Local veteran helped manufacture guns before U.S. entered WWII

Historian Joe Todd has been able begin conducting interviews with veterans again after taking a break due to COVID-19 precautions. This is the second installment of an interview that Todd and Betty Keim did with Chester Stevens on Nov. 12, 2020, at the Bartlesville Area History Museum for part of the “Remember When” Program for the museum and the Oral History Program of the Oklahoma Historical Society. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

(The interview picks up with Stevens describing life in the Bartlesville area during the Great Depression.)

Todd: How did the Depression affect you and your family?

Stevens: My dad worked in the oil fields and they paid him a $110 a month through the Depression; $110 with a big family and about all he could buy was groceries. We wore a lot of patched overalls and they were hand-me-downs from boy to boy. During the Depression, we lived like we were supposed to, I guess. Never missed a smile, everybody was happy.

T: Did you join the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, a voluntary public work relief program for unemployed, unmarried men)?

S: No, my twin brother did. He went to Craig, Colorado, and was the coldest place in the world. That place is cold in July.

K: What did he do?

S: I don’t know what he did out there. They built bridges and roads and paths for hikers.

K: Did any of your other brothers go into the CCCs?

S: No. Vaughen served in Korea, I think he did. Virgil was on Okinawa. He said the wind blew so hard that they went out to the motor pool and hide behind the trucks to keep from being blown away. That was a straight wind blowing through.

T: Any big storms come through here?

S: The biggest was a tornado and it went right by our house out here in the country. It traveled from Oklahoma City through Shawnee and right south of our house. We had a metal chimney on top and it blew it off. That is all it did to the house. My dad and most of the family was home and they stood in the house and looked out the window and watched it. I was here in a theater, and when I came out of the theater, all I could see was a black cloud and I walked home.

K: What year was that?

S: I was probably 15. When I walked home, I walked through brush that had been blown up across the road. When I got to see the house, I thought it would be gone. I came around that curve and there was the house. It was still standing. We lived up in a valley, right at the head of the valley.

K: Did you have any floods?

S: We didn’t have any floods up there. There were two creeks that came together right at the house. One came down one canyon and one came down the other. Today, they built a dam up there on the right side and made a big pond. I was up there the other day and they had a “No Trespassing” sign, so I couldn’t go up there. I was born in a lease house there.

T: Who owned the lease?

S: It was owned by the Wiser Oil Co. The Forrest Production Co. bought them out and my dad worked for them for a while before he retired. He really didn’t retire, he got sick. He had blood pressure problems. I was in service at the time, and Virgil, he was the oldest at home, would have to go with dad and pump the leases. Dad would pass out. He finally just quit. He bought an 80-acre farm up by Wann several years before that and never did improve it. When he got sick, they moved to the farm. There was an old one-room house on it and they moved in. They lived there, then he went to Coffeyville and bought a three-story house, and he and my mother took every board out of that house and took them to the farm and they pulled the nails out and built them a house. The house still stands. The guy that lives there now put brick around it. They hauled those boards down on a four-wheel trailer.

K: Were there any children left at home?

S: Not too many. Virgil and Marvin went to high school in Wann. They lived at home at that time.

T: Were you aware of the war in China at this time?

S: I had a cousin that flew the Hump (the name given by Allied pilots in World War II to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China). They flew into China over the back side and go over the mountains.

T: What was his name?

S: Darrel Wright. He was raised in Colorado around Boulder.

T: Were you aware of the rise of Hitler in Germany?

S: I remember some stories about Hitler before the war.

T: What did you think about Hitler?

S: I think he tried to conquer. He wanted to rule Europe. He made a mistake of waking up a giant, which was the United States. The United States didn’t have anything to go to war with. We started building ships and anti-aircraft guns. I worked in a steel mill in Argentine, Kansas, on the Kansas River. I worked up there when I was 17 or 18 years old.

T: What did you do there?

S: I was in assembly, and we had to read the blueprint that showed what material you needed. I would bring it up and guys would rivet it together. They made gun mounts and stuff like that, big guns. That was before I went in the service.

T: Where were you Dec. 7, 1941?

S: I know where my wife was; she was born that day. I’m not sure where I was, but I was probably home.

T: When you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, what did you think?

S: Well, I don’t remember. I don’t remember thinking because I didn’t think I would have to go to war. I got a letter from Roosevelt and it said, “Greetings, you are in the service.”

T: When were you drafted?

S: In 1943.

T: Before you were drafted, how did rationing affect you?

S: We were rationed some, but we had a big family and we were allotted a lot of stuff. Dad always bought a 48-pound sack of flour and my mother would make home-made bread.

K: What day would she make bread and do certain things like laundry?

S: I don’t remember for sure. The woman worked constantly. She raised nine boys and two girls in a four-room house. Dad set that tent up where four of us boys slept, then he built a little house that would hold two beds. The little house sat right where the tent did. We burned gas in the winter. He pumped the oil lease and we would get gas off the oil wells. We put a 15-gallon drum in the middle of the room and put a 4-inch pipe on it for a flue. He put a pipe in there and turned the gas on. We filled it full of stones and rocks, and when those rocks got hot, it would stay warm all night.

T: Was it drip gas?

S: It was sort of like drip gas. We burned drip gas in our cars for several years.

T: There was a man in town, and his job was to go around and smell for drip gas in cars.

S: I know the Highway Patrol could tell the smell of drip gas. We had to grind the valves pretty often.

T: My mother told me that Monday was wash day. She was born here in 1924, and there was an agreement that no one burned on Monday because it was wash day.

T: Where did you go for Basic Training?

S: For Basic Training, I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in March of 1943.

T: Tell me about Basic.

S: Basic Training was for eight weeks.

T: What did you do in Basic?

S: Mostly marched and learned how to be a soldier, and you respect your lieutenants. They also picked you out a job, and they thought I would be a good diesel mechanic, so they sent me to Atlanta, Georgia. It was a Caterpillar company, and I went to school there and learned diesel work. We tore an engine down and put it back together. I wound up in Columbus, Indiana.

T: Before we get there, what is your most vivid memory of Basic?

S: I had to run five miles with a pack on my back, and I did it.

T: Did you go on Bivouac?

S: Yes.

T: What did you do on Bivouac?

S: You built your own tent. You had a buddy. Your tent was half a tent and he had the other half. You picked out a buddy and put it together and you slept in that tent. They call them pup tents.

T: Tell me about your drill instructor.

S: I forgot his name. I’ll tell you what, you better be ready to get up about 5 and you better be dressed, because if you went out on the field without a shirt on and it might be snowing. In Fort Leonard Wood, they had a foot of snow. April 12 of 1943, it snowed a foot deep.

T: Did you go to diesel school after Basic?

S: I went to Atlanta, Georgia, then they sent me to Columbus, Indiana for Cummings Diesel. Cummings Diesel made the diesel truck engines. Each cylinder was separate. They were good engines.

T: What does a diesel mechanic do?

S: We kept them running. You had to know how to time them and clean the filters. The main thing was to keep clean fuel filters.

T: From Columbus, where did you go?

S: I went to New York and got on the darn boat.

T: When you were going to these different places, how did you travel?

S: By train.

T: On a troop train?

S: I got on a train right here at Bartlesville and went to Erie, Pennsylvania. I had to change trains in Chicago. The Streamliner came through here and I got on it and went to Chicago. We pulled into the station and I said I had to go to Pennsylvania. The lady selling tickets said there was a train moving right now, getting ready to leave. I went out the door and the train was moving. I ran and caught the back end of it and jumped on it. I caught the Pennsylvania train as it was moving out of town. I was walking down the isle and the conductor said, “Who are you?” I said I just got on and am going to Pennsylvania. He said, “Where is your ticket” and I had it right there.

T: Were you in uniform?

S: Yes, I was in uniform.

T: Did you have your duffle bag with you?

S: No, I shipped it.

T: Tell me about traveling on a troop train.

S: I’m trying to think if I traveled on a troop train. I was generally traveling by myself. I was on furlough and had 10 days to get to Pennsylvania. I went by home and stayed four or five days.

T: Did you go to New York City?

S: I went through New York and caught the boat and don’t know where it was at.

T: What boat did you get on?

S: I got on the SS Pasteur. It was a French luxury liner. It stood out of the water and was a long ways to the top.

T: When did you leave the states?

S: On D-Day, we landed in Liverpool, England. We had to stay outside the harbor while all the troops were moving into France. I was about 30 days behind everybody.