Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 44
It was below zero and they would have a tag on them, a big tag with their
name and number and where they lived and everything else about him, the
father's name, on his big toe and they would cart them along.
Q: That must have been very frightening.
A: A dead man would never hurt you.
Q: But I mean to know that so many were dying.
A: Well, you just hoped you wouldn't get it. I can say knock on wood, I
never even got a cough all during the flu epidemic. And then I, after I
got home here, I asked, "Where's Mr. Wineman here, where's Mr. Arbuckle
who used to run the livery barn, Wineman and Arbuckle." They said, "Hey,
they kicked the bucket with the flu." Well, the story and they told me
that after the fellows that drank a lot of liquor, if they got the flu,
it killed them. And if you got the flu and you weren't a drinker, they
would give you whiskey and it cured the flu. That's what their best
remedy the doctor would give you, they'd give you whiskey. That's what
they tell me. The flu epidemic was practically old when I got discharged
and got home.
Q: There were other boys that left Auburn when you did for the navy.
Did you see them or did they make it through?
A: Yes, they all, one fellow, he got color blind. He got chickenpox and
got color blind and he's dead now and they are almost all dead, the five
that went together with me.
Q: But they didn't die during the war?
A: No, I know one died in California, he was in the plumbing business.
And Fritz Ruski, that was a friend of mine, he and I, Ruski and I, stayed
together. A fellow name of Harris, he was captain of a PT boat, that's
one of these here guard boats. And there was Ruski, he went to
gunnersmen's school and I went in the cocksman school at Great Lakes and
we could see each other. He was on the second floor and I was on the
first floor so we had to sleep in hammocks and they didn't have no beds.
Everything was hammocks aboard ship too, you had a hammock, there wasn't
any room for a bed. You had to learn to lace your hammock and put it up
there and you got graded on everything. You had to learn it all. So
then Grider, a fellow by the name of Grider, he died with a heart attack,
he was, and Hank Harms, he died here just a while back, a couple, about
three years ago I guess. He died, and Fritz. . . .
Q: Was there a Fritz?
A: Fritz Ruski.
Q: How did it affect the people that stayed at home, were they all
trying to conserve or. . . .
A: Oh yes, they did everything, they knitted sweaters for us and sent us
sweaters and gloves. And they, I know the KP Lodge here, they sent me an