Fred Arthur Balfour was born in August 1923, in Glens Falls, New York. He lived there until he was 12 years old. When his grandfather passed away he was moved to the family farm. It was a dairy farm. He went to school in a centralized system. He graduated in 1941. His brother Walt graduated in 1942. He was a senior in high school when the president [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] declared war against the Japanese [Annotator's Note: after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His father served in World War 1 and was disabled. His brother Warren went into the Army after he graduated. He served in D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Balfour took over the family farm and his brother Walt worked on another farm nearby. He and Walt would go to town to dance with the girls. There were more girls than boys because all the men had been shipped out. He and Walt decided to join the Marines. They went to Albany [Annotator's Note: Albany, New York] to sign up, but the quota was full. The recruiter said he could join the Army. He did not want to be in the Army. His father had been in the Army and his brother was in the Army. The recruiter said he could join the Navy, so that is what he did. His brother Walt enlisted in the Navy as well. They went to Sampson, New York [Annotator's Note: Naval Training Station Sampson in Seneca Lake, New York]. There were 104 men in their company. They had no trouble with the obstacle course. They thought it was fun. The seabag all packed weighed 100 pounds. He enjoyed his basic training. He learned to tie knots in the Boy Scouts [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America, scouting and youth organization founded in 1910].

Fred Arthur Balfour went into service in 1944. He went to Electrician Mate's school in Bainbridge, New York. They needed people to go to Motion Picture Technician School. His older brother Warren became an engineer. They worked on the 16-millimeter films. They had a two-week period where they learned to make recordings on the two-inch tape [Annotator's Note: two-inch quadruplex videotape], which was useless because it did not hold up in the heat or the cold. They were brittle when they got cold and would stretch when they were hot. They had developed a mile-long film out of 35-millimeter film. They were 5,000 feet long and they could record up to 10 miles. They would hold up because they were put in a case when they were done. He kept up with the war through the newspapers and the newsreels. He got notice he was being transferred to Washington, DC to the Pentagon [Annotator's Note: the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, located in Washington D.C.]. They had a jeep waiting for him the next morning to catch a bus. They had badges indicating where they needed to be. They put him through interrogation to get his badge and his assignment. He was assigned to a specific section, and he was not allowed to go to another section. He was in room 12 with a sergeant who was a WAC [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps; women's branch of the US Army, 1942-1978]. He was supposed to sit there and wait. He was bored. He waited the whole day and nothing. This went on for several days. He asked questions and the sergeant told him his job was to wait. Eventually, a representative from each branch showed up. One morning they all decided to be late. The SPs [Annotator's Note: support officers] would show up and make sure they went in. This was the day they were supposed to be there, and they were not there. They could not go to eat unless they spoke in German. They were given a German-English book. The next day they had to go to an auditorium. They were introduced to General Douglas [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. He told them they were the Landing Craft Nucleus [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] for invading Germany and occupation. They covered a big territory. They were told what they would be up against. The next day he went back to Bainbridge, Maryland and they went to Newfoundland [Annotator's Note: Newfoundland, Canada]. They were supposed to fly to Europe, but fog prevented that. They flew back to the United States. They left on the RMS Queen Mary. There were 100 of them in the compartment. He grabbed the bottom row of the first seat. There were 18,000 men on board. As they made their way out to sea the water was rough, and people were getting sick. He switched to the top bunk. It was hot, but no one threw up on him. They could shower whenever they wanted, but it was warmed-up seawater. He felt worse after he took the shower. It was not a comfortable ship. They could eat whenever they wanted. He ate well. There was mutton, lamb, and tea. It took five and a half days to cross to Scotland. They picked up an escort about 200 miles outside of Scotland. They passed a scuttle boat and thought it was the enemy, but it was Americans.

Fred Arthur Balfour went to Scotland [Annotator's Note: Glasgow, Scotland] and then on to England. He was on the base for two days and then he was sent to London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. When he got to London, he turned in his orders. They had been looking for him. They told him he was supposed to be there a month ago. He was assigned to the Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] staff [Annotator's Note: SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force]. They had a lot of work waiting for him. He worked for the staff by making recordings and showing motion pictures. They were mostly for entertainment. If they sent a confidential film, they would send it with a guy from the Pentagon[ Annotator's Note: the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, located in Washington D.C.] with a .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] strapped to his side and he had to protect it with his life. The British did not like them very much. They said the Americans were overpaid and oversexed. There were many servicemen there. He had a lot of respect for the British. He would pick films up from the Navy and show them. It was usually at night in a smoky room. He would set the 16-millimeter projectors in the alleyway between the two sides. 150 people could sit in there. Most of the time they were not sober. He would show the movies to them and then pick up his equipment and take it back to the headquarters. They did not show a movie unless the General [Annotator's Note: General Eisenhower] was there. They had a guy show up from the Pentagon with his film. He would not open it up. Everyone was there from the staff. It was a 15-minute film. He put it on the machine, and he saw that it had to be washed or it would break. He told one of Eisenhower's aids and the aid told him to run it anyway. He followed orders. He ran the film and it snapped. The guy with the .45 pulled out his gun and said he broke his tape. Balfour put his hands up and backed away. The MPs [Annotator's Note: Military Police] came over to see what the problem was. The guy told them the film broke and he was supposed to protect it with his life. The captain came back to them, and Balfour told him he could not run the film. The captain told him it was his job to follow orders, but the film broke so he could not show it. Eisenhower became impatient and he came down. He asked what the problem was. He told Balfour to go wash it and bring it back. Eisenhower told the guy to put his gun away and he told the MPs to lock him up. The film was from the Pacific theater and was the first film attached to a gun. Each time they took a shot it took a picture.

Fred Arthur Balfour was in London [Annotator's Note: London, England with SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] when he was told he was going to Germany. His base was decommissioned, and he went up there to pick up all the film and recording equipment. He had to put it on the train to go to London. All the other equipment like the jeeps were dumped into the North Sea. They had a squadron of PT boats [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boat] they were using to practice for an invasion. The United States gave the PT boats to the Russians. The guys getting off the boats were mad they were giving up their ship. They confiscated some carbine rifles [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine] and they started shooting at the Russians as they were pulling out with their boats. Balfour was sent to Monty's Annotator's Note: British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery] camp in Southern England. They slept on the ground which was unusual after having a bed every day. He was attached to 126 Crew [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] which was a special unit invasion crew for Germany. There were 20 of them in the unit. He did not know anyone on the crew. Some of them were Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions]. They were told they would be moving out the next day. Balfour did not bother unpacking. They marched them down the next morning to tugboats. When he realized he was going across the Channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel], he knew he needed to hang on because the water would be rough. He tied himself and his seabag to the rope railing. The other men made fun of him. They did not lose any personnel, but they lost a lot of equipment. They landed in Belgium. They unloaded and had to walk up an incline to the side of a mountain. There was an explosion. The ship they had just unloaded had blown up. They said it was a bomb in the mud. The churning of the ships coming in had loosened it. The crew and several other people were killed. This was his introduction to the war. When he was in London, they were walking to Piccadilly Circus [Annotator's Note: Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, England] when a guy told them to get inside because a V2 [Annotator's Note: German Vergeltungswaffe 2, or Retribution Weapon 2, ballistic missile] was coming. They did not worry about it. The concussion blew into their faces and gave them each a bloody nose. The V2 would scare you when you heard them, but they were more of a noisemaker than a destroyer.

Fred Arthur Balfour [Annotator's Note: with SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] was building huts on top of a hill after being assigned to a Canadian outfit. They were going to go by land to Germany. It was 1945. They went 300 miles. There were many displaced people coming and going. Moving prisoners required two GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] to watch them. The Germans did not try to run because they had nowhere to go. Balfour's brother Warren was fighting in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter-Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] about 100 miles away. They could hear the battle happening. His brother was captured by the Germans and was a prisoner of war for a few days. Balfour was not involved with the front, which was south of them. They were in charge of the replacements. There were many people on the roads. They went on a run that was supposed to last all day, but they came up to a river that did not have a bridge across it. They made a pontoon bridge, but the day before a tank tried to go across it and it flipped over. All the people on board died. As it went over it cut all the lines that controlled the pontoon bridges. They had to re-cable all the bridges in order to cross. They were there for two or three days waiting for them to fix the bridges. They made good time. When they made it to Holland, they were tired of drinking slime water. They called it that because they had to put pills in it in order to drink it. They found some farmers that spoke German. They had a well, but they did not have enough water to give it to all the people. They told him they would give him a pack of cigarettes for the water. He agreed and gave them a bucket. They got fresh water right out of the spring. The people were glad to see them. There were thousands of displaced people and prisoners. The prisoners did not try to get away because they had no place to go, they were no longer fighting, and they might get something to eat. When they took over a submarine base, they left two guys there to keep watch. Then they went on to a naval base and left four people there. Then they moved on to Bremen, Germany and took that over. Balfour was in Bremen on 7 May 1945 when the war came to an end.

Fred Arthur Balfour [Annotator's Note: with SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] thought the war was over before it was. There were happy about it being over. They knew it was coming. He was in the Welfare and Recreation Department. It was his job to supply baseball bats and anything they needed for entertainment. He showed movies at night to the officers in their quarters. A courier would bring things that were mimeographed [Annotator's Note: a form of duplication]. There was one that said, "no fraternization." They thought it was funny to take over a country and not talk to the people. They hired people to work for them. The base had Germans doing the cleaning there as well. The Germans did not know what was going on. Anything was better than what they had. He was in Bremen, Germany. The British had moved into the area next to them. They made a request to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] for someone to set up a movie theatre for them. He knew people in London, and they were sending him on a special assignment with 126 Wing [Annotator's Note: 126 Wing, Royal Canadian Air Force]. They took over horse stables and he brought his film equipment in there. Some British and Germans set it up for him. He did some work with two other units. He repaired their equipment for them. He showed pictures to the officers. When they first got there no one was in charge of the harbor. They needed someone that could speak both English and German. There was a commandant that was the harbormaster. The harbormaster took them out on a sailboat to Guernsey Island [Annotator's Note: Guernsey (island), Bailiwick of Guernsey (dependent state), Channel Islands, United Kingdom] and they sailed back. Every weekend after that they were out on the sailboat. He told them if they went overboard, they had to pray they would get picked up. It was rough out in the ocean. The first one over was a lieutenant. The wind had caught the sail and it came back and flipped him overboard. One man had to watch for his head to bob up. They had to take care of the boat first. An hour and 20 minutes later they picked him up. He had almost frozen to death. Balfour went overboard once and was saved after about 45 minutes.

Fred Arthur Balfour [Annotator's Note: SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] was going to be sent to Bremerhaven [Annotator's Note: Bremerhaven, Germany] because his base was being decommissioned. They were constantly cutting the base down and transferring people to different places. The British navy took over their base and they did not want anything left on it. They had to get rid of all of their stuff. They moved it all to Bremen [Annotator's Note: Bremen, Germany] and stored it in fields. He and his new lieutenant did not get along. The lieutenant expected a certain authority to be given and Balfour did not do it. The lieutenant was green. He told the lieutenant how he always did things and the lieutenant told him that was not how they were going to be doing it. Balfour called London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. He was under Commodore Robins [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] at that time. Balfour told him who he was, and that he was not getting along with Lieutenant Lockwood [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. The Commodore told him he would check, and then he told him his orders were to go to Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg, Germany]. There would be a plane there to pick him up at the airport. Balfour did not know how he would get away with it. The next morning he snuck away from the lieutenant. Someone missed him. The lieutenant sent out a squad to look for him. They got to the airport where Balfour had boarded his plane. Men in jeeps rolled up and said the plane could not leave. They were told they were under orders from London [Annotator's Note: London, England] to take off. The lieutenant was mad. Balfour got to Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: in December 1945] and was taken to the headquarters of the trials [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, military tribunals Nuremberg, Germany, 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946], which had started in November. Balfour was sworn in. He met Major Vincent [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] who was a civilian in charge of the department. There were four civilians working in the department. They were experts in sound and recording were on loan to the government. The company they worked for paid their full salary, and the Army was paying them too. Balfour was assigned to film. They recorded on film that was one mile long. Then they would put it into a container so it would last a long time. Then he was transferred to recording in a different department. They recorded everything from the trials in English, French, and Russian. He would label the recordings with his initials and the date and then he would file them. One copy was for the tribunal, and the other copies were collected once a week and sent to the Pentagon [Annotator's Note: the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, located in Washington D.C.]. The French, British, and Russians were all recording the trials as well. If something happened to their equipment, they would come to the Americans to make up for what they lost.

Fred Arthur Balfour [Annotator's Note: with SHAEF – Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] would watch the prisoners being brought in each morning [Annotator's Note: at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, military tribunals Nuremberg, Germany, 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946]. There was an elevator that held three people. They would put one prisoner with two guards in there. When the prisoner got off, they would leave one guard in there. The other guard would go back down to bring more prisoners up. They did this until they had all 20 prisoners up there. There were eight judges up on the stand. Some technicians that would go into the tribunal to check to make sure they could hear it. They would signal the control room that they could hear it. When the prisoners were in there, they would go over to the prison box, and he would make a hand signal next to his ear and they were supposed to respond with okay if they could hear. He did not do that every day. They wanted to ask one prisoner what they would have done if they captured Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States]. The man said they would have taken him out and shot him which is what they should have done to them. He said they stripped them of everything and degraded them way below their ranks. Hess [Annotator's Note: Rudolf Walter Richard Hess; German politician, Deputy Fuhrer 1933-1941] would never answer, and he would keep his head down. He lived until he was 90 something years old. He was the last one in there and it cost them a lot of money to keep him there. The Russians thought they should have shot them. The French and British disagreed. Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] did not want to have a big trial and waste all the money on it. Balfour was there up until the final summations. He was there until they went to recess, and the judges would decide what they were going to do to the prisoners. Afterwards, Balfour was discharged with 110 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]. They would not release him. He wanted to go home at the same time his brother did. He went to the man in charge when his brother was leaving on the HMS Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth] from Bremerhaven [Annotator's Note: Bremerhaven, Germany]. He went to Jackson's [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] office and told him the day he needed transportation. Jackson took care of it for him. He had authority because he was assigned by Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. When Balfour arrived, they had already pulled up the gangplank. He was going to have to go up a ladder for personnel. He needed to get his gear up there too. They threw a net down for his gear. When he got to the top a British lieutenant yelled at him that he was late.

Fred Arthur Balfour was told to find his own way on board [Annotator's Note: after the war ended and arriving at his ship home]. Eventually, he found his brother. His brother was sick until they reached land. They took a bus to Myrtle Beach [Annotator's Note: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina]. His family knew they were coming. Walter had called them. They were there for four or five days because they ran out of discharge papers. Usually, the guys that got held up had to go to sickbay. His brother in the Army had returned home after he was in Europe for six or seven months. His brother Warren became an engineer and worked for Douglas Aircraft [Annotator's Note: Douglas Aircraft Company]. He and his brother Walt went to school. Walt became a teacher. They used the GI 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 and his brother Walt were not in the actual war. Balfour came home and raised a family. The government did not owe him anything. If he had to go again, he would. His oldest brother did not go because he was in ministry school at the time. His father was proud of all of them.