George Kays was born in July 1915 on a farm outside of Cambridge, Ohio. He went to school in a two-room school. In 1929, he started high school in Cambridge. He is 102 years old. He was the oldest of four children. He had two brothers and a sister. He went to college on 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]. It was hard to make a living on the farm. His dad worked in a steel mill. He kept their farm through the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. His mother was a housewife. She was a good cook and a good mother. Kays joined the National Guard in February 1938, and his unit was activated in September 1940. They went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He got married on 1 November 1941. He was a corporal. His outfit was transferred to Texas. He was accepted into an officer candidate school. He was sent to Fort Sill [Annotator’s Note: Fort Sill, Oklahoma]. His wife stayed in Texas. She had a job at a hospital. He graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was in charge of locating the guns. They had to be able to shoot accurately. They moved to Texas in February 1942. He was assigned to C Battery. He was a reconnaissance officer. They were sent to Florida. They were in charge of the defense of the coast of Florida. They were in Florida from Easter to Thanksgiving 1943.

George Kays was transferred from Florida to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. When they got to Fort Bragg [Annotator’s Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] they got eight-inch guns. They were sent on a special mission. His butt caught fire because a shell hit a tree near him. They had the target between them and the guns. He saw an anti-aircraft gun shoot down one of their planes. He called the weapon in. He called the fire direction center. They were in charge of all the guns in the area. The field artillery gave each battalion two planes. They were single-engine. They flew along the front. They had to be careful not to go too far across the front. They had to know how far the target was and how fast their shell would get to the target. [Annotator’s Note: Kays talks about how they calculated their shots.]

George Kays was with the 136th Field Artillery [Annotator’s Note: 136th Field Artillery Regiment, 37th Infantry Division] when he heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He got married on 1 November 1941 thinking his time in the service would be up in February. After the attack, that was not the case. His wife came down to stay close to him, then they were transferred to Texas. Then he went to Fort Sill [Annotator’s Note: Fort Sill, Oklahoma] where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. His unit was deployed in June right after D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They had to pack their tools for their eight-inch guns. Kays was the officer put in charge of making sure everything was packed. They went overseas aboard the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth]. They left New York and landed in western Scotland. There were 18,000 men aboard the ship. They spent five weeks in Wales. In the evenings, they would go down to a local bar. Kays would talk to the locals at the bar. They did not fraternize too much because they spent most of their time on the base. They had classes. They got on LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] to go to Omaha Beach [Annotator’s Note: one of the landing sites of D-Day]. They beached the LSTs at low tide. They could drive right off the LSTs. Their first taste of combat was in a beach town northeast of Normandy. Shells were hitting all over the beach. Kays was lucky not to get hit. His jeep was a block away. His jeep was his home for several months.

George Kays carried a 45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He also carried a camera. They spent two nights in Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France]. The French people were welcoming. Kays studied French in high school. At the beginning of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Kays was pulled out because they wanted to make sure they were not in a dangerous situation. As soon as it was under control, they joined the fight again. They were on the southeastern side of the Bulge. The fire direction center was set up in a house. They had their map set up on a table. When it thawed, it was muddy and made it difficult to set up the gun. The supply officer told them he could not get winter clothes. Kays flew up around the edge of the Bulge. They could see a trench that they knew was not theirs. They went back and bombed them with hand grenades.

It took George Kays’ unit [Annotator’s Note: 136th Field Artillery Regiment, 37th Infantry Division] 48 hours to set up. The line got out of reach. The headquarters was in a wine cellar nearby. Kays would get a bottle of wine with his mail. [Annotator’s Note: Kays talks about encountering slave laborers.] They interviewed German soldiers after the war because they were looking for SS soldiers [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS]. Kays was in charge of 300,000 German POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. He had to take one thousand men to the Dachau Camp [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany]. Kays had a tour of Dachau. He saw the trench for blood to flow from the men who had been shot. Eventually, they were sent to keep Patton’s [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] forward headquarters clean. They also had to clean Patton’s living quarters. They traveled from Munich [Annotator’s Note: Munich, Germany] to Le Havre [Annotator’s Note: Le Havre, France] when it was time to go home. He returned home on the SS Argentina.

George Kays had completed five years of service and had a wife and child at home. He was sent a telegram in Germany when his son was born. They were blowing up houses that had German occupation posts. He arrived in New York in October [Annotator’s Note: of 1945]. He was transferred to Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania [Annotator's Note: Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania]. His release papers were filled out and he had earned a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is an award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy]. He got a ticket to Pittsburg [Annotator’s Note: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania] and then had to transfer to Cambridge, Ohio. He arrived to his wife early in the morning. His parents never saw him in uniform again once he was back. He was honorably discharged. He got a job with a survey crew for the state highway department. That summer, he planned on using 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] to go to school. They lived in a camper trailer while he went to school in Indiana. There were several times he almost kicked his wife out of the bed from nightmares.

George Kays remembers they could see a battalion coming toward them in France. He was in charge of the forward command. After he got married and had a kid, he was able to go to college. His life changed when he went from an enlisted man to an officer. He went from a corporal to a second lieutenant in three months. If he had not been in the Army, he would not have been able to go to college. He grew up on a farm and they were very poor. 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] changed his life. Kays got a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is an award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy] and going to the doctor is free at the VA [Annotator's Note: United States Department of Veterans Affairs; also referred to as the Veterans Administration] hospital. His job was to direct the fire from the fire direction center and forward observation. Future generations need to know what the Nazis and the Japanese were doing and why the situation needed to be corrected.