The Voices of Fort Cronkhite

Fort Cronkhite Looking Towards Fort Barry

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35301

Fort Cronkhite was an active US military post from 1941 until the end of the NIKE missle era in 1974 then the army turned the lands 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 also talk about the lives of the civilians and staff who lived and worked there, as remembered by them.

Click for more history about Fort Cronkhite

 

Family Farm Marin Headlands

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-2902

---

"Okay, the military had, all the families that lived in the area and again primarily Ft. Cronkhite because there were no other teens up on the hill where we lived, they had a teenage club." -Werner Ottens

 

• Werner Ottens

  
  

  An Oral History interview with Werner Ottens who was a teenager who lived in the Marin headlands in the late 1940s'.
  Audio Transcript

  Conklin: Sara Conklin, and today is October 19th. I'm interviewing Mr. Werner Ottens for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's oral history program. This interview will be transcribed, edited by you, Werner, and added to the Parks reference library. Do I have your permission to conduct this interview? Werner: Yes, you do. Conklin: Okay, the first group of questions are going to center around your family history. What was or is your family's surname? Is Ottens your given name? How does that work? Werner: My last name is Ottens, that's O-double T-E-N-S. Conklin: Okay, and your father and your mother's surname. We've got probably your father's at point. Werner: We're talking about my own father now, okay? Carl Herman Ottens, and my mother's name was Paula Henrietta Ottens, Born was her last name. Conklin: And what was her name before she married her husband? Werner: Born. B-O-R-N. Conklin: B-O-R-N. Thank you. Do you have any siblings? Werner: I have a brother, Axel, younger brother and after my mother remarried to the American officer, we'll get into that, they had two more children. Concetta, who was born here at Ft. Baker. Conklin: How do you spell Concetta? Werner: C-O-N-C-E-T-T-A. And after that, they had a son named Peter. Conklin: And so you are where in the birth order, you're? Werner: I'm the oldest. Conklin: Okay. And how old are you? Werner: I'm 66. Conklin: And where were you raised? Werner: All right, I was born in Dutch Guyana, Dutch colony in South America. Conklin: And after that? Where did you live? Werner: We lived there, and my brother is a year younger than I am. I lived there until November of 1946. I was born in 1929, then until November '46 when we came to the United States. Conklin: Okay, and where did you move to in the United States? Werner: To the San Francisco Bay area. Conklin: All right, and who raised you? Werner: Well, perhaps I should shed a little light on this. My father was German, he emigrated down to Dutch Guyana, the Dutch colony, in 1925 or '26 from Germany. My mother was Dutch, her father was a ship's captain and they moved down to Dutch Guyana also, and that's where my mother and father met. They were married I think in 1926 or '27, and I was born in 1929. So we have a mixed marriage there with a German and a Dutch person living in a Dutch colony, and this created a big problem because we were doing really well, we were actually considered wealthy and May 10th, 1941, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. That night, they picked up my father and they rounded up all the Germans in the colony. There must've been about 50 or 60 of them, and there was also a large ship, a German ship that had sought refuge in the harbor as being safe from the British submarines out there in the Caribbean. So that ship was there with an entire complement of officers and men, so that night they arrested everybody, except for the women and children. That came about a week later. So they picked everybody up and we were sent to a separate concentration camp in the jungle from the men, the men were in another ... And after about six months, the Dutch authorities started to feel, perhaps we ought to get rid some of these people, because we're spending all this money, and we're feeding them, so they found a clause that said, if you're from Dutch origin, we could release you. So they released all the women and children basically of Dutch origin, but the men of course who were German were kept in concentration camp. It was quite a turnaround for us, because my mother had never worked. She was a nurse, but as I said we were well to do and the Dutch authorities confiscated everything we owned. Everything we owned. And I found out only about three years ago that, I always wondered what happened to our furniture, or the valuables that we had, and I found out they auctioned everything off. They sold everything. So we ended up, ground zero, there was nothing. And my mother went to work, and shortly thereafter ... The marriage had always been kinda rocky. I remember as a child the arguments going on, so in 1942 the U.S. Army came down there to protect the bauxite, which is aluminum ore resources that the country had, and it was the ... That country supplied perhaps 60 to 70% of all aluminum used in the free world, and so they sent the U.S. Army over there and they came in in a big way, airplanes and they built the airbase in Zandery Field. Conklin: How's that spelled? Werner: Z-A-N-D-E-R-Y. Zandery, and my mother went to work there at the USO and so on, and that's how she met my stepfather. And they were going for a while, and she had been divorced in the meantime and she had custody of us of course, and they married I think in 1945 and ultimately he was reordered back to the United States to Ft. Scott over here in the Presidio. And in November of '46, we left Suriname, Dutch Guyana, and first went to Puerto Rico, spent about two weeks there, and then shipped to New Orleans and then by train all the way to the San Francisco Bay area, and we ended up here. Conklin: And you were how old at the time? Werner: I was just 17. Conklin: That could be an entire interview with your family history, that was very interesting. Werner: Well the sad thing is, I know there was a lot of stress, a lot of problems between my own mother and my own father. The unfortunate thing is people don't realize that here, those people who were put in a concentration ... Interred, and on May 10th, 1941 did not get released until 1947. Two years after the war, and the excuse given was we had no place to send them. They had no money, they had no place to go, they had no jobs. My father stayed there, and he went back into business, he was a business man. And he did well. And I only saw him once again, it was in 1956 when he came here, when he was introduced here. But anyway, my stepfather who was a very ... He was a captain at the time. He was a very good man, accepting two grown boys and he brought us here. And the first home we really lived in was right up here at Ft. Barry. The first house, 934 on that road going up around, so we lived there for two years. Conklin: And we'll be discussing that probably pretty soon. What was the highest grade of school that you've attained. Werner: College degree. Conklin: And where did you go to college? Werner: This was after I went ... I graduated from Wayne University in Detroit with a BS in aeronautical engineering. Conklin: Okay, great. And what was your last job? Do you have your own ... I think you have your own business, right? Werner: I worked for, actually my entire professional career was spent with Pacific Telephone. I worked as an engineer for them. I lived in Michigan for a little while after I got out of the service. I went to the Korea and Korean War and all that, and I went to school after that. And when I came back out here, I tried to get a job in the aviation field, but everybody was gearing down because the Korean War was over, and they really didn't need any people. I tried to go to work for Hiller Helicopters. I'd done a lot of research on my own, inventing things, and I have some credits to certain things in the aviation world, but then nobody wanted anybody there. They laid people off, and I needed a job. So I went to work for Pacific Telephone, and I spent 27 years there. Conklin: And, okay. When did you leave the telephone company? Werner: In November of 1983. Conklin: Great, thanks. You lived in what's now called the Marin Headlands as a teenager because your father was in the U.S. Army, and what years were you there? Werner: From I think it was March 1947 through maybe into later 1949. Conklin: And what was your father's job? Werner: His job was to deactivate the gunner placements here, and also to clear the harbor of mines and submarine nets that were put in there to deter any invasion by the Japanese. He of course, did not complete the entire ... This was his work that he did, by the time ... The military reassigns people every two years or so, so his next position was under Captain Alzo. He went from here to there, we didn't go along with him, my brother and I. But during the two years that he was here, that was his work. Conklin: Okay, thanks. Please describe your family's living arrangements of your quarters? Werner: You're referring to the house up here at Ft. Barry? Conklin: Yes, could you place that in a geographic location for us? Werner: The address was 934B. They were large family dwellings that were separated ... You know, they were duplexes really. I don't know what that street is called that goes around there. The upper road, that runs behind all that. Conklin: It's either Simmons or ... So it could be Simmons or Rosenstock it seems, perhaps? Werner: I don't recall. Conklin: Oh, well. I think we can probably figure that out later. Werner: It was right above what was the parade ground, right? And as I said they were duplexes. There was a garage to one side which is now gone, it was torn down. And they were big, big houses, big, big homes. And there was right next to the road, as you drove by, there was a kitchen and a bathroom and a small ... It must've been servant's quarters, small bedroom. And then there was a large dining room and a pantry. That was all downstairs on the first level. And beautiful stairway going upstairs and there were three or four bedrooms, I don't recall exactly upstairs. There was a fireplace in the house, and there was also a large basement. And this presented me with a first in my life. I had to stoke the furnace. I had never done that before. And it was a coal furnace. The Army delivered a load of coal, every family was needed, and my dad of course, my stepfather had come from New York, so he knew all about this stuff. He'd done it all his life. Taught us how to back the fire to keep it warm during the day with the ashes. Interesting. It was a steam heat system. Conklin: So you could stoke it well enough at night that it would keep those houses warm all night long? Werner: Yeah. Well one house, each side had its own system. Conklin: Who were your- Werner: These were the officer's quarters. All along the road there, there were people that we know. Conklin: That's a perfect segue, because the next question is who were your neighbors and what was their rank? Werner: Well, I recall that the people in the next people in the next building were ... They guy was a captain, they had two little girls. And I don't know the people all along. As you realize in the military, they kept one guy come in and lived there for two years and then during the two years you were there, several people rotated out and others rotated in. We didn't know them all. Conklin: Did the children all seem to know each other? It sounds to me... Werner: No. My brother and I were really the oldest children, teenagers, living in that area. Most of the others were younger people, my step father's age, who had young children. But in April of that first year, 1947, my sister was born at Ft. Baker hospital, which is now gone. They tore that down. There's a good ... In reference to Brian Chen's book, there's a good article about that in here. And so we were there for two years, and when the military came in ... I'm regress, I'm going backwards now, in South America, I dropped out of high school. I hadn't finished, I had a year to go, to go to work at the airbase, and my step dad got me a job to work on the airbase and I worked there as an automobile mechanic. I got into the program and started working. And I had some experience with aircraft and so on, so it all added up. And so when we got back here, the first thing I had to do was finish high school. I enrolled at Mt. Tamalpais High in the valley, and the U.S. Army had a school bus, which was green, olive drab, that they drove around and picked up all the kids in the morning and took them to school and picked them up in the afternoon and brought them back, and there were most of the kids, teenagers, thereabouts were living at Ft. Cronkhite. As I said, there weren't very many teenagers. They weren't any teenagers up there where we lived. Most of them were at Ft. Cronkhite. So the bus would go around, pick them all up, pick us up, take us down to... Conklin: How did being from such a small community effect your high school's social structure? You were from a unique community probably to that high school. How did that effect you? Werner: What do you mean, the community? Conklin: You were picked up by a military school bus and dropped into a community high school. Did that have any effect on your social life? Werner: That is an interesting question because in retrospect, I did think about it at the time, yes. You realize this was right after the war, and all of the kids there were just civilian people, and we always were treated a little bit differently. Not by the faculty, but by our peers. "Oh, you guys are from the Army base." It wasn't a negative attitude, it was simply a realization that we were not living in a civilian environment. And they weren't isolating us, it was just that you always knew. For one thing, when we went to school, we had in our travels, picked up a lot of Army clothes, so it wouldn't be unusual ... Most of the kids wore blue jeans, bobby socks, loafers, and I'd be wearing a field jacket and green pants, so it carried on, it was okay. Conklin: But you had the normal interaction, girls didn't treat you differently. Werner: Oh no. Conklin: It was just that you always felt separate. Werner: It was just feeling, there were expressed sentiments by some of the kids. [crosstalk 00:19:16] As I said, it wasn't negative, it was as a matter of fact, perhaps a little envy because we had our own private school bus that brought us there, so it was kinda okay, you know. Conklin: Okay. I'd like to back up for a moment and go back to the living situation with the families on the loop. Were there things like pot luck dinners or big baby showers if someone had a baby? How tight knit was this community here? Werner: The community was not tight knit at all. There was really very ... the military has its own formal system where if a new family moves in or a new officer moves in, they would have to come over and present themselves and say, "Hi, I'm Captain so-and-so, and I'd like to introduce myself, and you are so-and-so." So these policies were adhered to. We met all the people, all our neighbors because of this arrangement that the military has, and I remember one time I was ... It was a little difficult for me to transition from the tropics to this area. I used to get very ... Well I got depressed because of the fog. I used to say, "It's foggy here 360 days a year." Only five days a year there's sunshine. And I had just come from a country where there was nothing but sunshine, see? It was a little bit depressing. I had trouble getting used to that. But of course, when you to Mill Valley, it's generally pretty clear there, so the sunshine was there all day. Conklin: As a teenager living on a remote post, what activities kept you busy? Werner: I did a lot of exploring and hiking up in the hills, and I enjoyed nature. I liked going around, climbing up. I probably knew more about these hills than anybody around, because the older folks didn't do this, and this is before the Park had taken over, so it was still an Army base, so entry was restricted to people that belonged here. And you didn't have people wandering around all over, but I did. I climbed all over the place and explored things and I knew a lot about the area at the time. Conklin: What do you think was different about the wildlife then and now? Is there any specific thing that comes to mind? Werner: Then and now? Conklin: Yeah, what do you think? Werner: I think that the wildlife has diminished considerably from what it was then. It wouldn't be unusual to ... We had a family of skunks living under the house. You heard them at night, they'd raid the garbage cans that were sitting right out in front, and there would be raccoons that were climbing the trees right outside, and occasionally a snake. So there was a lot of wildlife here at the time. I don't see much of that anymore. Of course we don't spend all that time here either. Conklin: I've heard rumors that there's some kind of large cats that have been out here. Did you ever see anything? Werner: Yes, there were. I never saw one, but I heard from other people who did see mountain lions and bobcats out here. One interesting thing, I'm not sure how this is lined up as a question, was that Baker-Barry tunnel, because that was a real eye opener. I'd never seen anything like that. As a matter of fact, I'd never seen a hill or a mountian until I came here. Because Dutch Guyana, in the tropics, the north coast of South America is totally flat, until you get about 200, 300 miles inland towards Brazil. Then we got some mild mountains. So when I came here and I saw Mt. Tamalpias this was, wow. My first mountain, you know? And the hills here were also really, God you gotta climb. You can't just walk. It was pretty funny. Conklin: Driving around in San Francisco must've been a little scary. Werner: Yes, yes. Well it was after I got my driver's license. It wasn't until I was 18. Conklin: When we first talked, you mentioned the teen club, so my question is how did it function and what activities did it provide? Werner: Okay, the military had, all the families that lived in the area and again primarily Ft. Cronkhite because there were no other teens up on the hill where we lived, they had a teenage club. The building is still there, and it had a large open area where they could set up for parties and things and there was a stage on one end. I haven't seen the building for some years, so I'm not exactly sure where it is anymore at Ft. Cronkhite. But the parents that sent up activities and things for the kids to do, there was quite an interaction going between all the teenage kids in the area. First of all, we all met on the school bus going to Mt. Tamalpais High, and a lot of them lived at Ft. Baker because the bus would go all the way down to Ft. Baker, pick up the kids there too. The teenage club had activities, I don't recall that it was every Friday night or once a month, but they also would set up things like taking all the teenagers to camping to Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz, the mountains where they would spend a week or two weeks. So we were kept pretty busy that, but this was again only on Friday nights, or in the summer time. Conklin: Okay, you talked about the movie theater and the role that it played in a teenager's life. Werner: There were no movies that ... There's a theater here, at Ft. Barry, but it wasn't in use at the time we were here. The only thing that was really in use was a bowling alley, right up the hill here. And we bowled there. We'd go bowling there sometimes, my brother and I. The movie theater that they used for both for Cronkhite and Ft. Barry was down at Ft. Baker, and we'd go down there. We didn't spend a lot of time going to the movies. Conklin: So who were your playmates? As a 17-year-old that sounds probably a little silly, but and what were your most favorite activities? Werner: Playmates were mostly kids from high school that I knew. There was also a time when some of the kids that I associated with were living at Ft. Baker. And there were a couple of guys there whose father was in the army also. Again, it was a family that had a stepson and a son, so Billy Lee and Bernie Mitchell. And they lived right there where the road comes down, that was Ft. Baker. Conklin: So would they come over to see you? Would you go see them? Werner: Yeah, we used to go see them, mostly. Conklin: Did you walk through the tunnel? Werner: I walked through the tunnel many times. Could be a scary experience because sometimes at 6:00 in the morning, you don't have a lot of people going through there, and sometimes the deer would get caught in there, and they'd get halfway in and they didn't know which way to go. If somebody comes from one side, they'd panic. They didn't know whether they could go further or would they have to go back the other way, and I have heard of people who said that they saw bobcats or mountain lions in the tunnel or right above it, so it was quite an experience. Conklin: How did life in the community change during the day when the fathers were at work? Was there any sort of a change in the feeling when it was just the moms and the kids around? Or maybe nothing? Werner: Not really. First of all, my dad was working right there at Ft. Baker, so he would come home for lunch. And but most of the time, me being a teenager, I was at school, so I wasn't there all day long. And on weekends, we'd either go to Sausalito, or go to Stinson Beach with friends. Conklin: Okay. When did you first meet the Silvas. Werner: I never met the Silvas. Mr. Silva was already a pretty old guy who owned the ranch, and the ranch was called the Marin Land and Cattle Company. Conklin: Marin Land and Cattle? Werner: Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was the official name. Mr. Silva owned it. I think it was Sam Silva, and he had a manager ... You have to understand, at that age I was now 17, going on 18, there's a transition going on from child to man, teenager, adolescent. And my interests were no longer play, but work and aviation and I liked guns. I always liked guns. And there were people living down there in that little enclave right across from the ... Not the blimp hangar. And there were quite a few people there that I associated with. Conklin: We're gonna stop the tape now and I'm gonna turn it over.

  1:45 of silence for tape switch

  Conklin: We were discussing the community down near the blimp hangar that no longer exists. And who was living there? Werner: I don't recall the names of the people. Well, there was one. Sergeant by the name of ... they were non-commissioned officer quarters. [inaudible 00:31:57] name of Tweety, and the son who was my age, Bill Tweety, the guy I bought six with, two or three, we went to school together. They always rode on the bus. All the kids rode on the bus to school. Conklin: Would that be T-W-E- Werner: T-W-E-E-T-Y. Conklin: Thank you. Werner: These people, I understand years later that they emigrated to Alaska. They took advantage of the homesteading act. They got some land and they moved over there, so they left. But this was after I had left here. But to go back to your question about the Silvas, I did meet Mr. Silva occasionally. He was an old guy, and the ranch was being run by his supervisor, his manager, by the name of Dietz. Conklin: D? Werner: D-I-E-T-Z. Dietz. I don't remember his first name. But he was living in the caretaker's house on the road, and the foundations are still there, but the building's gone. And he had a wife and two daughters. And don't forget, I'm going on 18, a very good looking kid. Little bit younger than I was, Anna Marie was one of them. They all went to high school with us also. See, the Army also picked up the people from the ranch and take the kids to school. It was good sense to do that. So they had two beautiful daughters, but I met Dietz through the people down there in the non-com quarters that I was talking about, because they all knew him, and it was a really, I understand that they had 2,000 acres. The Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was a big place. And later on when I went to work there, as a summer job, it was very nice. It was a nice place to be. Conklin: When you first began working for them, what was your work? Werner: I was hired in early '48. I don't recall, it must've been March of '48. As the job became available, they need somebody to round up cattle, a cowboy. To be a cowboy. And they had a large herd there. It's a big ranch. A dairy ranch, so it was a milk ranch. And they had several hundred head of cattle that they had to round up twice a day. Once at noon for the milking, the afternoon, and once at midnight. So yes, there I had this job to go out there on a horse. And I had never sat on a horse in my life. But they told me these are really very gentle. You can get on any of them. It didn't take me very long to catch onto that. I had three horses that I rode in rotation. One was a really big brown horse, and I learned to saddle and I learned to feed them and they had a regular stable and a little run corral where they ran. So once during the day, I don't remember the exact hour. I had to get on that horse, saddle up, get on that horse and go round up all that cattle that might be in 400 or 500 acres spread out. And you had to bring every single one of them back. So you'd go around there, and it would take an hour, two hours, three hours sometimes. And the same thing happened again at night. So I had to get on that horse, and saddle up and go out there and take a flashlight with me. And I had a dog, Butch. I remember Butch, like a long haired sheep ... Like a Collie type dog. And he'd go along, and he was really ... And you couldn't see a thing. I mean you talk about black as night, you couldn't see anything. So up and down the hills, and all I knew was which pasture they were in. And I had to go out there, and very often I'd ride for two and half hours and ... They knew, the cattle by nature drift back to where they're supposed to go to be milked, they do it. But I had to bring them all in, and then I had to wait until they put them all in the milk barn and start milking them, and then the foreman'd come out and say, "Okay, there are two missing." Here were are at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, I had to get back out there. And there were always two or three cows that hid. Yeah, they would hide. They'd find the darnedest places, and get under there, and as soon as I'd come up to round them up, they'd hide. So, and I used the flashlight and try to catch their eyes because then you'd see it. But sometimes it'd be a raccoon or I'd see a bobcat or something, or a skunk. And the horse was really wary of skunks. Every time come close they'd think, "Oh." But anyway, so it was quite a responsible job. It was a lot of fun. Get out there and ride at 3:00 in the morning and you gotta bring all the cows in. There cannot be any one left behind. This happened during the day too, but of course during the day was easy, you could see them. Night, you couldn't see them. Conklin: Do you remember how much you got paid? Werner: It wasn't a heck of a lot. Probably like $30 or $40 a month. Conklin: And this is what year? Werner: 1948. An interesting side line here is that I would be out there rounding up cattle, and if you come down from where I used to live, that road that curves down towards the main road down below, you can look up and you see a valley that's large eucalyptus trees sitting there. I was in there one time, and I saw a vehicle driving on the Army road down here, the road just before you come up to here. And they had MP patrols at night, so they were the guys in the military police. And this guy thought he'd do some target practice. It was 2:00 in the morning. And he may have seen some movement way up there where I was, and I saw the lights of the vehicle stop. And I'm sitting on the horse, looking for cows, and all of a sudden ... This is the sequence. I heard shoo, shoo. And the horse jumped both ways, and then I heard bang, bang. The guy was out there shooting at me. And you don't realize it until you think about it. The bullets get there before the sound. Conklin: Oh my God. Werner: So he was hitting pretty close to me, both sides, so I pulled out my gun and started shooting him. But then he went on. One of those things. [inaudible 00:39:28] experience. Conklin: Where did you live on the ranch in terms of the structures, where did you sleep and eat, and... Werner: There was a ... It's so sad that these buildings are gone now. I don't know when they tore them down. But there was a bunk house. As a matter of fact there were two bunk houses. One was pretty well vacant. If you drive into the ranch, the road is still there. You make a right at the end, the milking barn was on the left at the end of that road. Then the road started turning right to go back up the hill. There's a water tank up there, on the right side. I think that's still there. It's kind of overgrown. But at the end of the ... Well, the last building on that road was a very large bunk house. And they had small rooms there that the people would have. Some of these people were professional milkers, they'd done this all their lives. And Silva I think was a Portuguese, so most of the people there were Portuguese. And he would hire them I guess, go to the city and bring them in from there. But some of those people had been there for years. Anyway, I got my little room, and there was one community shower, and one little bed. Typical bunk house type arrangement except it wasn't like a barracks. There wasn't an open place where a lot of people ... Each one had their little room. And you'd have to have that because as I said, some of those people lived there for years. I had nothing to do with the milking except to bring the cattle in, and I would stand there while they were doing it. Conklin: So there was only of you. Werner: Only one of me. Conklin: One person to gather the cows. Everyone else was a milker. Werner: Right, exactly. At the lower end of the road where it first curved away from where the milking barn was, was the mess hall I guess you'd call it or chow hall or whatever they called it then, and this again was my first experience with this type of a set up, working on a ranch. And they had this old guy named Jimmy who was the cook. And Jimmy did everything. Remember Gabby Hayes? Okay? Jimmy looked just like Gabby Hayes. Old beard, little old rheumy eyes, bald. And he was a fairly good cook. You'd have steak for breakfast, steak and eggs, or pancakes, and he was a pretty good cook. The only thing that I took issue with was he wasn't too clean. You had an old guy muttering along, so that it wouldn't be uncommon to be served ... And I'd have breakfast there, or dinner. It wouldn't be uncommon to sit there and have him bring you a plate of food that was full of dirty crud along the edges that he hadn't washed well. He couldn't see. He couldn't see that well. But it was all an experience. It was all part of growing up and getting older. Conklin: Was there any dysentery or any sort of sickness any of you got? It was just- Werner: No, nobody got sick. Conklin: Interesting. Werner: But it was indeed a very interesting experience, jumping into this. And of course a lot went on with the taking care of the cattle and so on, and the Foreman Dietz was a really good person. He knew what he was doing. Conklin: In terms of the community in the bunk house, what do you think the age spread ... Do you think most people a certain age, but then there was a guy that was 80? Or how did that go age wise? Werner: There were people there, I would say the age spread was from ... I was the youngest, but I was not a milker. From the early 20s to the late 60s, maybe even older? Conklin: Where was it concentrated? Was it evenly spread through that? Werner: 40s I would say. And again, there was a fairly heavy concentration of Portuguese, and they spoke Portuguese to each other. They'd speak English too, but there were some ... Funny things would happen where they'd play tricks on each other. Conklin: Like what? Werner: Like a guy would come up to milk a cow, and you'd have a couple hundred cows in a row there. They had this thing where a head goes there, and they give them food there. So they're eating, and then the guys come in the back with their milk stool. They had machines of course, and the guy would come up to the cow and start milking, [inaudible 00:44:38] and there was a snake draped across the top of the cow. Somebody plant a snake there, and sometimes it was still alive, and he'd jump and run because he didn't like that. Conklin: Was there any ... As a Portuguese group of people were there any sort of ceremonial or interesting sort of ... I don't know how to describe it. Because they were all Portuguese heritage, were there any traditions, did they sing Portuguese songs, did they... Werner: Well yeah, they did sing Portuguese songs, and there seemed to be a heavy drift towards religion. You'd see all these Mother of Christ statues there. I remember that. Conklin: So would they all leave on Sunday and go to church together? Werner: Do you really wanna know? Conklin: Yeah. Werner: They'd all go to San Francisco to find themselves a woman. Conklin: Oh. Well that makes... Werner: I mean this was routine. Conklin: That makes a lot of sense. Werner: Hey, how are things? Come back. Remember in those days, this was down to Third and Market or Third and Mission, south of Market area. Conklin: Okay, so that was like Saturday night's activity, or was that a typical... Werner: It was weekend type. And others would ... I suspect that they rotated their days off, so that not everybody could be gone. This is a 24 operation. You had to have enough people there to milk the cows every day, twice a day. So there were always those people there. Conklin: In the evening, they had to get up again at midnight, right? Werner: Oh yes. Conklin: So was there a time in the evening where they played cards or there was a social hour? And would you guys go into each other's rooms, or how did that... Werner: No, I was not too involved with that, because don't forget my family home was right up here. And the thing is, if I wanted to have a nice, good shower, a clean shower, I'd come home and do it, because that place was not ... You know, all these old guys, they really didn't take good care of everything. They just lived there, they slept there, and I think having to get up in the middle of the night, I suppose you get used to that, but that was more disruptive than anything else to sleeping your eight hours or seven hours overnight and then getting up in the morning. But I guess they got used to that. There was a younger guy there they hired after I was there, that come from Los Angeles. He was a cattleman too, and he had this old, like from 1928 Dodge little pick up, and we drove that thing all the way to Playland at the beach, and this was still there then, and we did all the things, going around the Playland at the beach, and came back, back to work. I don't know what happened to him. Conklin: And you'd stay up until 3:00 in the morning and sleep until when? Would you get up at 6:00 for breakfast, or? Werner: Sometimes. It depended. Usually I did. At my age, it was pretty to fit in and go along with whatever went on. Conklin: And then would the bunk house be empty when they were milking and you could maybe go sleep? Werner: Yes, it would be. We had a ... The thing that as a young person, coming from a family where my mother took care of things, and everything was nice and clean, it was a little bit difficult to get adjusted to the relaxed attitude about cleanliness. But don't forget now, when the cattle comes in and they come into a holding corral, all of them, the 200 or so head, maybe more, the mud would be six or seven inches deep in there. So people all wore these high rubber boots, you had to. And they milked in those things. So and then when they're done, they walked back to the bunk house, they walk in, there was mud all over the place. And they'd leave the boots outside. You had to have that, because if even if you wore high tops the mud will get right in there. But it was lovely experience. I enjoyed it, and being somebody who enjoyed nature and being outside and seeing the land couldn't be a better job. Very often they had a truck, I'd drive it up on the hill to where the radio station is up above, Wolf Ridge, I guess? And just look out at it, look out over Sausalito, Mill Valley, but it was a good job for a kid, and I probably lasted there about three months, and then I left because one of my ... if you have any questions about this, about the ranch anymore, let me know. One of the kids I knew who was a little bit older than I was, we lived down at Ft. Baker, he got a job at Hamilton Field. And I thought, "Ah, airplanes." Conklin: So you were gone, huh. Werner: I was gone. So we drove up to Hamilton Field. I got a job, but I won't go into that. Conklin: What element of the remote location out here was depressing? And then what were the high points? Werner: The only element that was depressing out here was the weather, the fog. The ever present fog. Everything was dripping and cold. It's ironic because unless we're having a real change in climate, every time we come out here, which is probably once or twice a month anyway from Petaluma, it seems to be nice and sunny. So I remember it back then as being mostly foggy, almost all the time, and I would go out, no matter when, middle of winter what for [inaudible 00:51:17] and go swim in the ocean. And there would nobody out there of course. People kept talking about the undertow would get you and all that. I had no problems with it, I was a really strong swimmer, and I found a way to beat it, just to stay at the surface, you don't go underneath. If you go like this, it'll pull you. You stay up on top of it, you'll flow right in with the tide. So I did a lot of swimming out there. It was cold. Very cold. Conklin: And would you consider swimming one of your high points? What was the most fun? Werner: Swimming was one of my high points, and walking all around the area was really interesting. I enjoyed it. Let's not forget, there were a lot of nice girls out here. Yeah, a lot of good looking girls, and as you grow up, as you mature, you realize things that are going on. There was this family that lived at Ft. Cronkhite, they had this nice blonde girl, and maybe I shouldn't name her last name, who I kinda liked. As a matter of fact, I liked several girls in rotation in time, but anyway, we had the teenage club had a party, and we go there, and I wanted to take her home, but I had no wheels, I had no car. So the family friend was a sergeant there, he said, "I'll give you a ride." He was there too, kinda chaperone. And an old guy, must've been 60, 55 or something. Old guy, right. Conklin: Kinda old like you? Werner: He was gray. And I said, "Oh, okay." And then I thought, "Now why is he dropping me off first?" Conklin: Old and smart. Werner: Huh? Conklin: He was an old and smart guy. Werner: No, no, no. He had something going with this girl. Conklin: Oh dear. Werner: And she was what, all of 16? 17? The eyes open up. You begin to learn. Anyway, there were several other young women, high school girls that I liked and we got to know each other and so on. And mostly that lived down below there, in NCO quarters. It was a really lovely place to grow up, to live and to mature so to speak. Because from there on then, I got the job at Hamilton Field, and shortly thereafter my dad had got reassigned, he went to the canals and the whole family moved except for my brother and I, we stayed here. Not here on the base, but we lived in Richmond there for awhile. Conklin: When you were living in the Silva Ranch and working, did you have much contact with the soldiers that were stationed out here? You were a unique position because you bridged both worlds, but did generally the ranch people have much contact with the soldiers? Werner: No. They had no contact whatsoever. It was like the ranch was kinda like an enclave, it was its own world. And don't forget these people were mostly I would say, I think they were Portuguese, right? So they stuck together. They could talk to each other much more easily. The soldiers were always in transition. They would come, they would go and so on. As a teenager who lived here, I had both. See I could talk to those people and get along with them and work with them, but I could also come back and se my friends at the teenage club, those people there. We had a real good time. Conklin: Did the Portuguese people speak Portuguese with each other mostly? Werner: Yes, yes. Conklin: And then they turned to you and speak English? Werner: Yes. It was an education. The whole thing, in the two years, was probably one of the most, greatest educational experiences that I had other than the formal education from high school and graduating, about life. You could write a book about it. It's really, really neat. Conklin: Did you see, while you were living out here, some of the gun drills? Any of the gun practice firings? Werner: No. As far as I know, none of the guns were fired after we moved in here. They were in the process of dismantling the batteries. I don't think that they actually removed ... They may have removed some of the guns during that time, but I don't think they actually removed them, cut them up, until after we had gone. What did happen, and the first thing that they had to do was remove the submarine netting across the Golden Gate, and- Conklin: Do you remember any tricky stories about that? With your father? Werner: Yes, I do. My dad was very deeply involved with that, that was his job. He had an office down at Ft. Baker, and they'd go up, there were a couple of mine laying ships out there at the base where the sewage plant is, en route to Sausalito. Down below there, there was a long pier that jutted out and they had a couple of those ships out there, and they'd go out in the Bay with those things, and they'd have to haul ... There was machinery of course. They had to haul the nets back in. And I remember distinctly my dad coming home one night really shook up. He said what had happened, as they pulled the things in, a strong load, heavy load, the things are heavy. Apparently one of the cables snapped and the cable went back and hit one of the guys, cut him right in half. Yeah. Conklin: That happens to tow boat operators. Werner: I suppose. Conklin: It does, the cables break. Werner: It's a problem. But I think that he more ... As far as I know, he probably completed that phase up there, deactivation here. And then he got all involved in the other Battery's up here, Wallace and so on. But as I said, I don't think the guns were removed during our time there. Conklin: Did he bring crabs home? Apparently while they were out, they'd go crabbing occasionally and they'd eat the crabs and some of the fish for people? You know. Werner: No, I don't think so. Conklin: Brian Chen talks about it in his book. Werner: Oh, did he? I don't think so. Conklin: Do you wanna summarize ... You've been summarizing your experience. Are there any, well for the next two minutes that we have left, do you have any... Werner: Well, there are some things that, first of all, I think it's very commendable that [inaudible 00:59:04] are restoring some of the barracks at Cronkhite. Conklin: How do you spell Cresci? Werner: Cresci? C-R-E-S-C-I. Some of the, I don't recall what that, when you look out over the top of the hill there from the mountain side, look out over the ocean, there is a big rock. Blue Rock? Conklin: We call it Bird Rock. Werner: Bird Rock, yeah, it's all white at the bottom. Okay, there used to be a bridge across, a catwalk that you could get to. And all the way, there's a smaller rock further out too. There used to be a catwalk out there. You could get across there, but the thing was really deteriorating. They worried that the thing would get weighed and collapse under you. But I'd go all over the area there. Conklin: Did you go to the lighthouse much? Werner: Yes, we did. Yeah. Conklin: Did you get to know the keepers? Werner: No, did not. No. One thing I wanted to note is that it's very difficult to realize what the area around where we lived, that whole road, looked like then, because the trees have grown up and grown perhaps 50 to 60 to 100 feet taller. You could look out over the trees anytime. Now, the houses are ... I flew by there yesterday, they're sitting all amongst the trees. Trees have grown so tall, right on the other side of the wall, the stone wall in front of the houses, used to be small eucalyptus trees. Now the things are about 60, 70 feet tall, maybe even taller. Time goes on. Conklin: Well, thank you very much. This has been a really wonderful interview. It's been very nice listening to your stories. Thank you very much. Werner: You're welcome.

 

Soldiers at Fort Cronkhite HQ

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 40015

---

"How long were you actually here? In Cronkhite?" -Mrs Peddicord
"It was about, a little over a year. Just about, well, it was just about a year." -Mr Peddicord

 

• Mr. And Mrs. Peddicord Part 1

  
  

  An interview with Mr. and Mrs. Peddicord about life at Fort Cronkhite by National Park Historian of the Golden Gate Recreation Area John Martini and Volunteer in parks Paul Curry
  Audio Transcript

  Martini: Thursday, March 12th, 1992. My name is John Martini. I'm a Ranger with the National Park Service. And this is an oral history tape being conducted at Fort Cronkhite. And we're going to be talking with Mr. Peddicord, who was in 6th Coast Artillery stationed here at Fort Cronkhite. Mr. Peddicord, you want to give me your full name and your birthday?

  Norman:

  It's Norman Earl Peddicord, and I now live in Lafayette, California. My birthdate was February 14th, 1923. I was in the Army from March 1943 until February 1946. And most of that time was spent right in this area, along the coast. Part of it was with the 6th Coast Artillery, and part of it was in Special Forces in the radar sections.

  Martini: So this, yeah. I'd like to talk about that a little later. The Special Forces and the radar, wasn't directly under the 6th because they were [inaudible 00:01:14].

  Norman: No, we were not directly under anybody, at that time [laughter].

  Martini:

  You were cutting edge technology. Also present are Mrs. Peddicord and a Volunteer-In-Parks, Paul Curry. To set the scene, we're sitting right now in Building 1059, which is one of the Series 700, two-story barracks located at Fort Cronkhite. If you could, you lived in a barracks like this, didn't you?

  Norman: Yes, I lived in one, down the end of the line.

  Martini: I think you said it was 10, it would have been 1054, or-

  Norman: Either the last one or the one, this side of it.

  Martini: ... 1054, or 1055-

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: ... by the numbering system. Where were you living when you were drafted into the Army?

  Norman: San Francisco.

  Martini: In San Francisco?

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: Were you born in the city?

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: Okay. So when you were drafted, you took your Basic Training?

  Norman: In Camp Roberts.

  Martini: Was there any specialization that you went through, or it was just straight Basic?

  Norman: No, it was just straight Basic. And we just all got different assignments, scattered all over, from there.

  Martini: Were you surprised when you ended up being assigned to your backyard?

  Norman: Very much so [laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Martini: Kind of a basic question, but I don't know how it worked then. Did you have any say about where you might end up, was there any specialty you could request, like in today's Army?

  Norman: None at all [laughter].

  Martini: No.

  Norman: They didn't ask us anything [laughter].

  Martini: When did you first learn that you were going to be coming up here… how did they tell you?

  Norman: When I got here [laughter].

  Martini: When you got here?

  Norman:

  And then as we were just coming in, one of the noncoms [non-commissioned officers] had told us we were going to West Portal [laughter]. And I had lived in West Portal in San Francisco, and there was a 6-inch gun battery that was in a little park, that was right behind the West Portal district. And I thought at the time, maybe that's where I was going. But they meant West Portal, right up the end of the road here, by the tunnel.

  Martini: Tell me about your arrival. What did you physically go through, when you got here? Did they bus you in, or truck you in?

  Norman:

  We came in on trucks, and it was a straight shot from Camp Roberts to up here. And I can only remember that there were about a dozen of us, so when I say trucks, it was probably one truck. I just don't remember a whole bunch more than that. And we went into West Portal for quarantine. We stayed there three weeks before we were assigned down here, to the gun batteries.

  Martini: What kind of a reputation did going into the Coast Artillery have? Was it good duty, was it, did guys like it or, was it not enough action?

  Norman: When I came in it just, well, I'd have to say that there were two groups. There was old Army and all the recruits. And there was, as far as the mixing is concerned, it was a long time before the two mixed. But the old Army kept being transferred out until, after a year or so, most of them were gone. And they were just transferred out, in ones and twos, and then of course the recruits kept coming in and replacing them.

  Martini: Do you remember the date, when you got out here? Like you say you said enlisted in, and they're [crosstalk 00:04:28] within the three [crosstalk 00:04:28].

  Norman: All I can tell you, it was, that it was, I don't remember the exact day, except that it was in May 1943.

  Martini: May '43. What did it-

  Mrs. Peddicord: I was just going to say, how long were you at Camp Roberts? Wasn't there a certain, so many weeks, or so long you have to stay there?

  Norman: Yeah. About 60 days.

  Martini: What did it look like out here, and what was going on? That was really the height of the war [World War II]. Describe, if you were out here, what would you encounter? Sentries, camouflage, barbed wire?

  Norman: As far as the beach is concerned, it was… the whole length of the beach was completely covered with big coils of barbed wire. And I have a dim recollection of steel posts, buried in the sand, pointing out to sea.

  Martini: For landing craft?

  Norman: For landing craft, yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Didn't they have the camouflage out there, too? You know, the green and brown-

  Norman: Not that I can recall, not out there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: ... I thought I remembered it, over there.

  Norman: I just don't remember it, I remember all the barbed wire, and I remember the posts for anti-landing craft.

  Martini: But was the tunnel the only way in and out of here, at that time?

  Norman: That's right.

  Martini: Wow. Where there some-

  Norman: The road was not cut in until, I'm going to guess somewhere around, sometime during '45.

  Martini: The road over the hill, where we come in, there?

  Norman: Yeah. I don't remember the road being there at all, before that.

  Martini: McCullough Road, we would call it. Were there a lot of sentry posts and security out here?

  Norman: Yes. In fact, I'd say that, that was probably most of our duty, except when we would pull our turn on the guns. And the sentry duty went anywhere from up around the gun batteries, down to the range section. To the gates, going up there. To over at Fort Berry, down where your office is. Along with that, we had to pull prisoner duty.

  Martini: Explain what that was.

  Norman: Well, we'd be assigned to a day of taking two or three of the prisoners and taking them out, just to police the areas and work them on small details. The prisoners there were just minor infractions. I mean, fellows that had been AWOL [Absent Without Leave] for 24 hours, and were assigned over there for anywhere from a week to a month. And they were the fellows that you lived with all the time, too [laughter].

  Martini: "Hey, how you doing?"

  Norman: Anything worse than that, they were transferred somewhere else.

  Martini: When you talked about doing a lot of sentry duty, except when you were on the guns, did you go through a formal training of any type for working with the... You were at Battery Townsley, initially, the 16 inch?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Was it, like, on the job training-

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: ... or was there a course, or anything?

  Norman:

  No, there were no courses. It was just, everything was on the job training. We were kind of, I guess we were picked by our backgrounds, because I got assigned to the maintenance section on the guns. And I'm sure the only reason I did, is because I was an apprentice machinist when I got out of high school for a couple of years before I went in the service. And so, I guess because of that, I was put on maintenance on the guns.

  But we all had to train on drills on a regular basis. I won't say every day, but we were taken as groups and trained regularly, every week. And along with that, we'd have to pull our guard duties around the clock. And when we would go up on the, be assigned to the guns, we'd go up there for either 24 to 48 hours. Or we'd live in the tunnels.

  Martini: You were on standby, in case...

  Norman: Right. There was always crews up there.

  Martini: When you said you went through drills, you mean loading and aiming the weapons?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Were you ever there, when they fired them?

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: When we get up there, I want to talk about that.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You want to fire it? [Laughter].

  Norman: That gun's not there.

  Martini: No. I understand it was quite an experience.

  Norman: Yes, it was.

  Martini: We're sitting in one of the two-story barracks, only a couple of cots in here, now. What would this room have been like in '43?

  Norman: Well, the way you have the cots spread out here, you can get a rough idea of the number of people that were in here. There were about, I'd have to say, about two dozen people downstairs, two dozen men upstairs. Plus the noncoms [non-commissioned officers], and they were, I think they were two to a room.

  Martini: The two small rooms at the...

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Could you have things on, personal possessions on the wall? Pin-ups, or anything like that or was it [crosstalk 00:09:15]?

  Norman: No. We weren't allowed to do any of that, in the beginning. Maybe they did later on, but not in the beginning. In your footlocker you could, but only in your footlocker.

  Martini: How was it living with 24 other guys in a room this size?

  Norman: Pretty confining [laughter]. You got so that, you knew them all pretty well. And everybody had their share of the work to do to keep the barracks cleaned up and scrubbed, and pull the latrine duty. And, we all took our turns. We had to go out on the long marches, and doing drill and calisthenics, and all of that stuff, every day. On weekends, they'd have ball games.

  Martini: Where did you go for, like, calisthenics and exercise?

  Norman: Most of it was right out there in your parking area.

  Martini: That served as a parade ground, would you say, then?

  Norman: Well, if you wanted to call it a parade ground, we never had parades out there [laughter]. But we had… we played ball out there, and did all of the calisthenics and workouts out there.

  Martini: Were there formalized teams that would compete, between the different batteries and the different areas?

  Norman: Yes. Yes and no. I mean, there were both. Just made up games, and then also, we had... I wasn't on them, but we had formalized baseball teams.

  Martini: There was a newspaper that was put out, for the coastal defenses, I have a copy of it. And it makes reference to the Fort Cronkhite Tunneleers. I think a baseball team and bowling team?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Does that ring a bell?

  Norman:

  That was the baseball team. I can only remember one of the fellows that was on it, and his name was Aragon. And he was, he'd been drafted from, or rather, he was regular Army. And he'd come up from Los Angeles, and he was a semi-pro boxer and ballplayer. But he's the only one I can remember.

  Martini: What was the Tunneleers, in reference to?

  Norman: Well, I guess it was in reference to the gun batteries, where all the guns were underground. And when you were on duty, you had to live underground and bunk underground and eat underground. And as I say, it was only for 24 to 48 hour stretches. But…

  Martini: So they'd rotate, between living up here and up there.

  Norman: Yes. Right.

  Martini: Did you have regular food up there?

  Norman: Oh yeah, they'd truck it up. When we were on duty, they would truck it up. And besides that, separate from that, then you had guard duty, which was on a 24 hour basis. But that was for pulling posts, all around the outside. At that time, you were not inside the tunnels, on duty.

  Martini: When you were doing guard duty, was the feeling that something might really happen, or was it just tramping around up in the hills?

  Norman: Well, it was, back in '43 the feeling was you never knew when somebody was going to show up on the beaches. Although at that time, even on guard duty, they issued you one clip of ammunition. That was it. So they had all the ammunition here to issue, but you passed that clip from guard to guard, as you were relieved. And that was it. I mean, you had one clip [laughter].

  Martini: So were you warned against more of, something coming in from the sea? Or were you concerned about the local populace?

  Norman: No, it was mostly from the sea.

  Martini: Was there any, I don't want to say tourists, not a good term. But, locals, walking, coming out here trying to get near it?

  Norman: I never saw them. If there were, they sure didn't get down this far.

  Martini: Just over the hills, there were dairy ranches. Did you ever have any interaction with those folks?

  Norman: No. I never even, I never saw them. Never saw any people from them, at all. I can't even remember cattle being on this side of the hills.

  Martini: What exactly… do you remember what battery you were assigned to, in the 6th Coast Artillery?

  Norman: I'm not sure. It seems to me, it was Battery A, but I'm not sure. I just can't remember.

  Martini: Were you two married at the time?

  Norman: Yes.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Two months [laughter].

  Martini: Two months.

  Norman: We were married in January of '43.

  Mrs. Peddicord: And then the greetings came [laughter].

  Martini: What was your feeling when you found out he'd been assigned in the backyard?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, it was wonderful. But then, it was funny, we didn't know until the end, that he was stamped unfit for overseas duty [laughter]. And we didn't know that until he got out, that it said that.

  Martini: Was that medical, or?

  Norman: Just for glasses.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Glasses.

  Martini: For glasses?

  Mrs. Peddicord: That's all.

  Martini: When did you get a chance to come out here? Because you mentioned, you visited him out here, on occasion?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, I don't know how-

  Norman: That was New Year's of, what, New Year's Day 1944?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Whatever it says on that paper, I don't remember.

  Norman: Because I got the flu, that winter of '43, and I spent about three and a half weeks in the hospital. And when I got out, I couldn't get a pass, so they let me bring her over for New Year's.

  Mrs. Peddicord: And we'd come over for dances. And all I remember was, in the recon [reconnaissance] trucks and going through the tunnel. And I guess they took us to the end? No, I guess we went all the way to the city, huh? But I don't remember how I got home from there. But they would have a bunch of gals come in for these dances, every once in a while. I must not have worn my glasses because I don't remember any of it [laughter]. But he was so close to home that he got home more than I was invited here.

  Martini: You got passes, pretty frequently?

  Norman: Well, when I was with the 6th, no. You were on a regular rotation with everybody else for a 24 hour pass.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, it was after that.

  Norman: And I couldn't get them very often. When I was transferred over to the radar outfit, and I was stationed in the outstations, they just gave us our Class A passes. And we were allowed to have so many men missing from the station at a time, and most of the fellows would have to depend on how much money they had, whether they took a pass. So I got a lot more passes than everybody else, simply because if I was off duty I could go home.

  Mrs. Peddicord: How long were you actually here? In Cronkhite?

  Norman: It was about, a little over a year. Just about, well, it was just about a year.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Norman: About 12 months.

  Martini: You said when you were put on the remote stations, that's when you went into radar.

  Norman: Well, first, yeah. First of all, I went up to Mendell, and I was stationed up there for a while. Then I was stationed for about a year and a half up at de Lima.

  Martini: Was that Point Reyes area? Okay.

  Norman:

  Yeah. Right. And then I went from there, down to Sharps Park [00:15:54], and we closed that station in '46. Two of us, there were only two of us that went down there, and we just wrapped it up. And then from there, I went up to Beale [Air Force Base] and was discharged.

  Mrs. Peddicord: That's, how far away he… [laughter 00:16:07].

  Norman: All just right around here.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah. But it didn't seem like that. At the time, you never knew.

  Martini: When, how did you get into the radar from the fixed artillery?

  Norman: I can only guess. I was told at the time, that I had experience with delicate instruments, because I… from being a machinist. And I'm guessing that, plus the fact that my aptitude scores were fairly high. And I think between the experience there and the fairly high scores on that, that I was investigated and then transferred over.

  When I say investigated, I found out that there had been people in my home neighborhood, over in San Francisco, that were going around and been questioning all the neighbors about me. And I understand that they went down to work, and did some questioning down at work. And I had no idea what that was all about. I just found out that somebody was asking a lot of questions about me, and then all of a sudden, I was transferred over.

  Martini: Was that because of the, radar was then new and high security?

  Norman: I'm sure it was. It was completely new. And of course it was very, very secure in those days.

  Martini: And you said that was under the Special Forces? The radar?

  Norman: Well, I'm saying Special Forces. We were detached. We didn't belong to anyone. We were in the Headquarters Defense Command, yes. But we did not belong to any outfit. We were just assigned, certain people were assigned to different batteries.

  Martini: At that time, was that when the radars, when they first went up? I believe they were camouflaged to look like water tanks?

  Norman: That's right.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We were just talking about that.

  Norman: They were all wood. No nails in them, the Army, all made wooden pegs. And they were, roughly, about 40 to 60 feet in the air.

  Martini: And that was the, do you remember what model that was?

  Norman: I've been trying to remember that on the way over today. And I cannot remember.

  Martini: SCR-296? Or 269? 268? Is that... all the numbers, I know, I know [laughter]. But it was a surface craft detection-

  Norman: It was for surface craft, right.

  Martini: ... it wasn't, aircraft?

  Norman: That's right. These were not. Our range was a little out beyond the Farrallones [group of islands about 20 miles from Point Reyes].

  Martini: How did that system work? Was it just, each individual station calculated the range? Or was that also triangulation between the various radar stations?

  Norman: It was triangulation because when our station was actually operating, we would call the... And I don't even know where it was, but we would call all of our readings into a central station. And so, I'm sure it was all by triangulation.

  Martini: Did you triangulate for any individual installation or a battery? Or were you triangulating just general information that might be then be dispersed to another [crosstalk 00:18:59]?

  Norman: It was to the central station, and then dispersed.

  Martini: Did they give you [crosstalk 00:19:05]-

  Norman:

  Now, that's different. When we had the range finding stations, as you say, the gopher holes. That was different, that was directly to Battery Townsley. And we had the range stations. I don't remember any further than Stinson Beach. We did have one that was never used, that was right up there where, at Point Reyes, where I was stationed, but was never used. At least, when I was there.

  Martini: The furthest they were apart could be about 20 miles.

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: They had them all the way down, nearly to Half Moon Bay.

  Norman: That's right. When we had to practice firing one of the guns, a couple of times, I went up to Stinson Beach, to the range station. But only when we were practicing.

  Martini: Up at Stinson Beach and a couple of other locations where they used to have the semi-permanent radar, there were large underground concrete rooms, almost directly below the pylons that supported the radar. Is that what you would work in, when you were?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Was that where the scopes were, and what would have been in those rooms?

  Norman:

  Oh, you mean, yes. The scopes, all the equipment, all the radar equipment. The scopes, all of the banks of units themselves. If something went wrong with the equipment, we had spare units, and it was just a case of changing equipment. We did not do any of the repair on it at all. We'd just pull a unit out, put a new one in. And then it would be taken into, somewhere over across the Bay, down near Fort Scott. I can't even remember where we took them, now, but we did take them close to Fort Scott. And then we would just get new units and bring them back out.

  Martini: It was kind of modular, plugin stuff?

  Norman: Right. Exactly. Of course the units were about, roughly about three foot wide by about two foot deep, and about six inches thick. They were big monstrous things in those days.

  Martini: They had big vacuum tubes?

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: Did they have the magnetrons, then?

  Norman: Not that I can recall.

  Martini: What was the resolution like on those? Did you get a modern-day radar with a circular sweep where you could see individual dots for targets?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Or was this sine wave?

  Norman: No, these were circular sweeps and the scopes were about 10 inches in diameter. And I'd say that the sweeps, I'm going to guess that it was somewhere around once a second, that you would get a sweep.

  Martini: What kind of, was it real easy to recognize a target from just clutter?

  Norman: All you would do is get a... Oh yes. You would get a definite blip for a ship. There wasn't any question that it was a ship.

  Martini: Did you practice on coastal traffic?

  Norman: We used to track everything into the harbor, and out.

  Martini: Up there, I think they call that Hill 640, above Stinson Beach, where your radar was?

  Norman: Well, Stinson Beach, I wasn't in that station.

  Martini: You weren't in that station?

  Norman: Uh-uh (negative).

  Martini: Okay, the one up at Point Reyes-

  Norman: Point Reyes. We always just referred to it as the Point Reyes Station.

  Martini: ... Point Reyes Station?

  Norman: I couldn't even tell you the number anymore. [Laughter].

  Martini: So, you guys were pretty much on your own, up there. With the radar, and the guys that were in the sighting stations?

  Norman: Up there, we were totally on our own, except for two officers that had the proper papers to come in. And they were the only ones we let in, unless they were bringing somebody with them.

  Martini: Did you have a perimeter fence, that you took, guarding?

  Norman: It was just like a ranch fence. It was not a chicken wire or anything like that. It was just a barbed wire ranch fence, but we did not let anybody come past the gates. Except those two officers.

  Martini: How would you know if you were supposed to go into action? Telephone call come in, radio? Officer come screaming in [crosstalk 00:23:12]-

  Norman:

  Oh, yeah. We were in constant contact by phone and radio, both. And we were all, we all had our, if you want to call it that, the license for short wave, plus the telephones. So we were always, anytime that we were operating, we were always, which was most of the time, we were always in contact with the central station.

  Martini: The fellows I've talked to who worked on the base end stations with scopes, have said that it was pretty maddening because I guess to prevent visible above-ground development, you weren't allowed to have a lot of amenities top-side, like a permanent shack or anything. So pretty much, you were underground or in a tent?

  Norman:

  That's right. Well, we had, at Point Reyes, we had, there was the water tower, which is common for all of them. And then of course, then the cement building underneath, where all of the radar equipment was. Then about 50 yards away, right into the... I'm sure they made the hill around it, but it was like a long wooden bunkhouse, would be like the lower floor of this one. And it had a kitchen, beds for about 14 men and that was about it. And then, once they made that log wooden farmhouse, if you want to call it a farmhouse, then they covered the whole hill over with dirt.

  Martini: Really?

  Norman: So we had windows but the windows were actually under an overhang, or under a roof, that was all covered over with dirt. So from the air, it looked like it was just part of the hill.

  Martini: Talk about camouflage for a second. Did you guys end up doing a lot of camouflage work or maintaining it? Was there a lot around here? Nets and [crosstalk 00:24:57]?

  Norman: On the gun batteries, there was.

  Martini: What kind did they have up there?

  Norman: They just had nets that went all the way across the front because everything else was under the hill. But as far as the openings for where the guns were, would stick out, we had big camouflage nets that had to be pulled back before the guns were extended out.

  Martini: Were the batteries painted? Like dazzle camouflage, or mottled, or nondescript or, do you remember?

  Norman:

  I don't remember, because everything was underground, except for that one opening. I'm sure that they were the Army green but... [laughter].

  Martini: There was a book, it was National Geographic, some woman paid a visit out here in early 1943 and wrote an article for National Geographic about San Francisco at war. And she wrote several pages about driving way out into the hills to visit the coastal fortifications [crosstalk 00:25:49].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Huh.

  Martini: It's hard to tell when she was just being creative, but she talked about artificial mountains that opened, and her Jeep driver drove her into it.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I'll be darned.

  Martini: And we have no idea what she's talking about.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Where was she? She's not around, anymore, now?

  Norman: I don't know if it would be this one up here, but of course they had the big double doors that would open up, where you could drive trucks into them, but they couldn't drive through the tunnels. You know, it was just to get them off the road, and that was about all. And that was just kind of a camouflaged overhang, that I can recall.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Would they let her get in and do that in 1943?

  Norman: [crosstalk 00:26:19].

  Martini: That was a very carefully censored story.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, no [laughter].

  Martini: Very [inaudible 00:26:22].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah. They did, there were...

  Martini: Did the press come out, whenever you were here? Do you remember any press visits or dignitaries getting the red carpet tour?

  Norman: Mm-mm (negative). Not at all.

  Martini: Okay. We have a few carefully censored photographs, where the background was airbrushed out, that were taken-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh? Which ones?

  Martini: ... I have, The Chronicle [The San Francisco Chronicle] took a bunch of them. But you could tell someone was standing right behind the photographer saying, "Don't you dare move” [crosstalk 00:00:26:49]. [Laughter]. He didn't want anything in the background to give it away.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, yeah.

  Martini: [Crosstalk 00:26:51], okay.

  Norman:

  Okay. I can't remember any visitors like that. Army, lots of brass, yes. But along with that, there could have been correspondents.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You never even took pictures, around here. Even of your barracks. [crosstalk 00:27:05].

  Norman: They wouldn't let me, they wouldn't let me have a camera in here.

  Martini: You couldn't even own a camera?

  Norman: Mm-mm (negative). Couldn't have one in here.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, they were really particular here.

  Martini: One of the things that you gave us was that, the pillowcase cover, for the Coastal Artillery Corps. You said that that was, they sold those here at the PX [Post Exchange]?

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: As souvenirs? Was that about the only type of really specific souvenir for the Harbor Defenses or were there other things also?

  Norman: Oh, they had, I don't remember what kind of memorabilia they had. They didn't have a lot. They had very little.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Where did you get me... I got a charm bracelet. And I had the little crossed cannons, on that.

  Norman: I think that was at the PX [Post Exchange].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah. I forgot about that, for my charm bracelet. [Laughter].

  Martini: Someone wanted me to ask you, do you remember where the PX [Post Exchange] was down here, among this maze of buildings?

  Norman: It was down this end, I'd have to go out and look around and see if I could tell you that, which building was actually the PX [Post Exchange]. It was way down this end.

  Martini: Right across from it was the fire station.

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: And the two-story building over there, was headquarters. With a question mark? Had a flagpole, out front.

  Norman: Not to my recollection. Our battery headquarters was down over here, in just a small, one of the small buildings.

  Martini: Was it… do you know how the chain of command went? The battery was the basic one. What was above that?

  Norman: Well, as far as my recollections are, it went as far as the captain. Beyond that, I don't remember, I didn't associate with any in this area. I'm sure that there were, probably over in Berry, but not that I had anything to do with.

  Martini: Don't remember any of the, "This battery's under this command, and this command answers to the Harbor Defenses," or any of that chain?

  Norman: No.

  Martini: You mentioned that the noncoms [non-commissioned officers] lived in these barracks, here. What about married officers? Where were they living?

  Norman: From what I can recall, they lived up at West Portal.

  Martini: There was housing up there, at West Portal?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: When you refer to West Portal, when you drive in and out today, is that where the 1960s concrete buildings are?

  Norman: That's the first group of buildings, west of the tunnel.

  Martini: We call those the Capehart Houses, but that was that same location?

  Norman: Okay. Well, that was West Portal.

  Martini: That was West Portal? Okay.

  Norman: Yeah, because going up this way there was, where you have all the horses now, that was all the maintenance for all of the trucks and Jeeps and everything else. In fact, I think that barn is still there, that was the big maintenance building for that. Then there was the firing range, east of that. And then when you went around the curve and on up, just a little bit, that's where West Portal was.

  Martini: Yeah. Same area.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Okay. Yeah. You mentioned the horse stables, here. Actually that's a balloon hangar from the 1920s.

  Norman: But that was used for the maintenance building, for all of the trucks and Jeeps and recons [reconnaissance vehicles].

  Martini: Were the sheds outside, were those just coverage where the horses are now? Were those just covered sheds for vehicles, or was that searchlight or mobile, things?

  Norman: I don't remember any mobile equipment in there, at all.

  Martini: Do you remember a battery of mobile 155 caliber guns that were down here, for a while?

  Norman: No, I don't.

  Martini: Stuff came and went so fast, no one tracked a lot of this stuff. They have a picture of a battery of 155 guns in the parking lot. And, when was it? Yeah. I tell you. Want to take a drive up to the battery itself? Go inside it?

  Norman: Yeah. I'd love to, yeah.

  Martini: You got it.

  [Inaudible 00:30:38] you take it from a category position?

  Norman:

  Not really. We all ran the scopes. Out at Point Reyes, my primary duty, along... I had to pull my duty, in the radar station. But along with that, I had to take care of all of the standby motors and generators. And I got stuck with that, because I was a machinist.

  Martini: Machinist. Somehow, I got that [laughter]. [Crosstalk 00:31:07]. When we bring visitors in this barracks, they're always amazed at the latrine.

  Norman: That was the first thing I looked at when I came in [laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: I see it.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: And you had already come on in.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Norman: Yeah, this looks just, exactly the same as all of them, down the line.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Gee, I should take a picture. Oh my God. Boy, no privacy at all, huh?

  Norman: Nope. You can set down in here, yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: [Crosstalk 00:31:28].

  Martini: No [inaudible 00:31:32]-

  Norman: Yeah, there wasn't exactly much privacy here. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, this is all stuff I never got to see.

  Martini: You remember the little slots in the wall?

  Norman: Oh, the razorblades? Yeah.

  Martini: It's still full of them, too. [Laughter].

  Norman: Is it? Really?

  Martini: Found out the hard way. I was like, "What are ... ?"

  Norman: And then, "Uh oh." [Laughter].

  Martini: [Inaudible 00:00:31]

  Norman: Yeah, I forgot about that, till you reminded me.

  Martini: I ask that... with all the planning that went on, it amazes me. They just cut a hole in the wall, and just shoved the razorblades between the studs.

  Norman: Now that, looking at this, and the way the windows are, that reminds me, all the windows were all blacked out when we were living here.

  Martini: Oh, even the ones in here?

  Norman: Oh, yeah.

  Martini: Oh.

  Norman: Yeah, because we had all the blackouts going, so those windows all had to be blacked out. No light at night.

  Martini: Just painted over with black paint or...?

  Norman: From what I recall, we'd just paint it. I don't remember covers over them.

  Martini: Do you remember, where these barracks... had they been painted inside yet, by the time you got here? Or was it all still rough, exposed wood?

  Norman: No, it looked just about like it does right now. They were all whitewashed. And periodically, we'd have to not only in the cleaning, but periodically, if they were too bad, then we'd have to start whitewashing.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Norman: Mop the floors down regularly, as you can tell by looking at the wood. That's well water.

  Martini: Okay. So Ed, the-

  Mrs. Peddicord: We got to call up [Theodore] Lubjeg . Was he here, did you say?

  Norman: Well, he was stationed up in [Fort] Mendell.

  Martini: Is he still living in the area?

  Norman: I lost track of him. But he lived in the East Bay.

  Martini: Oh, great.

  Mrs. Peddicord: He lived about three miles from us.

  Martini: We should get a reunion together sometime, a bunch of you guys.

  Norman: I'll give him a call, and see if he's still out there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: We used to send him Christmas cards.

  Norman: Let me call Theodore [Lubjeg], see if I can find out if he still lives out there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Last time we saw him was 30 years ago, and yet they lived that close.

  Norman: He was not from here, but he stayed here after the war [World War II]. Was the company headquarters.

  Martini: OK, the first building that we're looking at right now?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: And the next one over.

  Norman: It was this one.

  Martini: That's building 1049. We never come up with names for these things. We still use the numbers.

  Norman: Still use the numbers?

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: Okay. Well this one was company headquarters, and then the smaller one down here was the day room.

  Martini: Building 10-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Maybe that's where we had dances.

  Martini: Building 1050. And what would a day room be?

  Norman: Oh, they had tables in there, where you could go down and play cards, just sit around and chew the fat, and whatnot. But if you wanted to get out of the barracks, you'd come down here usually.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Maybe we went from there to eat that time.

  Norman: They had magazines in there, and you could go down there and do reading. Mostly, it was used for playing cards.

  Martini: Yeah. And you can see, there's a couple of buildings missing, too. They got torn down before someone decided these buildings actually were now a historic district.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, that's great [inaudible 00:03:03].

  Martini: Well, there's the kid. There's plenty more in the Presidio, if we move over here.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, now that's a crime.

  Norman: I think those were barracks. Because I... you know, that's always bothered me, because I definitely remembered that there were three rows of barracks.

  Martini: And it was a fence and a gate here at the foot of the hill, you mentioned?

  Norman: [Laughter]. See where those people are right now?

  Martini: Yeah, the pipe gate.

  Norman: There was the gate there, and that was one of the .. first trip over here, that was one of the things that I looked for right away. But it's gone. I had my mark on the top of the post, where we were changing. I told you we had to change clips in the rifles when we were relieved.

  Martini: Right.

  Norman: Well, that night, I was on duty on that gate. When we changed, one of the cartridges had slipped into the chamber, and we always had to point it into the sky and fire it, just to make sure that nothing was in. And I had something in. So I left my trademark right in the top of the post. [Laughter].

  Martini: Right up here, on the top of the bluff, there's a small little square underground concrete structure. And it appears to be a cleared area. Maybe there was a temporary gun mount? Do you remember anything up there?

  Norman: Yes. There was a 50-caliber gun up there. And somewhere up there, and I can't remember where, we also had one of the range stations.

  Martini: Rain? Like just weather?

  Norman: No, the range.

  Martini: Oh, range.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Excuse me.

  Norman: But I can't remember just where it was, but it was somewhere this side of the gun. But right about there is where we had the 50-caliber gun. And that was a concrete emplacement.

  Martini: One of the ones like you described? The hexagonal box in the ground?

  Norman: Right, right. Right.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Are you lose-

  Norman: And the only restriction we had on that was that they had the pipes, to limit your travel, so we couldn't point them back at the barracks.

  Mrs. Peddicord:

  Are you losing some of the land along here? It looks like, from when we walked up here, 52 years ago, that it's...

  Norman: The trees, if I remember correctly, it was the range station. The plotting room.

  Martini: The main planning room.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Got it. Is that an area you ever went in and out of?

  Norman: Oh, yeah. I was... half the time I was here, I was with the plotting crew.

  Martini: Okay. Now, this thing, both of the portals to this are equipped with airlocks, and they're gas-proofed. Did you routinely use the airlocks, or would that only be if there'd been a gas attack?

  Norman: That was probably only if there was an attack because we didn't do drills that I remember.

  Martini: There are still bunks hanging from the walls inside this thing. That would have been for the crew that had the duty?

  Norman: Right. When you had to pull duty, then you'd stay right here. I was on the guns for about, oh, roughly six months. And then I was with the plotting section for about six months. And it was actually from the plotting section that I was transferred over into the radar group.

  Martini: What can you tell me about trees? The trees all seem to have grown up around the installations, but in photos during the war [World War II], it seems to have been barren, my thought was probably intentionally, so as not to draw attention. Did you guys plant trees, or remember, did they grow?

  Norman:

  No, we did not. Not that I recall. If they were planted, they were planted late in the war [World War II]. I don't recall our doing any planning like that at all. We would try to keep it as much natural habitat as we could. And we were not allowed to just tramp around the hills and make paths or things like that. We had to stay on the roads, or stay on particular paths to a gun emplacement, or something like that.

  Martini: Because they didn't want to give away the idea that activity was taking place?

  Norman: Right. So any activity had to be down here, in the barracks area.

  Martini: Would the portals have just been open like that? Or would this have been... or they would have had nets and all over it?

  Norman: Everything like this had nets over them, but there were no... the doors were further back in. I think those are still the original doors back in there. Yeah, those are still the original doors. But out here, we would have camouflage nets over the opening.

  Martini: Was the road... was it a paved road or was it a rock road?

  Norman: No, it was a paved road. At least from what I remember, it was a paved road. I don't remember it being just a rock road.

  Martini: When you were changing the duty up at the battery, and out of the barracks, did you walk? Did they truck you? March in formation?

  Norman: We either walked or ran.

  Martini: Or ran. [Laughter].

  Norman: No, they didn't feel we needed transportation. [Laughter].

  Martini: What job did you have down in the buck room?

  Norman: Most of the time, I was on the phones. I did some of the actual plotting, but most of the time, I was on the phones. They'd train us for plotting, but that was usually a .. they usually gave that job to the sergeants in the section. And they were very jealous of that, so they would show us how, but that's about as far as it went.

  Martini: When you were down in the plotting room, you say on the phones, you'd actually be getting the bearings from the individual stations, and relaying it to the guys with the arms on the table?

  Norman: Right. Right. It was just like a large drafting machine, with the right angle arms on them, and they would just keep marking in the numbers, and then drawing the lines.

  Curry: They'd draw it right on the plot board?

  Norman: Yes.

  Martini: There's a piece of paper or something underneath it.

  Norman: That's right. It wasn't like it was glass that was erasable. They actually would use charts.

  Martini: And I take it there was two men on the plot board that put in the information, and I suppose others that read it out?

  Norman: Seems to me that there were four phones. I wouldn't swear to that. I think you're right that there were either two or three on the plotting boards.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, look at the graffiti.

  Martini: Let me try to go up to the other tunnel portal, which is up ahead.

  Norman: Uh-huh ( affirmative). Right.

  Martini: That's the one with the long approach.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You had to walk all the way up here?

  Norman: Oh, sure.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh my God. [Laughter].

  Martini: Did you usually go into the gun positions, or did you use these center doors?

  Norman: We used the center doors.

  Martini: You went in this way? I'm kidding. Now, that brought you in through the generator room itself? That was in the very center of the mountain?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Did those generators... were those routinely operating, or were those backup in case the utilities went out?

  Norman: They were not used constantly. They were used as backups, but I can't remember how much they were actually run.

  Martini: Would it pretty much... pretty noisy? The vibrations? Was that disconcerting to have those running?

  Norman: You know, I can't remember that. I just don't remember anything about what they were like. The noises would amplify so much, but then the rooms were so thick in the walls, if they kept the doors closed, not much noise would go through the tunnels. And they had doors at various sections, so that the different sections could be closed off. Or all wide open.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You and David walked up, yeah.

  Martini: This was before the park, you mean?

  Norman: Right, right.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Martini: You could still get in these?

  Norman: Right. Of course, by then, everything was gone, but the doors were wide open. [Keys jingling].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Was that 25 years ago, David left? That was when he'd go with us, so that means he must've been about 12 or 13.

  Norman: At the oldest, yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Martini: Why did they have you use the back doors, rather than use the doors into the guns themselves?

  Norman:

  I don't know. Except that when you went in there, of course, all the bunks and everything were all along the walls, so I guess we'd bring up our packs with us when we come up. But there was very, very little foot traffic allowed in front of the guns.

  Martini: Did you have a particular assigned bunk, or did you just take what you came to as you came in?

  Norman: From what I recall, you took whatever was available when you came in.

  Martini: Well, look at that. Someone's-

  Norman: Because the crews were changing regularly.

  Martini: Someone's nicely allowed us.

  Norman: Yeah. [Keys jingling].

  Martini: Not that I really like seeing these-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Is it supposed to be open?

  Martini: Oh, no. [Laughter].

  Norman: No.

  Martini: But the teenagers, nicely, leave it open for us every chance they get.

  Norman: Oh.

  Martini: Thank you. Yeah, we're standing outside the entrance to casemate number one. And you were saying that you didn't usually approach it this way, or see it?

  Norman: Most of my memory is going in from the other tunnel, not on this side.

  Martini: This long access tunnel here, is this where your bunks were?

  Norman: Yes.

  Curry: Were they knocked down through the tunnel, going to the other-

  Norman: Oh, they were on the other side, and down through that tunnel, too. They were all hinged, right to the wall.

  Curry: Yes.

  Norman: Except when you were actually sleeping, they would be folded up and chained right to the wall.

  Curry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you know how many men were stationed here at the time? How many bunks there were?

  Norman:

  No, except ... the only thing I can tell you is that there were long stretches of [crosstalk 00:12:57] but I can't help with the number of people. [Wind blowing].

  Martini: There's always a breeze blowing through this thing.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, you're not kidding.

  Norman: There was always a breeze blowing through it then, too.

  Martini: Did they have this tunnel blocked off?

  Norman: From what I remember, there was always solid doors.

  Martini: Solid doors?

  Norman: Yeah. I don't remember these, like this.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Are those holes? Well, they're just small. Well, what are these holes here for? Maybe this is where it was.

  Martini: No, we suspect, because they're all along the walls, that this is where the bunks-

  Norman: These are where the bunks were.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

  Martini: We're looking at the vertical lines of holes, where, quite obviously, there was either wood or steel attached. And this is where the hinged bunks were.

  Norman: Yeah. They were all steel bunks.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Well, then it must've been closed off.

  Martini: Two high?

  Norman: Yes. They were all two high, and they went for a long stretch along here. I'm sure we can see by the holes, but it was a long... I just recall a long stretch of bunks along here.

  Martini: And there was a breeze, then, too.

  Norman: Yes, there was. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Well, you didn't sleep in this, did you?

  Norman: When we were on duty.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I mean with all the air coming through here?

  Norman: Oh, sure.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Jeez, no wonder you had pneumonia. [Laughter]. [Inaudible 00:14:13]. Oh, you couldn't.

  Norman: Yes, you did.

  Martini: Well, I... when we first took over some of these batteries, there was plywood bolted over the grates, and that may explain why they seemed to be solid doors.

  Norman: Well, that's... yeah, I can't say that they were steel doors, except that I remember they were closed.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You would know, if you went to sleep in this place.

  Norman: Yeah, but I can remember walking through here. I can remember the wind blowing through. Now, at night, the doors were probably closed. I just don't remember.

  Martini: So you looked just right on down this access tunnel, right at the breach of the gun?

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: To our left right here, this is the main lateral tunnel that goes through. You see, we now have it closed off. Okay. And this is where the ammunition magazines-

  Norman: I was going to say, down through there is where the powder rooms and the ammunition was.

  Martini: And there would have been more bucks still, down there?

  Norman: Yes. My recollection is that the bunks were down at the other end, though. I don't remember them being up at this end.

  Mrs. Peddicord: This is nice, down here. [Laughter]. [Inaudible 00:15:23].

  Martini: This is a little small room, that parallels the main tunnel. We can walk around to the other side, because they've nicely broken into this, too.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Do you remember-

  Norman: I can see that.

  Martini: You remember what use this room would have had?

  Norman:

  I don't remember it being used as a room at all. I think that was an access to... gee, I don't remember. I'm getting confused now, as to what... it may have been where they kept the next charges of powder and shells.

  Martini: Ready to roll out?

  Norman:

  Just ready to roll right out to the guns, because we never had to go all the way back to bring them out. It was always right close, very handy. And back here, they'd never keep anything in here, if possible, including people. Because when the gun would fire, whatever was there would get knocked all over the place. And if people were walking up when the guns we fired, either coming through the doors there or here, you-

  Mrs. Peddicord: This is where-

  Martini: Watch out for this.

  Norman: Yeah, watch out for that.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, yeah.

  Martini: We're standing right now at the gun pit itself.

  Norman: Yeah. But if you were walking through the doors when the guns went off, it would take you right off your feet, and lay you flat on the floor.

  Martini: When you actually fired, where... if they didn't like you standing around here, would they clear the whole casemate of men? And move them back into the tunnels? Or where would everybody stand?

  Norman: You stand on the sides.

  Martini: On the sides?

  Norman: Yeah. But in fact, as much as possible, you did not want to be walking in the tunnels. Because the pressure going through the tunnels was just terrific.

  Martini: All the doors inside are still stenciled, "Door to remain open whenever guns are firing."

  Norman: Right. It'd blow the doors off.

  Martini: It would blow the doors off?

  Norman: That's what they were afraid of. I've never seen it happen, but the doors were always open, and it was a lot of pressure to get out.

  Martini: Was it a bang? Was it a whoomp? Was it a huge concussion? Did the ground shake? What was it like?

  Norman: Everything would shake, and it wasn't a bang, it was more of just a big pressure roar. It was not a sharp, staccato type of repercussion at all.

  Martini: What about being outside the casemate when the gun went off? Obviously, you wouldn't want to be, but were there safety warnings about being anywhere in the front area when the firing took place?

  Norman: No. Not that I can recall, except the only ones that would be out there would be ones that would be out there for a purpose, which was primarily for the 30-caliber guns that were all over the top of here.

  Martini: There's still a couple of, yeah, the pits up there for it.

  Norman: Are there?

  Martini: Yeah. When the… Did you ever use the overhead rails, and the chain hoists, for moving the shells, or did they pretty much come out on the big carts?

  Norman: No. You also had the... inside there, you had the, all of them, the chain hoist. Out here-

  Martini: Well, they-

  Norman: They had all of them out here, and I was just trying to remember how they were placed, because you had to use them to get them into the slot, into the tray where they were fed right into the chamber, into the breach. I don't remember which way they ran, though. [Laughter].

  Martini: I've heard that using them to move all the way from the magazine out here, they tended to jam because of the weight and going through all the switches. And most of the time they just threw them right on the cart.

  Norman: That's right. My recollection is that they were always run out on the carts. Then they were just picked up and swung right into the breach.

  Martini: This was all hydraulic, and electrical operate, all the aiming, correct?

  Norman: Yes. Yeah. That's what I was curious about. That whole back there goes way back inside, if I remember correctly. And that's where the recoil mechanisms, all the big recoil cylinders were.

  Martini: Back-

  Norman: Remember that? Remember that story I told you about the sergeant that [inaudible 00:19:45].

  Mrs. Peddicord: I got it.

  Norman: Oh.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I don't know how to put it in.

  Norman: Remember the story I told you about the sergeant that was outside while this other guy and I were down inside, trying to get the recoil mechanism out?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, and you went in?

  Norman: Yeah. No, that's not... that is not the hole. So it must have been just that it was down in the pit itself.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. So it could aim up, you know, at an angle. And-

  Norman: We had to drag it out of a little tunnel, and then we had to angle it up, and just snake it around, and then lift it straight out, on end.

  Martini: Oh, some of the recoil-

  Norman: The recoil mechanism, yeah.

  Martini: Okay.

  Mrs. Peddicord: How much water is in here? How much lower did it go?

  Norman: Not much.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Martini: Maybe three feet, at most. So you actually had to go down into this thing underneath to do the maintenance on it?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Norman:

  And the only reason I remember the story is that he was one of the ... in fact, I can still remember his name. His name was Crushane [00:20:39]. And he was a buck sergeant, and he knew nothing about mechanics. And this other fellow and I had to go down and take it out. And he got tired of waiting for us to get it all slung and get ourselves out of the way. And he told the guys to go ahead and start pulling. [Camera noises]. And he almost killed us. Because when he started pulling, both of us just splattered ourselves to the side, as it started snaking out. That's the only time in my life I can ever remember really telling off a sergeant. We both can come out of there like greased lightning.

  Martini: How often did they have real live firing? Was it... ?

  Norman: I can only remember about half a dozen times that we actually fired at targets.

  Martini: How accurate?

  Norman: Usually, I would say, by the third shot, we would be hitting the target. And most of the time, it was you'd straddle one side, and then plot to straddle the other side, and then plot to hit. That was the normal pattern that you'd set up. Now, once you were using the radar, I can't tell you, because I was never on the guns at that point.

  Martini: Did a lot of brass turn out to watch the firings? Was that a big event?

  Norman: Yes. There were a lot of people around. That's about all I can tell you is yes, there were a lot of people around.

  Martini: Uh-huh (affirmative). When the… Okay, this is a story someone else told me. Tell me if this is lore, is that brass would come, and you said you shouldn't stand in certain places, the concussion could blow you off your feet?

  Norman: There, over there.

  Martini: And that's where the crew would tell the brass-

  Norman: The idea was try to get them to walk through, just before we fired. That's not lore. That is- [Laughter].

  Martini: That is? Ah, oh, great.

  Norman: There's a basis to it.

  Martini: Did you do any of the famous things, like plug your ears and open your mouth at the concussion?

  Norman: Yeah. And in those days. You didn't have any earmuffs, so you would do just that. Yes, you would try to keep your mouth open, and all you could do is just cover your ears with your hands.

  Martini: Right. Right. Over here on the wall, it still has stenciled all the crew position, or the crew roster.

  Norman: Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Martini: Keeping an eye out for that manhole.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: It's down there at the bottom of the pit. We dig it out, we put it here, the kids take it off and throw it in. It's kind of a local tradition. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, dear.

  Martini: Yeah. But you can see, there are as many as 35 positions. Would it take that many guys?

  Norman: There were a lot of fellows all around, because you had to figure that, let’s see, on the gun itself, there were probably somewhere around 10 men, just doing different things on the gun. The rest of them were either the commanders, standing over the side, on the phones. And also then running the ammunition. So it took, yeah, it took a large number of people to do it.

  Martini: Chief of section, gun commander on down. What would your position have been? Were you considered a loader or just an artillery man? Or did they have a specific position description?

  Norman: No. No. When you were with a crew, you'd be assigned to do a certain thing. I didn't get any of the fancy things, like actually operating the hand wheels on the gun. But most of what I did was running the ammunition and powder, and helping to load it into the breaches. I would either go in there or loading the breaches, over here.

  Martini: But how can-

  Norman: And one of the things that was interesting is one chore I got, that I had to do about three times, was we had to grease the barrels regularly. And the way you'd grease the barrels of the guns was they would tie a rope, they would shoot a rope through the barrel, and then you would tie it around your ankles. And you would start out at the muzzle end, and they would drag you backwards, with your arms over your head, and a pail of grease in your hand, and a paint brush. And you would paint the barrel with grease as you were dragged backwards.

  Martini: You're not kidding are you?

  Norman: No, I'm not kidding at all. I could fit in the barrel then. I don't think I could now. [Laughter].

  Martini: That sounds like something out of a bad joke.

  Norman: No, absolutely not.

  Martini: They'd pull you through?

  Norman: I was pulled through. [Laughter].

  Martini: Oh, brother. Cloth ... nevermind.

  Norman: And then usually, they'd pull you through on your back, and you'd just drag the grease bucket with one hand and the paint brush in the other end, and you're always painting around, around, and back of you, like that.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I suppose you're on the back so your buttons didn't get caught on the rifling?

  Norman: I guess so. We always did it on our backs, because it was easier to paint overhead, I just thought. [Laughter].

  Martini: Great. I just want to go back in, because when we bring people in here, I like to tell them what it was like when the thing fired. You said you weren't supposed to stand there or there, because that's where the concussion is-

  Norman: Not in the tunnel entrances, right.

  Martini: Not in the tunnel entrances.

  Norman: You got to the side, so that any repercussion in back of the guns was not going to knock you down.

  Martini: So if the gun was, say, straight out to sea, would you be okay against the sidewall or the back wall? As long as you weren't in the direct line of the tunnel?

  Norman: Right. You tried not to be anywhere in the back are when the gun was going off.

  Martini: How did they actually do it? Was it a lanyard? Was it a trigger on the carriage? Was it done by someone down in the plotting room? How did it actually fire?

  Norman: No, no. It was done by lanyard.

  Martini: By lanyard.

  Norman:

  And I don't know the hookup on it. I can't tell you what the lanyard was connected to, but that's the way it was done. And it was controlled by the firing officer. And there were generally... I don't remember exactly what it was, how many times they would warn, but they would shout out about three or four warnings, so that everybody could get out of the way. Because that was a lot of pressure behind those guns.

  Martini: Would the call go down the halls to the magazines, too, so everyone would stand by and not be out in the hallways?

  Norman: Well, it must have, because we all heard it when they were shouting.

  Martini: Was there one of those infamous time interval bells dinging in here? And you'd get fired on the ring of the bell?

  Norman: I don't remember that.

  Martini: With two guns in the battery, did you ever fire simultaneously or would that been courting disaster?

  Norman: I don't recall ever firing simultaneously.

  Martini: One after the other, then? And how long would it take to reload?

  Norman:

  If I gave you a figure, I'd be guessing. The only thing I can tell you, it was very fast. We had it timed down to just a minute, to minute and a half. I'm going to guess it was somewhere around one to two minutes, to swab the gun out, because you had to run a swab all the way through, to get all the-

  Martini: All the way through?

  Norman: All the way, all of it. The burnt particles out. And after that was done, then it went very fast, to load the shell and the powder bags.

  Martini: Were these guns equipped with the automatic compressed air, that shot the pressed air out the barrel after the moment of firing, to clear the breach a bit?

  Norman: Yeah. And then they had the rams that pushed all the way through, for cleaning it.

  Martini: All the way through?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Okay. These guns, I know, didn't last that long. I think 300 or 400 shots, then they started to lose their accuracy. And I know they husbanded the amount of shots they made. Each time they fired, was there a lot of cleanup and maintenance because of the powder residue and wear on the barrel?

  Norman: Well, I'd say yeah.

  Martini: Would be-

  Norman: We were dragged down through the barrel, so... [Laughter].

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: Yeah, that was common. When they were, yes, you had to clean up the whole thing, from one end to the other.

  Martini: Did the paint thin off the barrels?

  Norman: I don't remember that.

  Martini: None of them survived, so stupid question, what color were they? Were they the same green as the rest of the metalwork up here?

  Norman: I was trying to remember that, and I do not remember their... I don't remember their being painted. I've been trying to... you guys were talking about that earlier. And I just cannot remember their actually being painted. I've been trying to get that in my mind, but...

  Martini: How did they keep the casemate? Was this spit shined? Or was it like the ambiance of a machine shop?

  Norman: Mostly, it was all greased. It was not spit and polish. You had oil and grease all over everything. And I think a lot of the reason for that was that because of the sea air blowing in here all the time, you had to do that.

  Martini: There was only a partial shield, right? The whole casemate wasn't closed off.

  Norman: Your nets were dragged over the whole, the whole area at night. And usually they were controlled from the top and the bottom, and done manually. But they were taken and then pulled back by the men. They weren't on cables or chains, that I can recall.

  John Martini There wasn't a... but I mean surrounding the gun. In the photos, there's a partial shield, but most of this was still open. Am I correct? Between the shield and the concrete walls?

  Norman: When you say open, you're not referring to the camouflage nets?

  Martini: No. I'm talking about-

  Norman: No. Most of it was open. And then just covered over with the nets.

  Martini: Going around to the other one?

  Mrs. Peddicord: It's all the way around the back.

  Martini: The bolts overhead are for the railings that...?

  Norman: For the rails, yeah.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Norman: And down through here was where the tunnels were, where we kept the shells and the powder bags.

  Mrs. Peddicord: In here.

  Norman:

  And they would run them out on carts. They had carts, and very well, I can remember how high they were exactly. The carts were about yea high.

  Martini: Waist high?

  Norman: Yeah. And then they'd run them out here on the carts, and they'd put them somewhere along in here, and pick them up, and then load them over into the breach area. And then it got so that we were running the cart all the way out, and then just picking them right up at the gun.

  Martini: And you described, it was cold up here, and you're on duty for what, 48 hours?

  Norman: 24 to 48 hours.

  Martini: 24 to 48 hours?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: What was the worst part of being up here, aside from nothing happening?

  Norman: Boring. [Laughter].

  Martini: Boring? Did you have a rec room or anything up here? Did you sit or-

  Norman: No. No. When I say boring, it was boring during the night. During the day, you were always going through drills and all kinds of exercises, but at night, it was very boring.

  Martini: Radios? Or did you read? Play cards?

  Norman: I can't remember ever bringing radios in. And the lights that you were allowed, it was just a few light bulbs down through the tunnel, enough to see by-

 

• Mr. and Mrs. Peddicord Part 2

  
  

  An interview with Mr. and Mrs. Peddicord about life at Fort Cronkhite by National Park Historian of the Golden Gate Recreation Area John Martini and Volunteer in parks Paul Curry
  Audio Transcript

  Martini: ... but it's solid as a rock. [Inaudible 00:00:08].

  Norman: Yeah. Once they get wet, then the ready-made wall.

  Martini: Paul, you were asking about the cattle guard. [Car signal clicking]. It’s… they bought this from a dairy company. They condemned it-

  Curry: Right.

  Martini: ... in '37 to build Fort Cronkhite [former U.S. Army post that was part of the coastal artillery defenses in San Francisco]. And what we think is that they may have allowed for a few years for them to still graze cows out here. May have given them the rancher right and made it part of the deal. But down below where the plotting room was at least up until 1941, there were still dairy buildings and a milking barn in that little valley right below the plotting room.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Do you remember those when you were there?

  Norman: Not really. I don't remember anything about them.

  Martini: Yeah. Was still a couple of troughs buried out in the weeds out there.

  Curry: Could have been beginning of the war [World War II] and they removed it.

  Norman: I just don't remember anything about this.

  Martini: Yeah, would it-

  Mrs. Peddicord: I don't know if I took a picture of [inaudible 00:01:04] if you want to get it on the way down.

  Martini: Yeah, we'll go right by it. One of the great myths is that all these trees were planted for camouflage during World War II. That's why I was asking you about trees and what you said-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah. Would they be that big? Well, 40 years, 50 years ago?

  Martini: No, they aren't because when we've cut some of these huge cypress down, they'll only be 25, 30 years old. They grew up very rapidly.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Martini: And that's why, what you said about they had you out, you weren't supposed to walk, you know, create new trails and all that and keep the natural vegetation.

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: That will make our naturalists very happy. [Laughter].

  Norman: I just don't remember the trees at all. I don't know if you can see them or not, but up there, there's the pipes coming out of the ventilation. I think that was a generator room.

  Martini: There you can see it.

  Norman: And that they used those pipes for getting air in and out of there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh yeah. I see them in there, yeah.

  Martini:

  Inside through here, right inside it is the latrine and that's gas proofed, just like the whole plotting room's gas proof down below.

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: Did they ever do gas drills? Did you still carry gas masks or was that kind of past?

  Norman: We had them, but I don't recall any drills.

  Martini: And outside of the casemate here, like you said, this is where if they were going to bring a truck, they'd just drive it inside under the camouflage real quick.

  Norman: Right.

  Curry: Was the camouflage high enough that you could go under or did they have to lift it when you came to it?

  Norman: I don't recall having to lift it. Because I don't remember having to take it on and off of this side. We did all the time on the side where the guns were, but not back here. So it must've been just up high because I just don't recall having to take it on and off up here.

  Martini: Piper, you said you remember stuff about camouflage nets.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I'd swear that there was some down or down around near the lagoons someplace.

  Martini: Where these things colored or were they just bare?

  Mrs. Peddicord: What I remember was brown and green.

  Norman:

  Most of it was burlap. That was different colors of green, but just burlap strips.

  Martini: Over like a [crosstalk 00:03:06] net?

  Norman: Over a netting, yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: What is that over there? That little square thing.

  Martini: On the top of the hill? That's the reservoir for all the barracks buildings down below.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Now was that here then? There then?

  Martini: I don't know.

  Norman: I don't remember it's there being there. I wouldn't say it wasn't, but I just don't remember.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Look at this view. Give me the camera. Wait a minute. [Laughter]. You know, I told them, I says you were too young to enjoy all of this view then.

  Martini: And you're saying you never went to the beach. The barbed wire was-

  Norman: That's right. [Camera noises]. And I just can't tell you why, whether we were ordered off of there or what, but nobody was ever out on the beach. You'd think with a bunch of soldiers, they'd be out there playing games or throwing balls around or something.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You could maybe make it down to the lagoons, could you?

  Norman: But I just don't remember our being allowed out there.

  Martini: Did you attend religious services at our little chapel? It was now our Visitor Center.

  Norman: I can't remember going there.

  Martini: Okay. Across the street at the theater? I guess what I'm getting at, did you guys go over to Fort Barry for recreation?

  Norman: Yes.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Would have taken you in that truck to go there, wouldn't they?

  Norman: No, we'd walk.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Walk there?

  Norman: It's not that far.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh. Isn't that through that tunnel?

  Norman: No, no.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Norman: [Fort] Barry is where their office is.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, oh, oh.

  Norman: That's where the hostel is.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, okay. All right.

  Curry: This lagoon is the division between-

  Norman: Those buildings over there, that's Fort Barry.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Curry: [Inaudible 00:04:39].

  Mrs. Peddicord: All right.

  Martini: The big theater, was that for entertainment shows or was that in a lecture hall or USO [United Services Organization, a corporation that provides live entertainment to members of the U.S. Air Force]? What went on there?

  Norman: I don't remember entertainment shows. I just don't remember there ever having any of those up here. No doubt they did, but I sure don't remember any.

  Martini: When you said USO [United Services Organization, a corporation that provides live entertainment to members of the U.S. Air Force], those were USO sponsored dances. Those weren't like the big shows with Bing Crosby?

  Norman: No, no. Those are just a USO [United Services Organization, a corporation that provides live entertainment to members of the U.S. Air Force] sponsor.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You never got any of that, did you?

  Norman: Nope.

  Mrs. Peddicord: They probably felt that they were too close to the city, you know, to have somebody big like that.

  Martini: We're looking due south here, right up towards that Point Bonita Lighthouse. Now local nicknames. Do you have this big rock, just right off shore here at the end of the beach, we call it Bird Rock.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Did you have any special nicknames for that or-?

  Norman: I don't remember any for them.

  Martini: Okay. And I've heard of Gold Elephant Rock. And the beach, did it have a name or was it just the beach?

  Norman: It was just the beach. And I see that you now have a name for it and I don't remember that name at all.

  Martini: Rodeo Beach.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: The Potato Patch.

  Norman: The Potato Patch was out over in there, yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Norman: That's in the water though.

  Mrs. Peddicord: That I used to [inaudible 00:05:58].

  Martini: One of our researchers dug up the Lifesaving Service and Coast Guard use the name Potato Cove for this beach at the turn of the century.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Well, that's probably why then.

  Martini: Because that's where the potatoes washed up at. Fell off in the Potato Patch.

  Norman: That rough section of water beyond was always known as the Potato Patch.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, boy. This is eroding, isn't it?

  Martini: Well, what you're seeing up there that real bad stretch... That's because some fool opened the drain valve on a water tank.

  Norman: Ho, oh.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, no.

  Martini: How many tens of thousands of gallons went gushing down the hill?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh my God.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Recently, or?

  Martini: That there was years back. You can see that the big wide swath is re-vegetating-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, got the greenery-

  Martini: ... but on the left side, it's still continuing because of the heavy rains. It takes years for these hills to repair themselves.

  Norman: You know, I don't remember that being up there at all.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Well, I remember that it was much more covered up with dirt.

  Martini: Oh, I'll let you take them out over here.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Okay.

  Norman: Let's see. There you go.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You drive like [crosstalk 00:07:08] Where the heck is the... there it is. [Camera noises]. I'm out of practice with this.

  Martini: Do you want to take one out the window?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Huh? Another little place right in there.

  Martini: They connect. The call that makes it big like a horseshoe in there.

  Norman: Right.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Is this where you walked up to that time? And I stayed just around the curve.

  Norman: No, no, no.

  Mrs. Peddicord: That you came up-

  Norman: I walked up to the front of the gun battery.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh. Oh yeah, because I've walked up this [inaudible 00:07:41].

  Norman: Well, you walked up to the-

  Mrs. Peddicord: I walked up to the plotting room-

  Norman: ... you walked up to the plotting room with me when we could still get in.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, that's right.

  Norman: When the doors were open. They weren't closed yet. That was many years ago.

  Martini: Hey, we finally welded the door shut on that one after somebody broke in and started stripping all the copper wire out of the walls.

  Norman: Oh, no.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, no.

  Norman: No.

  Norman: I remember one time they just had it, had a lock on it and the day that I went up there, the lock had been broken off and the doors were opened so...

  Martini: Yep. We're trying like mad to keep the kids out of here. And the only thing we found that works is quarter-inch steel plate welded over the doors. Because remember when I checked the back doors where you said you used to enter?

  Norman: Yeah.

  [00:08:30] Martini: Paul and I were hoping to keep those doors operable. Pulls up the main laterals, but the back doors and somebody broke through a two-inch solid steel casting to pop the doors open, to get in. They've gone up with portable little acetylene rigs. You know, you only get maybe a minutes burn out of them but it's enough to burn the government lock off.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: What do they do when they get in there? Or is it just the idea that they-

  Martini: It's the idea. They drink. They spray paint the walls with gang names.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, God. I can't get over the number of cars there are in the middle of the week.

  Martini:

  Yep. Well this last double set of barracks buildings, both sides of the road are offices and some kind of conference center for a group called Pacific Energy Research. That's alternative energy options. Kind of a scattered group but nice people. And they must have 50, 60 people working in there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: That many, huh?

  Martini: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Now this part is more what I remember, right down the hill.

  Martini: Turned out. Oh, great. You recorded me bad-rapping them, sitting here and [crosstalk 00:09:52]-

  Norman: No, that's all right.

  Martini: Thanks, Paul.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, boy. You better wipe that off.

  Martini: Oh, God.

  Mrs. Peddicord: No, you said they were nice people.

  Martini: Oh, that's right. Yeah. [Laughter].

  Norman: We didn't have to wax and polish the floors. They were always just mopping.

  Martini: Just mop them. Do you remember when they had a Commando Training School out here in '43, '44?

  Norman: No, I don't.

  Martini: Some sort of a commando training went on. I asked Paul to kick out the tape recorder because that sheared off hill there, was apparently used for training guys and rappelling.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, back there?

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: I don't remember any activity like that at all.

  Curry: There was a boiler house in there at one time.

  Martini: Incinerator.

  Curry: Oh, incinerator.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Curry: And I take it this-

  Martini: I [crosstalk 00:10:37] as a word.

  Curry: Taken out because of the asbestos.

  Martini: I think it was just ugly. Like that… What happened up here? We’re right at what we called the Three Sisters.

  Norman: So I was doing a little government work.

  Martini: Yeah?

  Norman: I was making my wife a shoe rack and used-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Never got it.

  Norman: ... using the little carpenter shop down here. And I managed to slit my finger open and ended up about three weeks in the hospital with that. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: You know when they had all the graffiti up here?

  Norman: Yes.

  Mrs. Peddicord: And I said, you really ought to stop and put it on there, "This is where I almost lost my finger." [Laughter].

  Martini: So what was going on in these buildings? You had a carpenter shop.

  Norman: We had, I think there was an electric shop, a carpenter shop. I don't think there was a sheet metal shop. But those two are the ones that I remember in here.

  Martini: Would that have been in the long building on the-

  Norman: On the right.

  Martini: On the right, building 916. And the little buildings on the left?

  Norman: I don't know what was in there. Somewhere up here there was a mess hall, but I don't remember exactly where it was.

  Martini: There's three buildings now, that up until about 1960 or so, there were actually seven buildings. So it was quite a little complex. One fellow who was stationed on the side 41, referred to this as a ghost town because apparently not much was going on. They always received just a ramshackle assemblage. And up on top of the hill to our left is one of the anti- aircraft site.

  Norman: They were around here. But I never ever paid any attention to them. I never had anything to do with them.

  Martini: They were sited so that they'd be right over the major gun batteries. There was one on the hill, above [Battery] Townsley.

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: The one on the hill here above Battery Wallace. But you never interacted with those guys, even though you were supposed to missile defense?

  Norman: No.

  Martini: Out in the Point Bonita area at that time, was Battery Mendell, was that still armed and manned?

  Norman: There were people there, but we didn't have anything to do with them.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Norman: And we ate in the same chow lines as they went through and so forth, but we didn't have anything to do with them at all.

  Martini: Where were you quartered when you went over to the radar up here? Still in the barracks down there?

  Norman: No, we were quartered up here. If I had to point it out to you, I couldn't point it out to you where we actually lived. But from the moment I was up here, we never had direct contact.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, can you stop here for a minute?

  Martini: Sure.

  Mrs. Peddicord: It's beautiful. Beautiful [crosstalk 00:13:30]

  Norman: We never had direct contact with anything down in the gun batteries at all.

  Martini: Excuse me.

  Mrs. Peddicord: That's all right. [Camera noises]. OK, thank you.

  Martini: Do you ever do anything with the Coast Guard guys down here?

  Norman: Nope. We knew they were there and that was all.

  Martini: You didn't socialize much.

  Norman: No, we-

  Mrs. Peddicord: I was just going to say that. They were in their own little thing. [Laughter].

  Norman: We were kept pretty much to ourselves.

  Martini: Were you in the radar that was down on the lighthouse?

  Norman: No. Just right up here on the hill. See, where the antenna is now. [Walkie-talkie sounds].

  Martini: Right.

  Norman: Well, I used to be... I'm sure that that was the hill where underground is where all of it, the building was. The concrete building and it housed all the equipment. And on top was the water tower. [Walkie-talkie sounds]. I remember the water tower being higher than that one.

  Curry: You had nothing to do with this building right here?

  Norman: No.

  Curry: That was the fellows running the mine control.

  Norman: And we were down there to sleep and eat.

  Martini: When you say down there and you motion that way-

  Norman: Well, somewhere back here is where we walked down to the restroom and-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Restroom or commissary?

  Norman: The restaurant. [Laughter]. The mess hall.

  Martini: The mess hall. More of the two story type buildings for quarters? There was a complex up near there that was torn down.

  Norman: It was a complex, I can't picture it right now, but there was a complex where there were some barracks and they had the common mess hall where a lot of people all came together to eat.

  Martini: Okay. Seems that would have been right there where the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association, a worldwide youth organization] is.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: Short walk.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Then you'd walk up to this place.

  Norman: Then we'd walk up here. But we didn't have alternated crews up here. That's why I say, you either pulled night duty or you pulled day duty.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh. And you weren't living... How long did you live up here then? Was that before or after?

  Norman: Quite a few months up here.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I mean, before you went down to [Fort] Cronkhite [former U.S. Army post that was part of the coastal artillery defenses in San Francisco] or-

  Norman: No, that was after because at [Fort] Cronkhite [former U.S. Army post that was part of the coastal artillery defenses in San Francisco] I was on the gun battery. Once I was transferred over to the radar group, then I came up here first. And then I went from here up to Point Reyes.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Hmm.

  Norman: But except for off-duty hours, as I say, either a day shift or night shift-

  Mrs. Peddicord: There's a tunnel down there.

  Norman: ... all of our time was spent up here.

  Martini: Can you... set of stairs, okay?

  Norman: Yeah. That's okay.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You going to bring your jacket this time?

  Martini: [Aircraft noises]. For the tape recorder. We're standing right up behind the two story was times called a signal tower. And if you look here, those are two of the footings for your radar tower. So your water towers, you call it?

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: For the radar screen were right above us.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, you were right, you said that.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Right over here.

  Norman: Yeah, I remember we'd have to go up just to service the antenna. And the only way we had to get up there was just a ladder, a wooden ladder that was built right on the outside.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Was it this close to the edge of the thing? [Laughter].

  Norman: Well, yeah, but the ladder was on the opposite side.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh, okay. [Laughter].

  Martini: We've lost a little bit of hill too.

  Norman: I didn't remember it being quite this close. [Laughter].

  Martini: Now this building right behind us, you remember was this here?

  Norman: I don't remember it.

  Martini: Probably would, it's kind of one of those mystery buildings where we don't have a real date of when it showed up. It's been a long time.

  Norman: I just don't remember.

  Martini: Now, where was your operating room? Associated with greater number-

  Norman: Down over here, somewhere.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Norman: This is probably right down underneath here, isn't it?

  Martini: I don't know if we can be. [Wind blowing]. We're pointing to the area right between the pylons and the fence closure for the Coast Guard to get around.

  Norman: It could be right down in there, very close.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Is that an air raid thing that I'm hearing?

  Martini: Yes, could be.

  Mrs. Peddicord: [Inaudible 00:17:48].

  Martini: Outdoor from the breather pipes that might've been a fuel tank. There was a wood structure right here.

  Norman: No, this was underground.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You were underground.

  Norman: And it was a concrete room and it was underground.

  Martini: Could it have been one of the older fire control stations from the turn of the century that was adapted? Were there any vision slits or windows around?

  Norman: No. No, not at all.

  Martini: Solid room.

  Norman: It was a solid room, no vents that you could see out of. It was just… I'm going to guess at the size as being somewhere around 12 to 15 foot square.

  Martini: No kidding.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Is that where that picture was taken?

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah.

  Norman: That's where the picture was taken.

  Martini: The one that you donated to us [crosstalk 00:18:36]. What else was up here on the hill with you at that time?

  Norman: That's all I can remember, it was just the tower and in the underground room.

  Martini: None of these... Well, these were existing fire control stations. I don't know if they were still in use. There's a little stair-step section going down towards the lighthouse.

  Norman: Well, there may be but, as I say, we just never didn't have anything to do with them. So I never paid any attention to it.

  Martini: They were your neighbors. [Laughter]. You were so close.

  Norman: We never even talked except in the mess hall. [Laughter].

  Martini: That's great. So what would a typical day be like when you were working the radar on duty and just keeping track of the traffic in and out of the harbor?

  Norman: That's right. And we always had the same crew. It wasn't like you had alternating crews. You had one crew, and you were on duty for 12 and off for 12. And then besides that, I think you were allowed to have two people on pass at the time and that was all.

  Martini: So when you were down for 12 hours, would another one of these radar sets up the coast takeover?

  Norman: Well, when I say on 12, off 12, I only meant that the people were on 12, off 12. The station was on around the clock.

  Martini: I got it. Okay.

  Norman: But there would be about six of us on duty at the same time. [Airplane noise]. And of the six, unless we were actually doing an exercise, generally there were two on the scopes and that was it. And the rest of you could just sleep on the benches or read or do what you wanted. Once the exercise started and then all of you would be busy.

  Martini: Did they take any oath? Sign anything about the information you would've been exposed to and the technology and brief you that not talking about it?

  Norman: Yes. And I can't remember to what detail we had to, but it seems to me I had to sign a secrecy or a secrecy oath when I was brought in. But the secrecy was really stressed and of course, they continued to stress it for just almost all the time I was in.

  Martini: What would you tell your wife you're doing for a living?

  Norman: Just, I was with the Coast Artillery. [Laughter].

  Martini: You didn't-

  Mrs. Peddicord: He told me he was a machinist, I didn't know what he was talking about then. [Laughter].

  Martini: You said when an exercise began... what would that be?

  Norman: Well, we would do dummy exercises with the gun batteries. And for example, we'd pick up ships that were coming in and we would track them if it was during the daytime. A lot of times we would track them in the guns would track them too. So we would just use it as drills.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you weren't doing an exercise, you were still just watching the traffic?

  Norman: It was still surveillance, right.

  Martini: Okay.

  Norman: But we had around the clock surveillance unless we were down. And in that case, then some other station would pick up on our area. And usually I was never stationed there, but there was one over on the [Fort] Funston side someplace that would take over a lot of times when we'd be shut down. I don't know just where that station was. The next one I was familiar with was down at Sharps Park.

  Martini: Sharps Park. There was one at Fort Funston, but they've been very temporary because I don't have any trace of it. There was one at Baker Beach. There was here. There was one up near Battery Townsley, a little bit north of Townsley.

  Norman: I know I remember that one.

  Martini: Yeah. These things seem to have cropped up and then gone down, so it was very quickly like, Command decided, "Eh, wrong place."

  Norman:

  [00:22:30] That could be too. Our group of people... You know what? It was a small group of people. And there were a lot of the fellows I didn't even know. I mean, they just never got us all together. We were assigned to a crew at a particular station. They're the ones you became familiar with and you didn't know anybody else. We never had general get-togethers or...

  Martini: No class picture taken. [Laughter].

  Norman: Well, that's right. We all didn't have to get together to go to classes or anything like that.

  Martini: Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Norman: So we just never ran into each other. We might recognize a name that was used, but that would be about all.

  Martini: Did you ever get that paper that they put out called the Golden Gate Guardian that had the news of all the different batteries and units? What they were doing, what bowling team-

  Norman: I think isn't that? Is that the name of paper I gave you?

  Martini: Yes. Yeah, that's one page out of it.

  Norman: Right.

  Martini: Yeah. We have a couple of complete-

  Norman: Yeah. So I used to see it-

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: ... once in a while.

  Martini: You read that thing and they think everybody is getting together and-

  Norman: Yeah.

  Martini: ... going to football games. [Laughter].

  Norman:

  No, not really. Not as far as we were concerned, as I say we were detached. We didn't have anything to do with anybody. And we never saw any officers. We didn't have anything to do with any of the batteries. We were just totally isolated.

  Martini: And you, you said you don't remember or were ever told where the central plot was, that all this stuff was sent to?

  Norman: I don't know where it was.

  Curry: When you started in the radar, did you go to a special school then? Or did you just learn on the job?

  Norman:

  I was just one that learned on a job. The fellows that were already here had gone to school and then they made up the nucleus and then they filled the balance of the crew in, from a few of us that were taken from the gun batteries.

  Curry: I see.

  Martini: Looking for your operating room, it's driving me crazy.

  Norman: I still think it was right, just underneath where we're standing. That's what I-

  Curry: Radar's up there.

  Mrs. Peddicord: There's a big bush right here [laughter], maybe it's underneath that. Were you just learning or were you really doing something when you were here?

  Norman: No, it was on the job training.

  Martini: You know what I think happened?

  Mrs. Peddicord: It's gone. [Laughter].

  Norman: It was all just knocked out.

  Martini: That's what I was thinking, because you got to get a nice kind of angular squares depression.

  Norman: And that's just about the relationship to the tower that I remember. It was just right below the tower.

  Martini: They almost always were.

  Norman: Yeah. And there's the road and we had a horseshoe pit down there and then the pathway going down to the lighthouse, there was no road for cars.

  Martini: Did you have a backup generator set up here too?

  Norman: I don't remember one on this one. They did at Stinson Beach. We did at Point Reyes and we did at Sharps Park, but I don't remember one here. I'm sure that was not one here.

  Martini: Probably there was the generator stations over at [Battery] Mendell. They probably tapped off-

  Norman: That's probably what they use. Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: It does look like... Well, it'd be kind of right down in there.

  Norman: I think you're right at, this had to be it because it's just the right location for it.

  Martini: If you can, for the tape recorder, we're looking at sort of a big depression pit, it'd be directly south of the four pylons.

  Curry: I see a little bit of concrete right down there.

  Martini: You have to do an archeological dig and find the traces of it. The one is still complete up there at Stinson Beach.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Oh.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Martini: Big steel door. Hatch in the roof. That's about it. Never been in it. I've never been out to Point Reyes.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I wonder how he got to the [inaudible 00:25:47] where he was?

  Norman:

  Point Reyes, I say that was, everything out there was underground. I'm sure that the quarters are gone now because they were wood and I'm sure they'd rotted away. You might still find the cement structure that the hall equipment was in.

  Martini: Yeah. I think you're talking about Point Reyes and you mentioned a log cabin that you've built.

  Norman: Well, it wasn't a log cabin. It was just a wooden barracks type of structure that was underneath the ground. Then it was bulldozed over and completely covered with dirt.

  Martini: That's what it was.

  Norman: So it just looked like a hill.

  Martini: You never built anything with any attempt to make it blend like the farmhouse architecture.

  Norman: The only one that was blended to look like a farmhouse was down at Sharps Park. Now that one, all the barracks were erected just like a farmhouse, with the water tower outside. But the equipment itself was still underground. [Bird chirping]. It was still in a cement room.

  Martini: Sharps Park, right down by the golf course area?

  Norman: Well you know, you recall a gun battery? I think it was a six-inch gun battery that was underground, down there just on the hill, right up above Sharps Park?

  Martini: Battery number 243 is what they-

  Norman: Okay. Then the radar station, if you walk right up the hill and over the top of the hill, that's where the radar station was.

  Martini: Okay. Okay.

  Norman: In fact, after that was all closed down, that was the last station I was in. And I brought my wife down to spend a day with us one time and we opened it. We had to keep it under lock and key where the gun battery was. And so I took her on a cook's tour down through and showed her all the batteries and everything that, all our standby power and that stuff.

  Mrs. Peddicord: You took me and another fellow there.

  Norman: Yeah.

  Mrs. Peddicord: The other fellow had cooked dinner and it was really... I felt like I shouldn't be there.

  Norman: [Crosstalk 00:27:25] you weren't supposed to. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: Didn't understand what I was seeing, anyhow.

  Norman: But the radar station was right up on the hill, just over above the gun battery.

  Martini: I'll find out if your operating room and all are still there. You go-

  Mrs. Peddicord: I'd like to see it. I'd probably enjoy it now. [Laughter].

  Martini: You go to most of these stations now and there's four concrete pylons-

  Mrs. Peddicord: And that's it.

  Martini: ... and that's it because-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Why?

  Martini: ... They buried over it. Hmm?

  Mrs. Peddicord: Cement doesn't cave in, does it? Or anything-

  Martini: They just keep vandals out. Backfill it, try to get rid of these old buildings that are mucking up the landscape.

  Norman: You know, if somebody got in there and they got hurt or something, then they would be responsible.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Yeah, that's true.

  Martini: Phillip bought a piece of property somewhere down near Montara that, from what he described from the pylons and a square underground room, may have been another one of these stations might not have ever been activated, but he described exactly what one of these SCR [South Central Railway] stations would have been like.

  Norman: I forgot there was also one on Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station].

  Martini: Yeah, that too.

  Norman: I'd forgotten about that one. I visited that station-

  Mrs. Peddicord: Where was yours? Before that or, I mean, north of it?

  Norman: No.

  Mrs. Peddicord: It was south of it?

  Norman: It was at Sharps Park.

  Mrs. Peddicord: It was Sharps Park.

  Norman: But I was up in the one at Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station], but I was never stationed there.

  Curry: Was that partway up the hill or right up at the top?

  Norman: No, you know where the Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station] because was kind of out on a rock point? It's west of the highway.

  Curry: Right.

  Norman: And there's a long staircase that goes up and you'd climb up that long staircase to get into it.

  Curry: Now there's four gun sites up there. Or two gun sites up there.

  Norman: I couldn't tell you anything about the gun sites.

  Curry: Then further beyond is another underground room.

  Norman: I couldn't tell you anything about that. I just remember going up into the radar station.

  Martini: No, you mean base end stations up there probably?

  Curry: Yes. Two base end stations, one right above the other built together. And then further out on the point, there's a set of stairs going down. I've never been into it, but that could be the room.

  Martini: Could be.

  Curry: Yes.

  Martini: Yeah, there-

  Curry: And there's also another room just as you start those stairs up and I haven't been in there. I didn't have a flashlight when I was up there. [Laughter].

  Mrs. Peddicord: That sounds like it's bigger than the one you were at, huh?

  Norman: Well, I wasn't stationed at the Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station]-

  Mrs. Peddicord: No, no. I mean, that sounds like a bigger one than the one you were at.

  Norman: Well, it's a lot more installations than just the radar station. That's for sure. Because the radar station has only one room and that's all you needed.

  Martini: So you know, did they site these stations because geographically or strategically they were best or because they were close to other existing utilities and-

  Norman: I don't know how they pick the sites. I just assume that they more or less picked them at a certain azimuth to give coverage to the area.

  Martini: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Curry: On that one at Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station] is actually two points there. And there's two sets of gun sites. One on each.

  Martini: Is it the first one you come to right by Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station]?

  Norman: It's right by Devil's Slide [site of a military triangulation station].

  Martini: Is it the tall promontory?

  Norman: Yeah, it's kind of-

  Curry: There's a lot of stairs there. There's another promontory maybe 150 feet beyond-

  Norman: ... lot of stairs, you go up a long flight of stairs the one I went-

  Curry: That's the one. Yes.

  Norman:

  The one further south is sort of a lonely little base end station and a column of sandstone now. It's all eroded away around us.

  Paul Curry But somebody actually dug that out.

  Martini: Yeah. I think someone with a D9 Caterpillar and nothing else to do and actually [crosstalk 00:30:37] away. [Laughter].

  Curry: Well, he was going to do something with it, but I think the Coastal Commission is-

  Martini:

  Mrs. Peddicord: That's right. Good place for a house.

  I wonder if that old farmhouse is still there.

  Curry: I don't know.

  Martini: I don't think so. No, that's inside the park boundary now.

  Mrs. Peddicord: It is?

  Martini: The battery is there, all buttoned up and I don't know that the pylons are.

  Curry: Is the underground room right there?

  Martini: There's no record of any of the above ground constructions. Those usually didn't last.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I'll be damned.

  Martini: Yeah.

  Norman: It was built just like a farmhouse, except that inside, it wasn't divided up into rooms. It was just a great big room and a kitchen and a big, big shower.

  Mrs. Peddicord: Hmm.

  Martini: Down the way over here, there was a mess hall that they built, that they designed it to look like a barn. And they needed a large mess hall and it was way away from the other barracks so they wouldn't attract too much attention.

  Mrs. Peddicord: I'll be darned.

  Martini: They gave it, I guess, the board and batten sides and a big see through-

 

These oral histories may be used for any legitimate non-commercial public or press use with proper credit given to the National Park Service. If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact the Park Archives and Records Center’s reference archivist at 415-561-2807 or e-mail us.

For a Complete List of Oral Histories Available by Topic

 

---

For More Stories About Fort Cronkhite

Listen to Elizabeth de la Torre discuss enlisted service clubs on The Voices of Fort Baker

Listen to John Schonher discuss coastal defense on The Voices of Fort Miley

Listen to Lee Kanof discuss coast artillery on The Voices of Lands' End

Return to The Voices of the Marin Headlands main page

Return to the Oral Histories Main Page.