[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] John Ryan was born in June 1924, one of four children of a coffee salesman whose route was in central Louisiana. He attended Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana, and during his junior and senior years he participated in a part-time diversified occupation program with the school, a work-study program that allowed him to work half a day in an automotive repair shop. Ryan graduated in 1941, and he had a job at the Hotel Bentley at the end of that year when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Two of his coworkers joined the armed forces, but Ryan was still too young to enlist. In June 1943, he was drafted into the Army and left for duty the day after his 19th birthday. He was inducted in Alexandria, and trained at nearby Camp Beauregard [Annotator's Note: in Pineville, Louisiana], then at Camp Barkeley near Abilene, Texas, and finally at Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi where he was assigned to the 263rd Combat Engineer Battalion, 63rd Infantry Fighting Division [Annotator's Note: 263rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 63rd Infantry Division].

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] As an engineer, John Ryan helped build Bailey Bridges and locate mine fields. In December 1944, Ryan left New York on the Washington [Annotator's Note: USAT George Washington] and traveled down the eastern coast of the United States, then crossed the sea, went through the Straits of Gibraltar and into Marseille, France. The harbor at Marseilles was "shot up," Ryan said, so the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] were loaded into cargo nets 25 to 30 at a time and moved onto barges to get to shore. Then they went by truck inland, and set up their pup tents in a temporary camp while waiting for their equipment, including dozers and draglines, to catch up. Then they moved on. Ryan said most of the work he and his fellow soldiers performed was in demolition and assembling portable bridges. The Bailey bridges, as they were called, came in about 15 different sections and were put together with pins, sufficient for crossing small rivers. Ryan also worked locating minefields, then either blowing them up or marking them so they could be bypassed. The unit [Annotator's Note: 263rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 63rd Infantry Division] moved through France and Alsace-Lorraine, where they repaired and maintained a bridge over the Saar River, including setting it up to blow in case they had to pull back, then continued into Germany.

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] Moving on to Sarreguemines, France, near the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s], John Ryan said they "took a pretty good licking there," but they finally breached it. The troops slept wherever they could, sometimes in foxholes, sometimes under the trucks, and occasionally in confiscated civilian houses. Ryan remembers an incident when the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] moved a German family to one part of a house, and his squad occupied the rest. The soldiers of the bridge section ate K-rations, and rarely had cooked food because they were usually separated from rest of the unit [Annotator's Note: 263rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 63rd Infantry Division]. Ryan recalled that when they attempted to blow the dragons teeth [Annotator's Note: reinforced concrete structures erected as anti-tank obstacles which resembled the teeth of a dragon] at the Siegfried Line, which they never did accomplish, the Army came in with bulldozers and tank dozers and shoved dirt over the emplacements so that vehicles could pass. The weather improved, and the Air Force was able to get into the act. The aircraft worked with the heavy artillery on the ground, and things got "hot and heavy," then began to move pretty fast. Ryan was constantly on the assault and ended up right outside of Munich. His unit had been on the line for a long time, so they were pulled back to what seemed to Ryan as some kind of a mine. There, they had showers for the first time in months, and a mess hall with cooked food. When Ryan left Marseilles, France, and the Army, in May 1946, he was a buck sergeant [Annotator's Note: sergeant, the lowest sergeant rank; E-5].

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] Before John Ryan reached the Siegfried Line, he came under intense fire, and while they were in combat on the Siegfried Line, there were many casualties. Once past the Siegfried Line, he only came under artillery fire on one more occasion. Ryan distinctly remembers the "funny" sound of the German 88s [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery], and noted that he was in the forest most of the time he was fighting in Germany. Ryan said some people "broke down," from being constantly under fire, and they just "hunkered down in a hole." He felt sorry for them. Ryan concentrated on his responsibility, and relied on his training to stay level headed. He had a squad of ten or 11 men. Sometimes, Ryan said, it was eerie to hear the shells come across; some designed to explode before they hit the ground, others blew up on contact. Ryan didn't fire his M1 rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] too often, and was never in close combat. Once, while working on a bridge, Ryan came close to being strafed; on the plane's first pass, the bridge repair crew took cover, on its second pass, Ryan said it was trying to destroy the work that had been done. As the Allied troops moved further into Germany, Ryan was kept busy clearing roads that the enemy had blocked.

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] On VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], John Ryan was in an old school or hospital in a village called Rödichen, Germany, near Munich. The company [Annotator's Note: Ryan was a member of the 263rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 63rd Infantry Division] was sleeping on cots in the building, and there was a mess hall set up. After the surrender, Ryan said his squad was repairing roads and bridges in occupied Germany for another year. He had contact with many civilians and thought they were a "wonderful bunch of people." One local lady tailored his Army shirts by hand, which contributed to his belief that the locals were industrious. He recalls that they worked hard on sugar beet farms. Several of his friends visited the concentration camp near Munich, but Ryan never did; he said he didn't even know about what had happened in the camp. He did some guard duty on the railroad and remembers boxcars loaded with Poles coming through. He was moved to LeHarve, France for several weeks before being loaded on a small ship for a rough ride to New York. Soon, he was on a train for Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and discharge.

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] After his discharge [Annotator's Note: in May 1946], John Ryan traveled by bus to Alexandria, Louisiana. Everyone at home was happy to see him, but it was not a good time for Ryan. He couldn't just "forget" the war like many thought ex-soldiers should. There weren't any jobs, and he stayed on the 52-20 plan [Annotator's Note: a government-funded program that paid unemployed veterans 20 dollars per week for 52 weeks] and almost re-enlisted. He went to Wharton, England to a heavy equipment school, but was disappointed when he finished and found no industry in Alexandria where he could put the training to use. In 1947 he finally found temporary work with Shell Oil Company on a geophysical crew, then moved to Texas to continue work. He stayed with the company for his entire career. Brought back to his days in the military, Ryan said he wrote home pretty regularly, sometimes on V-mail, and he received mail from his mother in return. She also sent him "goodies."

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] John Ryan worked for Shell Oil Company in Odessa, Texas for a while, then moved to Houma, Louisiana, working offshore with a newly invented underwater gravity meter. Initially, the exploration was in shallow water, but later moved to greater depths. Ryan describes his work assignments with Shell covering the area from Cameron, Louisiana to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Ryan said his experiences in World War 2 didn't really correspond with the work he did in his later career, except for the hardships he sometimes had to endure and the leadership he had to convey. He said his rural upbringing prepared him for Army life. He remembered that during boot camp, he and a buddy were assigned to collect snakes in order to demonstrate their different characteristics to the recruits.

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] When John Ryan first started with Shell Oil Company, he was a helper and drove a vehicle that was set up with instrumentation. His responsibilities increased with his experience. Ryan further explains the nature of his work with the geophysicists. He said the food offshore was always good, and in no way compared to K-rations. He did note that Shell used a lot of leased surplus equipment from the war, including Higgins boats [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP] that were converted for offshore use, and communications systems.

[Annotator's Note: The audio level of this interview is very low.] John Ryan knows that over time, things changed for the better in the area and in the offshore industry, but does not believe that it was necessarily a result of the war. He suffered from his work with creosote-coated timbers, and is happy that the substance has been outlawed. He credited the get up and "get it" spirit, somebody thinking of something to make things work better, that forced the improvements.