Carey Eleser was born in August 1924 in Roseville, Louisiana and grew up in Ponchatoula. He was born at a Catholic seminary where his father was a caretaker. His father decided to become a strawberry farmer. Eleser worked on the strawberry farm and raised farm animals. He had two brothers who worked the farm with him. Their father gave them tasks which they could finish for a day. They would hurry the work on Saturday so they could go to the movies. They lived about four miles from town. They were never hungry during the Great Depression. They would eat a lot of their own hogs. They did all of their own butchering. Eleser was a senior in high school and was playing football in the front yard when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He did not think too much about it at that time. They finished school in March of each year so they could pick strawberries then they returned to school in July. After high school, Eleser wanted off the farm and had four aunts who lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. He lived with one aunt and worked for the Illinois Central Railroad as a freight clerk for about a year. When his time came up for the draft, he did not want to go in the Army. He wanted to go into the Navy, so he enlisted.

Carey Eleser enlisted in the Navy and went by train to San Diego, California for basic training. He arrived around ten o'clock at night and had the best tasting beans ever. Training was easy for him because of the farm work he did. He was one of the top guys and he liked it. He was mad at a little Jewish fellow from Los Angeles, California, who had a sister in Los Angeles that Eleser wanted to date. He called her and she asked what religion he was. After he said he was Catholic, she would not date him. He was mad at her brother once, and the CPO [Annotator's Note: Chief Petty Officer] of his unit told them if they were going to fight to get into the boxing ring. After that, they became good buddies. After basic training at Camp Decatur [Annotator's Note: Training Camp that was part of Naval Station Great Lakes], he went to radio school. The Navy figured he was a better radioman than gunner, so they sent him to Camp Mahan [Annotator’s Note: Training Camp that was part of Naval Station Great Lakes] for training. He learned Morse Code and he still knows it. They had to learn to type as well. They hardly ever knew what they were actually transmitting because it all came in code. He spent a month in this training and became a third-class radioman [Annotator's Note: Radioman 3rd Class (RM3c)]. Eleser returned home on leave for a short time and then returned to school in what was called the Armed Guard, which was Navy men on merchant ships. That school had radio and signalman training in Los Angeles, California. There were a lot of problems with the Mexicans back then in the Zoot suits [Annotator's Note: Zoot Suit Riots, 3 to 8 June 1943, Los Angeles, California; race-related riots pitting American servicemen against Mexican-American youths who live in the city and wore suits the servicemen considered unpatriotic], but he had a good time there. The training there was mostly about the duties aboard ship. He and another radioman were sent to Brunswick, Georgia where a new Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: class of rapidly produced cargo ship] was being built. While waiting for the ship to be launched, he and the other man stayed in a blimp barracks. The dirigibles from there would fly out and look for submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was the SS David B. Johnson. They boarded the ship and went to Charleston, South Carolina and loaded up with Army supplies. There were two Sherman tanks [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] right on the deck. There were two other radiomen, one a civilian. They worked eight hours on, 16 off, seven days a week.

Carey Eleser was a Navy Armed Guard radioman aboard the SS David B. Johnson. They left Charleston, South Carolina and went to New York City. There, he went into town with the captain to get briefed on the trip. The ships were being gathered into a convoy. He saw his first big snowstorm there right at the foot of Wall Street. It was very pretty at first, but by the afternoon it was all sloppy and muddy. He wanted to go to confession and went into a big, old church he assumed to be a Catholic Church. Later, when he returned from Europe he learned it was an Episcopal Church. Their convoy was 60 to 80 ships and it took 21 days to go from New York to Southampton, England. It was so cold there were icicles four feet long on the ship. The waves were very rough. [Annotator's Note: Eleser gets very emotional and cannot speak so the interview stops for a moment.] The first night out from New York was exciting as they had some propeller trouble and the ship started lagging behind. The convoy left them alone. Then two or three destroyer escorts came back to them. The SS David B. Johnson had a rather small crew with a lot of civilians. The Navy crew consisted of two radiomen, two signalmen and five or six gunner's mates. Unless Eleser was on his radio duty, he manned one of the 20mm guns [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannon], practicing on the guns was a lot of fun to him. The ocean was very rough, but he was glad because it meant the torpedoes would not be very accurate. They arrived in Southampton and started unloading the ship. They had a Sherman tank [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] up in the air when tea time happened and everything stopped. They left the tank hanging in the air while they had tea. At another small English town, they wanted some beer. Eleser and some guys grabbed a bucket and went out into a pasture to get some milk from the cows. British soldiers saw them and made them return to their ship.

When Carey Eleser was in port in Southampton, England, they were able to go into town. He would go to movies and the people were very friendly. He went to a restaurant and asked for beef sandwiches, but they brought him beet sandwiches. He did not eat them. He was there a month or so. The Germans would bomb at night. The gunners aboard the ships in port would want to shoot at the German bombers but the British did not want them to as it would give away their positions so Eleser and others just stood on deck and watched the bombings. [Annotator's Note: Eleser breaks down and cries. The interviewer asks if he was present for the D-Day Invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. He says he wasn't and there is an odd tape break.] Eleser says that all along the beach there were supplies readying for the invasion. Eleser went to the town of Fowey, England where he got into trouble for trying to milk some cows. It was a small town and pretty. They went up to Belfast, Ireland. They received a lot of messages in the radio room that they turned over to a decoding officer. The Germans would try to block the codes by sending signals that sounded to him like bagpipes. They heard rumors that they were going to Murmansk, Russia and they were heading north between Ireland and England but ended up in Belfast where they took on ship ballast. They came back across the Atlantic in a convoy, watching out for aircraft and submarines. They went into Halifax, Nova Scotia and there they had to watch for icebergs. From there they went down to Boston, Massachusetts and then New York City. From New York, Eleser was sent down to Algiers, Louisiana for reassignment. His best friend from New Orleans was assigned to the USS Card (CVE-11) and Eleser was sent to Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk, Virginia and assigned to the USS Charger (CVE-30).

Carey Eleser was assigned as a radioman to the USS Charger (CVE-30) which was a baby flattop [Annotator's Note: escort carrier, or escort aircraft carrier; hull class CVE; also called "jeep carrier" or baby flattop; small, slow aircraft carrier]. It was a World War 1 cruiser that had been converted. The mission of the ship was to train pilots to land on an aircraft carrier. A couple of the pilots were not lucky enough to survive. They would run out of planes after a few days due to the mishaps. It was boring for Eleser who wanted real action like he had when he was in England. He put in for a discharge and volunteered for anything that came up. He got orders to Casco Bay, Maine and arrived in Portland to find the radio school closed. He was then sent to a school in Noroton Heights, Connecticut. They did not know that they were being trained for the invasion of Japan. [Annotator's Note: Eleser breaks down emotionally and the tape is stopped.] The school had nice buildings and grounds. There were 500 students there. They would go on maneuvers on Long Island Sound. They went into towns on liberty to look for girls. At that age you do not worry about war. He remembers getting on the train in Ponchatoula, Louisiana when he first left for the service and waving to his father. He thought it was the last time he was going to see him [Annotator's Note: Eleser begins to sob] but he was not worried. That is why young guys fight wars. In November 1944, the whole school went by train to Oceanside, California. They had a ball on the train for five days. They had a lot of fun. They started training at a Navy station there that was part of Camp Pendleton.

Carey Eleser turned 21 on 5 August 1945 and went into a bar to get a beer. On 6 August the atomic bomb was dropped and 7 August was his new wife's birthday. They had gotten married on 4 February. His wife was pregnant with their first daughter. Even though the war was over, Eleser could not get out. He had signed up for the duration of the war. He stayed in Oceanside, California about ten months. Around the end of August, they went up to San Francisco and then to Honolulu, Hawaii. Eleser had a daughter who would serve 20 years in the Navy and she was stationed at the same beach. It was like a vacation there. He was anxious to leave the service and join his family. Hawaii was not a state yet, so his points did not count. He and some men volunteered for a ship that they hoped was going back to the United States so they could then be discharged. They caught a plane at Hickam Field, Hawaii and discovered the ship they volunteered for was in Korea. They left in a big C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft], stopped at Johnston Island [Annotator's Note: Johnston Atoll, or Kalama Atoll, United States territory] for lunch, and then went to Kwajalein Atoll, and Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, where it was pouring rain. They got on their ship there. He was happy. On the plane ride over the Pacific a man came out from the cockpit and told them to buckle up for rough weather. He was scared so badly he no longer flies. They made it onto the ship and every day they would take a Higgins boat [Annotator's Note: landing craft vehicle, personnel or LCVP, also referred to as the Higgins boat] to an island and play around. He almost drowned in a strong current once. He lost his shoes and his pants. After a few weeks the ship returned to San Diego. He then went back to New Orleans and was discharged on 19 December 1945. His first daughter was born 30 December. He stayed in New Orleans for a time. He had met his wife through an exchange-letter club. They corresponded for three years before they got married. They had nine children over ten years. Eleser is a charter member of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. His PTSD [Annotator's Note: post traumatic stress disorder] has kept him from returning but he wants to go back and see how it has grown.