Robert Guitard was born in January 1927 in Westbrook, Maine, the home of Rudy Vallée [Annotator's Note: Hubert Prior Vallée, American singer, musician, actor, and radio host] who was married to Alice Faye [Annotator's Note: Alice Jeanne Leppert, American actress and singer]. Guitard's mother had 12 children. His parents were Canadians from New Brunswick. They were going for work in Washington state when he stopped in Westbrook to visit his sister. She talked him into staying. His father went to work in the S.D. Warren Paper Mill [Annotator's Note: Westbrook, Maine]. His mother lost her first three children from diphtheria [Annotator's Note: a serious infection of the nose and throat]. All of her children were born in Canada except for Guitard, who was born in America. Guitard remembers the Great Depression well. They ate a lot of herring. They would go the whole week on seven dollars worth of food, which is all his father got paid per week. His aunt had to be institutionalized, and his family took on her three children. Guitard would see his mother in the morning with the newspaper. After she died, he learned that she did not know how to read. Guitard attended a school that was taught in French in the morning and in English in the afternoon. All of the children went there. His mother spoke French; his father did not as he was Scottish. Guitard turned 18 in January [Annotator's Note: January 1945] of his senior year in high school. He got his greetings from the President [Annotator's Note: his draft notice] then. They let him graduate in June and then the Army took him. His family paid attention to the news of the events in Europe over the radio. His brother was in the 5th Army in Italy and another brother was a Navy Beach Jumper [Annotator's Note: US Navy special warfare units that specialized in deception and psychological warfare] whose commanding officer was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [Annotators Note: US Navy Lieutenant Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr.; American actor, producer, decorated naval officer], the movie star. For the invasion of Normandy [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944; known as D-Day], the Navy brother was part of the fake invasion at Calais [Annotator's Note: Operation Fortitude (South), Pas de Calais, France] on a PT-Boat [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boat].

Robert Guitard and his family listened to the news of the war over the radio. One of his brothers was in the 5th Army in Italy and another brother was a Navy Beach Jumper [Annotator's Note: US Navy special warfare units that specialized in deception and psychological warfare] whose commanding officer was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr.; American actor, producer, decorated naval officer], the movie star. For the invasion of Normandy [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944; often referred to as D-Day], the Navy brother was part of the fake invasion at Calais [Annotator's Note: Operation Fortitude (South), Pas de Calais, France] on a PT-Boat [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boat]. They put down a smoke screen and had loudspeakers that made invasion sounds. It worked. His brothers communicated with the family using V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail]. It was so censored it did not make any sense. His brother in the 5th Army was an orderly in a MASH [Annotator's Note: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] unit. He landed in North Africa, was in the Sicily invasion [Annotator's Note: Operation Husky, 9 July to 17 August 1943, Sicily, Italy], Anzio [Annotator's Note: Battle of Anzio, 22 January 1944 to 5 June 1944, Anzio, Italy], Florence [Annotator's Note: Florence, Italy], and the Po Valley battle [Annotator's Note: part of Spring 1945 offensive in Italy]. They dropped the bomb on Japan then [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. Guitard's brother was scheduled to participate in the Japanese invasion and was on a troop ship heading there when the bomb dropped. Everybody Guitard's age wanted to get into the war. The way the Japanese attacked us [Annotator's Note: the United States], they could not wait to get in. Guitard was in the desert of Maine in the Freeport area with a friend when they got word that Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. No one knew what Pearl Harbor was then. They did not even know it was in Hawaii. It was terrible and they expected the Japanese to be at the West Coast [Annotator's Note: of the United States] anytime. They did come into Alaska and intended to come down to California. His brothers both enlisted then. Guitard was too young. He became 18 in 1945. He was not worried about getting in. He would have been willing not to go by then. They had heard of all of the kinds of killings the Germans were doing.

Robert Guitard was drafted after graduating from high school [Annotator's Note: in 1945]. He went to Fort Williams [Annotator's Note: in Cape Elizabeth, Maine] then was transferred to Fort Devens, Massachusetts [Annotator's Note: in Ayer and Shirley, Massachusetts]. He took a World War 1 troop train to Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama for 17 weeks of infantry training for the invasion of Japan. He was trained in all types of weapons like mortars, flame throwers, rifles, and hand grenades. In August, they were almost done with training when they dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. They did not know what an atomic bomb was but knew that was going to save them. They had been told in training that one million of them would not make it out of the invasion. He had made up his mind that he was not going to see Westbrook, Maine again [Annotator's Note: his hometown]. They knew even the women [Annotator's Note: Japanese women] were being trained to use spears. He was 18 years old, but it was all part of the big war and death was everywhere. It was just their time to go. You have to psyche yourself up, because you have to do it. They were training to bayonet people, imagine that. War is hell. The atomic bomb was described just as a big bomb. He could not envision the largeness of such a thing. Seeing pictures of whole cities wiped out made them feel lucky. After the war, his wife was in the hospital with a Japanese woman who had been burned by the bomb. On 2 September [Annotator's Note: 2 September 1945] the Peace Treaty with Japan was signed. In November of that year, Guitard was put on a troop transport, the SS Mariposa, and was sent to Naples, Italy. They had a hard time getting into the harbor due to sunken vessels.

The Army had events for the soldiers who had fought the war. They could go to Switzerland, Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], and Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy]. Robert Guitard went to all of them. The guys who had fought did not want to tour Europe so Guitard did. He went to them all twice at the expense of the United States Army. In Rome, he stayed in Mussolini's [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce] palace and swam in his pool. It was magnificent. The pool was the length of a football field and had inlaid mosaics. It had not been touched by the war. Florence [Annotator's Note: Florence, Italy] and Pisa [Annotator's Note: Pisa, Italy] were pretty bombed out; Pisa was more devastated than Florence. It was dusty and dirty. Buildings would have just one wall standing. It was dangerous as they were always falling. Rome was virtually untouched. The Army took over hotels; he had nice meals, slept in beds with sheets, they could ride the buses and streetcars for free. In Rome, Guitard met with Pope Pius XII [Annotator's Note: born Eugenio Maria Guiseppe Giovanni Pacelli, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State] with three other soldiers at the Vatican [Annotator's Note: Vatican City State, an independent city state enclave within Rome, Italy; focal point of the Catholic Church]. The Army had arranged it. He toured the museum there. Paris was pristine. He went to Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: Notre-Dame de Paris or Our Lady of Paris, medieval Catholic cathedral], the Louvre [Annotator's Note: Louvre Museum, world’s largest art museum, Paris], the Folies Bergére [Annotator's Note: cabaret music hall, Paris], and saw beautiful girls. The Parisians and the French were not nice to Americans. The Swiss were. They would pay for everything. He was surprised at the French. They did not seem to put up much of a fight with the Germans. They turned their Navy over to the Germans. When we went into North Africa, we had to fight the French Naval forces before the Germans. That stays with him, even today. In Paris, he could feel that they knew he thought they were not the best soldiers. He could speak French and that made it easier. The girls would tell each other to be careful because he understood what they were saying.

Robert Guitard was in Florence [Annotator's Note: Florence, Italy] on Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1945] and the enclosure he was assigned to [Annotator's Note: POW Enclosure 339] was moved to Pisa [Annotator's Note: Pisa, Italy]. His job was in the Prisoner of War Information Bureau. He would notify the American Red Cross that they had prisoners and were in the process of repatriating them to their homelands. Sometimes, the Germans tried to escape during the transfer. He did not personally have to deal with it. He was not surprised by it. Under Yalta [Annotator's Note: Yalta Conference, or Crimea Conference, code-name Argonaut, meeting of heads of governments of United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, 4 to 11 February 1945], we had guaranteed they would be repatriated. He heard some of them had to be fired upon. The prisoners were treated very well. They got all the coffee, tobacco and beef stew they wanted. They were never abused. The only time they had to get tough with them was when the SS soldiers [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] would refuse to get a haircut. They then shaved them to show who was boss. They were fed much better than they fed the American troops. A friend of Guitard's, who was a prisoner of the Germans, said he was fed potatoes mixed with straw for two months. Guitard is proud of the care given to the prisoners. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee if he had many SS officers as prisoners.] Guitard could not tell the ranks because they all wore American Army uniforms with "PW" on the backs. As far as he knew they were all enlisted. Most were Germans. About one quarter of them were Austrian. There were also what were called White Russians who were Russians who were fighting with the Wehrmacht [Annotator's Note: German Military] against the Red Russians [Annotator's Note: Soviet Army]. They were called Displaced Persons, or DPs, about five or six thousand of them. They fought against the Red Army [Annotator's Note: Soviet Army] because they disliked Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]. They had a separate enclosure and he does not know why. He never spoke with them nor did the paperwork for them.

Robert Guitard went to Livorno [Annotator's Note: Livorno, Italy] to a replacement depot. They got news that General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] had been killed [Annotator's Note: Patton died on 21 December 1945 as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident on 8 December 1945]. Guitard went to Florence [Annotator's Note: Florence, Italy] to his unit, the Prisoner of War Information Bureau, Prisoner of War Enclosure 339, the day before Christmas, 1945 [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1945]. Before he arrived, there had been a tremendous fire. They were going to transfer the prisoners to a new enclosure in Pisa [Annotator's Note: Pisa, Italy]. Two days after Christmas, they used a convoy to take them to San Rossore [Annotator's Note: Provence of Pisa], outside of Pisa. They set up their tents and enclosures and he worked there the whole time. Japanese Nisei [Annotator's Note: first generation Japanese-Americans] soldiers were the guards. They were members of the 442nd Infantry Combat Team [Annotator's Note: 442nd Regimental Combat Team]. They were marvelous guys. They talked to him about taking Lucca [Annotator's Note: Lucca, Italy]. Lucca was then assigned to the 92nd Negro Division [Annotator's Note: 92nd Infantry Division] but they could not hold it. The Nisei had to go back and take the town, costing them lives for the second time. Not a nice thing, but that is history. Marshal Tito [Annotator's Note: Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman; Former President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia], from Yugoslavia, decided this was a good time to take back a town just outside of Venice [Annotator's Note: Venice, Italy]. Tito did not realize that the 88th Division [Annotator's Note: 88th Infantry Division] was still in Italy. Guitard was readying to go up with the 88th Division into combat, but Tito backed down. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee how he felt about going into combat.] They were so trained for combat; it was just a necessary evil they had to fulfill. They become psyched up. The military psyches you so that when you have to do something, you do it.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Guitard was assigned to the Prisoner of War Enclosure 339, Prisoner of War Information Bureau in Pisa, Italy, processing paperwork for prisoner repatriation.] They had to know where they were going in the country. They would marshal them into groups and send them to Switzerland where they would then be dispersed to their hometowns. He did the paperwork and put them on the trains. Once they got to Switzerland, they had their release papers and they could just go home under the terms of the Yalta Conference [Annotator's Note: Yalta Conference, or Crimea Conference, code-name Argonaut, meeting of heads of governments of United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, 4 to 11 February 1945]. Guitard was in the postal part of it and he handled the mail to the prisoners from their families. He had two prisoners who worked for him. One was Siegfried Gurtzel [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] who spoke perfect English. The other, Alfred Becker [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], could not speak English at all. Siegfried could translate. They had a German band that would play for him. Germans would make their beds and work the mess halls. The war was over. It was a relaxed environment. They knew they were going home. There were about 100 of them that helped out. They would discuss Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. Hitler was his adopted name. Hitler's real name was Schicklgruber [Annotator's Note: Schicklgruber was Adolf Hitler's father's last name until he changed it to Heidler, which was listed as Hitler on legal documents]. They also talked about going home. They never discussed what they did in the war, and Guitard never asked. [Annotator's Note: Guitard tells the interviewer that no one has ever asked him about these things.] They did not discuss any of their war records at all. They never mentioned Jews. There were a lot of Jewish-American soldiers there. One time, he remembers Sergeant Silverstein [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] made it clear to a German prisoner that he was Jewish and did not appreciate what they had done to his people. Guitard felt that the emotions had built up, Silverstein knew about all the people going into the ovens, and the tension just broke. The prisoner did not dare to say anything, he was frightened. They then just went on with their chores. Silverstein never brought it up again.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Guitard was assigned to the Prisoner of War Enclosure 339, Prisoner of War Information Bureau in Pisa, Italy, processing paperwork for prisoner repatriation.] Releasing Germans back to their homes was done under the Yalta Conference [Annotator's Note: Yalta Conference, or Crimea Conference, code-name Argonaut, meeting of heads of governments of United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, 4 to 11 February 1945]. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had agreed to it with Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], and Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945]. Guitard recalls Roosevelt passing away [Annotator's Note: 12 April 1945]. He was sad. Guitard stayed at the camp one and a half years. They repatriated all of the prisoners. He left Livorno [Annotator's Note: Livorno, Italy] on a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] that was built in the town where Guitard is from [Annotator’s Note: Westbrook, Maine]. They arrived in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] on Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1946]. They went by the Statue of Liberty and an Army band greeted them. That was quite a thrill. They went to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey] on Christmas Day to get separated. He was only 19 then and it was a big treat to go right by the Statue of Liberty. The first thing he ate was steak. He had good food the entire time he was in the military. In Italy, he ate spaghetti. The Germans had confiscated all of their food [Annotator's Note: the Italian civilian's food]. Kids would come to the American areas and eat out of the garbage. They were starving to death. The Americans helped them out and gave them grilled cheese sandwiches. They could only do so much though. The transition to civilian life was easy for Guitard. He went to Gray's Business College [Annotator's Note: Gray's Portland Business College, Portland, Maine] and then worked as a financial controller for three insurance companies. He would not have been able to afford to go to college without the G.I. Bill. He also got the 52-20 Club [Annotator's Note: a government-funded program that paid unemployed veterans 20 dollars per week for 52 weeks]. Back then, you could live off of 20 dollars easily. He really appreciated the G.I. Bill. It worked for him.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Guitard was assigned to the Prisoner of War Enclosure 339, Prisoner of War Information Bureau in Pisa, Italy.] They had a German band. The prisoners liked to get out of the enclosure, and they would do anything they wanted. The band could play American music like it was Benny Goodman [Annotator's Note: Benjamin David Goodman, American jazz clarinetist and bandleader]. Every Saturday night they would send trucks into town to pick up girls so they could have somebody to dance with besides their buddies. They would feed them cheese sandwiches. The girl's mothers came along as chaperones. The mothers would fill baskets with cheese sandwiches to take home. The POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] were not allowed to dance. Even though the war was over, they still had rules. They served Vermouth [Annotator's Note: type of alcohol]. Guitard did not drink then. The guys would pour the Vermouth down the length of the bar and then set it on fire to watch it burn. They were all kids, just 18 and 19 years old. Once they were out marching and came across German calvary horses in a barn and they wanted to ride them. They opened the door looking for saddles. There were only English saddles there. Guitard had never ridden a horse. He went to get on and the horse just took off. All he could do was hold onto the horse's neck. It ran to the barn, stopped suddenly, and Guitard flew off. He brought home German souvenirs. One helmet has a shrapnel hole in it. The helmets were just lying there. There were German graves right around his office building. They had to be careful of minefields. They would go to a beach to swim and there were mines there. The graves were marked with big, black German crosses. Someone paid a lot of attention and made it a nice cemetery.

Robert Guitard took a Baltic [Annotator's Note: Baltic means relating to the Baltic Sea in Europe] trip and went to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, and Leningrad, Russia [Annotator's Note: now St. Petersburg, Russia]. That was the only time he set foot on German soil. This was many years after the war ended. After he returned home [Annotator's Note: on 25 December 1946 from his tour of occupation duty in Europe], the Army set him up to enter college under the G.I. Bill. It was a godsend to guys. He returned to Portland, Maine to school. The shipyard was closing, and people were concerned about losing their jobs. The two shipyards there were paying unheard of money then. Thousands of people came there to live, and they lived it up. The rest of the economy was going in the toilet [Annotator's Note: slang for getting bad] after the war. A lot of people lost family to the war. So many guys Guitard went to high school with were killed. One buddy used a bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable anti-tank weapon]. The first bazookas required two men to fire. One guy loaded it, attached the firing wires, and then had to get out of the way. He did not get away before the other guy fired it and his head was taken off. He was a Marine. People even got killed in training. The training courses were live fire [Annotator's Note: live ammunition being fired] and a lot of his friends raised their heads too high and got a bullet in the head. There were so many being killed that it was routine. On Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] and Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan], 30,000 or 40,000 men were lost in one day. That is real war. His community was hit hard. The mothers put a thing in the window, Gold Star Mothers [Annotator's Note: Gold Star Mothers are women entitled to display a gold star on a service flag as the mother of a United States military member who died while engaged in action against an enemy]. That meant they had lost a son or two.

Robert Guitard could tell we were no longer at war when women could buy silk stockings, and everyone could buy butter. Butter was gold. That was around late 1946 or early 1947. He never gave a thought to staying in the service. One guy from Maine was the only one out of 500 who did. He was the guy that Guitard had gone to Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy] and stayed in Mussolini's [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce] palace with. He did not know why he did not [Annotator's Note: re-enlist] because it was a good retirement, but then again, the Korean War started; then Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] and we've been at war ever since. His choice in career was detected by the Army in his aptitude tests. He was a natural at being an accountant. Guitard did not feel any lasting effects from the war. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee what his most memorable experience of World War 2 was.] Watching the kids eating out of the garbage pails [Annotator's Note: in Pisa, Italy] stayed with him. Riding a horse for the first time stands out to him. Meeting the Pope [Annotator's Note: Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Guiseppe Giovanni Pacelli, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State] was memorable too. He had told them what they had gone through. The Germans had cordoned off the Vatican [Annotator's Note: Vatican City, officially Vatican City State, independent city state enclave within Rome, Italy; focal point of the Catholic Church] with a painted, white line. Guitard decided to serve because he got his "Greetings" [Annotator's Note: draft notice for the United States military] from the President. The war changed his life completely. Seeing the devastation, especially the millions of Jewish people being put in the ovens, man's inhumanity to man. Today, people are denying that ever happened. It makes him throw up. Those Jewish people were told they were being put in the shower and then were gassed. Guitard's service means to him that he was patriotic and willing to die for his country. That does not seem to be the same anymore. If he was 19, he would do it again. The war means very little to the country today and he means to the politicians too. His son was in the Marines and would be on guard duty with no ammunition in his rifle. He asks "how nuts are we?" He has his doubts as to whether we are a Democracy now. Guitard is so pleased that the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is documenting what the guys have been through. He did not see action but some of these guys had kamikazes coming down on them constantly [Annotator's Note: he mentions the Currier boys undergoing this]. The war should be taught to future generations. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer says she will be interviewing the Currier boys and asks how Guitard knows them.] Their father's brother was Guitard's brother-in-law. He went to school with them and the wife of one of them. They were older than him. Back then, you could go in the Navy at 17. The Army was 18. Guitard missed the shooting because of that thank goodness.