missiles”? Is that your own?

  PARSHALL: (027) Yeah, yeah, they actually locked themselves in down here so that nobody could get into them which didn't make any sense and the missiles have heaters in them so it was about 55 to 60 degrees down here at all times. They had little tiny heaters and so what the guys would do is just climb on top of the missiles and sleep on the missiles.

  MARTINI: (031) I'll be darned.

  PARSHALL: (031) And they would eat down here which didn't make a lot of sense. I don't think that carried on for maybe a day or so. That was their alert. They, I, and it was in the later part of the Vietnam War, not the first part, when Kennedy had all these troubles in 1962 and it was towards the later part. I think it was mainly because of the attitude towards the Army, I think in the seventies, late sixties that they were getting bombarded with rocks and pedestrians were getting in here more and more. The Army couldn't shoot them at that time which they should have done, as far as I am concerned, but that's neither here nor there, it's my own opinion. This is a top secret thing so why let anybody in there, you know, that could sabotage it. This is our defense.

  MARTINI: (041) You said that there was a real pride in duty, again at that time, when you were in?

  PARSHALL: (042) Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

  MARTINI: (042) Did you think that changed?

  PARSHALL: (042) Oh. Definitely. Yeah. What other people have come by here and told me that you know they got the Snoopies [NB: cartoon drawings] in the generator building, and they got the [Confederate] battle flag in battery ... in launcher area B. That would never have been tolerated. I mean, somebody would have got, they would have spent a lot of time in Leavenworth doing that, to tell you the truth. That would be the truth. The officers had pride in the Army. They were people who were dedicated. For somebody else to do something like that, that was not the SOP of the day. You know, somebody has to pay. The officers always pulling inspections and like I told you before, the officers knew way more than we did. They knew everybody's job and they were highly qualified. Rombowski, who I talked about, was a graduate of West Point. I think we had a Captain as the CO, all with pride. You know so that it instills it into you. You are, although, I was twenty-five, twenty-six, I was still young, and these guys not any older than thirty, but they were still that, you know. So, pride of what of you did, pride of your job, pride of the Army, it was there. It was there. You wouldn't think of nothing. Having your hair cut or your shoes shined or when you left here and setting the example for others rather than getting into trouble. Because you only cause yourself more trouble but at the same time you had that pride that you were apart of this unit. You hear of the Infantry going into town, taking over town, fights and all of that kind of thing. That would have never happened with us, to tell you the truth, never.

  MARTINI: (063) You did mention that you used to go into Sausalito and you get together with some of the other guys from other Batteries?

  PARSHALL: (064) Here we had a bus. A twenty passenger bus, or something like that, and if you could get seven guys together, that had a pass, waiver, the way it, just a night pass, it was like a, just to go off base, you had to be able to call in or no matter what kind of pass you had. But they would allow us to go down to Sausalito to get a pizza and some, and a Coke, stand around a little bit and bring something back and it was, it was kind, that was like, exciting. You could go over to the Presidio, but I never did, for movies. We had no movies here.

  MARTINI: (071) The theater was not operating?

  PARSHALL: (071) No.

  MARTINI: (071) Was the chapel?

  PARSHALL: (071) The chapel. Yeah.

  MARTINI: (072) Was that on the Visitors' Center site?

  PARSHALL: (072) And that was not our Chapel, either. We had nothing to do with that part down there near the Visitors' Center, nothing.

  MARTINI: (073) Oh.

  PARSHALL: (073) No. There was a Reserve unit in the other part, and that was theirs. Our chapel was our Day Room.

  MARTINI: (075) The chaplain came and held services?

  PARSHALL: (075) Mm. Hmm. Yeah and another thing nice was, like, David met his wife, she was a part of the coffee people, you know, that would come over. Girls would come by and actually help you write letters, which was at that time very difficult to do because you had never wrote a letter before, say, and they would help you with that. They would bring coffee and doughnuts. They would dance. Always under supervisor, supervision.

  MARTINI: (080) Were they USO?

  PARSHALL: (081) I think they called them something else. They were not a USO company. They came very seldom. You went to the USO. I used the USO a lot when I was in Washington going to school. If I could get a day pass, or a Saturday pass. You could go there. They had cots set up for you in case you could not make it back, coffee, doughnuts plus a theater tickets and baseball tickets and it was a great place the USO. No, this was a service run out of the Presidio.

  MARTINI: (086) They came out, they actually came out to the site?

  PARSHALL: (087) Yeah. Donna, Donna was part of that ...

  MARTINI: (087) Right.

  PARSHALL: (088)... and then David's wife later on was part of that same unit.

  MARTINI: (089) For the record, Dave ...?

  PARSHALL: (089) Oh oh. Oh boy, I can't ... Krot, David?

  MARTINI: (090) Is it Kroits?

  PARSHALL: (091) Kreutzinger

  MARTINI: (091) Okay. Who was also here at the site?

  PARSHALL: (092) His wife, Janet, and Donna Norris.

  MARTINI: (092) Donna Norris.

  PARSHALL: (093) Whose husband was a Sergeant at Site 87. A career man. In fact, an inventor of quite a bit of things for these missiles. How to check them better, ways to plug them in better. He really, he was a great man.

  MARTINI: (096) Were there any real characters, I mean, oddball type characters?

  PARSHALL: (097) When I went to school there was.

  MARTINI: (097) Yeah?

  PARSHALL: (097) In our groups, I mean, everybody, I guess, was fooling around there, but no characters here. No characters, yeah. Serious people. Lots of serious people. Very serious.

  MARTINI: (100) Everybody tells their own jargon. These were the “pits”?

  PARSHALL: (101) The pits, yeah.

  MARTINI: (101) Okay. What were these called [NB: indicates the missiles]?

  PARSHALL: (101) Birds. These were birds.

  MARTINI: (101) Birds?

  PARSHALL: (101) Yeah. We made them fly. (Laughs).

  MARTINI: (102) What did you call the guys up on top of the hill, at the IFC?

  PARSHALL: (102) Probably quite a few things. Those were the nerds, if you really want to know. I mean, they thought so much of themselves up there it was pitiful. Yeah. We were jealous, actually, of those up there after, you know, I had seen what they do and I was in New York I was part of that group that would go in the air conditioning trailers all day long. We are down here in the fog, you know, they're telling us what to do all the time and that's why there is resentment in it as so far, we are part of a team and we are a good team that way, I guess, we are all trying to show off each other, you know, better but there was a little resentment towards the IFC.

  MARTINI: (111) Yeah. Even today you kind of pick up some of that.

  PARSHALL: (111) [Laughs]. Well, it was there, you know, you had to leave a couple of things ...

  PARSHALL: (112) Is that it?

  MARTINI: (113) Well, let's do one thing.

  PARSHALL: (113) Okay.

  MARTINI: (113) What goes through your mind when you come back now?

  PARSHALL: (115) Unfortunately, it has deteriorated. I wish the Army would have turned this thing over lock, stock and barrel like they had wanted to and it had been preserved a lot better than what it is. But, there is still a lot of pride we have been seeing all of these people coming out visiting and the questions they ask. The little kids especially ask the greatest questions and it is kind of nice.

  MARTINI: (119) What do they ask?

  PARSHALL: (119) Oh, they don't ask the technical questions they ask, "well how could you do that because it weighs so much?" or "how do you keep the air in there?", you know, and "if you have a warhead how do you keep it from going off?" you know, or "what do those dogs eat?" (Laughs) stuff like that.

  MARTINI: (123) Hopefully not the guard.

  PARSHALL: (124) "Well if it could fly that high, how could I can’t see it?” Great questions.

  MARTINI: (125) I watched you give a talk to a group of high school students one time and I think one of them asked a great question "Were you ever scared?"

  PARSHALL: (127) Yeah. You could answer that question, yes. Yeah. It's just ... I kind of put it like when we went through basic and had to fire the rifle. You are looking down there a couple of hundred yards, you see the target and you pretend it is a man, and then you have got to pull the trigger. You do the same thing, here. You know you are actually going to kill someone. You fire this thing off and or get killed. So, the scariness wasn't for me, or this guy, it was more for the ... I always thought of San Francisco, you know. I wouldn't want that destroyed.

  MARTINI: (134) So that was always real?

  PARSHALL: (135) Yeah. Yeah. I feared a lot because I knew what these weapons could do and they were carrying the same thing with them so, it ... I don't think I was ever scared for myself, I was just nervous, real nervous.

  PARSHALL: (138) Not knowing what to expect.

  MARTINI: (138) Do you think the fact that you had family so nearby, you think that kicked it [nervousness] to an extra level?

  PARSHALL: (139) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, it could have. I felt the same way in Niagara Falls, though. The power plant and everything there. You don't want to lose the war before it starts, you know. I worried that way too. I wouldn't want this country under Communism no matter what, and I would still fight to the death for it. I have a strong feeling of patriotism and I do. Everybody knows that. I would die for my country. I don't want to, but I would and it had to be that way. Yeah. It's ... well, you are strictly defense you are not offense. They come to you, so you don't feel so bad if, that you’re gonna knock them down. In fact, you probably would have pleasure in saying, like, they did with the SCUD, when they knocked down the SCUD over there in Desert Storm, you know, there is a pride in doing it. Doing your job. I think the Army instills ... any service instills that in you ... if do you job properly, there is a lot of pride in it.

  MARTINI: (153) The wrecker it caught my eye back there. I did want to ask you about the vehicles here ...

  PARSHALL: (155) Oh, okay.

  MARTINI: (155) ... and Battery Alexander is where you had your offices and your vehicles?

  PARSHALL: (156) Correct. Mm Hmm.

  MARTINI: (156) And you did your “trip tickets” in there, which were like log books and ...?

  PARSHALL: (157) Trip tickets for each piece of machinery that you operated. They all had an hour meter on them.

  MARTINI: (158) Okay.

  PARSHALL: (158) And the generator. I had a card with all of the responsibilities on the back. I was tested and signed by Bohan that I was, like driving a car or driving a half inch (?), I had to go over to the Presidio, even though I had driven for ten years, I had to go over the Presidio and take a test in driving a car so I could drive the truck up and down that hill.

  MARTINI: (163) And now, what specific vehicles were assigned to the site?

  PARSHALL: (164) The ones that I know about are the bus.

  MARTINI: (165) The bus was assigned to the site?

  PARSHALL: (165) Yeah. Sure. It was our bus. It was parked over there [Btry. Alexander] all the time. You could see it from here. The bus, a deuce-and-a-half [truck]. The cherry picker was our main vehicle down here, like a portable forklift, except it had the big boom on the end. They could lift, actually, when we, I told you about that missile, when we brought it up here, we brought it up on the cherry picker and it was going like this, it was teetering all the way up through there [NB: indicates launcher area gate] and then we had the boosters on the truck, put them on the rails, and then joined the two right there. But the cherry picker, it was strong enough to pick that whole missile up with a warhead in it, and teetered like this, but brought it all the way up there. It was a strong machine. I don't know any other missiles that, any other equipment. We did our own work on all those things I know that. We had no jeeps here.

  MARTINI: (179) No jeeps?

  PARSHALL: (179) No jeeps.

  MARTINI: (180) Did they feed you good?

  PARSHALL: (181) Very good. We had one of the best cooks I ever saw in my life for a big, you know, a lot of people. This was a small base, when I first stationed at Niagara Falls, you know, you would eat in cycles like at two and three, and rush through the line and never go back for seconds because there was no time. I first got here, a little room no bigger than this and tables, and I started going through the line I was ready to run and the guy says, "how do you like your steak?" and that's the truth. And I knew I was in heaven. (Chuckling) Like I told you, at night he would bring ... if you are on the fifteen minute warning and you were in that little shed up there ... he would bring coffee, doughnuts or cake that he had made during the day. So he took care of you, and he didn't have to do that because he was off duty about six o'clock. As soon as the mess hall was clean he could leave. He actually stayed later and did it. A devoted person. Nice guy, and I wish I could remember his name. I can't remember anybody's name. [END TAPE]

 

 

 

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