[Annotator's Note: This clip starts with Clayton Hall mid-sentence talking about growing up on a farm.] Clayton Hall graduated from high school on 29 May [Annotator's Note: 29 May 1942]. On 3 June [Annotator's Note: 3 June 1942] he was in Kansas City [Annotator's Note: Kansas City, Missouri] for his experience in the Marine Corps. They were taken to an old hotel overnight. The second day they all went in and lined up for a corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps] who gave them shots and physicals. They were asked if they had scars that could be used for identification. One guy asked if circumcision was a scar. They all laughed. The Marines got on a train to California. He said he wanted to go in the Air Force first and sea-going second as a policeman on a ship. He wanted to be in security in the Air Force or be a tail-gunner. He went through boot camp and was told he was not going into the Air Force because the PBYs [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PBY Catalina] coast patrol was no longer needed. Hall was expert at the machine gun, so he was made a machine gunner in the infantry. He started out carrying ammo. He was assigned aboard ship and did guard duty. Three days later, everybody got sick except the Navy boys who laughed at them. They went across the sea zig-zagging [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] to avoid Japanese submarines. They were on a British luxury liner that had been converted to a troop carrier. They slept in swinging bunks off the wall. They had to help with different seagoing jobs. He was put on a potato machine that peeled them. They made mashed potatoes out of them. Some men made pies and cakes. The Navy supervised them.

Clayton Hall got to New Caledonia [Annotator's Note: New Caledonia, Oceania] and the ship lost a prop [Annotator's Note: propellor]. Frogmen [Annotator's Note: Navy divers] put a new one on. They then went on to Brisbane, Australia. They unloaded there. They then headed towards Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] where Hall was dropped off with several others. Mr. Looney [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] was the Lieutenant that Hall was assigned to in Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division [Annotator's Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division]. His first job was helping to wind up the fighting [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal Campaign, 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. There were a lot of Japanese stragglers in the trees. The points [Annotator's Note: soldier at the head of a patrol] were getting shot. Hall and the men started just shooting up into the trees and they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] would fall out to the ground. They did that for three days to clear the area. They had to unload the metal ammo boxes and take out the tracers [Annotator's Note: bullet with a small incendiary charge that leaves a visible trail when fired to assist with aiming] because they were giving their positions away by using them. They had flare guns to help them see the enemy. The machine guns would be set up in old shell craters. The gun would on the ridge and the men would slide down in the crater. There were eight men in his squad. They had the platoon leader, the gunner, assistant gunner, and ammo carriers. The platoon leader had to set up and say where to put the gun. Hall would come up and set the tripod. The gunner would put the gun in, and Hall would lock it in. Hall then snapped in the belt, locked it in, and cocked the gun. They had been using the air-cooled, .30 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919 .30 caliber air cooled light machine gun], but it got heavy, and they burned up several barrels when firing. They got Guadalcanal pretty well cleared out in six months. It changed hands seven times in those six months. The Americans did not have ships bringing in troops and ammo like the Japanese did. Whether the Japanese ran out of ammunition or starved to death, the Americans finally gained control of the island.

Clayton Hall and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] got on LST-267 [Annotator's Note: the USS LST-267] and went to Australia to Camp Balcombe [Annotator's Note: Balcombe Army Camp, Mount Martha, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia]. The "mastermind" of the 80mm mortars [Annotator's Note: M1 81mm mortar], Lou Diamond [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant Leland "Lou" Diamond], got away with a lot. He would bring goats and baby kangaroos in. They had roll call every morning. When Lou came out of his tent, he might be carrying a monkey while his skivvies [Annotator's Note: slang for underwear]. Another kid's dad was in the USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations, Inc.]. He was young and his folks would send him tennis shoes to wear. Hall's mother would send cookies. At first, they would get mildewy so she started sealing the cans better. If Hall got one or two cookies, he was lucky. They prepared to hit another island and went to a rendezvous area. They learned they were going to land on New Guinea. That is when MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] came. They secured the beach and MacArthur came on and told the Marines to go to the backside of the island. The 81st Wildcats [Annotator's Note: 81st Infantry Division] took over for them. They hit Cape Gloucester [Annotator's Note: Battle of Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Papua, New Guinea, 26 December 1943 to 16 January 1944], New Britain, and other islands and secured them. They then went to Goodenough Island [Annotator's Note: Goodenough Island, Papua New Guinea]. The Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] set up tents for them. They stayed there and got replacements. They then went to hit Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944, Peleliu, Palau] and hit Angaur Island first [Annotator's Note: Battle of Angaur, 17 September to 22 October 1944, Angaur, Palau].

Clayton Hall and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] were in the second wave hitting Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944, Peleliu, Palau]. They were to secure the airport in the north. [Annotator's Note: A phone rings and Hall answers it from 0:24:54.000 to 0:26:02.000.] After the beach landing, they cleared part of the airport and then had to go to Bloody Nose ridge [Annotator's Note: a ridge in the Umurbrogol Mountain on Peleliu]. After the battles, the bulldozers would come in and filled the gun holes [Annotator's Note: at the airport]. Hall looked in his haversack [Annotator's Note: small pack with single shoulder strap]. He had six pairs of socks, underclothes, dinner gear, and poncho. They were pinned down and his haversack got hit. After the area was secured, they got K-rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals]. He had holes in his mess gear. There was a slug [Annotator's Note: spent ammunition] still in it. They went around the ridge, set up, and waited for the other side to be done. The Japanese had trenches where they would fire knee mortars [Annotator's Note: Japanese Type 89 Grenade launcher] and do Banzai charges [Annotator's Note: Japanese human wave attacks] from. The charges were mostly done at night. One hit them. [Annotator's Note: A phone rings and Hall answers it from 0:30:08.000 to 0:31:01.000.] They had to call in flamethrowers [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire]. Flamethrowers take two men to operate. They shoot out rubberized fluid about 40 feet. When it hit, it would burn awhile. The Japanese hollered and screamed when it was on them. They had 60mm mortars [Annotator's Note: M2 60mm mortar] they shot into the trenches too. On the fourth day, one hit his gun position and the platoon leader, the gunner, and Hall were blown out. The first ammo carrier was a little way back. The three were killed. Hall was told he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He had blood coming from his nose, eyes, ears, and mouth from the concussion. The corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps] could nothing with him. He had a concussion and small pieces of shrapnel in his arms and legs. The next day he was put aboard the President Hayes [Annotator's Note: USS President Hayes (APA-20)] which had been converted to a Red Cross ship [Annotator's Note: a hospital ship]. He left towards home. He got to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California], and they could not do anything for him, so he was put on a medical train to Tennessee and then to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] to a Navy Hospital. He was there until he got repaired after about three months. He got a ten-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and then was sent to a reclassification and redistribution center and then to Quantico Marine Base [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia]. They put him back on a train to San Diego to prepare to invade Japan. It took three days to get to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California].

Clayton Hall was at Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California with the 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] where everybody was getting ready for the invasion of Japan. They did a lot of marching and exercising. He went to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], and they heard the armistice was signed [Annotator's Note: with Japan]. The officers on the ship said the men who had four children or more could get off at Guam and go back to get discharged. They then moved on to the next island. Then, those who had two children could get off and go back. Everybody else on the ship were single men and went to Tientsin, China [Annotator's Note: Tientsin, China or Tianjin, China] for occupation duty. Hall was assigned as a guard and overseer of a food train. They had six boxcars of food going up for the troops near Manchuria [Annotator's Note: historical and geographic region of China]. They stopped at small Chinese towns where each regiment was and gave them the food. At the end, they got a day to freshen up. On his second trip, he asked if anyone had a jeep so they could go see the China Wall [Annotator's Note: Great Wall of China]. His helper and he went seven miles to it, but it was a just an area where the wall was to be continued. The Wall was 700 miles long and was made by mules and men. If a man died, he was buried in the wall. The same thing happened to the mules. There was nothing much there. Later, he saw it in National Geographic [Annotator's Note: National Geographic magazine]. His job then was to get back to Tientsin. They received Japanese weapons to take back to headquarters. He made six trips on that line. He got a .32 caliber revolver once. The grips were glass over diamonds like jewelry. It probably belonged to an officer. They found some .32 caliber shells. He fired it a couple of times and wanted to keep it as a souvenir. At headquarters, he was told he was up to go home. Officer Scott [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] told him that he had done an excellent job and asked him to reenlist for four more years. They were offering him a promotion of one rank. He said he would think about it. He said if he did not get the rank right away, he would go home. He was told he had to go on a waiting list, so he went home. He got out at San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. They were selling new jeeps in the motor transport, but he did not have the money to buy one. He got home and his uncle told him he would have sent him the money to buy two.

After returning home, Clayton Hall went to work with an oil company for a week. He then went to work in a harvest field. One Saturday he met a friend who had been in the Army. Some girls were coming out of the theater, and they went to talk to them. One of them had been in class with him in high school. They all went to a ball game that night. Hall offered to take the former classmate home. They visited after that and then dated for about two years before getting engaged. They were married on 2 August 1948. He went to work for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. His wife had two years of college and her father wanted her to finish it. She was teaching school at the time. Her former school principal offered her a job as his secretary. She accepted it. Before they were married, he asked her father for permission to marry her. They were listening to radio programs after dinner, and he asked. That was the old custom. Hall applied to school for engineering. After Hall got consent to marry, they went to the theater and afterwards they went to A&W [Annotator's Note: A&W restaurant, American fast-food chain] to get a root beer float. They did that for the next year. Hall was working at Southwestern Bell. They got married and they both went to school. He went into pre-engineering. He went two summers to trade school to get a full year. When he graduated, there was nothing for him to do at Southwestern Bell. He then got a degree in Education. He accepted a job and spent four years. He moved to Wichita [Annotator's Note: Wichita, Kansas] and spent 31 years teaching.

Clayton Hall was born in Harvey County on a farm near Newton [Annotator's Note: Newton, Kansas]. His father was in World War 1 at Camp Funston which became Fort Riley [Annotator's Note: in Geary and Riley counties, Kansas]. He was a cook for the officers. He started farming after his discharge for two years with poor crops. He then sold his farm equipment and livestock and then the farm itself. Once that happened, the family moved with him. They moved into a house and his mother got a job as a cook. His father cleaned coaches and then became in inspector of trains and an oiler. Hall was born in April 1924. He was 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was in school, and his future wife was in his class. They discussed current events each day. Everybody was excited and asking why it happened at Pearl Harbor. It was terrible and everybody was ready to go to war. They made food to feed the boys on the troop trains that came through. Hall graduated on 25 May [Annotator's Note: 25 May 1942] and on 3 June [Annotator's Note: 3 June 1942] he went to register to draft with a friend. He told them he was ready to go. He wanted the Marine Corps. He took the train to Kansas City [Annotator's Note: Kansas City, Missouri]. They were taken to an old hotel. A friend of his and he decided they wanted to see action and be a part of it. One guy had quit school early and joined the Army. He was killed overseas. His school had a program like ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] for those who were interested in enlisting every day. When he and his friend graduated, they both volunteered. His friend learned Morse Code [Annotator's Note: a method of telecommunication encoding characters in a system of dots and dashes] and worked in the signal towers during the war with aircraft. The friend was sent to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] and then came home. Hall chose the Marine Corps because it was more organized and was gung-ho. He would do it over again if he had to.

Clayton Hall went to boot camp in San Diego [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in San Diego, California]. He had all kinds of training. They spent a week at the rifle range with the M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He fired the .03 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber Model 1903, or M1903, Springfield bolt action rifle] too. The M1s were in Cosmoline [Annotator's Note: name for petroleum-based corrosion inhibitors], and they had a half day to clean them. He fired the .03, the M1, the Thompson sub [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun], machine gun, pistol, and learned to throw hand grenades. They practiced on coyotes. He always carried two hand grenades in combat. He was given the carbine and it was nice weapon. It was good for rabbit shooting up to 200 yards. He fired sharpshooter on everything, including the .30 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919 .30 caliber air cooled light machine gun]. They had to swim every day and tread water for an hour. They once had to be fully dressed and packed and jump in water. He always unlaced his shoes so he could get out of them in a hurry if he went in the water. In the water, you would use your pants as a flotation device. They had to swim 300 yards for distance. Learning to control his body and taking clothes off and on was tricky. He had done calisthenics on the farm under direction of his father. It helped in certain ways when he went in the Marines. All farm boys were in better shape than others in boot camp. Hall enjoyed the rifle range. Tyrone Power [Annotator's Note: Tyrone Edmund Power, III; American actor, United States Marine] pulled the butts [Annotator's Note: pulling targets on a weapons range] for Hall and then Hall did the same for Power. Hall did not know who he was at the time.

Clayton Hall and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] had to go down a rope ladder to get off the ship [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Papua, New Guinea, 26 December 1943 to 16 January 1944]. They went into the water and waded in. It was scary because the Japanese were firing, and the bullets were flying. Later, they got half-tracks [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks]. If you were in the front, you were a riddled man [Annotator's Note: slang for being shot many times]. Then they started getting out in the back and coming up from the sides. He never thought one day was better than the other one. There were some trees on Gloucester, but most were riddled by shells. After the war, the Marine Corps sponsored a trip to go to every island that Marines hit. It cost 4,000 dollars so he could not go. He would have liked to go on that. He wonders what Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Peleliu, Palau] looked like now. Peleliu was a hard-fought one [Annotator's Note: Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944, Peleliu, Palau]. Its terrain was different from Gloucester's. You could not dig in on Peleliu and in the rainy season, the water would run everywhere. Thirty minutes after the rain stopped, the water was gone. The Japanese had all kinds of bunkers that you could not get into from the front. You had to get them on top or from behind. When he went ashore, he thought all hell had broken loose. He wondered why anyone wanted to be on that island. You could not get off without fighting to get off. He learned that if you took two metal ammo boxes and used them for head protection, you had to make sure the bullets inside were pointed at the enemy. If a round went off, they all went off. Hall does not know where the shell came from [Annotator's Note: that wounded him]. His first day on Peleliu was not any different than for any other of the boys. He saw the shells hitting people. A lot of the landing craft were blasted out in the water. It was terrible to see bodies strung all over. Mike Cardoe [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] was from New York and got killed. The 1st Division all seemed to be people from Pennsylvania and New York. He was from the country, and they all thought he still rode horses.

Clayton Hall was pinned down [Annotator's Note: with Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] on the edge of the airport [Annotator's Note: during the first night of the Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944, Peleliu, Palau]. He used ammo canisters for bullets as his only protection. The Japanese would try to fire just a few feet above the ground. Your legs would be riddled [Annotator's Note: slang for shot many times], you would fall, and they would then riddle your body. He never saw any tanks. He only saw American bulldozers that would wreck everything they came across. They made a second airport there. It was the shortest strip and only 500 yards. They would take off and drop their bombs on Bloody Nose ridge [Annotator's Note: nickname for a ridge on the Umurbrogol Mountain on Peleliu]. He did not have too much trouble with the lack of water. They had iodine capsules to purify the water. It was hot there even in the rainy season. He was wounded on the fourth day there. He was manning a gun. He does not know how many [Annotator's Note: Japanese] he hit because of the distance. You watch where your bullet hits, but it could be brush or something else. A person normally yells. Hall thought it was ridiculous for two countries to be fighting one another. It is like what they do now [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview] in Iraq [Annotator's Note: Iraq War, 2003 to 2011]. The head guy [Annotator's Note: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, fifth President of Iraq] was a banty rooster [Annotator's Note: slang for Bantam rooster, meaning "cocky"], but he does not think they had the atomic bomb. Hall was under shell fire all the time. You just had to weave through that to not get hit. If you were laying prone on your belly, you prayed to God that it did not hit. The shell that wounded him hit right among he and the men. Hall did not get the full blast as he was manning the belts of the gun for the gunner. The platoon leader, the gunner, and the first ammo carrier were killed. Hall was blown out. They were afraid that his ear drums were broken from the blast. They temporarily could do nothing for him.

After the war, Clayton Hall's mother used to tell him that she would hear him in the night hollering that they needed more ammo or that they needed a corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps]. They always needed corpsmen. He took Atabrine [Annotator's Note: proprietary name for mepacrine or quinacrine, antimalarial drug] for malaria [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite] even after he was discharged. He could get it refilled at the VA [Annotator's Note: United States Department of Veterans Affairs; also referred to as the Veterans Administration], but he did not. Hall was in China for six months [Annotator's Note: with the 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division]. The Japanese were all gone. His barracks in Tientsin [Annotator's Note: Tientsin, China or Tianjin, China] was a Japanese school. They hired two young men who would work for them. He did not give much thought to being there. They were told that every person in Australia had false teeth by the time they were 21 because of the water not being treated. They had nothing for fun in China. He slept and cleaned his weapons. He did not bring them home with him. He learned right away that you do not call a rifle a gun. Hall returned to the United States around March 1946. They did not keep track as they did not have calendars. He was discharged around the end of March 1946. 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] for college all the way through. He would never have been able to go to college without the Bill. There were nine kids in his family. One sister was born after he went into the service. He asked his father why the farmers had large families. He told him that they had to do that because they could not hire help. Hall was the third of the nine children.

Clayton Hall's most memorable experience of the war is fighting and wondering what he would be doing if he ever got out. He thought about it quite a bit. He never thought about college at first. He never doubted he would make it home. Hall fought because he wanted to help the world get settled and get it over with. There always has to be two people at least from either side that cannot get along. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] wanted to dominate the world. Life after the war was hard at first. He could not find work or things. War is the experimental time for new things though. His service means a lot to him. Some Americans think okay of the war, and some do not. There is a different breed of people nowadays. It is important for every war to be taught so the youth has some kind of experience of what war is. No one wants war, but they do happen. There are those who want to go. It is like Kennedy [Annotator's Note: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States] said, "ask what you can do for your country" [Annotator's Note: from Kennedy's inaugural address 20 January 1961].