Wendell Galbraith was born in Detroit [Annotator's Note: Detroit, Michigan] in January 1925. He had two sisters and one brother. His brother had polio as a child and did not go in the service. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945], his father was the manager of a bank branch. Every month brought a reduction in salary. They had to move out to the sticks [Annotator's Note: slang for out in the country] for cheaper rent but he was never laid off and they never went hungry. Galbraith mostly amused himself. He played softball in vacant lots. His mother was always on the hunt for cheaper rent, so they moved a lot. He graduated from high school in 1942. He worked in a delicatessen to earn enough money to attend Wayne University [Annotator's Note: Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan]. He got in one semester. His father had to retire due to health reasons and returned to his farm in Canada. Galbraith went with him. While there, he was volunteered for the American Army and was drafted in July 1943. Galbraith worked when he was young on paper routes. His first pay in the Army was the most money he had ever had. He had no trouble crossing into Canada. He was the only one in his family born in America, so he had dual citizenship. He considered himself an American. He was back in Canada a matter of months and he felt rotten about it. He had to choose between his father and personal things like being a draft dodger. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Galbraith where he was when heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was out in the street playing football with a best friend. He had never heard of Pearl Harbor until then. He knew it would have an effect on his life. His parents had come over in 1924 from Canada. His family had followed the war and the events leading up to it, much more closely than the American families he knew. His parents were vitally interested in the affairs of Europe. Their sympathies were with the Brits [Annotator's Note: slang for British people].

Wendell Galbraith got his draft notice [Annotator's Note: in July 1943] and returned [Annotator's Note: to the United States] from Canada. He thinks having had one semester at Wayne University [Annotator's Note: Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan] is why he was drafted into the Air Force. He was sent to technical school for radios. He did basic training in Gulfport, Mississippi [Annotator's Note: Gulfport Army Airfield in Gulfport, Mississippi] and it was sweltering hot. Guys would pass out on the parade grounds. He had been told he was going to be on a ground crew. He did his radio training in Sioux Falls, South Dakota [Annotator's Note: Sioux Falls Army Airfield in Sioux Falls, South Dakota]. It was the first time he had ever really been away from home. He was taught Morse Code and radio mechanics. When he got overseas, they had ground radiomen who repaired them. He then went to Yuma, Arizona [Annotator's Note: Gunnery School/AAF Radar Observer School at Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona] for gunnery training. His job was radio operator, mechanic, and gunner. He had qualified on the Enfield Rifle [Annotator's Note: United States Rifle, cal. 30, Model of 1917, or M1917 Enfield] in Gulfport. He flew in B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] for gunnery training. They had planes dragging sleeves they shot at. They had air to ground training and they flew very close to the ground. From Yuma, he went to Fresno, California to Hammer Field [Annotator's Note: Hammer Army Airfield; now Fresno Yosemite International Airport in Fresno, California] to the 4th Air Force. There, his crew was assembled. That was one of his luckiest breaks. The pilots were multi-engine instructors and not just green kids coming out of flight training. His pilot was a super pilot. They were sent to March Field [Annotator's Note: now March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California]. They did a lot of flying there. But it is not like the movies where everyone is buddy-buddy. They called him "Lieutenant" or "Lieutenant Richardson" [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Edgel Willard Richardson] or he would chop your head off. The copilot was Charlie Metzger [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Charles H. Metzger] from Cincinnati [Annotator's Note: Cincinnati, Ohio]. The pilot was from La Junta, Colorado. The navigator was Eddie Haddad [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Edward J. Haddad] and was really nice and was from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The bombardier was Paul Long [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Paul Long] from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. He would make the pilot mad by associating with the enlisted men. The pilot was Edgel Richardson. The flight engineer, Bob Geibel [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Robert Geibel] was from Akron, Ohio. The engineer and radio operator were technical sergeants [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant; now referred to as Sergeant First Class; E7]. The waist gunners were the engineer and radio operator if they were not the lead ship. The tail gunner was Hans Jorgensen [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Hans Jorgensen] from Toppinish, Washington. The top turret gunner was Leonard Edgell [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Leonard Edgell] from West Virginia. The ball gunner was John Chapman [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant John H. Chapman] from Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. The other guy on the original crew was Bob Casebeer [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Robert E. Casebeer] as the nose gunner. On the trip overseas, he got arthritis in his knees. In Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy], he was put in the hospital, and they got Maas [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Alfred Maas] on their ship. He was also a tech sergeant and engineer who was the only member of a crew that got out after being shot down over Yugoslavia. The rest were taken prisoner. The pilot liked having two engineers, so he kept him. Unfortunately, he died when they were shot down over Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria while flying with the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force on 22 March 1945].

Wendell Galbraith went overseas at the end of August 1944 from Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia [Annotator's Note: in Warwick, Virginia] via Newport News, Virginia on a French troopship. Rather than stay in the stinking hold, Galbraith spent as much time as he could up on deck. He finds it hard to explain how you are in complete ignorance as to where you are and what is going on. A destroyer escort dashed up beside them signaling ship to ship. He thought he was about to learn something. He was a radio operator, so he could read the signals. They were only asking if their ship had any women aboard. They landed in early September [Annotator's Note: September 1944] in Naples, Italy. They got on the first train out of Naples. It had been strafed and had holes in it. The guys kind of went crazy on the train. The men would crash the doors of the train into the power poles. They tore up the floorboards and started fires to heat up their K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals]. Galbraith did not take part in any of that. They went to a staging area for about three days. He got a shower after three weeks without one. They went by truck to Gioia [Annotator's Note: Gioia del Colle Air Base in Gioia del Colle, Italy] to the headquarters of the 55th Wing of the 15th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 55th Bombardment Wing, 15th Air Force] was. A guy on the crew wanted to get the pilot a bottle of wine. The six enlisted men went into town. Everything was shuttered and closed. They ran into two New Zealanders of the British 8th Army who had been fighting the Italians since North Africa. They took them to a big home where they said they had just broken a chair over a guy's head. One of the New Zealanders ran into the door and then the Italian inside said he was going to get a Gatt [Annotator's Note: slang for a pistol]. A gun went off and others were throwing stones at them. They ran down the hill. They decided to go back to base. The New Zealanders stayed and broke every window in the place. The men were taken by plane to a base by Canosa [Annotator's Note: Canosa di Puglia, Italy] in the middle of nowhere. The countryside had been flattened due to the fighting and there was nothing to do there. The town of Canosa was off limits due to venereal disease and the filth. They had very little contact with the Italians. They had boys who they paid to clean their tents. Around 6 or 7 September [Annotator's Note: September 1944], he was assigned to the 465th Bomb Group, 782nd Bomb Squadron in the 15th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. The 780th Bombardment Squadron, 781st Bombardment Squadron, 782nd Bombardment Squadron, and 783rd Bombardment Squadron, made up the 465th Group.

As a replacement aircrewman, Wendell Galbraith was received with open arms. One of the raids in August [Annotator's Note: 3 August 1944], they [Annotator's Note: the 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] had lost seven of nine bombers over Friedrichshafen [Annotator's Note: Friedrichshafen, Germany]. That is why he was rushed in there. They started on practice missions. His his first mission [Annotator's Note: with the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] was on 22 September [Annotator's Note: 22 September 1944]. On the first mission, they grounded the copilot and replaced him with an experienced pilot. Galbraith has never seen a more nervous pilot than the one they got. He was on his 33rd or 34th mission out of 35 to complete. When they learned the target was Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany], they all knew it was going to be bad. They were on the bomb run in the number four position. That pilot took over the controls and suddenly threw his hand off the wheel and told the other pilot to take it. The plane started to go up. Maas [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Alfred Maas] in the top turret was screaming to get down because they were going to go into the plane above. Their pilot got control. The mission was tough. The Germans put holes in their plane. You never hear the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] unless it is about wingtip away from you. They heard it. He was amazed that somebody was trying to kill him. They got through it.

The target for Wendell Galbraith's second mission [Annotator's Note: with the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] was a railroad bridge in northern Italy that they hit at low altitude. The third one on the next day, 23 September [Annotator's Note: 23 September 1944], was to sub [Annotator's Note: submarine] pens in the harbor at Athens, Greece. They got some flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] there, but not bad. They bombed Piraeus [Annotator's Note: Piraeus, Greece]. He has seen some documentaries about Greece having trouble with the Communists at the time. He thinks that was what that mission was about and not submarine pens. The worst targets they had were at the Blechhammer Oil Refinery [Annotator's Note: Blechhammer, Germany]. He found out after the war it was the biggest synthetic oil producer in Germany. It had been built by Speer [Annotator's Note: Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production, Nazi, Germany] who tried to get it far enough East to be out of reach of the 8th Air Force in England. They could reach it from Italy though. It was tough. They had four missions to it. Earlier, their copilot had been lost while flying with another crew to Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria]. Their pilot was a superior pilot and was making squadron lead. On each Blechhammer raid, they always hit someplace due to heavy flak. When they landed, there was a hole in one of their tires. The bomber skewed right when it landed. The pilot jammed the engines on the that side. The tire was on fire. They were headed for the control tower, but the pilot straightened it out. That was a mission to Odertal [Annotator's Note: Odertal, Germany]. They had been told the flak would not be as intense there and it was the worst one that they had. They went to Vienna four times which was their worst target. Their fourth time was their last time, and he became Hitler's [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] houseguest [Annotator's Note: captured and made a prisoner of war on 22 September 1945].

Wendell Galbraith and his unit [Annotator's Note: 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] bombed where the Germans built the jet airplanes [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter aircraft]. They also bombed Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Greece. They got in 24 missions. People say they had 50 missions and that is not really so. If you went far enough up on a tough target, you got credit for two missions. That made it easy to get to 25 total missions, so they changed the total to be flown to 35 and scrubbed the credit system. [Annotator's Note: There is a tape break at 0:47:41.000.] There would be a bulletin board up at squadron headquarters. If your pilot's name was listed, you were going the next day. Around three o'clock in the morning, they would be woken up. They did not brief with the officers. They had an old stable for a briefing room. They sat on bomb fins. They would pull the curtain off the screen to show the target. If you knew it was a bad target, it sounded like the air was taken out of everybody. They would get the particulars and then go get their flight equipment. They would go to the plane their pilot went to. They were routed around the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] installations, but the Germans were pretty smart and could move their flak units on flatcars. Galbraith only saw two German planes in his 24 missions and they, including an Me-110 [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Bf 110 or Me 110 Zerstörer (Destroyer) multi-role combat aircraft], were going the other way. As the air opposition decreased, the flak opposition increased. At a target like Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria], you would swear it was a rain cloud over it. Forming up for the mission could be bad, especially if there was cloud cover. They are circling and circling. Once they got into clouds, and when they broke out, there were planes going in every direction. Mostly, they watched that very carefully. They had a target town to gather over.

Wendell Galbraith never used the voice radio. Voice radio was bomber to bomber. There was a 522 set which was bomber to fighter escort. They [Annotator's Note: 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] had a radio compass and there was Galbraith's set which was strictly Morse Code. That was the only contact to the base in Italy as the voice would not carry that far. It was important in case they got a recall. One time the 8th Air Force missed their recall, and they paid the price. Galbraith could assist the navigator if they were lost. That never happened to them. The lead plane and deputy lead sent the "bombs away" code. They tried to maintain radio silence. He had a call sign of eight-two-S. They had four characters they had to send. MS/VI was "mission successful/visual." MF/VI was not good. If they bombed by radar, it was different characters. These were sent back to base as soon as they got off the target if they were the lead plane. [Annotator's Note: They stop to change tapes and at the return, the interviewer asks Galbraith to talk about 22 March 1945.] It was a normal start to the day. They knew it was going to be tough. On this mission, when they hit the initial point to start the bomb run, the cloud cover made visual bombing difficult. They had three navigators, a bombardier, and a Colonel who was flying as an observer. He was going to be the Group Commander and decided to fly his first mission with them. He stood between the pilot and copilot. On the bomb run, the bombardier was having a hard time locating the target. They started arguing about what to bomb. About this time, there was flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] crashing around them. The bombardier then said he had the target. They dropped their 40 100-pound bombs and started their turn when there was an explosion. The whole bomb bay was aflame. Galbraith's escape route was through the fire. On another mission, the pilot got them out. Galbraith was pinned to the ceiling. So he knew what it was like to go down when you cannot move. On this one, his pilot kept the plane even. The Colonel fell down on his hands and knees and stayed that way. To get out the bomb bay, Galbraith had to turn his chair and the Colonel had him blocked. Galbraith boosted him out of the way. Galbraith got out through the fire. A navigator got out another way and he died. The top turret gunner was killed by the flak. He was still in plane when they found the wreckage. Galbraith got second degree burns. He was at about 25,000 feet. He pulled the rip cord almost immediately and the parachute opened. He had a long drop down over a burning city. He was 35 minutes in the chute. He could see civilians running into the intersections looking up at him. He knew he was not going to get away. He saw the Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria] woods a distance away and thought he could escape and evade.

Wendell Galbraith landed in a yard that was like an apple orchard [Annotator's Note: after being shot down on 22 March 1945, while flying for the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. He came down hard and broke his ankle. He had second-degree burns and was in shock. There was a brick wall around the orchard. Two civilians came in who spoke French. They let him know they were friends and were forced laborers. They picked him up and carried him out to the street. There were German soldiers all aiming their rifles at them. They searched him for his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] but he was not carrying it. A German came over and pulled a Luger [Annotator's Note: German P08 Luger 9mm semi-automatic pistol] out, chambered a shell, and put it to his temple. He does not know to this day why he did that. A truck came along with nine of his ten crew. Ten of the 12 survived. The pilot was the only one not with them. They went through the streets of Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria]. The German guard told them they killed 121 civilians that day. Galbraith wanted to ask him if they were the only ones who were supposed to do that, but he kept his mouth shut. They went to a building on a hill. There was a big crowd that tried to get to them. The Germans had to keep them back. They went in for interrogation. A guy in a sharp, black uniform came out. In perfect English, he asked where the men came from. A lieutenant answered that according to the Geneva Conventions [Annotator's Note: international standards for humanitarian treatment in war], they only had to give their names, ranks, and serial numbers. The German said that he knew they came from Foggia, Italy. That ended the interrogation. Galbraith was taken to a doctor who broke his blisters with tweezers and wrapped him in bandages. While he was doing that, he said they all hated Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] because he was a beast. Around dark, they took them out until about midnight, dropping guys off at different locations. The bombardier and Galbraith were the only ones left. They went in the courtyard where they had started from. It was a hospital. Days went by and at night they could hear a rumble in the distance like thunderstorms. It got a little louder every night. The German said that Ivan [Annotator's Note: slang for Russians] was coming. They were moved from the hospital to Lazarette Zweigay 2 [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling – possibly Zweilager Puppiing, later Stalag XVII-D, Vienna, Austria]. There were prisoners of every nationality there. There they learned about German racial superiority. The Americans got the best of everything they had. The others had it worse. The Russians were treated the worst of all. He was in that hospital for about a week. The city was being bombed and shelled and it was getting close, so the Americans were taken into a subcellar.

On 9 April [Annotator's Note: 9 April 1945], Russian shock troops burst into the hospital where Wendell Galbraith was a prisoner [Annotator's Note: in Vienna, Austria after being shot down on a mission with the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. They were very friendly. They went on and the commissars took over. They never saw another Russian soldier. They were moved to another hospital. The Viennese were praying for the Americans to come because the Russians were savage. Galbraith got to know the hospital staff and became much fonder of the Viennese than the Russians. He heard things at night too like women screaming. Most of the time the Russians were drunk. They would take bicycles and drive them into each other. Major Ben Ash was their commander. He was a P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] pilot that had been shot down. He made contact with the Russian commandant. They told him if they wanted out, to go to Odessa [Annotator's Note: Odessa, Ukraine] on the Black Sea but none of them were ambulatory. On 18 May [Annotator's Note: 18 May 1945], a captain from the 11th Armored Division's medical unit showed up at the hospital. He told them to get ready to go out. An ambulance convoy came in from Linz, Austria. The whole hospital staff gave them bouquets of flowers when they left. When Galbraith saw Old Glory [Annotator's Note: nickname for the flag of the United States], he misted up. They were fumigated at Linz with DDT DDT [Annotator's Note: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; developed as an insecticide]. They were flown by B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] to England to a hospital in Bournemouth. He was there about two weeks. That was the first time he could notify his parents that he was alive. They had been told he was missing. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Galbraith what Vienna, Austria looked like as he was floating down by parachute.] When he saw the buildings in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] that were rammed by the commercial airliners [Annotator's Note: September 11 Attacks; series of coordinated terrorist attacks on the US, 11 September 2001] collapse and then saw that rolling dust, that is exactly what it looked like. It did not look too good, and he did not think he was going to get fond greetings. The crowd was not the bad, but one called him a "Schweinhund" [Annotator's Note: German for "pig-dog"; an insult]. A girl got him water though. He came back on a hospital ship to New York. He was in hospitals until November [Annotator's Note: November 1945]. Being on the ground did not really give him any thought as to what he had been doing [Annotator's Note: by bombing cities.] He had gotten used to it in Italy. At least in Vienna, he could see the people cleaning up the debris. He landed in Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy] and the stuff was still strewn around. Nobody had cleaned it up. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer returns to when Galbraith was picked up by the Germans.] The Colonel was on the truck with the rest of the men. According to his story, he had a slight break in his leg, but Galbraith did not think so. Galbraith was in the United States when the war ended completely. He was home on furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] from the hospital. He did not feel like celebrating. He had lost so many friends.

Wendell Galbraith did not suffer from any survivor's guilt. The only thing he experienced, not long before the interview, was while watching something on the Malmedy Massacre [Annotator's Note: Malmedy, Belgium, 17 December 1944]. The Germans were shooting prisoners with their Lugers [Annotator's Note: German P08 Luger 9mm semi-automatic pistol]. That took him right back to the time a German had a Luger at his head [Annotator's Note: after being captured in Vienna, Austria on 22 March 1945]. That was the only time that ever happened. When the Russians came in, he knew the war was over. The Viennese civilians kept them well informed. They wanted the Russians out. Galbraith watched their trucks taking the heavy Austrian machinery out. He heard some clatter and a Russian on horseback was taking herds of cattle through the city. Galbraith could hear screams but there was nothing he could do but sympathize. The hospital also had a psychiatric ward where a girl screamed and screamed at night. He was told it was a 16 year old girl who was raped repeatedly. His doctor was female, and she hid in a coal chute for a week after the Russians arrived. The Russians organized rapes and roped off city blocks. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Galbraith at what point he knew he was a free man.] When he got to Linz, Austria and saw an American flag. He never felt forgotten. They had had problems with the Russians on missions. They were supposed to be able to land crippled planes in Russia. Dropping the wheels meant surrender. The Yak [Annotator's Note: short for aircraft built by JSC A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau, Russian aerospace firm] fighters did not give a damn and shot them up.

Wendell Galbraith has never told a story about the time he learned what it was like to go down in a plane while not being able to move. They [Annotator's Note: men from the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] were going to a rest camp and there were about 17 guys on board. They flew from Canosa [Annotator's Note: Canosa di Puglia, Italy] to go to Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy]. They got into bad weather. Their parachutes were far away. Galbraith could see ice starting to form on the stabilizers. He went to get his chute and shot to the ceiling with everybody in there. He could not move a finger. The waist windows blew out and all of the ammunition went out. They were at 13,000 feet. Two guys in the front bailed out because they could. That was when he decided that given the chance, he would bail out. That was pilot error. He got turned around and flew back, but he ruined a brand new Liberator [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] that had never flown a mission. Galbraith learned of the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] when everybody else did. He thought dropping them was just fine after what the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war in April 1942] and what the Japanese did to the Filipinos and the Chinese. To this day he does not feel bad about it. Galbraith had returned to the United States in June 1945 in New York Harbor [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. That was a good deal. He was on a big hospital ship, and it was the first time anyone had cheered him for anything. He was discharged 13 November [Annotator's Note: 13 November 1945]. Bill [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Sergeant Vito "Bill" Pellegrino] was discharged after that, and they went to a bar to have a drink. The bartender did not serve him because he was only 20.

Wendell Galbraith was discharged at Fort Sheridan, Illinois as a Tech Sergeant [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant; now referred to as Sergeant First Class; E7]. He did not join the Reserves. He said "Thanks, but no thanks!" Then the Korean thing [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] came, and a lot of those guys were called back. Galbraith used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] and got a degree at Wayne State [Annotator's Note: Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan]. He had trouble finding housing. His parents were in Canada. He lived at the YMCA [Annotator's Note: Young Men's Christian Association] for a while. He had to go back to work. He could not exist on the government pay. He worked for a couple of years and then met the woman he would marry. She insisted he go back to school, so he did. He thinks the G.I. Bill was ultra-important to America. He does not know how it would have worked for the guys from Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. He thinks they did not have the same attitude he did. He wanted to start his life. The best way to do that was to get a degree. Galbraith's most memorable experience of the war was 22 March to 18 May 1945 [Annotator's Note: when he was a prisoner of war in Vienna, Austria]. He got to experience both dropping bombs and having bombs dropped on him. He served during the war because his family followed the war prior to it, and he did too. It had to be. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had to be stopped. He does not know how his life would have been without it, so he cannot say how it changed his life. The war and the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] are the two things that formed his life. He is proud of his service. Nobody knows what he did. He does wear a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the 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] cap and some people thank him for his service. World War 2 made the United States the most powerful nation on earth, but it has been frittered away. The worst thing that has ever happened to America is the guy who has been elected twice. Galbraith is not even sure he is pro-American. Galbraith thinks the war should be taught to future generations. They had to know if there is a guy like that, he is not going to stop. The Iranian deal is like the Munich Conference [Annotator's Note: Munich Agreement, also called the Munich Betrayal, 30 September 1938] prior to World War 2. They repeat the same errors. He is very, very disappointed in the way we have lost our ascendency in the world. The guy in Washington [Annotator's Note: Washington, D.C.] is bound and determined that we are going to be just like any other nation. He does not understand what is wrong with being superior. He does not mind talking about it. It was different. Even his POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] experience was different. Only 16 of them were in an enemy capital [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria] captured by the Russians. Right in the middle of it.