Charles Stix was born in March 1925. His great-grandfather came to Cincinnati [Annotator's Note: Cincinnati, Ohio] from Bavaria, Germany in 1840. Stix's whole family has been there ever since. He went to a boy's camp in Minnesota founded by a minister from Dayton, Ohio. Everything in the camp, like the pup tents and canoes, was from World War 1. The camp had no hot water, sewage, or ice. It was very rustic. Stix spent five summers there and learned a lot about living outside. They would take canoe trips into Canada. Stix then worked on a ranch in New Mexico as a cowboy. The idea for that camp was to build a school for the Spanish-Americans who lived in San Cristobal [Annotator's Note: San Cristobal, New Mexico]. He learned a great deal. On 7 December 1941, he played a football game and had a fraternity meeting afterwards. Somebody had a radio and said Pearl Harbor had been attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Everybody asked where Pearl Harbor was. In high school, he wondered what he would do at age 17. A lot of his friends were joining the Navy to stay out of combat, or the Army Quartermasters to stay out of combat, or the Merchant Marine. Stix joined the Marines at age 17 on 5 February 1943 because he wanted to kill Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. That was his decision-making process at that time. The Marine Corps had the V-12 program [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946]. He went to the University of Rochester, New York for that on 1 July 1943 after graduating from high school. He was put into advanced subjects he had no training for and flunked out. He was sent to Parris Island, South Carolina [Annotator's Note: in January 1944] and was assigned to a platoon of 50 men, 25 of them could not read or write. Stix was ready to go into the Marine Corps and combat. After boot camp, he went into combat intelligence at Camp Lejeune [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina] and graduated. He was offered another school but he turned it down. He volunteered to go to jungle warfare training. At Lejeune, he was in gas mask training and could not clear his mask. He never did learn to use it. He thanks God he never had to.

In Combat Intelligence school they learned to analyze and creep up on Japanese emplacements, the types of troops, type of units, types of weapons and vehicles. After the school, Charles Stix was put on a train with 10,000 troops to Norfolk, Virginia. The USS Baxter (APA-94) was built for 1,200 men. They boarded and had to go into the hull where the bunks were stacked. They went through the Panama Canal and to the Pacific. A destroyer circled them until they reached Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. They left on 15 June [Annotator's Note: 15 June 1944] and got to Pearl Harbor on 7 July. Stix was not assigned and had to be interviewed. They looked at his record and saw that he had driven a truck and gone through Combat Intelligence school. He thinks his last name saved his life. The replacement group of last names "A" through "H" went before his group. The guys he went through school with had gone to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Battle of Saipan, Mariana Islands; 15 June to 9 July 1944] and the invasion of Tinian [Annotator's Note: Battle of Tinian, 24 July to 1 August 1944, Mariana Islands] and most of them did not survive. Since his name began with "S", he was in the latter group and lived. He went to Pavuvu in the Russell Islands where the 1st Marine Division was forming. When he left Pearl Harbor, he boarded an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and was put into the kitchen as a pot walloper [Annotator's Note: dish washer]. They had no hot water. He had to steam the pots. The LST is flat bottomed and would roll. He would hit the hot pipe and burn his arm. He landed on Pavuvu and was assigned to Company D, 3rd Armored Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division. He had nothing to do and the prime jobs were taken. He had to go into the tank park every day and clean out the coconuts that had fallen the night before. Broken coconuts made a bad stench. He was unassigned when they went to Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Peleliu, Palau]. They had maneuvers off of Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] first. The most beautiful night he ever spent was sitting on a barrel of airplane fuel on the LST under the moon.

Charles Stix took an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] to the invasion of Peleliu [Annotator’s Note: Peleliu, Palau] on 15 September 1944. He spent D+1 [Annotator's Note: one day after the day of the invasion; in this case, 16 September 1944] and D+2 in the radio shack, listening to the communications and watching the action. It was a horrible scene. He kept telling his Lieutenant he wanted to go ashore. He did on D+3 in a Higgins boat [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP]. When he landed, the sea was full of dead bodies, mostly Japanese. The 1st Marine Division headquarters was close. Stix saw Colonel Boyers [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Kimber H. Boyer], their commanding officer and asked him where he wanted him to go. He told him to find a tank and get on it. Stix did that. That night, he realized he left his toothbrush on the LST. He had to brush his teeth with his finger and saltwater. That is not too bad to have that be the worst thing that happened to him. After he was there a couple of days, he was assigned to a .30-caliber, air-cooled machinegun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919 .30 caliber air cooled light machine gun] with two others. They went up for a line of defense with a swamp on their right. They were afraid of Japanese infiltration into the lines. He would toss hand grenades into the swamp to hit any Nips [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] who might come up. None did. Their guns were too far away to hit any Japanese who were up in caves. They were more worried about the Marines' artillery rounds falling short than they were about the Japanese. One night, one did try to infiltrate their camp but a machine gunner up the line got him immediately. One night in his foxhole, Stix thought he heard something crawling but it was only a land crab. They spent a week or two on the line. The mountain on Peleliu was huge and the Japanese had been there since about 1914. You could not see them. They would come out and shoot and then go back in the caves. They had their big guns on tracks behind metal doors. The only way they could get them was with flamethrowers and satchel charges [Annotator's Note: explosive device usually carried in a bag or satchel] dropped into the caves. He came back for a rest. He was told to wash his clothes with saltwater soap. They had to hang them to dry and guard them to prevent people from stealing their uniforms. Towards the end, he was assigned to the Army 81st Infantry Division that had come in as a back-up to the 1st Marine Division. Colonel Chesty Puller [Annotator's Note: then US Marine Corps Colonel, later Lieutenant General, Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller] was a hero there.

[Annotator's Note: Charles Stix served in the US Marine Corps in Company D, 3rd Armored Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division and took part in the Battle of Peleliu.] Stix was assigned as a stretcher-bearer. He got to the top of a hill and an Army lieutenant told him to dig him a foxhole. Stix told him it was solid coral and that since he was Army, he had no authority over him and told him to get lost. That was the end of his time with Army brass [Annotator's Note: slang term for officers]. One day, he took out an Army lieutenant whose jaw had been shot away. He kept telling them not to go so fast and he was fine. They took him to where they had a line that could lower down the stretchers to be taken to a hospital ship. After they secured Peleliu, they took an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] back to Pavuvu [Annotator's Note: Pavuvu, Russell Islands] and started training for the invasion of Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. Stix thought he was stupid because he was trained in intelligence. He went to the headquarters tent and told them he was trained to be an intelligence observer and said he wanted a constructive job. He was assigned to be a company clerk in DC-3, intelligence, and prepared for the battle of Okinawa. Before he left, they had Thanksgiving dinner. This was in November 1944. He had not had hot food for months. They did not know it was all spoiled and 900 of them got sick. The land crabs were bad too. They would make nests in their boots. On the way to Okinawa, they formed up at Ulithi [Annotator's Note: Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands] with the Army and Navy. The first night was exciting. Stix went up on deck and heard all the ships in the harbor. You could walk across the ocean from one ship to another. There was one Japanese bomber flying high overhead and every gun on every ship was aimed at it. Pretty soon a puff of smoke came out and it was like being at a football game the guys were so excited.

When Charles Stix went into Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] on a Higgins boat [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP], there was no opposition. They dug their foxholes. He heard the drone of engines and thought it was American planes. It was Japanese airplanes. They got in their tanks and drove to Bolo Point. There, they heard that Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had died on the tank's radio. It was very emotional. This was the only leader they had ever known. They worked their way down the island creating all the intelligence they could. Stix survived because he was in the tank battalion. On the way to Naha [Annotator's Note: Naha, Okinawa, Japan], they stopped where there was a small airstrip where the Japanese used to have observer planes. They camped in a sweet potato patch. One night, in his foxhole with a buddy, he woke up and saw tracers coming in from the ocean. He went back to sleep. Only in the morning did he learn the Japanese had attempted a landing. He had slept through the whole thing. He went to the command tent and Lieutenant Parker [Annotator's Note: no given name provided; unable to verify identity] asked him where he was. He told him nobody woke him up. Fortunately, he was not court-martialed. They cleared out the insurgents around Naha and left Okinawa. Stix took a transport to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], dodging a hurricane. This was 1945. When they got to Guam, the Marine Corps took away their tanks and made them a Duck [Annotator's Note: DUKW; six-wheel-drive amphibious truck] battalion, the 20th Amphibian Truck Battalion [Annotator's Note: unable to verify unit].

Charles Stix left Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] after the atomic bombs [Annotator’s Note: Nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] and landed in Sasebo, Japan on the southernmost island. They were in a large, seaplane hangar. Stix walked the beach where they would have landed had there been an invasion. Stix says he would not be alive today if we had not dropped those bombs and had to invade. Sasebo was practically destroyed. Their job was to take the Ducks [Annotator's Note: DUKW; six-wheel-drive amphibious truck] back and forth from ship to shore moving things. They had trouble with the tires. The rubber was deteriorating due to the heat. Stix was there for about three months. He had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] in January [Annotator's Note: January 1946] to come back to the States aboard an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. He was still a private. They had not promoted any of them the whole time. They had a blanket promotion coming back. They landed and he could see the shoreline of San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. Tears were streaming. He saw there was a Red Cross canteen on the sand. He loved milk and had not had any for 18 months. He rushed ashore and asked for a glass of milk. He was so nervous he spilled it. He was assigned to take a 6 by 6 [Annotator's Note: two and a half ton, six by six truck, also known as deuce and a half] to Camp Matthews, a rifle range in San Diego. He was close to 20 in an open cab going through the pristine streets of San Diego and he was in heaven. Then he had no brakes. He made it to Camp Matthews and went back to the ship. He took another 6 by 6 to Camp Matthews and it died at the gate. That was the last trip he made. He went back to the ship and was taken in a van to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, San Diego County, California]. He was still a private, but he should have been a sergeant in Combat Intelligence. He liked Camp Pendleton and had one liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in San Diego which he enjoyed. He took a train to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] to get his discharge. A lieutenant told him if he signed up for four more years, they would make him a sergeant. He said no and that was the end of his Marine Corps experience.

After he got home, Charles Stix started at the University of Cincinnati [Annotator's Note: Cincinnati, Ohio] immediately under the G.I. Bill and stayed for three years. He married his high school sweetheart. He was the news editor of the school paper. The Marine Corps sent him money that helped him buy food. After he graduated, he went to work making women's shoes. He retired and became a manufacturer's representative. The Marine Corps prepared him for life. It was the greatest experience he ever had. He thinks there should be compulsory training for two years for every man and woman. They can learn how to be good citizens and have the ability to have a good life. He feels that now most who sign up for the military are not even qualified to be recruits. He has attended reunions of his battalions. They were enjoyable. Evansville, Indiana has the only LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] that is still floatable. When he was in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California], he was able to get aboard the USS Peleliu (LHA-5). As a student at the University of Cincinnati, the Navy had a Naval Cadet Aviation program in Pensacola [Annotator's Note: Pensacola, Florida]. Stix was asked if he would like to join students on a trip. He flew to Pensacola and interviewed the cadets. They went out to a carrier and were put into officer's country [Annotator's Note: section of a naval vessel where the ship's officers live]. He had been a private overseas and here he was in officer's quarters. That was a thrill. One year, he and his wife went to Huntsville, Alabama. They were having lunch when some officers came in. He started to stand up at attention and then realized he did not have to anymore.