Anton Jaber took his basic training at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. He went right into advanced training with his division [Annotator’s Note: 42nd Infantry Division] and stayed there for eight months. The first part of April [Annotator’s Note: April 1944], people started being taken out and sent to Europe. Jaber was taken out of the division in April 1944 and went to Fort Meade [Annotator's Note: Maryland]. From there, he went to Fort Myles Standish [Annotator's Note: Camp Myles Standish, Taunton, Massachusetts] for embarkation, leaving Boston Harbor on 6 June 1944 aboard the SS Manhattan. They traveled alone and it took seven days. It was a good journey. He came back on the RMS Queen Mary in four days. They zig-zagged [Annotator’s Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] going over. They docked in Liverpool [Annotator's Note: England] and went to Kent County in Wales, where he turned 19. They then went back to England before leaving for France. He did not get any leave there. General Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe; 34th President of the United States] put out a notice that nobody could leave the base. He was aware of the invasion and was just waiting for his time to cross the channel. He went across in a convoy led by an English ship and landed on Omaha Beach [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]. The fighting was still heavy inland. This was around 13 July 1944. He was in a replacement depot waiting to be assigned. The beach had obvious signs of battle like debris, wreckage, the landing obstacles and a few pillboxes. He always wondered how the Rangers [Annotator's Note: US Army Ranger] captured the hill he saw. It had to be some dedicated people.

Anton Jaber was born in June 1925 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He grew up there and his mother died when he was two years old. He spent the next 15 years in North Carolina Catholic orphanage [Annotator's Note: Catholic Orphanage, Raleigh, North Carolina]. He graduated from high school there and then was drafted. He had a brother and sister in the orphanage. His brother enlisted in the Army Air Forces after Pearl Harbor was bombed [Annotator’s Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. An older brother fought in the South Pacific. He knew what the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor meant. He knew from then on that we were in a war that had to be won by us. A kid asked him why he was over there. He said there was nobody else in the world who could do what we did. We freed countries that were conquered by one of the meanest men in the world. He enslaved them. We were the only ones who could free them. If we had not gotten into it, there is no telling what the world would be like today. Jaber was drafted into the Army within two months of leaving high school. He knew he was going. He was drafted at Fort Bragg, North Carolina then he was sent to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma where they were reorganizing the 42nd Infantry Division. They were supposed to go to France as a unit, but they started breaking the division up because they needed people sooner. For Jaber, the military was not all that hard. It came natural after being raised in an orphanage. They worked seven days and four nights a week in basic training which was tough for him. It was hard work physically.

Anton Jaber went ashore [Annotator's Note: across Omaha Beach, Normandy, France] around 13 July 1944. He went to an area around Saint-Lô [Annotator's Note: France], but he does not know how close. It was in American hands. Jaber was part of the break-out there. He was assigned to the 30th Infantry Division as a replacement. It was just a field where they pitched their tents and wait to be called. They were strafed there once and that was his first combat experience and it scared the hell out of him. He had just turned 19. He then went to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division and was assigned to a machine gun section. He told them he was not a machine gunner and did not know how to even load one. He said he was a mortar gunner and they put him there. During saturation bombing on 25 July 1944, he was sitting in the machine gun section watching the aircraft attack. The bombs came close to them and their operation was called off. Jaber had been told to stay with the machine guns until they moved out, and then switch to the mortar section. He moved over to mortars and was sitting on the side of his squad leader's foxhole when the enemy started bombing again. There was shrapnel flying all around them. He got in the foxhole before the squad leader did. He was not used to this. When meals were brought to them, they were not brought all the way up. Jaber was detailed to go get the food that morning. The foxholes looked like homes underground. He got the food and then they started moving out. After the bombing, the ground was littered with dead soldiers. Company F [Annotator’s Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division] was supposed to spearhead the attack but got hit so hard, the task was given to Company E. Jaber did not know if he would make it through that. He was used to discipline and following rules. He was not used to actual combat.

Anton Jaber was part of a force of three divisions, 3,000 planes, and 300 artillery units moving into combat. He could see the planes come over and the bombs falling. He was petrified and someone said to hit the ditch. He did not get hurt but people behind and in front of him did. They were close to where General McNair [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General Lesley James McNair] was killed [Annotator's Note: McNair was killed by friendly fire by Eighth Air Force on 25 July 1944] a few yards in front of him. This was the Saint-Lô Breakout [Annotator's Note: Operation Cobra] in July 1944. All of them jumped off for the same target. They made it out and things got easier. He got to a point where he could tell where a shell would land by hearing it. A mortar can only be heard a split second before it lands. You know it is up there because you can hear it when it fires. It is too late to do anything once you hear it. Mortars are unlike field artillery pieces. If artillery shells land in front of you, the shrapnel is going in front of you. Mortar shells burst in circles, making it dangerous within 25 yards. An 81mm mortar [Annotator's Note: M1 81mm mortar] is a lot bigger. He accepted combat after his first experience. There is nothing you can do about it. He was scared in his first battle. He did not want to be by himself in that first attack and he saw a man near the hedgerow. He went to him, but the man told him to get away.

After the Allies broke through at Saint-Lô, France [Annotator’s Note: Operation Cobra in July 1944], things got a lot easier for Anton Jaber. They were not marching as much and riding more. The Germans were retreating, and they were riding on tanks and jeeps. He was in Germany on 17 December 1944. He went to church and after services the priest asked them to fix the church up for Christmas. He went back to his area and fully armed jeeps were on the move and he heard paratroopers had been dropped. Things got chaotic. Nobody knew what was going on. Late that night [Annotator’s Note: 17 December 1944], they were put on trucks and driven down to the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. Nobody knew where the front lines were; there was fighting everywhere. They stayed until it ended and then returned to Germany. The weather was terrible. They had to use dynamite to dig a foxhole. They had no white clothes and just their brown uniforms. They could spotted from very far away. His division [Annotator’s Note: Jaber served as a mortarman in Company E, 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division] was well known to the Germans and Axis Sally [Annotator's Note: Mildred Elizabeth Gillars, American broadcaster employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate propaganda out of Berlin] would call them "FDR's Butchers" [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt or FDR, 32nd President of the United States]. The division emblem had an O and three Xs on it with some spaces top and bottom. They proposed adding FDR at the top and SS on the bottom. The Stars and Stripes [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] published it but it never happened. There was a lot of frostbite and trench foot [Annotator's Note: immersion foot syndrome]. One blizzard was the most terrible he had ever seen. He could not see his hand in front of his face. The Allies wiped out Hitler's [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] 1st SS Division [Annotator's Note: 1st SS Panzer Division, “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler"]. They never did come back into it. These were people who might be in a basement, a tank would come up and fire into it, and they would come out fighting. They were not giving up. The regular Wehrmacht [Annotator' Note: German armed forces] and the Polish people were not like that. A lot of them when captured, would say they were Polish. They did not want to be known as German. The SS troops [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel, the German paramilitary organization] were terrible and would not give up. You either had to kill them or let them go. Even after war, Jaber was overseeing a prisoner of war camp and they would have to go out for firewood. The Germans did not want to go anywhere. They were getting fed and had nowhere to go to.

They [Annotator’s Note: Anton Jaber and other American forces] had been on the Roer River where the dam had been destroyed. The flooding made a lot of area crossable. They stayed there for quite a while. The 29th Infantry Division had stayed there during the Bulge [Annotator’s Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] and had been shelling Jülich [Annotator's Note: Germany]. Jülich was a pretty good size town which was Charlemagne's [Annotator's Note: Charles the Great, or Charles I, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Emperor of Rome] headquarters back in early 800s. It was leveled except for one archway. He never saw a house in it. They crossed the Roer and fought at Aachen. They had already crossed the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: series of defensive fortifications built by Germany in the 1930s] when they went to the Bulge. When they came back, they really went into Germany. Reaching Aachen was a big thing. They crossed the Rhine River and knew where they were going. After crossing the Rhine, things got easier. They ended up in Magdeburg in the Russian Zone around February and March 1945. He did not see a lot of refugees. When he had first been in France, he did not see any French at all. The civilians were still in Germany. Each little village would surrender as the Americans arrived. Once in a while, someone would kill somebody or fire on them, and then they would take the town. Even up into April 1945, there were people fighting. Jaber had a buddy killed about the same time Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died. He had been riding a tank destroyer. It was dark and the Germans fired a Panzerfaust [Annotator's Note: single shot, German anti-tank weapon] and hit it. It killed three or four of them. Jaber felt bad because that friend had been through the whole war with him and here the war was ending. You do not make too many good buddies because they may be there today but gone tomorrow. He was never injured during the war. He was lucky. Some of the machine gunners got killed. His first squad leader got killed. The hedgerows were terrible. They were on the left side and were being told to watch the right flank. An 88 [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] on their left opened up and went right down the hedgerow. The squad leader got hit. Jaber went up to help him but could not find where the shrapnel went it. His leader kept telling him he could not move his legs. Jaber kept hollering for the medics. The man died in the hospital later. Jaber was at Magdeburg [Annotator's Note: Germany] in the Russian Zone when the Germans surrendered [Annotator's Note: 7 May 1945], near the Elbe River. He went on occupation duty until the Russians took over for them. They went through villages to make sure things were being done right. The Germans were glad the war was over too. Everything was calm. There could be one or two guys that did not want to give up, but it was fine overall.

After the Germans surrendered, the units moved back gradually. Anton Jaber thinks he went through every one of the cigarette camps [Annotator's Note: Allied temporary staging camps named after popular cigarette brands] before he made it to France to go to England. The harbor at Southampton [Annotator's Note: England] had to be dredged so they could get the RMS Queen Mary in there to load the troops. He loaded up on 21 August 1945. There were so many people on the ship that half would have a bed for the night while half slept on the deck. They would swap the next night. The trip took four days. He went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina where he was discharged because the war had ended in Japan as well. Jaber knew he was supposed to take part in the invasion of Japan. They started discharging people with 80 points or more. Everybody in his outfit [Annotator’s Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division] had been in a lot of combat in North Africa and they had more points. After the war ended, they started lowering the points required to be discharged. Jaber got out on 11 November 1945. He had been raised in an orphanage until he went in the Army so there was not a lot of adjustment to do for him. The Army had not trained him for any job. Jaber worked for a couple of years. The draft started again and the day he was supposed to register for the draft, 6 September 1948, he joined the Air Force. He stayed in until 1 January 1972. He went to Korea and England. He was at Weathers Field in England. He figured if he was going to go to war, he was going to do something easier than the infantry. He was a personnel man. He learned that in high school. Most of his time was spent with a special reporting unit or an ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] unit.

Anton Jaber did not use the G.I. Bill. He was on ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] duty for five years at Lafayette University of Southwestern Louisiana [Annotator’s Note: University of Louisiana at Lafayette] and then at ROTC headquarters for three years before going to England. All of his time in personnel was special duty. He was stationed in Bossier City at Barksdale Air Force Base, [Annotator’s Note: Louisiana]. It was a secret base from November 1951 to December 1953. He went to another base like it for training and then to one in Massachusetts for special units. He met his wife in Shreveport [Annotator's Note: Louisiana], and she was from Many [Annotator's Note: Louisiana]. Jaber does not think people today recognize what the war was about, nor do they recognize what this country is about. Especially the young people who are killing people. We have a country that we can change if we have a mind to. [Annotator's Note: Jaber discusses an event in North Carolina where a black person killed a black person. The interviewer mentions that the police chief there is black.] The people just tear up the town. People have got to realize that you cannot take the law into your own hands and destroy buildings and loot stores. These football players that have been given a life they could not have been given anyplace else and they are not satisfied. He cannot understand it. People need to understand what their families went through to build this country and appreciate it.