Henry Floyd Little was born Kemper County, Mississippi near DeKalb. He lived in the country and his family raised their own food. His father worked in saw mills. He attended agricultural school. When he came home from the war, his parents had moved to Butler, Alabama. He returned to Waynesboro, Mississippi. Little had to give a current event every Wednesday in his high school. His older brother had joined the Army Air Corps in 1940 and was in Germany flying missions on a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. He would write and tell him about his missions. Little would use these stories for his current events. He and a friend decided to join the Navy. His friend was too tall for the Air Force or the Navy and he did not want to go in the Army, so they went home. Right after high school, Little was drafted and went to Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He then went to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana for basic training. He volunteered to be a combat engineer to stay out of the infantry. He liked the job.

Basic training was normal for Henry Little. His training for building bridges involved alligators and snakes swimming around him. He attended gunnery school. The engineers traveled in trucks and he would train on the ring mounted .50 caliber gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun]. He trained in tanks and half-tracks. They also trained in digging foxholes which involved tanks driving over them. People would get scared and run up a tree. The tanks would hit the trees and shake the soldiers out. It was very realistic. He went to Fort Jackson [Annotator's Note: Fort Jackson, South Carolina] after basic. He was headed to Japan and got to the West Coast when he and five more combat engineers were sent back to go to the ETO [Annotator's Note: European Theater of Operations]. They went to a bakery in New York where German prisoners of war were working. Little was given a job behind the chow line ensuring the prisoners did their jobs right. He worked one shift a day and he could eat anything he wanted to. After a month, he got his orders. He got on a troop transport. Because he had some rank, he was assigned to a compartment with about 350 men. They crossed the Atlantic to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France] and got on a troop train. The train was small, and they had to push it up the hills. They went to Stuttgart and through a lot of little towns. Little's brother had already returned from his tour of duty and asked him to take pictures of the towns he had bombed. He went into Amberg, Bamberg, Munich, and Stuttgart [Annotator's Note: all in Germany]. He was assigned to the 106th Combat Engineers. [Annotator's Note: The 106th Engineer Combat Battalion did not serve in Europe. It is more likely that he was assigned to the 81st Engineer Combat Battalion, 106th Infantry Division.] They stayed in that area for six or seven months. The Germans were on the verge of surrendering. Little's division was called a roving division and they would go put down any German fighting. He finally made it back to the company for one week.

Henry Little was told to get on a truck with 12 men, but not told his destination. Achering [Annotator's Note: likely Echterdingen, Germany which was an airfield near the autobahn] was a little town where Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had been. The Autobahn [Annotator's Note: German national highway] in that section of Germany was always facing into the wind. Hitler was on the verge of quitting. Little and his engineers would build roads for tanks and heavy guns. They moved from one place to another. They also blew up bridges. When Hitler quit, everybody sighed in relief. Little was moved back to his company for a week. They then went around and started rebuilding things so the Army could use them. He did not have enough points to go home. Achering had spotter planes and an artillery base. The Germans there did not give up. They would sabotage things. The Americans had Polish guards there. Many of them had no noses or ears from being in concentration camps. The German camps were laid out like a modern city. A colonel had him put up a warehouse. There were 12 airplane hangars there where they stored the raw materials to rebuild the towns. Little was in charge of his crew and managing the hangars. The Germans did all of the physical labor. There were also SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] prisoners of war. They were stubborn. One was a panzer [Annotator's Note: panzer is the German term for tank or armored] sergeant who knew some English. Little used him as a translator. He was in charge of requisitioning supplies. He came back to the United States during Christmas 1945 on a troop transport. They were halted within sight of the Statue of Liberty [Annotator's Note: in New York Harbor, New York] because they came in at night and could not enter the harbor. They were too excited to sleep. His family met him at the train station.

[Annotator's Note: Henry Little served in the Army as a combat engineer in Company D, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea.] They had really big trucks that could cut logs which they would use to build bunkers. They would cut every tree they could find and use them. Korea has two seasons, winter and summer. They built their stovepipes at angles so grenades could not be dropped down them. They had a big trench connected to a door to keep bazookas from being able to shoot them. They had a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] set at the door. He was concerned about his safety the whole time he was there. [Annotator's Note: Little returns to his World War 2 service.] After World War 2 was over, they were allowed to go into the town of Achering [Annotator's Note: likely Echterdingen, Germany]. They would go in groups of four but only one of them could carry a gun. The beer joints were open. The Germans would drop flower pots on them. They had a lot of hatred. He went to Korea in 1950 and left in 1953. They had a lot of campaigns. It might take six months to take a hill but that is one campaign. Battleships were their heavy shooters. They shot a shell that weighed as much as a Volkswagen [Annotator's Note: automobile]. He learned to tell where they would land by the sound they made. The soldiers would take empty cans, punch holes in them, and put them on the shells of the guns. They called those shells the screaming mimis because they made an ungodly sound. They started out taking the ridges and mapping the country.

Henry Little went to work at a shipyard after returning from the Korean war [Annotator's Note: in 1953]. He worked there for 33 years. He started out as a pipefitter then went on to become a supervisor in the inspection department. He became manager of inspection until he retired. They built Navy ships from scratch. They overhauled frigates and battleships. The inspectors would look at every nut and bolt in it. They built 30 something DDs [Annotator's Note: destroyers]. After about five years, they would return for overhaul. The USS Cole (DDG 67) was brought back to Pascagoula to be repaired. [Annotator's Note: The USS Cole (DDG 67) was damaged in a suicide attack in Yemen on 12 October 2000.] One day, a person from the pipe department heard some hissing. There was a live missile still in the ship and they had not known it was there, even while they were overhauling the ship. Little does not think the country today has any idea of what the war [Annotator's Note: World War 2] was about. He taught classes to children who did not know what he was talking about. Their parents did not even know. He visited The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] and he felt it was accurate and the exhibits were right. [Annotator's Note: Little goes into detail about how a bazooka works.]

Henry Little joined the National Guard after World War 2 ended. He went into the combat engineers and went to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Because he had been in combat in Germany, he was made a platoon sergeant. He spent many long months in Korea. He was taking Old Baldy for the 12th time [Annotator’s Note: Battle of Old Baldy, 1952 to 1953, near Yeoncheon, South Korea]. He was acting as infantry at the time. Infantry got killed pretty quickly. After he got to Korea he was building up his combat company. He was in Company D, 2nd Engineer Battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion], 2nd Infantry Division. His unit had to break out on the line and were assigned to three different Infantry Regiments. Their first operation was clearing a road through Heartbreak Ridge [Annotator's Note: near Chorwon, South Korea; September to October 1951]. There was not much flat ground in Korea. The mountain passes were built for carts. The engineers had to widen them. Half of them would keep the enemy off while the other half built the bridge. South Korean troops were assigned to do the labor. They were not good about staying on the line, so they were placed with the American troops.