When John Wicklund went for classification at Keesler Field [Annotator's Note: now Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi], the corporal he reported to told him that his AGCT [Annotator's Note: Army General Classification Test] scores were high enough that he could chose anything he wanted. Wicklund asked the corporal's expert opinion, and he recommended cryptography, and said the odds were he would be in Washington [Annotator's Note: Washington, D.C.] for rest of the war. Wicklund agreed. When he got back to the barracks, he talked with guys who knew about the ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program]. Wicklund ran back to the corporal and asked to change his declaration, and since his papers were still there, the change was made. Afterward, he talked with close friends who said they were staying in Biloxi to work in the psychological testing unit for Keesler; and Wicklund called the major, explained that he had a year of college, and had flown with guys who were staying at Keesler, and that he would like to stay as well. He was sent back to classification, but his papers had already been sent in, and he couldn't make the transfer. Wicklund pointed out that everybody in the ASTP went to the infantry. Wicklund wound up on Leyte. Born John Charles Wicklund in McComb [Annotator's Note: McComb, Mississippi] in November 1923, he was the son of a man who worked in the superintendent's office of the Illinois Central Railroad. After graduating high school in May 1941, and entering college that fall, he was doing what Wicklund says all young men of his age were doing, "chasing girls", when he heard the news on the radio of the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His first reaction was to "hurry up and get in the service because those little Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] won't last long and we won't get a shot at 'em." At the time, Wicklund had been flying, and he said everybody who knew how to fly wanted to get in the Naval Air Corps. To get in required 30 semester hours of college, and it became his goal get the hours before it all went away. "Bad thinking," Wicklund remarks.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks John Wicklund how he ended up in the Army.] John Wicklund explains that during his freshman year in college he took a CPT [Annotator's Note: Civilian Pilot Training] course and at the end of summer, he enlisted in the Air Corps Reserve in Jackson [Annotator's Note: Jackson, Mississippi] in August 1942. He repeated the same course from the same instructors in the same planes, then after a little lag time, went for aerobatics training in larger airplanes in north Mississippi. That August, he was called to active duty, and reported to Keesler [Annotator's Note: Keesler Field; now Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi]. In the meantime, he had suffered an injury to his right eye, and did not pass the Air Corps physical. Wicklund "went to Private status" and had to be reclassified. He began the ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program] at Lake Forrest College in Lake Forrest, Illinois in the fall of 1943. In March 1944, the ASTP was demolished and its participants were sent to replacement units in infantry divisions. Wicklund got on a train in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Illinois] and went to Camp White in Medford, Oregon where he became a member of "Fox Company, 382nd Infantry, 96th Division" [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry, 96th Infantry Division]. Wicklund said he was now a "soldier in the US Army." It rained every day he was at Camp White; nevertheless, he trained on the M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand], and did some field maneuvers. As "college boy replacements," Wicklund said his group really didn't fit in for quite a while. Soon, they moved to Camp San Luis Obispo [Annotator's Note: San Luis Obispo, California] and were designated and trained as an amphibious division. At Mare Bay and San Diego Bay [Annotator's Note: California] the training "got serious," and it was a "real learning experience." Then he went on to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California], from where he was granted a two week leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. Wicklund went home and said goodbye to everyone because he knew where he was going. When he returned to duty, the division had moved to Camp Stoneman, a debarkation location in the San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] area. While he was in California, Wicklund had been designated the flamethrower operator for his company. Wicklund describes the weapon, his training in its use, and how he felt about the assignment. From Camp Stoneman, Wicklund boarded a ship for an "uneventful" trip, which he describes, to arrive at a tent city outside of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. While there, Wicklund went to demolition school, and made a memorable black sand practice landing on Maui [Annotator's Note: Maui, Hawaii]. He was there for about six weeks.

On 28 August [Annotator's Note: 28 August 1944], LST-1047 [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank], the ship to which John Wicklund was assigned, left Hawaii. He describes an "adventure" he had just before sailing. He and some buddies got permission to leave the ship to go to a Navy beer garden, but stayed too late, and when they returned to the dock, the LST was gone. The Navy took the soldiers out on a small craft, searched Pearl Harbor, and found the LST. The group was allowed on board, but had to clean heads [Annotator's Note: toilets] for a week. The trip took 52 days during which the soldiers slept on deck. A small problem with theft was checked, but otherwise the trip went unchallenged. After a short stop at Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands], the ship's plan to land at the Japanese island of Yap was "thrown overboard." According to Wicklund, that was the "exact time" Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] met with Nimitz [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Sr., Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet] and MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area], the island-by-island strategy was discarded, and their destination was changed to Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines]. Wicklund's group volunteered for GQ [Annotator's Note: General Quarters, a call to report to battle stations] every evening in order to eat first shift with the Navy and also to have an opportunity to pilfer the tanker's beer while they were at chow. The LST went to a mooring at Manus [Annotator's Note: Manus Island, Papua New Guinea] to join a huge fleet readying for the run to Leyte.

It was a beautiful day with calm seas when John Wicklund and the 96th Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: at the time of the landing Wicklund was serving as a flamethrower operator in Company F, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry, 96th Infantry Division] went ashore on Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines] a little after ten in the morning [Annotator's Note: on 20 October 1944]. The ship had circled for quite a while "letting everybody get ready," while cruisers starting bombarding the shore, creating "the greatest fireworks show you've ever seen." There was also a ship firing salvos of rockets that burst in solid flame on the shore. On signal, the circling amphibious ships pulled up and the troops clambered out. There was no opposition and Wicklund was amazed to see, after all the artillery that had been spent, a water buffalo grazing a hundred yards from the shore. Wicklund landed at Dulag Beach, and he knew of only one casualty, a soldier was bayoneted "in the butt" by the soldier behind him. The infantry formed a line and started inland. They achieved their distance goal for the first day, but while slogging through the swamps on the second day, Wicklund sank in water up to his chin, and could feel no solid bottom. He had to drop the heavy flamethrower he was carrying or drown. Wicklund's platoon leader chewed him out "real well," then told him to choose between carrying the squad's BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] or becoming first scout for Company F. Wicklund elected the latter and served in that position for the rest of his time on Leyte. That afternoon, the unit encountered the enemy and killed two Japanese. The local Filipinos immediately stripped them of their clothes and shoes. The next day the American troops met organized resistance and from then on they were in "constant contact." Wicklund's unit stayed on line for 66 days without a break. During the month of November the rainfall measured 19 inches, and Wicklund said they had an "indoctrination" to the tropics. They dug in every evening, and didn't move out of their foxholes after dark because "people shot at anything." During the month of November they slept in water.

John Wicklund and his fellow infantrymen started hitting tough resistance at Mechum Ridge [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], and lost a lot of people there. He spent his birthday, 5 November [Annotator's Note: 5 November 1944] trapped in a foxhole with machine guns zeroed in on him for a 24 hour period. When his company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry, 96th Infantry Division] finally moved along, he met good friends who had been hit. One friend asked for water, and when Wicklund gave him a drink, the liquid came running out of holes on both sides of his neck. Another guy walked by holding in his intestines. His stomach had been cut across as cleanly as if a surgeon had incised it. Wicklund said, "It was a bad time, and it didn't get much better after that." A move into one town proved quite eventful. As he approached in his position of first scout, Wicklund kept hearing pinging around him, but wasn't hit. As they reached the bank of a creek, a guy about four down from him got shot in the back, then a second suffered the same fate, and the unit initially thought they were experiencing friendly fire. But they noticed a clump of trees to their rear, and blew it apart, and a rifle fell out. As they continued into the town, they came under machine gun fire, and Wicklund took cover in a ditch next to another soldier whose gun went off, nearly hitting Wicklund in the head. The enemy came at them during the night and it was "quite a fight." The next morning there were bodies everywhere. It was hot, and at that point, more than any other time, the gruesomeness of war really hit Wicklund when he watched flies move between the C-rations [Annotator’s Note: packaged pre-cooked foods] he was eating and the decomposing bodies all around him. The American realized the Japanese had dug what the Americans called "spider holes," under the houses in the town, and were firing light machine guns from them. The American started rolling hand grenades into these holes to pick them off. The GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] moved through the town, and the next afternoon, a flame-throwing tank showed up. Wicklund called it an "awesome" weapon, and said he saw a Japanese soldier take a full burst from the tank, and "he just melted." At the next ridge, Wicklund dove into a foxhole full of red ants, and had to jump back out to strip down his pants to rake the ants off his body, exposing himself to ground fire. On that same trip, he was relieved by a soldier who never returned. They found the man three days later, hacked by machetes. Wicklund says there was no mercy shown. It left the men no question about the need to win the battle. But as privates, the men were "operating in a vacuum," with no idea of their objective or the progress of the mission; they had to just do as they were told, and it worked on the soldiers in "odd ways." Wicklund goes on to tell several anecdotes about unusual experiences that occurred while his outfit moved on through the fields. He speaks of a custom-made trench knife that he went to great lengths to retrieve when he left it on the battleground; things like that, Wicklund said, "you never forget."

As first scout, John Wicklund carried a Thompson submachine gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] and a pistol [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol]. He remembered that nights in the jungle could be "eerie." They tried to get two or three men in a foxhole so they could take turns on one hour watches. When awake, the soldier tried to be alert as possible, but sometimes would see things that weren't there. If one round was fired, flares went off and mortars started firing. At night the smells and sounds were different in a foreign land and the imagination played tricks. Wicklund said his machine gun was perfect for the job he was doing. After they had secured the assigned area, Wicklund's unit [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry, 96th Infantry Division] was tasked with finding a route through the mountains to Ormoc [Annotator's Note: Ormoc, Leyte, Philippines], on the other side of the island. They headed up into the hills, and vehicular traffic became impossible. Supplies were airdropped, and the Japanese got about half of the Americans deliveries. They met very little resistance and after MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] landed troops at Ormoc, the mission was "futile." The unit was in the mountains for a while longer, until the Japanese took over the Leyte airfield, and Wicklund's unit was called in to retake it. When replacements arrived, they brought fresh supplies that made for comfortable living for a short time. Then the 96th Infantry Division was sent north to Samar [Annotator's Note: Samar Island, Philippines] that had a long peninsula on Leyte Gulf. The Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] had constructed an airstrip and there was a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] unit there. At last Wicklund slept on a cot in a hut, and there was a mess hall serving hot meals and cold drinks. Their job was to guard the airstrip, although there were no enemy forces apparent on Samar. The GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] were free to roam into the town of Guiuan, Samar and on the whole, lived a good life for about four or five weeks. Wicklund says it is a fallacy propagandized in the movies that the soldiers came face-to-face with the enemy; they were mostly in the trees or the jungle, and he very seldom saw the targets he hit.

John Wicklund says the most effective weapon the infantry used was the Browning Automatic Rifle [Annotator's Note: BAR]. He goes on to describe other weapons they used and how they were employed. He describes a night when he used his 1911 Colt pistol [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol]. They experienced a banzai attack, and had actually placed a Japanese body in front of their foxhole to prevent the enemy from rolling hand grenades into the space they were occupying. It [Annotator's Note: his pistol] was a "reassuring" thing to have in hand. Wicklund had been a hunter during his early years in Mississippi and guns were not foreign to him. He said there was no question that American weaponry was good. After Samar [Annotator's Note: Samar Island, Philippines], the division [Annotator's Note: 96th Infantry Division] went back to Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines], which was "secure" by then, meaning the Americans were not going to be "thrown off," but didn't mean the fighting was over. They went ashore on 20 October [Annotator's Note: 20 October 1944], and by the end of December, "hostilities were over." Another fallacy Wicklund uncovered was the myth of the "little Jap" [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] as he was amazed at the size of the soldiers on Leyte. They had been marines on Singapore, and were "robust, large men." The infantry was beginning to re-outfit for the next operation, and rumors were rampant as to where they would be going. But that's when Wicklund went "to get paregoric and bismuth" for his stomach ailments, common among the infantry. After one of the doctors examined him, he put a tag on Wicklund and sent him to the hospital. It took six months for Wicklund to recover his health, starting with evacuation on a plane from Leyte to Biak, New Guinea, then on to Hamilton Airbase Hospital in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. The diagnosis for his case was miscoded, indicating a non-existent lung problem, and Wicklund was sent to Bruns General Hospital, in New Mexico [Annotator's Note: Santa Fe, New Mexico]. He was finally granted a medical discharge from there in July 1945, while his infantry buddies went on to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa,Japan], and had "a real bad time."

The 96th Division [Annotator's Note: 96th Infantry Division] spent Christmas [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1944] on Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines], and the soldiers were served canned turkey that was rotten. They resorted to "10-in-1 rations" [Annotator's Note: prepackaged combat ration meant to provide a meal for ten soldiers]. At Thanksgiving, they had been issued raw turkeys that the soldiers boiled. When they were first on the island, the rumor was that the division supplier was "cashiered out," and they got no rations for almost a week. Wicklund describes C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] and K-rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals], and how he used them. He goes on to say that most soldiers carried cigarettes, matches, and toilet paper between their head and their helmet liner to keep them dry. They also used wild peppers to spice up the canned stew. They were hungry, but Wicklund said that was among the least of their worries. They were "dirty" and "grubby," and dysentery was rampant; and "you never feel too good," but they survived. The thing that happened on Leyte that Wicklund will never forget was the occasion when he saw a man that he killed. He couldn't sleep that night; he may have had a little dengue fever as well, but he said as "tough" and "mean" as he was supposed to be, he was still a human being, and it bothered him. The man had 11 holes between his waist and his chin. It was primitive living, sleeping in a hole every night, scrounging for food, and somebody shooting at you all the time; "not a good way to live." One of his company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry, 96th Infantry Division] collected the teeth of dead Japanese in a tobacco sack, and Wicklund said soldiers gained a "hard shell" to such revolting behavior. The worst thing he saw was a truck loaded with American bodies in full rigor. Not good memories, but, he said, a lot of people had worse.

On the day after V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], John Wicklund and a friend went to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] with two young ladies. He was standing in the lobby of a big hotel, and said, "a million ants started stinging me." He went into the men's room and started tearing his clothes off. When the attendant asked him what was wrong, he couldn't respond. After some wet toweling, he calmed down. The same thing happened on more than one other occasion, for no reason, except "nerves." When he went to LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana], he roomed with a former pilot and learned from him that he was "acting out dreams" during the night. After about a year and a half, it all ended. His five children complained that he never told them much about the war, and Wicklund said it is only now that he is willing to tell the story. He eventually earned his degree from Ole Miss [Annotator's Note: University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi]. Looking back, Wicklund says he had no idea when he was sent to the hospital on Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines] that the war would be over for him; he "fully expected" to go back into combat. It was when the plane headed for Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii], he knew there wasn't much chance of his returning. But he "lived on the edge," not knowing, and "lived one day at a time." Taking advantage of a 30 day hospital leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in June [Annotator's Note: June 1945], Wicklund went with his family to northern Michigan, and when he was returning, he took a flight that unexpectedly landed in Wichita, Kansas. All the passengers were thrown off the plane because it had to take on priority cargo - the atomic bomb. He was given passage on another plane, but the weather forced them to land in Oklahoma City [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma], and by various means got back to the hospital. Only when he was processed for discharge could he sure he wasn't going back to the Pacific.

John Wicklund didn't get his full regular Army pay from August 1944 to August 1945. When he was discharged, he finally got paid. He was discharged on an affidavit, because his records had been lost, and believes his documents may have gone down in Leyte Gulf [Annotator's Note: the Philippines]. He has no question that the Americans had to get involved in World War 2. He says that the United States was predominantly isolationist, and that Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] "got away with" a lot before the declaration of war, such as lend-lease and giving planes to Great Britain. He feels that Japan was determined to get the United States into war, because they wanted the whole Far East. Wicklund says it is "absolutely” important that we have institutions such as The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] to bring the story of the war forward because subsequent generations owe the World War 2 veterans so much.