Harold Roed was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1926. He had an older brother, who was also in the service, and a younger brother as well. His father worked for Ford [Annotator's Note: Ford Motor Company] until he died. His father served in World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] overseas, in a reserve unit that never saw any combat. He previously served with the North Dakota National Guard on the Mexican border when the US Army was chasing Pancho Villa [Annotator's Note: Francisco "Pancho" Villa] who had been raiding into Texas. General Pershing [Annotator's Note: General of the Armies John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing] was leading that group, and was called back when World War 1 broke out in order to take American troops overseas. The National Guard troops were discharged and Roed's father then went home to Minnesota. He then went to Canada to homestead when World War 1 broke out in full, and he rejoined the Army. He married Roed's mother around this time. Roed loved to wear his father's uniform. The family went through hard times during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], his father was laid off from Ford and worked for some time for the WPA, the Works Progress Administration [Annotator's Note: the Works Progress Administration was a federally sponsored program that put unemployed Americans to work during the Great Depression]. Roed and his brother contracted scarlet fever [Annotator's Note: type of infection], which could be deadly at that time, so the house was quarantined. He attended grade school in inner-city Detroit, which he liked. In high school, World War 2 was approaching, and they all knew that if it came and went on a while, they would be serving. They did training exercises in the school's pool. They also practiced swimming while holding wooden rifles above their heads. [Annotator's Note: The interview cuts out.]

Harold Roed knew he would be going into the service once the war started, just not when or how. His father worked for Ford [Annotator's Note: Ford Motor Company in Detroit]. Henry Ford [Annotator's Note: founder of Ford Motor Company] started the Henry Ford Trade School in one of the company's branches, the Rouge Plant. It was a private trade school that taught them drafting and other skills. They would have one week of class and two weeks of shop work, manufacturing machines. He was only 13 when he started the school, which lasted three and a half years. He also went to night school to pick up additional credits to get his high school diploma. When he graduated from the trade school, he went back to high school and got his diploma. They learned how to operate the machinery in a machine shop. They also learned electrical work and received 20 cents an hour which increased as months went by. He ended at 80 cents an hour which, in 1944, could be a living wage for a family of four. He graduated the trade school in June 1943, and in January 1944 he graduated high school.

Harold Roed tried to enlist in the Air Corps [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Corps] before his 18th birthday, passing the written test but flunking the physical because of his eyes. A friend of his who usually wore very thick glasses, suddenly stopped, explaining that an eye doctor had given him eye exercises to do that permitted him to stop wearing glasses. Roed got the doctor's name and began doing the exercises as well. In April [Annotator's Note: April 1944], he was drafted into the Army and did infantry training in Texas for four months. He learned how to use weapons and operate in combat situations. In July, he was shipped by train to Fort Benning, just outside of Columbus, Georgia, having volunteered for the paratroopers. That training only lasted one month. Part of the point was to weed out those that could not handle it. They started each day with one hour of running. The second week they learned how to land. The third week, they began jumping from 450-foot towers, learning to use their parachutes. They also learned to pack their own chutes. The fourth and final week was made up of jumps very day. They used the chutes that they had packed themselves. They learned to check the chutes of the men in front of them, and how to stand in the plane. Roed's first jump felt wonderful. There were signal lights in the airplanes to tell them when to jump. On one jump, Road was somersaulting through the air as he had no control.

Harold Roed completed five successful jumps [Annotator's Note: parachute training jumps] and graduated from jump school. He remained at Fort Benning [Annotator's Note: Fort Benning, Georgia] to go to the airborne communications school for another nine weeks. They learned Morse code [Annotator's Note: a method of telecommunication encoding characters in a system of dots and dashes], how to use radios and walkie-talkies, as well as a backpack radio and field telephones. They learned to climb trees using special equipment and to string telephone wire. They hung it high up so that tanks or troops would not run into it on the field. Roed finished communications school in early December 1944 and got a furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home for a few weeks. A friend of his at communications school who was also from Detroit [Annotator's Note: Detroit, Michigan] had an influential father who arranged for his son to be flown home on an ATC (Air Transport Command) plane, a C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain] rather than taking a train. Roed as invited to join him to return to Benning via the plane. It was the first time he had landed inside of an airplane. Every other time he had jumped out for training. Within a week he was sent to Camp Shanks [Annotator's Note: Camp Shanks in Orangeburg, New York] waiting to be shipped overseas.

Harold Roed was shipped overseas to England on the Mauretania [Annotator's Note: RMS Mauretania], an ocean liner converted into a troop ship. They were not in convoy as the ship was fast enough to outrun enemy submarines, and apparently, they did outrun at least two. They arrived in Liverpool [Annotator's Note: Liverpool, England] and immediately went to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] and crossed the channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel] to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France]. This is when he had his first look at war. Le Havre had been completely flattened. He soon went by train, his first experience with a 40-and-eight, a nickname for the French box car because there was just enough room for 40 men or eight horses. They traveled for a few days, finally arriving in Auxerre [Annotator's Note: Auxerre, France], roughly 75 miles southeast of Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], where there was an old French garrison. His unit stayed for a month or so waiting on orders. When he got to Auxerre, the 13th Airborne Division had already arrived there a week or so before. There were on the Yonne River, not far from the cities of Joigny [Annotator's Note: Joigny, France] and Sens [Annotator's Note: Sens, France]. The division was scattered among the three towns. His regiment, the 515th [Annotator's Note: 515th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 13th Airborne Division], was stationed in Auxerre.

Harold Roed and his unit [Annotator's Note: 515th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 13th Airborne Division] were alerted to do a jump across the Rhine River [Annotator's Note: near Wesel, Germany], along with the 17th Airborne [Annotator's Note: 17th Airborne Division]. It was the last jump of the war. But instead of the 13th going with the 17th, General Montgomery [Annotator's Note: British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery] wanted his British troops to make the jump, which they did, replacing the 13th. He had a mixed feeling of relief, but also disappointment that he could not go. There were three other jumps that they were alerted for, including one into southern Germany near a little town called Rottenburg [Annotator's Note: Rottenburg am Neckar, Germany] to capture and contain a German atomic bomb research center in the area. Before they could make the jump, French partisans took over their drop zones. They were also supposed to jump into the city of Worms [Annotator's Note: Worms, Germany], which did not happen. In many of these cases, they did not know why the jumps had been canceled. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was still going on, though winding down. They ended up calling themselves the "Lucky 13th." Roed's experience parallels his father's during World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918], when he was shipped overseas as a reserve unit that was never called upon. They were in a tent city outside of Amiens, France. The division was scattered among three or four different airports. During this time, C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft] pulling gliders landed at one of the airports. Roed jumped a fence with a few other guys and ran over to a glider. They asked the pilot for a ride, which he gave them. They remained there until the end of the war on 8 May [Annotator's Note: 8 May 1945] and returned to Auxerre [Annotator's Note: Auxerre, France].

Harold Roed [Annotator's Note: with the 515th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 13th Airborne Division] had a furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to England. He and a friend went by train to a little town called Étretat [Annotator's Note: Étretat, France], just north of Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France], a small seaside village. They could not go on the beach area because the Germans had mined [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact] it. After a few weeks, they returned to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] and took a train into London [Annotator's Note: London, England], where they stayed for about three weeks. They were billeted [Annotator's Note: a place, usually civilian or nonmilitary, where soldiers are lodged temporarily] two blocks from Hyde Park. He met a girl named Chris Beam [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], who worked in a theater in downtown London, and the two of them spent a lot of their time there together. Once his liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] was up, Roed went through Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] to get back to Auxerre [Annotator's Note: Auxerre, France] but their unit had already left, so they had to catch up. He finally rejoined the 515th at Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France], finally boarding a ship in Le Havre. They learned that a bomb had been dropped in Japan and the war in the Pacific was over [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. They returned to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and Roed immediately got a month-long furlough, which was extended by two weeks. When the furlough ended, he went to Fort Bragg, [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina]. While there, he learned the 13th Division had been disbanded and he was transferred into the 82nd Airborne Division. He got to participate in a victory parade in New York in January [Annotator's Note: January 1946]. They paraded up 5th Avenue to Central Park [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York]. Walking in the parade was awesome.

After returning home, Harold Roed [Annotator's Note: assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division] went out in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] after the parade [Annotator's Note: a victory parade in January 1946]. Everywhere they went, someone offered to buy them drinks or meals to thank them for their service. It was tremendous. He spent that night out with Louis Mattro [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] and Michael Kelly O'Brian [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], who was a cousin to the actor Gene Kelly [Annotator's Note: Eugene Curran Kelly], whose brother, Fred Kelly, lived in New York. Fred invited O'Brien and his two friends to go over to their home and he would find the men dates. They lived in Greenwich Village [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York]. Roed's date was Jeanne Coyne [Annotator's Note: American dancer, choreographer, and actor]. The following morning they had to report to Shanks [Annotator's Note: Camp Shanks in Orangeburg, New York]. Gene Kelly ended up marrying Coyne.

Harold Roed [Annotator's Note: with the 82nd Airborne Division after the war ended] returned to Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] and was discharged in April 1946. Jim Gavin [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General James Maurice "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin] was the commander of the 82nd. When Roed first returned to Fort Bragg from overseas, he was still with the 13th [Annotator's Note: 13th Airborne Division] before being reassigned to the 82nd. He returned in October 1945. They were paid more money because they jumped. They were required to make jumps every so often to maintain that pay structure, so he made a few more jumps at Bragg. Roed was promoted from Private to Corporal, and given Staff Sergeant stripes, without Staff Sergeant pay. His uniform is at a museum in Fort Ripley, Minnesota. He decided not to stay in the Army, and to use 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]. Roed is of Norwegian descent. He was accepted to Concordia [Annotator's Note: Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota], but not Saint Olaf [Annotator's Note: Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota]. He stopped at the latter school on his way to Concordia to see a friend, Carl, who was the freshman class president and knew the dean of the school. The dean told Roed that as long as he could find housing, he could attend Saint Olaf, which he did. He ended up being the best man at this Carl's wedding and was introduced to a woman named Mary whom he later married.

Harold Roed spent a year and a half at Saint Olaf [Annotator's Note: Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota], a liberal arts school, but he wanted an engineering degree. He got his degree from Northrop University [Annotator's Note: in Inglewood, California, originally called Northrop Aeronautical Institute], founded by Northrop aircraft [Annotator's Note: Northrop Corporation, now Northrop Grumman] in California. He graduated in 1950. He went to work for McDonnell Aircraft [Annotator's Note: McDonnell Aircraft Corporation] in St. Louis [Annotator's Note: St. Louis, Missouri] from 1951 to 1953, then they moved to Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis Minnesota] to work for Honeywell [Annotator's Note: Honeywell International Inc.], among other companies, and later UNIVAC [Annotator's Note: UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)] which made mainframe computers.