Vernon Squire was born in a farming community that was a very small town [Annotator's Note: Orland, California]. Being raised there was good for him. This was before the days of supermarkets. There were one-room schoolhouses. People would go into town on Friday nights. On 7 December 1941, Squire was pumping gas at his father's gas station. A man drove in off the highway and said the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Squire was stunned. He was aware we were mad at the Japanese. He knew the Japanese could come through there quickly if they chose to. He wanted to get armed and defend his country. He had a bad dose of patriotism. He was in high school and they would not take him. After he graduated, he immediately tried to join the Navy. They turned him down due to poor eyesight. The draft was started. Squire went to work in an olive oil factory. He was drafted in December [Annotator's Note: December 1942] and went into the Army.

[Annotator's Note: Vernon Squire was drafted into the Army in December 1942.] Squire was given a week off and then went to the Presidio in Monterey [Annotator's Note: Presidio of Monterey in Monterey, California] to be inducted. They shipped their civilian clothes home, and they got all olive drab-colored uniforms. They lined up to get their shots. The men on either side of him fainted while waiting. Squire had KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] duty and learned to pick cigarette butts up off the ground. He took tests to see what his skills were. He was then put on a train for Texas. He really wanted the Air Force. He loved airplanes and had built models all his life. He got off the train in Texas to learn he was in the tank destroyers. He had never heard of them. They were halftracks with a 75mm cannon on the top [Annotator's Note: M3 Gun Motor Carriage; 75mm M1897A4 gun on M3 Halftrack body]. They were being used in North Africa at the time. The Germans had wonderful tanks and wonderful guns. The halftracks had four-wheel drive and a winch on the front to get through the sand. The turret and gun on the top were nothing. It could only move 45 degrees either direction. They found out that was not going to work. They trained with a three inch cannon [Annotator's Note: M5; three inch anti-tank gun], naval antiaircraft gun that they towed behind a halftrack. He did not like the halftrack. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the tape then Squire seems to be describing the base.] He learned Army protocols and how to be a soldier. They did a lot of physical training. They then moved to Camp Hood [Annotator's Note: now Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas] where they did target shooting with a lot of different guns. Squire was a good shot and was made a gunner. He had a three inch cannon, a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun], and a carbine rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine]. He was ready to go to war. He went to Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky [Annotator’s Note: in Morganfield, Kentucky]. The barracks were nice, but they camped in the woods a lot. They went on winter maneuvers in Tennessee. He learned to dig foxholes in frozen ground. They did not fire their guns much because it takes a lot to clean them. They went to Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts] to go to Europe to fight Germans. They took 14 days in a convoy to cross the ocean [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean]. They zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] across the North Atlantic to avoid the u-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarines]. They were fed twice a day. The ship stunk and the food was lousy, so his appetite disappeared. He bought Hershey candy bars [Annotator's Note: Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar] that he ate instead. They tried to exercise on deck, but it was hard. They came into the channel between England and Ireland [Annotator's Note: Irish Sea] and went right onto a train. It was nighttime and it was lights out due to the Germans bombing England. They were then put on trucks and taken to Wales [Annotator's Note: Wales, England]. They set up their tents and camped for some time. They waterproofed their equipment. He went to school to train to fire at aircraft. They did not do any sightseeing in England as there were large amounts of forces gathered there for the pending invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944].

One day, Vernon Squire looked up and the sky was covered with airplanes; bomber, fighter, and glider formations. He knew it was D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] and he would be going soon. He cannot believe there were that many airplanes in the sky. They got their equipment ready. They went to the coast and loaded on an LST or Landing Ship, Tank. They had water-proofed their gear. The high tide had not gone out yet and his was one of the first trucks off into four feet of water. If they had not had snorkels on their carburetors they would have stalled out. He went ashore on Omaha Beach 20 days after D-Day [Annotator's Note: 26 June 1944 or D plus 20]. They were supposed to go in earlier as part of the 29th Division [Annotator's Note: 29th Infantry Division] which had gone in there and suffered a lot of casualties. The shoreline was still in bad shape with rubble. A big storm had also prevented their landing. They got onto the highland and the first thing he saw was a World War 1 cemetery and it was demoralizing. They went ten or 12 miles inland and set up their guns. Squire asked where the front line was and was told his gun was hanging over it. His morale went down again. That part of France is called the "Bocage country". Bocage is French for hedgerows [Annotator's Note: pastureland divided into hedged fields and groves of trees]. The farmers would put all of their rocks at the edges of the fields and plant hedges on them. They were dense and tall. You could not dig through it. One machine gun in the corner could control a whole field. American engineers came up with tines to put on the front of the tanks [Annotator's Note: "Rhino tank"; M4 Sherman medium tank fitted with bocage-cutting prongs] to chop the hedgerow out to get through. The fields were not much larger than a high school gymnasium. Larger fields had poles in them to keep gliders from landing. They finally got to Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France]. They needed to get onto the roads there. There was a bitter fight there. The town was devastated. The houses had been toppled into the roads. They took the town [Annotator’s Note: on 18 July 1944] and Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] came through and started moving the war.

[Annotator's Note: Vernon Squire was in the 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion, 29th Infantry Division and helped take the town of Saint-Lo, France.] Back on the beach [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy, France], they were having trouble landing supplies. The floating docks were sunk in the storms. He was called to do some duty he was leery about. He went to a port that was a submarine base the Germans had built [Annotator's Note: Brest, France]. He had seen the pillboxes that guarded these fortifications get hit by a 500-pound bomb and suffer no damage. It had been decided to use tanks to come up and shoot in through the gun slots. This did not cheer him up. He was a tank destroyer gunner and he did not think he would even get a chance to get a shot off. The tank destroyers used a towed gun [Annotator's Note: M5 three inch anti-tank gun] and he felt he would have been knocked out before he could get it set up to shoot. The last night before going to do this, he did not even dig a foxhole because he thought he would be dead the next day. Instead, he slept under the halftrack [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks]. As they started to move, Germans came marching down the road under a large, white, surrender flag [Annotator's Note: 19 September 1944]. This was at Brest. He is sure the Germans saved his life right there. He went to join his outfit and motored to the border of Holland and Germany. They drove through Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] on the way but could not stop. They went to Heerlen, Holland. It had a coal mine and they had electricity. He set up the guns. They would go into Germany during the daytime and set up anti-tank guns. Some would go back at night and fire artillery all night. He set up his gun at night in Heerlen and had a foxhole. He had electricity in his foxhole. There was an old German civilian there. He was critical about their foxholes. They put roofs on theirs and he thought it was going to cave in on him. He traded the German a pair of boots for a light bulb and socket. Before leaving town, the German invited him to his house for dinner. They were fed boiled potatoes and greens with gravy. The coffee was ersatz coffee [Annotator's Note: coffee made of non-specific ingredients to replace real coffee]. No meat. They played cards for a while; he thinks the game was called "In the Hat". They left him some SPAM [Annotator's Note: canned, cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation]. That was about his only contact with civilians during the war. Squire was on the frontline all the time.

[Annotator's Note: Vernon Squire was in the 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion, 29th Infantry Division.] They fired far more artillery shells than anti-tank shells. They were far more effective as artillery. They were near the frontlines all the time because their gun did not shoot as far as the artillery guns did. They moved from Brest [Annotator's Note: Brest, France] to Jülich, Germany and had a tough struggle to the Roer River. It was at flood stage and there were no bridges. Army engineers built a pontoon bridge. The pontoons are open boats lashed together. By the time Squire reached the river, his three inch gun [Annotator’s Note: M5 three inch anti-tank gun] was worn out. 2,200 rounds through the barrel makes cracks. It is liable to blow up then. They then got the M10 tank destroyer [Annotators Note: M10 three inch Gun Motor Carriage]. Now he was in the tank fighting business. They trained in it quickly. The M10 weighed less than a medium tank but it was a lot to go over the water on the bridge. They made it and went a couple of miles to take position. One day, Squire looked up and saw his first jet airplane [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft]. He had seen buzzbombs [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] but not a jet airplane before. It went by a P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] like it was parked. That was a surprise. The guy was trying to bomb the bridge but had not hit it. The plane flew intermittently with the engines on to save fuel. They decided to go into Germany, and they fired 300 rounds that night. His gun got so hot; it would not retract. They pulled out before dark. In the northern latitudes, dark is really dark. You cannot see anything. They started across a field and about halfway the ground got rough. They waited for light to see where they were going. The tank destroyer is not adept at getting around in snow, ice, or mud. They got hit while sitting there. The shell ricocheted off, but it woke them up. The tank commander said to move. They got hit again and the track was knocked off. Squire had seen where the shot came from and destroyed the target. He got shot from the left. It hit under his feet. It was time to get out of there. It sprained his ankle. As he went out the turret, either a fourth shell hit, or the tank exploded. He was blown out of the tank and started running zig-zags. He found a shell hole and took cover. He found his crew. All five made it out alive. The sun was coming up and he saw his hands were black and bloody. He had been hit and burned badly but he was not feeling it yet. The war moved away from them and he was able to get to an ambulance and field hospital. They cut his clothes off. This was 25 February [Annotator's Note: 25 February 1945], and it was cold, so he had a lot of clothing on. He had not been wearing a helmet. He still has shrapnel in his hands. He went to a hospital near Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. His hands were bandaged, and he could not even write a letter to his mother. She got a telegram that he had been wounded. It was hard to eat.

[Annotator's Note: Vernon Squire was wounded in a tank battle near Jülich, Germany on 25 February 1945.] His hands were bandaged, and he could not even write a letter to his mother. She got a telegram that he had been wounded. A nurse helped him write a V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail] home. It was hard for him to eat. He had to grow new skin on his hands. There were a lot of soldiers wounded worse than him. As the war progressed, people who had been in German POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camps were coming in. They had been starved nearly to death. They were so desperate for food that they would hide food in their beds. Their minds were affected too. Squire was told to get a new uniform and report to the drill field. He was there to receive a medal and review a parade. He did not think he had done anything too great, but he was awarded a Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the Silver Star Medal is 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] and Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: a Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy]. He went back to his unit [Annotator's Note: 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion, 29th Infantry Division], but while traveling he heard Germany had surrendered. He saw his tanks across the autobahn. He jumped out and got with his company. They went into Germany to guard an electricity station. They had to search German homes for weapons. He did not like that. They moved to near Bremerhaven [Annotator's Note: Bremerhaven, Germany] and did guard duty. Men were getting called to go to the Asian Theater. Since they were a high-point [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] outfit, they were moved down near Reims, France. They would ferry the vehicles to an area where they were being sold to the French. He got to travel around quite a bit. The ship he was to go home on, was unloading German prisoners from the United States. They were all carrying things they had bought because they had been paid and they had eaten. Comparing them to how the Americans were treated made Squire mad. He had a friend who had been captured and starved nearly to death. He got on the USS West Point (AP-23) and sailed back to Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. He then flew from New Jersey to California. They had to land in Texas because their DC-3 [Annotator's Note: Douglas DC-3 commercial airliner] lost an engine. After two years and ten months, he was discharged.

Vernon Squire realized that if he was going to make a success of his life, he was going to need to go to college. He got a degree and teaching credentials. He got married while in college. He did architectural drafting while in college for a building company. He opened an office in Sacramento [Annotator's Note: Sacramento, California]. He worked for them for several months and the war in Korea started [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953]. He moved to Chico [Annotator's Note: Chico, California] and they were buying used steel due to the war. He then went to work for National Cash Register [Annotator's Note: now NCR Corporation] for a while. He then worked for Shell Oil Company for a little over 30 years. He started out as a truck dispatcher in Colusa, California. He then went into the drafting department there and then went into the field as a builder. Later on, he ran plants and then got into the headquarters office. He moved into San Ramone [Annotator's Note: San Ramone, California. The tape cuts and then he speaks to some men offscreen.]