Joe Pigott was born in 1925 in Cybur, Pearl River County, Mississippi and grew up during the Great Depression. He said, "everybody was in the same boat," and "made do" with what they had. He thinks people were friendlier than than they are now, because they were "all in need." Fortunately, his father was never without a job. Pigott finished high school when he was 16, and went to college for a little more than a year and a half, then joined the Army on 31 July 1943. He was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia for infantry basic training and lived "pretty primitive" in tarpaper huts for 13 weeks. Pigott learned that the group he was training with, and didn’t like, would probably go overseas as a unit, and he "wanted to get out." He transferred to parachute training, and after four weeks, he and three other recruits' Army General Classification Test scores qualified them for Office of Strategic Services training in Washington, D.C. He was there for about five weeks, then went to Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Little Rock, Arkansas for training in explosives. There he was assigned to the 289th Engineer Combat Battalion. Ordered to report to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, Pigott boarded a ship for England. The crossing took about 17 days, and Pigott ended up at Weston-super-Mare. He reported to General Walter Bedell Smith, the executive officer "right under Eisenhower" [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] at SHAEF [Annotator's Note: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] headquarters, who became "like an uncle" to Pigott. Smith decided to "start off right" by giving him a pass to London, where Pigott had accommodations at the USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] near Piccadilly Circus. As ordered, he reported for duty on the ensuing Monday morning.

His expertise was not required for the invasion of Normandy [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944; also known as D-Day], and Joe Piggott saw his first action at Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France] where the Americans met with heavy resistance. They "had a couple of bridges that needed blowing up," so Piggott was sent with a team of four or five other demolition experts to do the work. The next action that Pigott remembered was about 18 December [Annotator's Note: 18 December 1944], when the Germans began the counter-offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. He was sent to Trois-Ponts, Belgium, where they blew several bridges to prevent the enemy from crossing the Meuse River. His group moved on to Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Bastogne, Belgium], with no idea that the town would be encircled, and was sent to the perimeter. With a buddy named Carmen Pinser [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], he took a position in a pre-existing foxhole and hunkered down for nine days. Every morning someone came by to give them C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food], and Pigott and his buddy just stayed there waiting. They found two or three anti-tank mines the Germans had set out, and moved them into a nearby road, and covered them with snow. "Sure enough," Pigott said, one day they heard a single German panzer [Annotator's Note: panzer is the German term for tank or armor] tank coming in their direction. Pigott and Pinser each had grenades, an M-1 rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand], a pistol [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and some extra ammunition. When the tank hit two of the mines, the explosion blew the tank's tracks off. Although the engine kept running, the tank stood motionless. Almost immediately, Pinser jumped out of their foxhole, ran up behind the tank and clambered up to drop a grenade into the air intake. It went off, and he dropped another one, and it went off. Pinser came back to the foxhole, and the two of them waited. The tank's motor ran until late in the afternoon, but no one ever got out of the tank. Pigott mentioned that they were fighting alongside, but not a part of the 101st Airborne [Annotator's Note: 101st Airborne Division], then under the command of General McAuliffe [Annotator's Note: US Army Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe]. A couple of days later, Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] army came up from the south and relieved them. The soldiers finally got a hot meal and coffee. The team then moved on to retake Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France], in house-to-house fighting, which took a few weeks. Afterward, they crossed the Saar River with the 289th Engineer Combat Battalion [Annotator's Note: 289th Engineer Combat Battalion, XXI Corps, 7th Army] into Saarbrucken [Annotator's Note: Saarbrucken, Germany]. From there they went toward the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River] through Kaiserslautern [Annotator's Note: Kaiserslautern, Germany], and Pigott said they could see that the Germans were retreating "pretty fast." On 29 March [Annotator's Note: 29 March 1945] Pigott was part of a team of five sent to blow the bridge at Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany]. It was an old, Roman-style stone bridge, with a keystone at the top of its arch. The Air Force had been unsuccessful in bombing it, but the team was able to blow the keystone up and out to bring down the structure.

According to Joe Pigott, after December 1944, he could feel a change in the citizenry of Germany. Most were "ready to get the war over with," and were in favor of an early surrender to save their towns. At Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany], the demolition team blew two spans of the bridge using 40 pounds of C-2 explosives. They decided to use what they had left to blow a train crossing, and executed the undertaking when the next train passed. His next assignment consisted of determining whether bridges had the width and weight capacity to support a Sherman tank [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank]. For their work, Pigott and several others rode in tanks, and he noted that most German bridges met the conditions. When they approached Heilbronn [Annotator's Note: Heilbronn, Germany], a member of the team named John Snyder [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], who was fluent in German, went ahead to tell the townspeople they were "coming through," and would destroy the town if there was any resistance. When the tank started onto the bridge, it was met with gunfire. Pigott's team was ordered to "pull back," and the Allies "shelled that town all night long" with tanks and tank destroyers. The next day, dozers had to clear the road through the totally decimated town. When they moved on toward Dinkelsbuhl [Annotator's Note: Dinkelsbühl, Germany], the townspeople had heard the fate of Heilbronn, and met the tanks on the road to surrender. It was not a militarily significant town, and was spared. From there they went on toward Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany], passing the concentration camp of Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany] on the way. Pigott heard the guards had fled, and saw the horribly emaciated prisoners inside the fences. Since Pigott's unit [Annotator's Note: 289th Engineer Combat Battalion, XXI Corps, 7th Army] was not equipped to take care of them, they left it to "people who were coming behind" to liberate them. For Pigott, the camp was a shock, and despite their pleas of ignorance, he couldn't believe that the townspeople of Munich didn't know of the camp's existence. His unit was not there long, and moved on through Brenner Pass [Annotator's Note: on the Austrian-Italian border] to Italy.

After he left Heilbronn [Annotator's Note: Heilbronn, Germany], Joe Pigott said he doesn't think he heard another shot. He felt the Germans knew the Russians were advancing, and were hoping the Americans would move "farther and faster" before the Russians came. Pigott joked that "you couldn't find a Nazi anywhere." When the war ended, Pigott was in Milan, Italy, and after the surrender, he got orders to report to Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany] where General Smith [Annotator's Note: US Army General Walter Bedell Smith], the executive officer of SHAEF [Annotator's Note: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] had moved headquarters. The general called Pigott and several other G-2, or intelligence, officers and told them if they went back to the United States, they would be retrained and sent to the Pacific. Pigott was among the volunteers who stayed in Europe, and was given a jeep, a driver, and a trailer loaded down with K-Rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] and supplies. His instruction was to "go off and look for hidden treasures." While others on the same mission found stolen artwork and gold bullion, Pigott found nothing but two barges filled with alcoholic beverages. The officers who "took charge of" the loot distributed some of it to the men. Pigott got a bottle of cognac. Afterward, Pigott and what was left of his platoon were stationed at the small town of Mudau, Germany. Pigott was the highest-ranking officer in the town, and when the burgermeister [Annotator's Note: German term meaning master of citizens; similar to a city council chairman] was removed from office for some offense, Pigott was left to work through the local Catholic priest to keep the peace. Pigott remained there on occupation duty until he left Germany in the early part of September [Annotator's Note: September 1945]. He was getting on a ship in Antwerp, Belgium when he got word that the Japanese had surrendered and the war was over. He was 20 years old when he came home.

In Joe Pigott's opinion, General Smith [Annotator's Note: US Army General Walter Bedell Smith] was "one of the best"; and knew best how to equip the troops. Although he was "a very important person," he was not held in high regard at SHAEF [Annotator's Note: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] because he was not a "West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York] man." But after the war, he was appointed ambassador to Moscow [Annotator's Note: Moscow, Russia], and sent Pigott a Christmas card that had "all kind of fancy stamps on it." Thinking back, Pigott said the size of his team fluctuated, and he didn't pick the men in his unit [Annotator's Note: 289th Engineer Combat Battalion, XXI Corps, 7th Army], but he remembered that Pinser [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] and Snyder [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] were with him every time he went out. Not everyone on the team was a demolition expert, and Pigott commented that Snyder could do almost anything. Asked by the interviewer if any of the bridges he blew up were guarded, Pigott said that when they were at Trois Ponts [Annotator's Note: Trois Ponts, Belgium] a man who "happened to be in the way" got killed, but there were no Germans at any of the bridges they demolished.

Joe Pigott joined the Army because the Navy and the Marines did not appeal to him. At the time, the Air Corps was part of the Army, and Pigott said if he had to do it over, he would probably apply to be an airman. When he went overseas, Pigott was in an "18-knot convoy," and was seasick almost the entire time. He said that there were probably 1,000 men in each hold, pretty closely confined, and if one man got sick, it was likely that they all would. Mess lines were long, and it could take over an hour to get food. And the food wasn't all that good. Pigott was "shocked" out of seasickness off the coast of Ireland when the ship began dropping depth charges. Supposedly, they had sighted a submarine, and the idea that "it might happen" made him forget about seasickness. Asked if the war changed him, Pigott said he "grew up." He was only 17 when he went overseas, and he never thought about whether he would come back. He had broken up with his girlfriend, so he didn't write to her. He had resigned himself to being in the war until it was over. Only one man on his team was married, the rest had no dependents or obligations. He noted that he was the youngest in the platoon, and he was chosen by the lieutenant to be its leader. Thirty-three men went over, and six came back. Of the six, one or two were wounded to some extent. At the time, a wounded soldier might go without real medical care for a day or two. Medics had only minimal training, and although a buddy might try to calm him down and help if he could, a wounded man would not get professional help until he reached a field hospital. Pigott said that nobody but the brass flew across the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean]; the wounded that went back to the United States went by ship, and the hospital ships only sailed after there were enough aboard to justify the trip. He feels the greatest advances made for the military since then were made in the medical field. Then, there were no helicopters, or jet airplanes, and it was not too much advanced from World War 1. For America, Pigott said, it was "the last necessary war." Then, our country and its way of life were in jeopardy, and we waited to get into the war until we had to, when the aggressors declared war on the United States.

Asked to recount the occasion when he was taken prisoner, Joe Pigott recalled that it was after they blew the bridge at Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany], and the unit [Annotator's Note: 289th Engineer Combat Battalion, XXI Corps, 7th Army] had started back toward Manheim [Annotator's Note: Manheim, Germany]. When the unit was crossing the autobahn about halfway between the two locations, Pigott was caught while stashing some ammunition. A German outfit in a panzer wagon ordered him to halt and took him to Manheim for questioning. He was put in a basement room with a Polish man and held for two nights. The Polish prisoner, who was huge and strong, twisted off the metal leg of a bed, and used it to strike their guard on the head. Pigott thought it a good time to leave, and made his way to the Rhine River, swam across, and ended up downstream at Worms [Annotator's Note: Worms, Germany]. There, he caught a ride on the back of a coal truck to Kaiserslautern [Annotator's Note: Kaiserslautern, Germany], where he contacted a supporter of the Allies, who hid him in a wine cellar until he could get back to the American lines at Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France] where the other members of his team had already arrived safely. Pigott hoped the Polish prisoner got away too, but has no idea of what happened to him. Pigott also tells the story of how, when he arrived in Milan, Italy at the end of the war, he came upon "quite a to-do" among the people. He found Benito Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also know as il Duce], along with his girlfriend, hanging upside down from a post. Pigott ordered his men to cut the corpses down, and handed them over to the Italians for burial.

Joe Pigott feels that the United States assumed it's position as a world leader as a result of World War 2, however, the country is now losing its respect. He does not feel the United States should have been involved in Vietnam or in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He feels the significance of having a National WWII Museum is "to remind young people that a price has been paid."