Joseph Blouin went to basic training at the largest wooden hotel in the country [Annotator's Note: Belleview-Biltmore Hotel], just outside Clearwater, Florida. He did not want to do KP [Annotator's Note: Kitchen Patrol or Kitchen Police] and march, so he went out for boxing. He left Clearwater for Salt Lake City, Utah for two days of training. Then they were sent to Boise, Idaho. He was supposed to go with a suicide squadron to the Pacific to open small land fields for emergency landings. He went on a five day furlough to California and when he returned, that unit was gone. He was fortunate because the unit got wiped out. He was then put in the 445th Bombardment Group and sent to Wendover Field, Utah. Jimmy Stewart [Annotator's Note: US Air Force Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart, American actor and military officer] was the officer in charge of operations. He got a five day furlough and went home. He came back and found out he had been assigned the 713th Bombardment Squadron, 448th Bombardment Group because the 445th had been shipped to Sioux City, Iowa. He took his second phase of training. When they were getting ready to ship out, a 24 [Annotator’s Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] took off and went down. He and some others took off across the desert to try and get the putt-putt motor [Annotator's Note: auxiliary power unit] out of it. The truck got stuck in the sand. A Piper Cub [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub light observation aircraft] landed, and a Major told them to dig the truck out. They saw the ambulance was stuck also. They hiked over and helped get it freed and went back to the base. They then went to the last phase of training. He did not know what his job was until later. They went to Herrington, Kansas to modify the B-24s for shipping overseas. They got snowed in for two weeks. They flew to West Palm Beach, Florida to take the southern route to England. The route took them to Belize, South America, Dakar, North Africa, Marrakesh, Morocco and finally to England.

Joseph Blouin was born in March 1923 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He grew up there. He had a brother who was coming home from the Pacific and was listed as missing from a troop ship. They never found out anything about it. Baton Rouge was a quiet little town. His dad worked at the Standard Oil plant and rode a bicycle to work 25 miles a day for 25 years. He did not own a car until 1939. Blouin had older brothers and three sisters. He graduated from high school. It was just on the tail end of the Great Depression. It was not easy for a family with five kids. They had a garden and never lacked for food. Blouin and three friends were in a car and heard the news [Annotator's Note: of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] over the radio. His friend was taken into the service the very next day. A guy wanted them to go to California and go to school to work in aircraft factories. He and two friends took a Model A Ford to California to do that. The only adventure they had was being stopped by the police near the Hoover Dam. He went to Douglas Aircraft factory in El Segundo [Annotator's Note: California]. Blouin stayed there until he was drafted on 12 January 1943. He did not know where he was going or what he was going to do. A child star, Little Lord Fauntleroy [Annotator's Note: Actor Frederick "Freddie" Cecil Bartholomew] was there but he was taken out. Blouin was then shipped to Florida.

It took a good month for Joseph Blouin to fly from West Palm Beach, Florida to England. The captain checking them in in England told them the English charge the United States 75 dollars for every plane that lands there. They flew out of Norwich, England to a base called Seething [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Seething]. The mud was up halfway up their legs. Engineers had to come and rebuild the whole base. They had to recap the runways to handle the B-24s [Annotator’s Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. There he discovered he would be in charge of battle damage. Lieutenant Thompson [Annotator's Note: likely First Lieutenant Phillip B. Thompson], one of their pilots, got to know them and let them get flight pay. That is how Blouin started flying some. Blouin was in metal works, repairing anything that happened to the airplane. They built some shacks out of bomb boxes. They gathered some things and made their own supply of running hot water. A B-24 crashed and they took the radio and put it in the armored division. They installed a speaker so they could give each other warnings if something was coming up. The aircraft near their hut was the "Fascinating Lady". Tweet Gwaltney [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant James T. Gwaltney] was the crew chief and that airplane had been doing a lot of flying. It almost beat the "Memphis Belle" [Annotator's Note: a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] with 25 without an aborted mission. It was sitting on the tarmac when the magnetos went out. That is how the Memphis Belle passed it in missions.

The thing that disturbed Joseph Blouin the most in England was the German putt-putt [Annotator's Note: slang for the V-1 pulse-jet rocket bomb] that would come over every night until it went down and blew up. When the war was over, the base was turned back over to the RAF [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force]. Colonel Thompson [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel James McKenzie Thompson], who did 25 missions, took over the 448th Bombardment Group. On his way home, he hit a mountain in Scotland and died. Blouin would repair bullet holes in the returning aircraft. He also flew three missions during D-Day [Annotator’s Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He was the engineer aboard a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. They were bombing the coast with the B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. At that time the fighters did not have enough fuel to accompany the bombers into Germany. When the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] came in, they could go all the way with the bombers. He returned from the war and landed in New York. He then took a train to California. He was on furlough when the Japanese surrendered, and he went to Fort MacArthur [Annotator's Note: Fort MacArthur, San Pedro, Los Angeles, California] where he was discharged. He was in England when the war in Europe ended. They tore up the whole base. [Annotator's Note: Blouin laughs.] On 25 August 1945 he was discharged. His brother had been in the Pacific. He was on a troop ship coming back and three days out from California, he came up missing. Blouin was in Los Angeles to meet him. He had been in the Army. Blouin had an uncle in Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Army. He also had a cousin in the Pacific. He had two uncles in the Navy in World War 1. Blouin returned by ship. There were 9,000 Canadians and 7,000 Americans were aboard.

The British treated the Americans well until the war ended. Joseph Blouin would go to pubs frequently and after the war, they did not want to talk to them. The British did not appreciate how the Americans acted. They would come in and order all the pale ale and scotch they could get, because the pubs would run out. He would get together with guys at the mess hall. They worked on the mess hall men's bicycles so they would get to raid the mess hall at night and get food they would cook in their own shack. The armament boys next to them would go into town and get supplies for the officer's club. They would bring them back a keg of pale ale. It was not that hard. Their operations officer wanted them to come down and do exercises with the rest of the people. Colonel Thompson [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel James McKenzie Thompson] stopped that. Blouin flew some missions on D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He cannot describe what Normandy looked like to him. Pictures are nothing like seeing it. He was an engineer on a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] that day. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe; 34th President of the United States] did one of the smartest things. He brought Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] to England and they built a fake Army. It was unbelievable. The Germans thought sure that Patton was going to land in the wrong place. They can say what they want about Patton, but he was the greatest we ever had. For the man to get killed [Annotator's Note: Patton died on 21 December 1945 as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident] the way he did breaks a soldier's heart.

Joseph Blouin did not fly any missions after D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. His squadron [Annotator’s Note: 713th Bombardment Squadron, 448th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] flew missions into Germany. Blouin remembers when the jets [Annotator's Note: likely Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft] hit them. The bombers would come back with big holes they could not fix. Somebody in 2nd Air Command decided that instead of B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] and 17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] taking off in early morning, they would take off at noon. They would return at dark. Enemy planes would follow them back. They could not shoot ack-ack [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] at them, because the Allied planes were up there. They lost so many planes they could not fly a mission the next day. They did not lose many men but a lot of planes. Blouin had five men under him. When Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] was stopped from going to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Germany], he ran out of everything. They took the ball turrets out of the B-24s and dropped him supplies. Blouin was discharged in California and got a job. He was kind of restless. He met a guy in the neon sales and service business. He went with him, hanging beer signs in bars. He left that job and stayed at the beach drinking beer until 1947. He then returned to Baton Rouge [Annotator's Note: Louisiana]. Everybody should know a complete synopsis of the whole thing [Annotator's Note: World War 2]. The only way they will find out is by people telling them. Today we have protests to get out of Iraq [Annotator's Note: Iraq War, 2003 to 2011]. We are up to our necks. He does not know how we will ever get out of it. Blouin went to The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana]. He only objected to the armada going across on D-Day and there was not a B-24 up there. The man [Annotator's Note: likely Stephen E. Ambrose, American historian] did such a fantastic job and thank God they have continued it. He is sure that everybody that goes there is as amazed as he is when he sees it. Everybody should see that museum and it is one of the finest in the country.