By Alsu Fattakhova, 13 Mar 01

Interviews are donated and given to the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Reproduction rights are at the discretion of the institution. Please contact the University prior to duplication of any material posted on this website.

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Alsu: 13 of March, 2001, and we're in the home of Greg Smith. I'll start with some formal questions, and my first one will be... Could you please state your full name?

Smith: Greg M. Smith, Senior.

Alsu: Okay...Who are your parents?

Smith: My father was Mark A. Smith, and my mother was Dorothy Smith.

Alsu: Okay...

Smith: Of Niagara Falls, New York.

Alsu: Cool...When and where were you born?

Smith: I was born in Plainfield, New Jersey.

Alsu: When?

Smith: When?

Smith: 1929...

Alsu: 1929, and the date?

Smith: August 27, 1929.

Alsu:Okay...What was your childhood like?

Smith: Well, my childhood was kind of interesting. I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. In 1941 I went to school in Canada to the place called Ridley College, which was a high school. And went there till 1948; it was a boarding school, I lived there. I was there when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I remember that very much, I was there all during the war. There were 29 different countries represented from all over the world. One of the lots of interesting young men there. In 1948 I went to University of Virginia in Charles, Virginia. And in 1952 enlisted in the Army, and was sent to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. Do you want to keep going?

Alsu: Yeah...

Smith: O'key, in 19...where I met my wife by the way, and we didn't get married till I got out of the Army. We went back to University of Virginia, where I went to graduate business school. And then I went to Lewiston, New York, where I was working with a Car Rental Company, I was the manager-in-training. And in 1959 I came down to Little Rock, and went to work for the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. In 1963 the regional director of that agency resigned, and I ran the agency until the June of 1963, when I went to work for Winthrop Rockefeller as his administrative assistant. And I served with Rockefeller until 1973 when he died. And then I went to work for a federal government I was the regional director of the economic development administration in Denver for 10 years. And in 19, the latter part of 1982 I went to Philadelphia (there were 10 states in the 1st region), and I went to be a regional director in Philadelphia where we covered 13 states, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands. 1985- I went down to Washington where we moved from (we went to Paliate, Pensylvania) We moved to Cherry Hill, New Jersey while I was in Philadelphia. Then we moved to Washington, I went down there. I was a director, the national director of public works until 1986 when President Bush was nominated, and became president. And the director of the agency, the man named Mister Orson Swindel, who had spent 6.5 years by the way in Hanoi Hilton appointed me assistant secretary for administration. And I ran the administration of the agency until 1993 when the Clinton Administration came in, and the entire staff, the political staff, walked out and since I was a senior career person. I was...ran the economic development administration for the next 9 months until the political flunkees came in and testified in front of Congress 6 times. It was a very interesting time, it really was... And then in 1995, on December 29 of 1995, I retired, and since we didn't have a lot of ties in any place, we came back here. My wife is from here. And by the way she is the daughter of Dean Fullerton who the Fullerton Student Union is named after. And we are enjoying our life ever since.

Alsu: Well...sounds great! Pretty interesting life! You've traveled so many states, so many places...Have you ever been out of the country?

Smith: Oh yeah! Been to England, and been to Spain, and to Brazil, been to Mexico, lived in Canada...In and out...been to Scotland, Wales...

Alsu: Really!?

Smith:Yeah..

Alsu: What was your favorite country?

Smith: I guess England...My son was stationed in Spain, so we have spent some time with him...He was in the airforce...

Alsu: It was all military?

Smith: Yeah...It's kind of interesting...My grandfather was in the Marine during the WWI; my father was in the Navy during the WWII. I was in the Army during Korea, and my son was in the Airforce. So all of us have been in the service one time or another. One of the interesting things that happened in my lifetime: when I was at University of Virginia....I heard...stop that for a second...President of

Smith: That's for you, okay?

Alsu: Thanks...

Smith: Now you can ask me some more questions...

Alsu: Okay...well, since I'm here to ask you questions about Fort Chaffee, I want to ask you: What was life like in Fort Chaffee? You were there during 1952-1953...

Smith: 52-53...

Alsu: So what was life like?

Smith: Well, it was like being a Private in the Army. There was...this was a basic training camp...It was Camp Chaffee then, it was not Fort Chaffee... And they were running people in there and out of there very rapidly. Basic training was 16 weeks: 8 weeks of ????arbitrary training, and another 8 weeks of artillery training. And then a few were selected for some kind of special program. You either went to a training camp, or many of them went directly to Korea. My...I went to a thing called Leadership School which was down at the other end of the base, which was another.., Gosh..I think, was another month-six weeks...And typical of the Army, people who went there the class before, I saw, came out Corporals... We went there, and came out Privates. So then I was weapons instructor; I taught rocket launchers, rifle, grenades, then I would serve also teaching. I went to the weapons school, I was teaching weapons. I taught machine guns, hand-to-hand combat, participated in teaching bayonet which I did not like. It was a lot of work. And I did that for quite a while. And then the Army being what it was in those days, for example I just: from the top of my head: I would say that our basic company which started in September was about 75 college graduates... Today you're lucky to get 75 college graduates going in there. When we went to leadership school, 75% of that group was college graduates. Consequently, the Army was run by privates who were college graduates. I was then sent over and ran the weapons pool for the area...and that was a massive service slot, I had my own little office and telephone, it was quite an interesting time. So I was one of those people who really enjoyed Fort Chaffee. I ran into people who were at Chaffee at the same time I was that didn't enjoy as much as I did. I have made an effort to do things... I remember the first leave we got I came into town and walked up and down downtown, and stayed at the local hotel. And as soon as we got to leadership school, we got apartment in town. We had our barracks, but we had an apartment in town. There were 4 of us living in there, man named Paul Sandahl who's here, married somebody from here; another young man...a young lad whose father was ambassador in Australia; and we had a great time... We called it 'Withering Heights' 'cause there was no air conditioning in this thing. We rented the second floor of the house owned by 2 women here in town: Sis Jessie and Ms. McCorkel who were very well known ladies. And they never rented an apartment to military before, she was very scared to do that... I also got to know people here in town, went down to Presbyterian Church and stood at the back. And a young gentleman came up and asked me if I would like to sit with them and certainly I said yes which is what I planned anyways, and so then they said Would you like to come over for Sunday dinner and I said Yes. I'd love to do that... And so I came home, and I got to know them, and they would invite me over occasionally, and their daughter was going to the University of Arkansas... And so I went up there one weekend, and I was walking across the campus up there, and I heard somebody: "Hey Greg! Hey Greg!" And I turned around, and here were 2 girls that I had known, who went to school called in Santon, Virginia Mary Washington College... A lot of the girls from Fort Smith who would go to Mary Washington, or Sweet Briar or Randolph Mankin, and they would come back and finish their 2-years up at Fayetteville. Now all of a sudden I had big interest in the University of Arkansas, and I had a good time. I went to football games, and I really enjoyed myself at Chaffee, I really did. The young lady who was a daughter of this family (his name was Paul McCartney, who owned Texaco dealership here in town), she married Paul Sandahl, who was one of our people. Paul stayed here for his whole career. I left in 1953 and went to Fort Halburt, Maryland, which was kind of ????. Then I was in Fort Davis, Massachussets and also in Pinehurst, North Carolina for a period of time. But I really enjoyed Chaffee, and I really enjoyed Fort Smith. I had a ball here. In fact, my wife had never got in around town. The girls just didn't go down on Garrison Avenue That was... oooh She never went down there, and she lived here. And I took her. She had never gotten, I'm a history nut, she had never seen Judge Parker's court room; she had not been down to the historical markers, or any of that. So I got to take her all around town... Her daddy would shut the door in my face when I come to date her because I was the Yankee. He would tell me that she wasn't there. And I would pass, and she said; "Daddy, I'm here, I'm here!!!" It was kind of an interesting time.

Alsu: It's funny...

Smith: Yeah, it's true...

Alsu: How did people get along with each other?

Smith: Well, it was interesting... That was a typical army where typical things always happened. There were three of us that came from the East, up from Devons: myself, a man named Egor Kipness, and another young man. The rest were all from Chicago, Nebraska and Iowa. It was a real interesting time. I had gone to a school that had a military component with it. Every Canadian school had a cadet corp. So I was familiar with rifles. As a consequence what they did because of the way things were there were people appointed acting capacity. I was an acting sergeant. And we would be in charge of the barracks...There was a number of us who did that. But people got along. There were people who've never taken baths, there were people who had never eaten as many meals as they have eaten in their lives. There was one old boy named Melvin Sergeant...And Melvin was about six feet; he was big, I mean, really big. And his suntan was just like overalls; you could see that he wore overalls all day long. And I remember one time I said; "Sergeant, you're chewing that tobacco again?", "Oh, yeah!", I said; "You chew it all time?"; "Oh yeah!" And he said; " I even chew it at school..." I said; "You didn't chew that in school." He said, "Yeah, I did." I said, "Did teachers catch you?" He said, "No, I just spit the chew down the front of my shirt and they never did catch me." They would make Sergeant sit over there and he wouldn't write home and we would get these phone calls and the officer would make him sit there and write his mother. He would never and finally he would just seal up an envelope and send it. It was a strange thing. I uh, I remember, I had a couple of things happen in turns of how people were. We had this young boy from the ??? and uh, he was a problem and I kind of worked with him and he kind of got to like me. Around Christmas time everybody was getting Christmas cards. He brought this card over to me. And, he couldn't read. And, he said, "Greg, would you read this to me?" And I picked up this Christmas card and it was a very flowery card and uh, and in the inside, she had written, "Stop, making these telephone calls home and stop…." And was just giving him the hardest time about money and sending stuff to her. I looked at that and I said, "I can't read him that." I said, "Darling I miss you…and I apologize" and he went AWOL about three days later. He was quite an interesting guy.

Smith: Actually, it was very interesting. We had a sergeant by the name of Waters who had uh, it was when he first came as a corporal. He was really tough. He was really tough on the troops. He was very hard with them but was very fair with him. And uh, a lot of things happened that were very interesting about that. And the more he got tough with people, the better he was respected. And when we went out on BIDWAC, which was a two week time out in the woods in pup tents and stuff, we had a new young officer out there and the sergeant did something that he didn't like. He called the sergeant out in the front of the entire company and dropped him for push-ups, I think 50 push-ups, in front of all the troops. And we were just aghast. You just don't do that to your sergeant. When he came back, he got transferred immediately down to D-Company, which was just forming by the way. The company was just coming in, and they were all coming in from New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania and that kind, they were different kind of people than we were. And I remember he was coming up the walk and we just finished bad BIDWAC and we were really very…and he was coming up, and Paul and myself and Charles Stewart walked up and we stopped him and just wanted to tell him how much we appreciated him. How that he had made soldiers out of us. He got all kind of fuss over it and was upset. That night we were on guard duty and uh, I wasn't one of those people on guard duty, but our company was on guard duty. And the word "Guard! Guard!" went out and it turned out that the barracks down there did not understand how Sergeant Waters operated. They got him up against the barracks and were threatening him. Our barracks heard about it. There were about 200 people went flying up those doors down there to save Sergeant Waters. And I want to tell you something, he was screaming at us and we were screaming at them and he said, "You guys back off!", and we all stepped back and uh, the situation was got under control. Our company was not going to let those guys mess with our Sergeant. It was a very interesting time to tell you the truth. That was the only incident that I recall that was any problem we had. ??

Smith: And you could tell a draftee from a regular Army because they wore helmets that said, "US" they had a US and the regular Army had an "RA". That proved very helpful. You know, oh he was a regular, we don't worry about him. It was hot uh, when I was an instructor out there. We would stop training at noon because the heat would get so bad. And you'd be marching along in full pads and a steel helmet and the temperature is over a hundred and if one went down, you'd start to see that two, three or four would go down. Then you'd have to rush them down to the hospital, pack 'em in ice, get the temperature down. The temperature would shoot up to 106. They would just be in bad shape. So they would stop training at noon and that meant that we could come into our apartment and we slip down at the Creekmore swimming pool. We had a very good time. Of course I met the young lady that eventually became my wife. But uh, I really did enjoy Chaffee, I really did. It was uh…there were those who felt that as I said, I had a couple of friends of mine that I ran into later who couldn't stand it.

Smith: Let's see, uh…this gentlemen here by the name of Frank Urbrouch at the University of Columbia, and uh, when he came down, we became pretty good friends. Uh, S's and U's kind of end up together in alphabetically. You always pull one of those things. I remember he really looked bad at training because when he went to Columbia he was a fencer. He was a fencer for the University of Columbia. Fencing and bayonets were almost the same thing, in that you just have a longer…you have a bayonet on the end of the rifle. And how you handle that in terms of hurrying somebody's rifle so that you can knock it away, so you can stab him. He really enjoyed it. That was a lot of fun. He was really good at it too by the way. He was one of the only married people. His wife came down here and she had a job in town. And uh, I remember a funny incident. She got me a date. This is after we were able to get out. And we went down uh, to a dance that was near where the Malco Theatre is now which is the new theatre that they restored. There was a big hall above that and we went into this dance. And this gentleman who was sitting next to Frank and next to B?, offered him a drink and so B? tried to be polite and handed him this paper bag and B? took a swig and it was straight moonshine whiskey. And it just nearly killed him…and his reaction was worth it, believe me. We saw each other after the war, I mean afterward. He went back to New York with the railroad. I think he ended up Chicago. I haven't been in contact with him in a long time. I've tried the computer, uh the name Urbrouch is so unique because it's spelled with a 'uh'. I've not been able to run him down. Another one was a guy name Charlie Stewart. Now Charlie was from Noel, Missouri, went to the University of Arkansas. He'd run for the State Legislature when he was up at the University; he didn't make it. He was an interesting guy. Charlie was uh a very interesting guy. I remember when they were reviewing a lot of people for various things, and they would say, "Private Stewart, would you kill anybody?" And he said, "Well, I'd have a tough time killing my friends, but I'd kill anybody else you want me to." And he would, he would. He probably….he ended up an instructor too. Most of us did. And uh, he started to date this lady. She had a little boy. We'd say, "Charlie how old is that little boy?" He would say, "I don't know, but he is this tall (motioning with his hand)." And he finally married her. So we went up there and said, "yeah, he is that tall."

Smith: I remember one time before I dated my wife, when we were still instructors and I hadn't met her yet. I met this young lady who was at the drug store. And uh, so uh, we got to talking and everything, and we had a nice conversation, so I asked her if she would like to go to the movies. And she said she'd love to go to the movies and I asked her what her name was and her name was ?. I said, "Sergeant ? is your father?" She said, "Yes" and he was my first sergeant. And so, I couldn't back out. I said okay. And so I came up, I had a car, I came up to the front door had my coat and tie on and I want to tell you something that you can be sure that that young lady got home on time.

Smith: For somehow I didn't feel really comfortable asking her out again. But he was very polite, he came to the front door ??? It was interesting, I... There was a couple of interesting things I will tell this on myself...I was...I got really, really good with rifle grenades, and I could drop the rifle grenade right in the tour of the tank, you had to know what the ammunition was to tell at the back it would say what year it was made and sometimes it will make 50 yards difference in how grenade would go. So once you understood that you could end up doing it. And I also got very good with the rocket launchers. And the lieutenant and I were working on a little scam. We had these troops out there, and the lieutenant would say, "Pick some guy and see how many hits he gets, and I'll pick some guy and see how many hits he gets." Anyway, we end up making a little wager and of course he would let me know through the loud speaker it was time we start knocking the targets out. And uh, we always come back with a little bit of money during the day. We had some real problems with that though. And this is a double story. When I was teaching the rifle grenades out on the range, which was very interesting, we had log revetments that would be square and there would be a teacher, a professor, instructor, and a student, and usually there were 2 students and one instructor. And the rifle grenade had a pin that you would pull when you were ready to pull it was on the side of the thing you waited till it got out until the end of the grenade launcher, the launcher fitted over the top of the barrel, and it was really like a blank that fired it, and the pressure would send the grenade up. And I was working with the young man, named Jim Wilson, and Jim was a super kid, he was from West Virginia, he was short, stocky, tough kid. One of the brightest kids I've ever met. And.. so he was...and I said: "Jim, don't stand beside them, stand behind them." Even they call to stand beside them. I said, " what you can do, you can see whether his rifle is pointed at a grenade or not you can put your hand on the butt , and kinda' line it up on the tank." And so he did that a couple times and it was working just fine. They were firing... I had fired my 2 grenades with the young man, and I was moving to the next bunker. And lieutenant told them to fire, and the grenade went off right on the end of the rifle. It was...you know and it cleaned uh, it knocked both of the young men down in his deal and knocked him back, it cleaned out the two bunkers on the other side, I got hit with a couple pieces of shrapnel but nothing serious. I went running up there, and the boys were lying on the ground, and I said, "Jim, help me! Jim, help me!" Jim came running over and he fell over and he had been hit by shrapnel all from one shoulder to the other. Just all kinds of shrapnel. So he was in trouble. At any rate, the ambulance arrived. And it wasn't long before the general from the base was out there, and everybody was out there. The Colonel was there, the general was out there. And the sergeant on that range a man named sergeant Banks...Lieutenant O'Rourke And we were standing there, and the General turning to Sergeant Banks he said, "Sergeant, what do you think happened?" And before the Sergeant could talk, a Major from the ordinance division interrupted, and the General turned around and said, "Major, when I want your opinion I'll ask you! I'm talking to Sergeant Banks!" And Sergeant Banks told us how these were faulty grenades. It took 48 inches for a rifle grenade to go off. In fact, because these launchers were old, sometimes you tend to tip them over and you can almost catch them before they hit the ground, it would take a good size drop to get it to go off and so if it was close, it wouldn't do it. Well, that caused all kind of problems, and we had to change the methods of how we were handling the grenades. Couldn't put them on a ground. And we made sure that... Oh by the way we didn't even open the rifle 'cause we wanted to make sure there was no live round in a grenade that it was a grenade launcher. You know what happened 2 weeks later? Same thing. Same problem. This time there was another friend of mine who...and he came out, his eyes were going around in his head just like marbles, and that time they only got 4 guys. But we began to get better grenades than that. That's not the end of the Major however. We were tearing up these targets so badly with the rocket launchers that they were getting upset with us. And so Sergeant Banks and I came back in off the range. And Sergeant Burhaul says, "Will you go over and get 2 rocket launchers, and get back out with a range? I want to test a new target." So we said, "Okay." So we went out and got some rounds, practice rounds, went back out all the way back out to the range, and major from the ordinance was there, and he looked at us, and we looked at him. And he was not happy with us to start with. Cause we were already ???? shot by the general. So what he had was targets which went back and forth on a little railroad car and they were towed by a jeep so they were hitting a moving target. So he had this little platform built on this little track machine. And it was a great big piece of steel. It was ????! So when you hit it on the top, it would bend over, and it would come back up, bend over and come back up... And Sergeant Banks looked at it and he says, "Major, that will last about 2 shots." He said, "Oh no, no, no!" He says, "Okay, Greg", he says, "I'll fire first, I'll hit it up on the right, you shoot, hit it in the middle, and I'll you know..." So he fired, hit it right there. It went down just like it was supposed to. Major was just smiling. We were about a hundred yards away from this thing. So I fired, I hit it right on the top, and it went down. He's smiling like crazy. Sergeant Banks fired, just blew it all apart. And it towed over the corner. And it was there 'til the day I left. I came back one time, since my mother-in-law lived out there, we drove by there. I think about 6-8 years later, it was still there on the side of the range. But it was a real problem. Cause we did have a lot of trouble. I remember the day we trained from the old pineapple grenade to the round grenade. Now the real pineapple grenade had a little snap cap when you pull, when you let go off the handle, the little thing that snap around the top and go pop! Make a noise and at night it made a little flash. And this was always a problem with grenades because the enemy knew where they were coming from cause they gave a... And so they came out with the new one which was round like a little apple, and had a silent fuse on it. And we didn't know that. And so that day, the first ones came out, we pulled the pins, let the hammer go, woah, and threw them and they exploded, you know. That's how we finally found out that you don't hold the live grenade in your hand. But it was exciting. Interesting.

Alsu: Did anyone get hurt?

Smith: No...However, one of the worst accidents that did happen happened on a rifle grenade, uh hand grenade range. We had an ambulance jeep up at our range, and the call came for me to get that ambulance jeep down to the hand grenade range and not waste any time doing it. So I jumped in it, and we took off like a...down to the hand grenade range. And what had happened was really very tragic, and I really get upset about it because there were just not enough trained personnel to teach that, and if there...they would have a trainee and an instructor. And since that day they did not have enough instructors, they took one other company cadre, and this was a young boy from North...New Mexico, I believe, and he'd not he had thrown a grenades, but I don't think he was a competent teacher. And so many of the trainees were scared to death; they had never seen a grenade, they did not know what it would do, and there were... many incidents were real problems with it. They would get it in their hand, and they'd go to throw it, and they take it back, and they hit the wooden side of the barrack. Drop it. Anyway, this young trainee was having trouble pulling the pin, and the young cadre man made the mistake of trying to help him, and...which he should have never done, he should have made the guy to pull the pin by himself...but what happened was they lost the grenade between them, and it just blew up right between them, killed them both. And it was a mess; we had a real mess out there. But it was because we didn't have enough people. And that happens. But there was one incident just on the other side of that. And this is really kind of hard to believe. We had all our national guard troops going through, and that guard troops...

Smith:This Jim Wilson that I mentioned who was the instructor that got hit with the grenade... He was really a neat guy, and he was really a tough little kid. And one of the people who really should have got into college. I hoped that since he was a veteran, he was able to go back, he was from West Virginia, that he was able to go back and go to college... Cause he was really inately bright... Anyway, we went down on Garrison Avenue, and right where the fountain is now in the middle of Garrison there was a little triangle, and there were a couple of little old bars in that place. And...so we went...we weren't in civilian clothes. We went in, and we were sitting there at the bar. And bars being what they are, there was a lot of noise and talking. And this guy decided that he was gonna give us a hard time. So he started giving us a hard time by how he didn't like the army people, and all this kinda business. And he particularly didn't like short people, and he went on and on and on. And all of a sudden Jim just kind of pushed himself back a little bit stood on the bar stool, turned around, and one shot right on the jar. Just boom! And this guy went flat on the floor, out cold, and we decided that it was not the place for us to be, and we both walked out. But it was... That was the only time I really had any problems in Fort Chaffee. It was really....he was quick. But I was impressed with how fast that happened, I want to tell you that. But he was a good guy. One of the things that was interesting, my next-door neighbor here Frank Lockwood, Dr. Lockwood, he was at Chaffee, when I was at Chaffee, and he was in the hospital rather. And he and I had a lot of discussions. About one night somebody hit a deer out there while he was out there, and he was a surgeon, he brought the deer in on a stretcher, took it in the back room, and cut it up in the hospital. I had to go down there. I went down there a number of times. When you're teaching, and I was teaching a rocket launchers. There was a little wire that came out of the back of the rocket, and went around a spring that was on the back of the launcher, and the electric charge would generate when you squeeze the handle, and that wire would blow up, and it would go through my ear and my shoulders and I had to go down there and taken out all the time. And so I got to know some of the doctors. They would, " Oh you coming back from the range again, huh?" "I'm back again." Actually one of the pieces finally worked this way out, about 4 months later when I was at Fort Haliburt, Maryland it came out, stuck in my pants, in my leg. And I was trying to figure out what was catching on my pants... It was a piece of wire from the rocket launcher. Most of the guys that I went service with... I really enjoyed my time. I really enjoyed it. I felt I learned a lot. In its own way it was exciting; something was going on all the time. I remember another thing. I got to know a guy here in town at Randall Ford, ??? Randall, and our helmet liners when you were a cadre out there, they were painted bright red, and they had a gold back thing around it with a 5th Armor Division. It had your name and rank on the front of the helmet. And so I went down there and took mine down there, and got it done in his little auto shop. And they painted it red, and it was just beautiful. Beautiful thing you ever saw. And I had a pair of really nice jump boots. The next thing I knew, I was serving on firing squads to go down to the National Cemetery, and fire at funerals. Every time they had a guard thing I discovered my helmet attracted more interest than I wanted, so I put it away cause I kept getting special detests. And I remember the first time, we had another fellow, he was a good friend of mine, he came in and had us on the firing squad, and he didn't know what that was, so I told him that we were gonna execute this trooper to death down at the military prison. He was not a happy camper until he finally figured out that I was joshing him. Let me see... The Army in those days was a lot different than it is today. We had to pull KP, we had to do... peel potatoes. And when you're on KP, you're on all day. It was a lot of work. Now they don't do that. Every company had their own mess. There were 3 barracks, and there were 3 buildings up front of those barracks if you've been out to Chaffee. And one was the dining hall, one was the supply, another was the day ready room, as the commanding officers quarters in there. And...the meals were served there, and they were responsible when you're out on training for bringing the meals out to you when you were out on the wherever you were on the rifle range or if you were on the whatever training you were taking. They brought the meals to you. And we always had to carry mess kit with you. And we get C rations. They were pretty good. I didn't mind C rations. There was one can that had a key on the bottom, and that can had cigarettes (lot of Lucky Strikes cigarettes - and Old Gold and I wanna tell you something those cigarettes, you take a drag and they were all dry, you know they were from WWII), and had toilet paper, matches, water purification tablets, and at the bottom had some sort of the candy. And it had a can opener because that was there to open other 2 cans that you get whether it would be spaghetti and meatballs or whatever you were gonna eat. But everybody carried their own can opener, and you always carried your own toilet paper. They came in a little pack and you always carried it inside your helmet in the webbing of the helmet liner. And everybody carried that.

Smith: We got up before the sun was up..if it was summertime, well of course we were in the fall, go to chow, come back, and clean up that barrack 'cause it had to look good. And you make the beds, and get it all cleaned up, and then you fall out on a company road and you'd be taking whatever you were going to do that day. If you were gonna... First eight weeks were infantry training. You were out, you learned rifle grenades, machine guns and bayonet drill. Forever, it was teaching of the rifle was forever. It was very interesting that they had a sighting bar thing that you used. If I had all the money in the world I would never buy one of those. If I owned everything I would never want one of those. And we used, we fired the M1, and then the six uh, second eight weeks was artillery training which was really very interesting. I remember the very first 105 Howitzers. I remember the very first demonstration we had with it, which was very interesting. Howitzer had five powder bags in a shell and they would tell you how many powder bags we were going to use for each shell… how far you wanted it to go, or how fast you wanted it to go. And what they did was a...they took a charge one, put it in there, cranked the gun straight up in the air and fired it. And then they took a charge five, cranked the gun down and fired it. And both shells landed at the same time on the target. It was really kind of interesting. Artillery fire is very very accurate. And...(it's a clock)...and so we went through all kinds of firing of the Howitzers. There was a place out there called a "potato hill". "Potato hill" looked...there was a number of places out there, but "potato hill" was a target. "Potato Hill" has been shrapnel put in it since WWII. It probably weighs more than any mountain in a state of Arkansas. And that was where the target was. And they had a big wooden, I don't know what do you want to call it, a cross or an indicator target up on top of that. Of course, everybody tried to knock that off of there which people would do and then they stop that 'cause it cost a lot of money to put that thing back up there. But...we would have a lot of artillery training. We had night firing and daylight firing. One of the ones that was also very interesting it was a direct fire. And that would be where the gun barrel was horizontal to ground, and you'd use any tank round or infantry devastating type rounds when they were that close coming at you. The thing about that was where you were on that range you could stand behind the Howitzer and watch the shell go. You could see it. And, of course, we were firing inert shells and they would go down the range, and they would hit, and they would skip like a stone for...'til you just could not see it anywhere. But it was... That was exciting; I liked that. I liked the artillery. It was very very good. And the instructors were good. And I still have the book in my file that I took all the hand and eye notes when I knew you were coming I wanted to see if I still have it, I still have it. I don't know what notes I have… Then we would come back, go to chow. Then everybody spent time cleaning their weapons and whatever it was or shining their shoes. And on Friday night would be the GI party 'cause if you didn't have your barracks, and you didn't pass inspection you didn't get a pass. And I want to tell you something, that was something else. Those floors out there probably are embedded with more clorox than you can imagine. On the back of each barracks was a big box frame with a chicken wire front where we kept the mops and brooms and things to keep that place clean. And, of course, when you're working on the barracks, everybody else is working on the barracks. So we would sell Melvin Sergean, our boy from Iowa, "Hey Sarg, go find a mop?" One day he came back, and we went out there and said, "Hey!" He had pulled the whole mop rack off the door. When we were in there I don't know whether you know how big the garbage can is and how much it weighs when you got to put water in it, but we fill the garbage cans up, threw it into the barracks and mopped the floor. And we'd say, "Sarg, we need...the garbage..." He'd pick the garbage can with water, and I don't know how he picked, whether you know how much that would weigh. But he said, "Where you want?", and put it down. He was strong. He really was. So he'd shine that floor up, and we'd have the inspection Saturday morning. And I mean to tell you, those were white glove inspections. And you would get gigged, and if you had...you know you had a little extra work to do. But we really worked on those, we very rare did not...I can not remember not getting a pass 'cause we didn't pass inspection. It was really an effort. And, of course, that brought people together. Everybody's on it, working to get that floor cleaned, and the upstairs get cleaned, two floors. You know, it was really good. One of the things we did have, we did have a thief. And that was interesting because we finally figured out who it was which was disappointing because it was somebody everybody liked. That was a problem. Oh I remember we would come back from BIVWACK, and I was at one end of the barracks, and I moved to another end of the barracks. And my bunk was right next to Charlie Stewart. And I had turned it around, and I came in, and it was dark, and I grabbed the bunk , and they had put my bunk up, stood it up on end, they were giving me a hard time. When I grabbed the bunk a helmet fell down full of water, and it landed right on Charlie. Right on Charlie. I said, "Oh Charlie, I'm sorry!" He said, "Oh...(this is a guy we had an apartment later)...That's alright, Greg." I said, "Okay." I found out later that he was the one who put it out there. ???? "I did it, Greg. That's okay." But it was interesting.

Alsu: So who was the thief?

Smith: It was a young boy from Chicago.

Alsu: Oh really.

Smith: Yeah...

Alsu: What happened to him?

Smith: They just talked to him, and everybody... Since everybody knew at that point who he was, he had enough problem. He didn't get a lot, but he got enough to make it where...you know...he would rob the barracks, we had to leave somebody in the barracks, and he would be the barracks watch. And of course it would be… pretty soon it became pretty obvious who it was. Because who else there but him, you know? And that wasn't too bright on his part because he was not a Rhodes' Scholar. So... It did cost him.

Alsu: What was the regular punishment in Camp Chaffee?

Smith: You could get all kinds of punishment. You could be over on KP, they give you extra duty or you could get dark guard duty. Things like that. There were things you know... Or they'd pull your pass, you know. And there were people that didn't bother, there were people who never left the base. They were, you know, they were... I don't know why, but they were, you know, very happy in their area all their needs were met. We had a PX, and you could go over there and drink beer, and get candy bars, and all those kind of things. The food was good. I didn't have a real problem with it. I'm a picky eater, but I got to say I made it, you know. But...I was on some other bases, and Chaffee...I thought... The thing that bother me I was upset when Chaffee closed. Mainly because I thought it was excellent training base, it really was an excellent training base; great terrain, the things that they set out there where you have squad and attack, BIVWACK areas. All I thought it was excellent. I thought the training was good. It was hot in the summer. But it was a good training. I thought it was excellent training.