Carl Payne was born in December 1919 in Herrick, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a dairy farm community. His father left the family when Payne was a baby. He had two older brothers. His mother only had an eighth-grade education and she wanted her children to have the best education. His brothers both went to college. Payne completed school. He has all but his doctorate degree. [Annotator’s Note: Payne describes his graduate-level work.]

Carl Payne heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] over the radio. He tried three times to get into the service. He was drafted in January 1942. He trained in Lee, Virginia. When he finished training, he was told that he would teach the next group. He trained the next three classes that came in. He had a good college record. His job was to get the men physically fit. They had to work together to protect themselves and their teammates. He enjoyed his job. He grew up on a farm doing hard work. He went up in rank to master sergeant. They were shipped to Tacoma, Washington. Payne was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps. The second lieutenant got his rank in the reserves and he worked in a grocery store. The adjutant general checked them to see if they could be moved into the active field. The men did not respect the second lieutenant. Once they were approved, the group was split. Half went through Canada, and the other half through the northern United States. The Military Police said it was done because they had word that there would be an effort to bomb the train. They ended up in Boston [Annotator’s Note: Boston, Massachusetts] a half hour after the Canadian train. Then they went to New York to board a ship. They were the last men on the ship. He was on the USS Alexandria. They went across by convoy. They landed in Oran, North Africa. There were seven thousand men aboard the ship.

Carl Payne told his men they had to be in operation as quickly as possible. [Annotator’s Note: Payne was stationed in Oran, North Africa.] The men put everything together quickly. There was a sergeant in each tent. They were in the desert next to a vineyard. They were equipped with a washer, dryer, and folder. They would put the clothes together with sizes and put them in a duffle bag. Each man would have two pairs of clothing. Some of the laundries came back from the front. Some clothing had to be destroyed because of blood stains. The Arabs were around. It was an open country and they did not have much cover. The vineyard had an irrigation system. Some of the clean equipment went to a warehouse and was prepared for the men to take Anzio Beach [Annotator’s Note: the Battle of Anzio, 22 January to 5 June 1944; Anzio, Italy]. The soldiers would have a chance to get clean clothes. They were four or five miles behind the line. Many of his men were from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee. They had an Arab try to get in and take a mattress cover. When Payne set up the guards, he put men in each corner. The men came back from the front line every two weeks to get fresh clothing.

Carl Payne went to Italy right after the invasion started. They landed in the Port of Rome [Annotator’s Note: Rome, Italy]. They had to take their vans and tractor to set up in Pisa [Annotator’s Note: Pisa, Italy]. If a soldier came back from the front and could not return, one of Payne’s men had to take that soldier’s place. Payne would then have to train the new man on their equipment. The men he had were largely from the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee. They had to get the Italians to accept that they were there to free them. He told them not to be partial to the Germans. When the war ended, they were in Pisa. There was a points system [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to send people home. Payne had to stay until all the reporting was done. They had to account for all the equipment. Payne came home on a Canadian transport ship. He was the only American on the ship.

Carl Payne came home to the naval base in Virginia. He was discharged in Indiantown Gap [Annotator’s Note: Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania], then he took a train to Harrisburg [Annotator’s Note: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania]. His first concern was getting back to school. He used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. He went all the way up to his master's degree in mathematics. He did not have a good philosophy teacher. He did not like lectures. The Socratic method teaches you how to deal with other people. Payne was a teacher and then moved into administration. He was an elementary principal. He does not think veterans are treated as well as they should be, but they did not do it for the pay, they did it out of a sense of duty. The government does not handle the Veteran’s Administration the way it should.