ORAL HISTORY OF JOHN AND LEONA HENRY

T874 Co. Rd. 21, Napoleon OH

Interviewed by C. Wangrin, March, 2003

J. When I was young there was very few laws or suing or anything of that kind. And now we have volumes, volumes, rules and regulations all trying to do what the Ten Commandments did.

C. That's right. Suing was something you wouldn't do. It wasn't an honorable thing to do. Well, what would you like to tell your grandchildren or great-grandchildren?

J. Growing up in the 20's we didn't have electric lights, no radio, no television, not even a telephone. The first eight grades we walked about 1 3/I miles one way to a one-room school.

J. In our area were mud roads, being improved with gravel. Gravel was shoveled on wagons and hauled to the road. Wagons were pulled by teams of horses and roads were built.

J. Horses and buggies were being in use. There also were some cars, Model T's, Dodges etc. Travel would go along fairly well, but in the spring when the frost would go out of the ground cars would often get stuck when they got into quicksand ridge on Road 21. That was 3/4 mile north of our house. At times a farmer, Bill Eicher, who lived across the road from us on Road 21 wouldn't even unharness his horses. He with his team would pull them out and they'd be on their way.

C. Now these roads that were built and the men that shoveled the gravel on wagons, were they the farmers in the area?

J. They were the farmers in the area.

C. Were they paid for their work?

J. I think so. The township paid them for their time.

C. That was later than the time of the Black Swamp, I take it?

J. Oh sure. I'd say this was in the 20's and 30's, in that area. I wouldn't say the late 30's anymore. But then they had stone roads. It wasn't that bad in the late 30's but in the 20's and early 30's--oh they were mud roads in the spring, that's all they was to it.

C. Y'know, I remember my family going out into the country in the spring and there'd be deep ruts. My Dad, he was always the driver, and he'd get into one of those deep ruts but then he'd have to get out of it and it would be a big jolt. It was a rough ride.

J. Where were you raised?

C. Pennsylvania. When I was a girl we lived in Union City, a small town, but later we moved to Erie. I talked to Henry Eggers. He said at that curve at Route 6 before they got it beveled there'd be a certain time in the summer when there'd be an accident about every week.

J. Oh, that was a bad one! I know Henry real well. We served on the School Board together. C. You were both farmers?

J. No, I was in Construction. I worked for Behrman until he quit, then I was over to Boyer’s. How many years was it I worked for Boyer’s? I suppose 15 or so.

C. What did you do in construction?

J. I done everything that you could think of buildings, bridges, houses, churches, schools, factories, pipe lines, barns.

C. Did you build Ridgeville School?

J. No, but where the gym is I worked on it--in 1938, 39? But I was a common laborer. C. Did you do carpentry?

J. First common labor and then carpentry, and I was supervisor of the whole job.

C. Now, what did the common laborers do?

J. Common laborers done everything, I guess that needed to be done. Along with the bridge layers, and the carpenters, brick layers, they did the shoveling and the lifting and the wheel barrowing. (laughs)

C. They were the Go-Fer's I guess.

J. In World War II I was in Combat Engineers.

C. What outfit were you with? Do you remember?

J. It was Co. C, 1283rd Engineers Combat Battalion. Well, anyhow, building bridges was our responsibility. We built some, we repaired some, mostly roads and on the tail end of the Battle of the Bulge I was involved.

C. How?

J. Rebuilding bridges mostly. Keeping them open so our supplies could be moved to the front. I was never clear to the front. And after that they sent us clear back to Engineer Petroleum Pipeline Distribution. They put us on the pipeline between Cherbourg and Paris; we were between Vise and St. Lo. They had three lines, two for automotive gas and one for aviation gas. And we were there till the end of the war.

C. So was it your job to make sure those pipes stayed operating? J. Operating, right.

C. Now did you have certain centers that the troops went to get their gas?

J. We just pumped it from the ship which was unloading in Cherbourg to Paris where we had a station that distributed it to various units and so on.

C. How did they distribute it? Did they have trucks that picked it up?

J. I never saw that. I imagine they had trucks that went to various units that filled up the trucks, tanks, whatever.

C. I remember the newspapers saying that Patton moved so fast the supply lines couldn't keep up.

J. Right. But Patton was more south, if I remember right, where the Battle of the Bulge was more north. It went--I won't tell you where it was cause I don't know where it was but we were in France and I think we went to Belgium for awhile. Then they sent us back by 40 & 8's, railroad cars with the capacity of 40 men or 8 horses. Here our 1283 Engineers Combat Battalion was broken up and we became the 2823 Road Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company.

C. What were those 40 and 8's?

J. Railroad cars, with nothing but straw in 'em. That's were we slept and that's where we were till we got off at Caen, and by truck to a pumping station between St. Lo and Vire, France.

C. How'd you get food?

J. I don't really know anymore. (laughs) I know we didn't get too much.

C. How long were you in the railroad cars?

J. Oh gosh, I don't know. Couple, three days, I suppose, something like that.

C. Wow.

J. Those were hard days, maybe the hardest of my life. (Struggles to control emotions). And then we were sleeping on the ground, in tents 'cause they wouldn't allow us in the building 'cause that's where the Germans would hit to bomb or whatever. No that was a rough time.

C. A lot of the noise. And what about the winters, was it cold?

J. It was cold. There was snow on the ground. About two hours was all you could stand it. You'd get up and move around, jump around to get warmed up again and try to sleep awhile again.

C. Oh my! Hard!

J. Yeah. Anyway then the war was over we went to Marseille and there we waited on a ship. Of course the war wasn't over yet in Japan, the Philippine Islands, whatever. And then we went from there hoping we were going home but we went through the Panama Canal to New Guinea.

C. Oh!

J. (chuckles) We sat on New Guinea--oh, we went ashore of course but we slept again on the boat two or three nights. So while we were signing the treaty with Japan we were on shore. So on Sept. 2 we were in New Guinea, on shore in New Guinea. Then we went to the Philippines and from there we went to Manila. It was in Manila Bay where we got off the ship.

C. Oh I wondered because they had already signed the last treaty and yet you still had to stay there.

J. We had to stay there to lay the pipe. Sept. 12th 1945 we landed on the shore of Luzon. Manila docks were destroyed by the war and not useable. We landed by Navy landing craft made for invasion purpose, wading the last couple hundred feet. From there we went to a camp near Manila, and about a week later to Bataan where a project was waiting for us.

I was promoted to Master Sgt. and put in charge of laying the pipe to connect the 40,000 barrel tanks that another part of our army had constructed. This was to be a 'tank farm', a storage facility where oceangoing tankers would unload and navy ships would replenish their tanks.

While we were in Bataan we met some very kind, friendly people that were glad to see us. One lady did my laundry, also laundry for several other soldiers in our tent. One of those was a large man. When she brought the clean clothes back to us, this large man said, "This is not mine, they won't fit." The clothes were for a much smaller person as was plain to see. She was so sorry, soon got the proper clothes to him, and to make it right she baked an 18-inch fish, wrapped it in a banana leaf and brought it to him. He was thankful, but lost his appetite seeing the fish with tail on, also head with eye looking right at him. Other soldiers in the tent ate it and said it was very good!
On Thanksgiving Day, 1945, it was our assignment to hook up all these tanks with 8" pipe and take it out in Manila Bay on a platform. They called it an oil jetty. But anyhow we didn't have to work on Thanksgiving Day. That was our day off. So we went out to the end of Bataan to Marivellis, the last little village between Bataan and Corregidor on the other side of Manila Bay. We just wanted to see it. So we went out there and we ran into a little band of Aborigines. (Marivellis is a small village on the tip of Bataan.)

C. Were they little people?

J. They were small; they were thin, men, women, children, long hair. They carried their bows on their backs.

C. What were they wearing?

J. Loin cloths. Men, women and children. Evidently they were moving They were on the same path as we were.

C. They didn't attack you did they?

J. No. They didn't bother us and we didn't bother them. That was an experience I'll never forget.

J. And then, let's see, it was early January I came home. A few of us who had enough points to come home went to Manila. There we boarded a Navy ship, the APA Knox on Jan. 6th, 1946, and set sail for the U.S.A. We arrived at San Pedro, California Jan. 25th, 1946. From there we went to Camp Atterberry, Indiana and I was discharged Feb. 3, 1946, so I was almost 4 years in the Service. Home at last!

C. Now, how long were you in Basic Training before you went overseas? . . . Oh there's the shoes. Aren't they something!

J. I sent her some things after the war in Europe. These people were wearing wooden shoes. The shoes were sent from France.

C. They were?

J. Oh yeah.

C. Did they klunk when they walked?

J. Oh yeah.

C. (taps shoe on table) What do they feel like when you wear them?

L. I really can't tell you. I can't get them on. So he didn't know what size shoe I wore.

C. These are something that your family will treasure for generations and if for any reason your family doesn't want them you're welcome to donate them to the Henry County Historical Society.

L. I believe they have been to every school that our grandchildren have gone to, for Show and Tell. (laughs)

C. Oh, that's something. (laughs) So, how long were you in the states before you went overseas?

J. About three years. For the longest time I was in Norfolk, Virginia. Building temporary barracks. I was on special assignment.

C. What did you do there?

J. Built temporary barracks, water towers. Y' see in Norfolk, Virginia, these people were scared. This was in '42. March 6, 1942, that's when I went in the service. I was there at Camp Wallace--that's where I got the basic training. Camp Wallace, almost New Mexico, and from there I was sent to the Norfolk area. I was there, about 16, 18 months, I believe, till --when was it--doin' construction work for the Army.

C. Constructing barracks?

J. Barracks, digging wells, constructing towers. Coast Guard and Artillery had outposts all over that area. The Great Dismal Swamp was there too.

C. What's that? Never heard of it.

J. Never heard of the Great Dismal Swamp? Well I have. I've been there. We drilled wells for these outposts--did I say that right? I guess it was outposts, or antiaircraft stations. They were a airplane spotters, that's what they were. You see, we had so many stations all around that area – three -- Norfolk had an Army Base, a Navy Base, a shipyard across the river. That was the St. James River. That's all that separates the two really. These outposts were to spot enemy aircraft when they would come in. That was in '42. These people were scared. You could see it. You could see masts of ships where some were stickin' up out of the water where the German submarines had come in and sunk our ships.

C. Really! That's pretty close.

J. That’s pretty close, and these people were scared. But, like I say, I was building barracks. Oh, I guess I was Sergeant at that time. Trying to get these people – they were Coast Guard and Artillery--we were establishing outposts for them. Once we had to go eleven miles by row boat in order to get there. They already had their artillery, guns etc. We had to dig a well out there.

C. This Great Dismal Swamp. Did it have many trees?

J. Oh it had trees, they weren't large trees. (laughs) Not large trees but small ones. They even had bears there. I saw tracks.

C. So when did you get your orders to go overseas?

J. Let's see, that was in December 1944 when we had our honeymoon in Camp Blackstone, Virginia. Blackstone is a town in Virginia that is close to Camp Pickett. I was Staff Sergeant at that time and there we got recruits in and we trained these troops that came in.

C. So, when did you get your orders to go overseas?

J. Let me see. We were married April 18, 1944. But anyhow when I went to Virginia.

C. Leona, did you live down there with him after you got married?

L. Yes. He said, "Why don't you come? There's lots of jobs available." So I quit my good job at GE and I was there only one month when he had to go.

C. When you left were you on a big troop ship?

J. U.S.S. Sea Robin.

C. When you first went across the Atlantic I'll bet it was scary, wasn't it?

J. It was really scary. I was three days, three nights out. Up until that time I could count 30 ships out; then I should say everything broke loose. They tried to sink us really, and the sea was the roughest I've ever seen it. They wouldn't even let us up on deck cause it was so rough we'd have got washed off. There was 35, 40 foot waves. From that time on until we saw land we could only count 3 ships beside ourselves.

C. Were they sunk?

J. We never knew. When you're down in a ship you can't see anything.

C. You were way down in the hold. How many levels did they have?

J. Oh I don't know. Like I say, everybody was seasick but me.

C. You didn't get seasick.

J. No, but I was sure sick of the sea! (laughs)

C. I'll bet it took you a long time to get there, didn't it?

J. Oh, I don't know. It must have took us nine or ten days to cross the Atlantic.

L. You said it was the storm that saved your lives.

J. That's right. They couldn't hit us. They couldn't hit us cause we were bouncin' too much.

C. Was it submarines that attacked?

J. We don't know, but we could hear the depth charges as they went through the water.

C. That's no picnic.

J. That's no picnic.

C. Y'know, I think it's valuable for Veterans to record these experiences because…

J. They wouldn't let us have a diary. The enemy might get it. .

L. My brother wrote a diary. But he tried and tried to rewrite it and he couldn't do it.

J. They took it from him before he went ashore, or after he went ashore in France. See he was in the invasion at Normandy Beach, the Navy.

L. He just tried and tried to rewrite it but he couldn't.

C. I think what happens, the young men think, "How exciting!" But they don't know. You probably were excited when you went.

J. No. I wasn't excited. I was unhappy. I was leaving my girl. (laughs) No, that was one occasion I'll never forget. It was one of the saddest days of my life, I guess.

C. Well you two have had a happy marriage. I can read it in your faces.

J. We were married April 18th, 1944--59 years ago.

C. Long time. You'll have to have a party when you hit 60.

J. We'll see.

C. What was life like when you were first married then, when you got back from service?

L. It was a little hard to find a place to live, but we did rent a very old house for two years, owned by Frank and Helen Meyer on Route 6 about 1/2 mile east of Ridgeville. The red barn is still there but the house is gone.

Some house furnishings were scarce too, as washers and refrigerators. When we did find a washer we were surprised to hear, "It must be cash." Some friends loaned us an ice box until we found a refrigerator, a used one.

C. Did you start out in Behrman Construction then?

J. Oh no. I worked for him for about three years before I was in the army.

C. And then when you came back did he have work for you?

J. Oh yes. In fact, he wanted me to come back before I did, I guess. But first there was a lot of things that had to be done to the house.

L. We had to make the house livable.

J. That's right.

C. You probably did a lot work on it yourselves, then.

L. Cleaning it up. It was in bad shape.

J. In '48 we bought this, and this was in bad shape. But we thought, "We're gonna live in this," so we fixed it up.

C. It looks sturdy now.

J. As far as this place goes, years back when I was a boy there was a saw mill here, a thrashing rig, steam engine. The fellow who lived her had a lot of hives. He had a whole lot of bees. Then of course then the neighborhood got together threshed out grain; there was Herman Baden, Fred Shibler, Bill H_____, Bill Eichers, Elmer Shiblers. We went around the neighborhood and threshed out grain, wheat, oats.

C. That was a fascinating time for me, as a young wife. My husband's family were on a farm just west of Archbold and they used to tell about the threshing days. A lot of the women would come and they would have big meals and it was a fun day in a way but a lot of work too. What was the men's job?

J. Oh they did the threshing.

C. Yeah but how'd they do it?

J. First of all the farmer would cut his grain with a binder into shocks or bundles, then the men would come along and shock them up.

C. How did they do that? Tie them up in bundles?

J. No, the binder done that. The farmer set up the bundles in shocks. They'd set there awhile until they really got dried out, then they would start thrashing. They wouldn't start it until August, July or August. In July already they'd start cutting wheat or oats.

C. Then how would they get them up into the machine?

J. Well they had a team and a wagon and one man on the ground and he'd pitch each up on the wagon. That would be high towards the end, towards the point where he had a load.

C. What would get high?

J. The wagon. The load on the wagon would get high. We'd place 'em on the wagon. They had to lean right so they wouldn't fall off

C. I remember when I was a girl one of our big moments was to take ginger tea out to the men in the field and they said, "Do you want to go back to the barn with us?" So we got to go way up high on top of the load. Then how did they get it unloaded?

L. They drove the wagon right up by the thresher, side by side.

J. The thresher which was run by a steam engine at that time, later by a gas tractor. When I was eight or ten years old it was run by a steam engine.

C. That was pretty loud then too, wasn't it.

J. Oh yeah.
C. How many men would be working together?

J. Oh, about 12, 15 maybe?

J. I would say 12, 15.

C. They had fun too, while they worked, I suppose.

J. Oh yeah.

C. Oh did they?

J. They neighbored, no matter if it was work or thrash, they helped each other, and it didn't matter if they was Catholic, Lutheran, Mennonite or what, what religion they were it didn't matter. They didn't talk about religion, it seemed. They were neighbors. They helped each other, whether it was cutting wood or thrashing or whatever.

C. They sort of grew up with the idea of watching each other and if someone needed help you'd help him. Maybe that's one reason farmers are pretty nice people.

J. It's different today. Oh yes.

C. Church was more important then, wasn't it?

J. Well on Sundays you didn't do anything. You done your chores but that was about it.

C. Then you rested.

J. Then you rested, visited.

L. After church too, I know we always stood outside the church and visited.

C. Stand around for quite awhile and visit.

L. And talk, yeah. And we girls would invite friends to come over after church. There was a lot of that.

C. And where did you live as a girl?

L. On Okolona Road.

J. Just south of Ridgeville. It was out in the country like at that time.

C. How did you two meet?

L. We always knew each other when we went to high school.
J. Our first date I guess I took her home from a dance. (L. Laughs) She was working in Ft. Wayne at the time so I had to go quite a ways to see her.

C. Well you had spotted her when you were in school, I’ll bet.

J. Oh I guess.

C. Maybe she spotted you!

L. No, I never expected to go out with him. I just didn't.

J. Then we had both dated others. I don't know whether it didn't suit or what, but when we went together it did suit, I guess.

C. So, do you have any other stories or memories or anything?

J. We used to farm with horses, and my Dad said he would never buy a tractor, But when we boys were in Service he bought a tractor. (laughs) I remember my first tractor.

C. Was that a John Deere?

J. No. It was an International, Chain-drive International.

C. So you went over to see it.

J. My Dad didn't want to have nothin' to do with it. He loved horses. And they all had names.

C. And did they have personalities?

J. Oh yeah. We usually had one colt every year.

C. What did you do, sell it?

J. We'd sell it usually, but sometimes we'd keep the colt. But generally he had three horses and he had a three-horse doubletree, horses that he'd do his plowing or dragging with.

C. Heavy work, you'd use three horses.

J. Yeah. Yep. In those days that was different.

C. Did you have a pet among the horses, one you liked better than the others?

J. No.

C. You were more interested in tractors than you were horses, I suppose, being a young fellow.

S. Well, I was more interested in fixing things. I was--I don't know. I guess I was born to be a builder, I don't know.

C. Yeah, evidently

J. We had five acres of orchard. One thing I learned to do was I learned to graft.

L. That was a lot of work, five acres of orchard.

L. We have a peach tree that has a plum graft on it. The plum graft goes straight up the center of the tree and has plums on it and the lower branches have peaches on them.

C. Is that right!

L. It's just something! It's beautiful when it's all in bloom.

C. Do the blossoms look similar?

L. Oh no. The peaches are pink and the plums are pure white. We have a lot of grafts. We have an apple that has lots of different kinds of apples on it.

C. We used to have an apple tree like that but most apples we'd get were the summer green apples.

L. He grafted some of the apple trees at the parsonage and this pastor saw a pear on it. He couldn't believe his eyes. (laughs)

C. So did you sell the fruit?

J. Dad did, and we made cider. He had some whiskey barrels. We'd make cider and make that into vinegar; we'd sell vinegar. Sold apples of course.

C. Where and how did you get apples to market?

J. Oh people would come there to get apples but the apples he made cider of he had to take to Pettisville. We'd go down there to get vinegar too.

C. Is that right, they made other things?

J. Oh they made cider there, and they made sugar cane, sorghum. We'd take that to Pettisville too to have molasses made. But that's many years ago too. I don't believe that's there any more.

C. Was it near the railroad?

J. Right. It was east of--there's a mill there now, I believe, where they buy grain. We used to go over there with a team and wagon.

C. That'd be a long trip, wouldn't it?

J. It'd take all day. He'd get his load of apples pressed into cider, put the barrels on the wagon, full of cider, get home--suppertime.

C. Now that Ridge Road, was that there at the time"

J. Oh yeah, that road has always been there. It's been there as long as I can remember.

C. Well, I heard that that's the path the Indians took.

J. That's right.

C. Because it was the shore of the big Lake Whitlesee.

J. I wouldn't know but--

C. That's why there's a ridge there.

J. I wouldn't know but I'm sure that where we are now at one time was a swamp.

C. Oh, so this was part of the Black Swamp?

J. I would guess it is.

C. Well now that's interesting because the Ridge Road is east of here and that whole road went east.

J. You look out the window here and you'll see a ridge about 80 rods west of us? I say that's higher than the Ridge because across the road where Fred Shibler used to live, that's the highest spot in Henry County.

C. So, there must have been Indians on that road.

J. That was also a gravel ridge. When I was four, you can see the house from here, that was the old Eicher farm. John Eicher told me Joe Eicher was the first settler, I guess, and John Eicher was his son. He told me the first wells that was put down there was put in by hand and they put a hollow sycamore log in and they dipped the water out with a bucket.

C. Oh really! I wonder how long ago that was?

J. Oh, that was about 1830, 35 maybe 40--in that area, a long time ago.

L. Now talking about Indians, do you know along the Ridge where Bethlehem Church is, the church sits here and the Ridge Road goes here.

J. A little north and a little bit east.

J. I'd like to know, why are them trees there?

L. There's a miniature woods, it looks like.

C. God's little acre? I heard that years ago each farmer would save one acre of his land and that would be dedicated to God. And they let the trees grow on that and that was good for the people and the soil and everything.

L. But now we were told Indians are buried there but we don't know for sure.

C. That might come out when Sauder's Museum gets their Indian section done. You know that's going to open next summer and that will draw a lot of people who know about them.

L. There'll be farms all around this little plot and it always looks the same.

J. Have you ever traveled the Ridge Road to Defiance?

C. Yes but I have never noticed that place.

J. Bethlehem Church is on the Ridge, and just across the road and a little bit east is that little square and I'd be interested to know just why that is there. Somebody must take care of it.

C. I'll take a ride out there some day.

L. And I remember as a little girl my Grandma lived right close, and there was that little woods and it looks the same now.

J. In my lifetime it's never changed.

C. It wouldn't be an acre would it?

J. Smaller than an acre would be.

L. It's a little longer than wide too, I think. There's gotta be a reason.

C. Didn't have any connection to the church?

J. No. The church has its own cemetery south of the church.

C. Well, if I ever find out I'll let you know.