Theodore Pavlovich was born on 19 August 1923 in Leith, Pennsylvania, one of seven children in a close-knit family. His father was a Slovenian immigrant who worked as a coal miner; his mother a housewife. During the depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression] years, his father didn't always have work, but the family kept a garden and raised pigs to get by. Pavlovich was 16 years old when he volunteered for the armed forces. He lied about his age and signed up for the infantry in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He took the oath in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, mustered at Fort Hamilton, New York, and was shipped to Honolulu, Hawaii. When he arrived at Schofield Barracks, he was assigned to Company A [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] and handed a bugle. He trained himself to be the "best bugler you ever saw in your life." Pavlovich loved the Army and planned to stay in service for 50 years.

The "glorious" starting salary Theodore Pavlovich was earning in the Army came to 21 dollars a month, from which he sent ten dollars home to his mother, paid for his laundry and contributed to the old soldiers' home. In the Army he learned "the hard way" to live within his means, as wells as many other things he hadn't learned in civilian life, but Pavlovich was always a voracious reader, and gathered a lot from books as well. His basic training took place in Hawaii, and he was proud to be a part of the Army, but was initially hesitant to put a bayonet into his sergeant's stomach. Apart from training, being stationed in Hawaii was not very exciting because there was little to do. Locals did not look favorably upon the GIs [Annotator’s Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier]; there were signs on people's lawns that read "dogs and soldiers not allowed." Pavlovich "pumped iron," and stayed in shape. He was an expert rifleman, and worked in defense of the island.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: that Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Theodore Pavlovich said his training was varied, and included situating pill boxes and digging trenches. The island was rock and sand, and sometimes required dynamite to establish beach positions. Pavolvich's beach position was west of Pearl Harbor, near the mixed-population village of Ewa, which was a little friendlier to dogfaces [Annotator's Note: a slang term for an American soldier]. Pavlovich said he became acquainted with people all over the island, and thought them mostly "nice." He remembered a place called Soldier's Beach that was strictly for GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier], near the village of Kahuku [Annotator's Note: Kahuku, Hawaii], where they could rent a hut for 30 dollars a month. The currency used was silver dollars; after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were dollar bills printed with "Hawaii" on them. Sometimes, the soldiers would make an excursion to Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii] where there were big hotels and "houses of ill repute." For conventional sports, soldiers could enter bicycle races, and box competitively. Pavlovich entered the ring as a welterweight, but lost his first six round bout. After the event he learned that he was up against the golden glove champion of New York State. Luckily he got out of the match with nothing hurt by his feelings. Pavlovich said boxing was often used as a method of settling differences, regardless of rank. He noted that he made a lot of friends in the Army, and has stayed in touch with many of them.

The morning that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] started like every other Sunday in the tropics, according to Theodore Pavlovich. For Sunday breakfast, the soldiers had eggs to order and Pavlovich had just gone through the mess line when a bomb exploded right outside the building and his plate flew out of his hands. Everybody ran outside and saw planes coming in from Kolekole Pass on the north end of the island, strafing the barracks. The supply sergeant was asleep in the supply room, and couldn't be roused, so some soldiers kicked open the door, grabbed machine guns and worked their way to the roof and started firing at the oncoming aircraft. Pavlovich remembered that one hotshot pilot from Wheeler Field was just coming back from Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii] when the enemy planes arrived. He blew the lock off the hangar with his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol], and jumped in a P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] to become one of the first aces of the war. Pavlovich said everyone was doing their best to knock off the planes. He recalled going out on an alert one week before the attack; usually the platoon would spend a week out on maneuvers, but on that alert they stayed less than half a day. Pavlovich has had other flashes of hindsight, and suspected that there were spies among the civilians they worked with who were relaying information to the Japanese. Then 17, he was an able second to his 35th Regiment [Annotator's Note: Pavlovich was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] commanding officer, and might have had an opportunity to attend Officer Candidate School if things had gone differently.

On 7 December 1941, Theodore Pavlovich, along with many of his fellow riflemen, was on their barracks roof using the chimneys for protections, and firing a machine gun at the marauding Japanese fighters. He remarked that many eyewitnesses saw different things, but for him, the episode on the roof was his reality. When the attack ended, Pavlovich and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] started packing things up to move to their beach position. He spent the better part of the next year defending the shores of Hawaii. Some nights a scare would produce nothing more than a dead cow, and Pavlovich said the livestock and wild game of Hawaii took a toll from the anxious defenders. Pavlovich told a story of an anti-sabotage patrol in which a warrant officer at Schofield Barracks removed the machine gun from their truck while he and a buddy stopped for coffee and donuts. They got their gun back with a severe scolding. Pavlovich shipped out of Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii] in late November 1942, and headed for Noumea, New Caledonia where he trained for actual combat. Pavlovich said it was a miserable trip because the men were always hungry. For a long time, there was nothing but C-rations [Annotator’s Note: pre-cooked combat ration] that Pavlovich considered "slop."

For much of the time, Theodore Pavlovich had nothing to eat but C-rations [Annotator's Note: pre-cooked combat ration] that Pavlovich considered "slop." About halfway through the battle of Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands], part of his company [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] crossed a river and broke into an abandoned British ration dump to steal some food, and Pavlovich captured a horse. They managed to get enough food for themselves, with some to spare that they traded with the Air Force for used parachutes. They made fake Japanese flags from the parachutes and traded them with the American sailors offshore for food. They also pilfered some of the stocks they offloaded from supply ships, because they were always hungry. Pavlovich said the natives on Guadalcanal were "wild," and they would work, but sometimes they would steal vanilla and lemon extract because it contained alcohol. Pavlovich said he learned how to be civilized even in the harsh environment of war. He would do favors for the men on the Navy ship, and get his clothes washed in fresh water in return.

While the 35th Infantry [Annotator's Note: 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] waited on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] for the rest of the division to assemble, Theodore Pavlovich was loaned out to a Marine outfit to replace its scout. The boy had been captured, and because they were so close to the front, the Marines could hear the Japanese torturing him through the night. Afterwards, Pavlovich exercised no restraint against the enemy. Off and on, Pavlovich would work with the battalion intelligence units to determine whether his captives had useful information, but often he would just shoot them. Pavlovich said they found diaries that described how the Japanese killed Americans and ate their buttocks. He said he captured the first Japanese officer that was taken during World War 2. Pavlovich described the circumstances of the capture. He came upon the officer, with his arm in a sling, at a water hole. The Japanese had a hand grenade hidden in the fabric of his sling, but Pavlovich grabbed him before he could use it. It was said the officer gave up valuable information, and Pavlovich received the Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] from General Alexander Patch [Annotator's Note: US Army General Alexander McCarrell Patch] for his bravery. When the Marines moved out, he went back to his Army unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division].

When Theodore Pavlovich was on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands], it was wet and rough. For about a month, he spent every night in a foxhole that was swamped with water. He was never on level ground, and getting around meant "slipping and sliding" through mud. The jungle areas were inundated with vines, and he chopped his way through with a machete. Pavlovich said he doesn't remember being dry. It wasn't always easy to see the enemy, but he remembers an occasion when he killed about 15 Japanese at one time. He was carrying a message, following a telephone wire that had been cut, and when he reached the "hogback", what the soldiers called the crest of a hill, he sighted a group of stragglers below and demanded they lay down their weapons. When they scattered, he opened fire with his M-1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. Pavlovich said he realized that "at any second," someone could blow his head off. On another occasion, he went too far out front, and he came upon a GI [Annotator’s Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] he knew laying dead on the trail from sniper fire. As he struggled on up the trail, his helmet was blown off his head. He dove and ran around the knob to find the source of the fire, and found his helmet hanging on a vine. There was very little air and artillery support at the time, and although there was no hand-to-hand fighting, there was a lot of blind firing. Pavlovich said the Japanese were so hungry and so worn down, they weren't "in any mood" to come out and fight. He described how, at night, the Japanese would strip and grease their bodies, making them too slippery to grab, and jump into the Americans' foxholes to kill them. The GIs developed buddy systems so that they could get some sleep. Pavlovich said he wasn't afraid of the Japanese, but admits they were determined soldiers.

Theodore Pavlovich discussed the effectiveness of the weapons he used during his time as an infantryman. He also mentioned the suicide casualties before and during the war. Pavlovich commented that the hardest part of combat on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] was the weather. Before the campaign ended, he contracted malaria, and was shipped out to Noumea, New Caledonia where they found him suffering from an array of illnesses. While he was in hospital, his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] moved to New Zealand and Pavlovich rejoined them there. Once refitted, the unit moved back to New Caledonia to train for the Philippines. Pavlovich's group was in the first wave in the Lingayen Gulf assault. The invasion wasn't "that bad," but the eventual combat was fierce. As long as Pavlovich was there, the weather was tolerable, but they had no maps for the area around Luzon. He remembered taking out a night patrol, with a good dog and his handler, and marking a new trail with toilet paper.

In the Philippines, Theodore Pavlovich recalled searching hut-to-hut in a village where the natives had tried to ensure their safety from the Japanese with propaganda. He occasionally worked with intelligence units investigating the dead and wounded for information. Some of the dead were booby, trapped and some of the wounded were armed and ready to kill. During one search, Pavlovich found a photo album that he was allowed to keep. He tried to persuade another soldier to accompany him on a mission to "grab" General Yamashita [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese Army General Tomoyuki Yamashita], the "The Tiger of Malaysia," but the man refused. The next day, the GI [Annotator’s Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] attempted the excursion on his own and was killed by sniper fire. Cutting the trail from Umingan [Annotator's Note: Umingan, Luzon, Philippines] took "hours and hours," and Pavlovich was relying heavily on his hearing and hoping the guard dog that accompanied them could smell the Japanese. When the dog stopped, it was an indication that the enemy was near; the unit dropped and crawled for a long way, and Pavlovich began to lose faith, but soon they came upon a clutch of Japanese "jib-jabbering" away. His scouting party dropped back, and at daybreak the battalion [Annotator's Note: Pavlovich was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division] attacked near Lupao and the battle raged all day.

On the morning of 3 February 1945, a mortar shell dropped in the rice paddy alongside Theodore Pavlovich and he took shrapnel in his left ankle, knee, buttocks and lung. A medic gave him a shot of morphine, and marked his forehead to indicate that he had been injected. But his buddies, seeing he was still hurting and bleeding heavily, held the medic at gunpoint until he agreed to administer another dose. He was taken off on a stretcher, but dropped in a gully on the way down the hill. When he eventually reached the MASH [Annotator's Note: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] unit, he was put in a corner where a priest gave him last rites, covered him with a sheet and put a cross on his chest. He lay there, ignored, while the more salvageable patients got attention. Eventually he was put on the operating table, transfused, and had his lung aspirated. After they patched him up, he was sent to a hospital that had a wall blown out, and Pavlovich remembers being attended by two caring Filipinos. He was moved to a hospital on Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines] and lived on morphine. At one point, he threatened the staff when he wanted a shot and realized he was becoming addicted. Ultimately, he wound up in Van Nuys, California, and insisted on getting out of his hospital bed. He and a buddy went into Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] by bus and drank cognac for three days. The Army shipped him to a hospital in Utica, New York and then to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. where he had finally had surgery in October 1945.

Theodore Pavlovich compares the battles on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] with those in the Philippines. He found the greatest difference to be in the terrain. He comments on the Japanese use of tanks in the Philippines. Pavlovich noted that he was eligible to return home on the rotation system, he had been in the Pacific for six years, but kept losing the lottery to guys who had practically no combat time. Pavlovich wrote a letter to island censorship, and it got passed down until it reached his commanding officer, Swede Larsen [Annotator’s Note: then US Army Colonel, later Lieutenant General, Stanley R. "Swede" Larsen commanded the 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division]. Pavlovich and a buddy were reprimanded for speaking out. Afterward, Larsen got a direct order from President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] to send Pavlovich home on the next available transport. His mother had written to the president on her son's behalf. Pavlovich refused to leave on principle, and got a commendation. Later, Pavlovich was instrumental in having the regulations that prohibited a soldier from petitioning a legislative body changed. When he was wounded, Pavlovich was an E-6, a staff sergeant; he got out of the service but re-enlisted, and stayed in the Army for 20 years, remaining an E-6 until he retired from the veterinary food inspection service.

Asked what he thought of the Philippine people, Theodore Pavlovich said he made friends wherever he went, and found good people everywhere. He was always confident in the training he was given, and thought the equipment he was issued adequate for his purposes. He especially valued his M-1 Garand rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand], and kept it under his personal care and protection. Pavlovich thinks every young man should undergo the kind of training he received in preparation for World War 2 to learn how to handle himself and how to treat his fellow man. He believes it was necessary for the United States to become involved in the war, and is convinced that the history should be taught in schools as well as in institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana].