Jack Battuello Memoir #1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Jack BattueLlo 4 9
Q. Did you get anything to eat that night in DuQuoin? Anything to
drink?
A. Well, we had water. I can't tcll you about what everybody did.
We just at that point in time wc were just $cuffling for ourselves,
you know, a place to slcep or drink of water or somebody in the tail
end of the march they could turn their cars around, see, in the tail
end of the march and they salvaged their cars and their food. Well,
there was a little contingent of that part of the caravan that had a
little food and s~n'Ie--I didn't get no food--but some of them did.
Q. Did they come into DuQuoin with you?
A. Yes, yes, they all stayed there that first night. Al.1 stayed
there.
Q. Did you pick up food and stuff as you passed the ambushed caravan
on your way in to UuQuoin?
A. No, wc Figured they're still around and we didn't want to, you
know, tarry. We didn't know where they were at actually.
Q. Were there a bunch of you that stuck together? Can you remember?
A. At that point in time as John Dean is one to say in his testimony,
the (airp1an.e passes overhead) thing became total disarray, total
disorganized and a state of ,~otal confusion. There was just no
heroics that could be performed and to pull that line together again
in the matter of the time that we had, just couldn't be. Everybody
was just scuffling for themselves. We were friends and talking to
each other and consoling each other but the big question was, "What
do we do now? How are we going to do it to get our lines organized
again? "
Q. The truck you've bccn riding in, you camped again?
A. As far as I knew it stayed up there for a week.
Q. Did you see it?
A. No.
Q. You didn't see it a.fter you'd left it.
A. No, no. It mtght have been there for a week, I don't know how
in the hell it ever got back. That big portion of that front line
stayed there for a few days, you know. The ones that could turn
around that weren't hit weren't involved in the first fusSllade.
They got their cars turned around and back to DuQuain. Quite a few
of them. But then there was pandemonium in DuQuoin, Jesus, you
ought to have seen that mess.
Jack Battuello Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield