[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton was born in February 1924 in Shellbrook, Saskatchewan, Canada. He grew up on his father’s wheat farm, the seventh of eight children. The children all helped on the farm when not in school. Some of his earliest memories are of milking cows and riding horses. It was his job on the farm to break new horses in for the first time. Because of the large farming operation, Van Eaton never missed a meal during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] unless he had been sent to bed without supper as a punishment. His family canned fruits and vegetables and kept them in the large cellar beneath the house. He recalls chopping down trees to heat the cook stoves in the house during the frigid Canadian winters. After finishing the eighth grade, Van Eaton moved in with his father’s sister in Yakima, Washington to attend high school in the United States. He was unaware of world events in the late 1930s and early 40s and had no strong reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He did not think it would impact him in any way at first. After graduating, he moved back to Canada to help his father with planting and harvesting. A rainy summer cost the family the crop and Van Eaton left his family to see his brother who was away at college in the United States. One Sunday, he and his brother attended church where he saw a dark-haired girl who he fell in love with. In order to see her more, he enrolled in the college where he took a remedial algebra class with the dark-haired girl. At the end of the semester, Van Eaton decided he needed to help fight the war and decided to enlist. He asked the dark-haired girl if she would marry him if he came back in one piece, and she agreed.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton and his brother went to Kansas City [Annotator’s Note: Kansas City, Missouri] to join the Air Corps. His brother passed the written test, but he did not. Van Eaton says his brother flew across Europe, and “I walked”. Van Eaton was then sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky where he underwent armored infantry training. While there, he took the Air Corps test again and passed. He was transferred to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania for educational training. Before he had the chance to begin any flight training, he was abruptly transferred into the infantry because of mounting casualties in Europe. He was transferred into the 78th Infantry Division and assigned as a machine gunner with M Company, 310th Infantry Regiment. After more infantry training, he boarded a converted English luxury liner, the Carnarvon Castle, on 13 October 1944 for transport to England. The ship sailed solo across the Atlantic. Van Eaton was told the ship could outrun submarines, but often wondered if it would outrun torpedoes. After a short period of organization in England, Van Eaton arrived in France and quickly moved up to the front lines in Belgium. He spent Thanksgiving Day 1944 in a Belgian cow pasture enjoying a turkey dinner. The field was cold and wet and lacking in fire wood. He cut several trees down, but before he could chop them into firewood, he was ordered to stop because the trees were protected under Belgian law. “What a nice bunch of Allies,” thought Van Eaton, “They don’t care if we freeze to death!” One night near the frontlines, Van Eaton was awakened by the noise of many engines. He imagined that the Germans had broken through and were barreling towards them in their Tiger tanks [Annotator's Note: German Mark VI main battle tank; known as the Tiger]. However, he looked up and saw thousands of American bombers heading towards Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany] on a night raid.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton, with the 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division, fought through combat in Belgium. While in position during the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], an order was issued for the men to oil their weapons to prevent the snow from causing them to rust. Van Eaton refused the order because he knew this would prevent the gun from firing properly. He was threatened with a court martial which he welcomed eagerly as it would have allowed him to get out of the snow into a warm building. He did not receive a court martial. Van Eaton suggested to his sergeant that they build a cabin to get out of the weather. The sergeant relented and allowed Van Eaton to head up the construction. The cabin was big enough for his squad to lay down inside or to sleep. They used a German jerry can as a wood burning stove for eating and fashioned a 30-foot chimney out of a rain gutter that they rigged high into the trees so that the sparks from the fire would not give away their position. Van Eaton says the sergeant was always chosen for special patrols, often leaving him in control of the squad. After the Bulge, Van Eaton’s outfit was sent to the town of Huppenbroich, Germany. The machine gunners were ordered onto a hill overlooking the town and ordered to fire their weapons into the outskirts of town in order to clear a path for the rifle companies to advance. As a result of not having oiled his weapon, Van Eaton’s machine gun fired as designed while the other machine gun had to have its spent shells manually ejected. He was thankful they were not being attacked or they would have surely been killed. After a few days in Huppenbroich, several Germans entered the camp waving a white flag of surrender and claiming there was an entire company ready to be taken prisoner. As the Americans were led into the position, the Germans attacked. They were pinned down for several days. On night watch with his sergeant, Van Eaton was shot in the right ankle and evacuated from the front. A supply sled pulled by two horses drug Van Eaton to Huppenbroich where he was loaded onto an ambulance and brought to a hospital. Upon arriving, two Germans in uniform opened the ambulance doors. Van Eaton thought the ambulance driver had made a wrong turn and gotten them captured, but it turned out that the Germans were POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. He was taken into surgery where the doctor discovered that the bullet entered Van Eaton’s leg without damaging any bone or tendon. He could not have paid the German to place a better shot on him.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton, with the 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division, was wounded in Huppenbroich, Germany and was flown to Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] and then onto England where he spent time recuperating. He was put on detail twice while in the hospital. His first job was egg candling to weed out rotten eggs, and his second job was being placed in charge of an ice cream factory, a job he jokingly says he hated. He was on a train back to London [Annotated Note: London, England] to be reassigned for combat when he heard the news of the German surrender. He was very happy about the news and spent the following day among the Brits in Piccadilly Circus. They were elated and the party was way crazier than anything going on in Times Square [Annotator’s Note: Times Square, New York City, New York]. After visiting family in London, Van Eaton was sent back to France with orders to join a new outfit. He conveniently lost the orders while crossing the English Channel and managed to find his way back to M Company. In June 1945, he began a period of occupation duty in Niederaula, Germany where he was tasked with guarding trains. He was billeted with a German family whose barn he nearly burned down after firing a German flare into the hayloft. Many years after the war, Van Eaton’s sergeant returned to Niederaula and met the woman who owned the house. She asked what ever happened to the kid who almost burned her house down, and the sergeant informed her that he became a fire chief in Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California].

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton, with the 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division, was working occupation duty in Europe. He returned home in January 1946 and was discharged from Fort Lewis, Washington as a PFC [Annotator’s Note: private first class] in late January 1946. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California] and was married less than two weeks later. Van Eaton’a family thought he had trouble readjusting to civilian life, but he always insisted he was fine. He told them anyone who got in front of a bullet in Europe must have committed suicide. He tells a story in which three artillery shells landed only feet beside his squad and did not explode. Someone thanked the Polish slave workers for building bad ammunition.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off camera prompting the interviewee to answer the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment. Can see a person in the background throughout this segment.] Jack F. Van Eaton fought in World War 2 to keep the Germans “over there”. Had it not been for World War 2, he would not have visited his brother in college where he met the woman who would become his wife. Without her, he would never have become a successful firefighter and probably would have moved back to Canada and become a farmer. Van Eaton still stays in touch with some of the men he went through hell with. Though he never loved the Army enough to stay in it, it did instill in him a strong sense of discipline which served him well in his career. He believes World War 2 should continue to be taught because it is the story of an entire generation of young people being awakened to a threat and their response to it.