Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Roger buck Winters. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two,
serving as a combat engineer in the Pacific Theater. Mister Winters was deployed to
Guadalcanal in the South Pacific and the island of Sabu in the Philippines. He
also had the distinction of serving on an honor guard when General Douglas MacArthur returned
to Sabu. Buck Winters was born in Willow Springs, Texas, in nineteen
twenty three, and he is a lifelong Texan. He graduated high school in
nineteen forty one, just months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was
working for Hughes Tool Company at the time of Pearl Harbor, and while he
was immediately interested in joining the service, the government had other ideas. I
couldn't join a service. I wanted to be in the Air Force and fly
a plane because I was a hot road builder back when I was young,
and the plane was what I wanted to fly. But it so happened that
I got a letter one morning from the President that I would be struck on
the job until the Linleys all order for rock bitcoms for drilling went to Russia,
and until that was over. It took a year before I was automatically
inducted in. On April fifth, nineteen forty three, when he was finally
allowed to join, Winters encountered another disappointment. He could not serve in his
first choice. But Winters and a friend soon got some advice on what to
do next, and they followed that recommendation. They said, no, no
more people were wanted for Air Corps from this area. It's all filled.
So they let about eight or ten guys that didn't want to just be in
the infantry the order to do something else. Let us stayed there three weeks
until finally an officer came by. We fell out. He says, the
next best thing to being in the Air Force, he's being an engineer.
So it was the last recourse anyway, So that's how I became an engineer.
From there, it was onto training and Buck Winters found out pretty quickly
that he was a good shot. We had rifle training with the grand had
a forty five pistol, and I came out with a pistol with expert,
and with a carbine with expert. But I missed the mullaseye on a three
hundred yard range and missed it, So got a sharpshooter badge for that.
When I missed the target, the guys behind there have a white white flag
on a stick and they wave it and they called him Maggie's drawers. So
I got a maggage drawers but only lack one point, but get an expert
on that. That made me feel good, just to addam away. When
it came to the explosive side, some of his training focused on what he
likes to call cocktails, more of the molotov kind. Part of our training
was we went to this particular area. Sergeant told us that said, you
got five minutes to dig you a foxhole. Sure, we got tanks coming
over and they're gonna run over you. So that was part of our training.
We had to dig. We found out that you couldn't dig a foxhole.
You had to dig a wi hole or slit trench and laying it and
then they would drive a tank over the top of the little training tanks of
small ones and you're supposed to then get up with your cocktail because it's fake
with gasoline and a fuse, he's supposed to light it and as soon as
the tank gets over, then you pop up and you throw the cocktail into
the air vance or back of the tank and therefore disabled that tank. But
the work with explosives didn't stop there. As a combat engineer, Winters needed
to develop a range of skills to demolish targets before he and the other engineers
could build. And once he was trained, Buck and his fellow engineers were
on their way to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. I went to Fort Leonardwood,
Missouri, and he got on BASI and then I were qualified for two
different schools specialists, and so I chose one in San Antonio, which is
close to my home. Of course, it was a normal ordless depot,
and that's where I learned automotive and I also had a blow up stuff.
So I spent three and a half months there and joined the three sixty eight
Regiment of the Engineers, and then I took desert training out in California,
and after a tour of duty there, we got only an old French liner
called the Roushambo and took our track across South Passiffic. As we mentioned,
Winters had to wait before joining the service, and by the time he was
trained and deployed, the main battle of Guadalcanal was over, but there was
still work to be done to turn the island into an effective base of operations
for forward missions and to fight off sporadic Japanese attacks. Upon arrival, the
first order of business for Winters and his fellow engineers was to set up camp
in the middle of rainy season, and we threw it from there up to
Teneru Beach and there we bivouicked as the end of fire Strip number one of
Henderson Field, and of course we set up our camp there, and there
were still Jeffs on the island, but at that fourth of the island we
weren't involved in all at that particular time, so we was able to set
up a camp area and get settled in before we had to go out on
patrols or anything else. You know. On a day to day base Buck,
Winters and the engineers were focused on building, but every once in a
while the Japanese would make it clear they did not accept their eviction from Guadalcanal.
Winters as Japanese strikes served as his first taste of combat in the war
and his first experience in seeing hundreds of American lives lost. I got my
battle Star there at Guadalcanal. They were still Japanese. They were still bombing.
In fact, the northern port of the island of Guadalcanal we had a
armament stored and also had a naval outfit that that stored torpedoes, and we
had the planes still coming over and bombing. But we had a pretty good
defense with We had a little called eric Obras that was the island command,
and they were fast and they were the only one that could outfly the Japanese
planes, and they were the island protectors. But they did get through one
particular case and blew up about a half acre and we called it Hell's half
Acre cause when everything blew some of the guys said, this man, this
looked like it's the end the time, the way the skies was all red
and blue and black and smoke. And then and one other incident that was
a not be of interest was on January twenty ninth, nineteen forty four,
I woke up about six feet up in the air from a tenth and hit
the street and a big vowel pitcock that he had the street right by where
my tent was. If what had happened where there's a little two men.
So Jeff sub slipped down armed bottom bay and put a couple of slugs into
a ship we'd had just got through armamentt loading, and it blew it up
in little three hundred men. Throughout the war in the Pacific theater, one
thing about the Japanese fighters became frustratingly clear. As he just described, the
Japanese would kill Americans anywhere, in any way they could, and they would
not surrender. The Japanese considered it a dishonor to give up, and we're
taught that dying for the emperor was far more honorable, so they kept fighting
at a cost to American lives. But all saw their own Winter says they
had to do what was necessary to find and eliminate every last Japanese soldier.
Yeah, and the only time that we had the confrontation, we're helping the
second I think he was the second Marines. And if we get another army
outfit, we didn't become attached to them, but we just became a compliment
to burn some Japs out of the caves. You take dieselttle gas and ford
were rolling down of the cave and then when the jats come out and you
can pick them off or use a flamethrower. But building was still the main
job for Winters and the other engineers. Buck says one of the big projects
he worked on was a hospital on Guadalcanal, and luckily for him it was
completed just in time for him to be treated there. One thing we did
get into that, it's just the thing that happened was only Gualacaval. We
built the twenty station or a R hospital, and I was a seventh guy
to go in there with jungle fever. I had stated there seven seven weeks
and that's the heavy malarias with it. What's you called jungle fever? I
went down from one seventy two hundred and twenty six pounds, but I survived.
That's Roger buck Winters, a US Army veteran of World War Two.
He served as a combat engineer in the Pacific Theater. When we come back,
Buck Winters leaves Guadalcanal for the Philippines and a front row seat to history.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service. This
sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T Mobile office six exclusive
discounts for a veteran and military families and are proud supporters of the National Defense
Network. Visit tmobile dot com slash military to learn more about how they support
our military community. In Cape Girardo, Missouri, people can wash a car
and help a veteran next week as part of the SuDS for Service Members event
in Cape Girardo from ten am to two thirty pm on Thursday, people can
donate money to have their vehicle cleaned. The effort is put on by the
Community Partnership of Southeast Missouri with a goal of helping local veterans. Organizers with
the PAVE program preparing area of veterans for employment say all donations are welcome and
people can give without getting a wash. There will be multiple ways to donate,
including QR codes. PAVE helps veterans with job support and retention. We
raise the money to help them in any area we can. Chiron Triplett,
Senior said for more great veteran stories, just go to nationaldefensenetwork dot com.
This is Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Roger
Buck Winters, who served as a combat engineer in the Pacific theater of World
War Two. After a few months on Guadalcanal, it was time for Winters
to move to his next and final stop during the war, in the Philippines.
They're from a tour in the Canal. We got our reuniment, broke
up into battalions, and my battalion got attached to the American Division and went
through the Mediterranean Straits. In the Philippines, we jump ship in a little
island called Cibu, and that's ross spent the rest of my time on that
island before I had a chance to come home. One of the biggest surprises
for Winters in the Philippines was finding out that many of the natives there spoke
perfect English, and he explains the unique way that he found this out and
how it almost cost a local woman her life. And the first Filipino I
saw was old lady that I was went down to use the trees, and
I heard some noise behind me, So I had my whole go around with
me, of course, and I swiveled around a little bit. It's where
I could see what was going on, and at that time the ladies spoke
in the King's English. He says, you want banana, Joe, I
said, lady, you almost lost all your bananas. Now I don't want
a banana. And I thought that was strange. I found out leader that
missionaries that had been over there from England and the English chrisp talk is the
way they talked, and the people from Texas was all cowboys. And with
this slang they laughed about every other word we spoke again. Most of Winter's
work on Sabu was about tearing down and building back up. He and the
other engineers went through Sabu City determining which buildings were too flimsy or too badly
damaged to keep. So he and the others blew up the buildings that had
to go and then got to work constructing better, longer lasting structures. But
there was still the occasional skirmish, which reminded everyone they were still at war.
It was clearing out an area and picking up some giant sized bamboo did
bring down to bring down to Sabu City. Some of the Filipinos were coming
back down out of the heels and we got the Jeffs. Jeffs is all
moved down. It is two struggler Jeffs jumped up out of a ravine and
one of them had a grenade and it was we didn't know it was primed.
But one of my lieutenants was a new man. He didn't have any
souvenirs, but he is a good shot. He was riding as a shotgun
and as soon as he jammed the truck to stop and he topped the ball
offender and he put fourteen hold in one little jap out of a fifteen shot
clip. Of course, the grenade went off, but he went off behind
him down in the ditch, and the other one gave up. But the
most indelible memory of the war for Buck Winters came in late nineteen forty four.
That's when he was an eyewitness to what is perhaps the most famous fulfillment
of a promise in World War Two. But before that could happen, there
was some important and potentially dangerous work to do. Our company B was selected
to be on a guard for Douglas MacArthur and his entourage. He came to
visit Saboo, so they come waiting ashore. Previous to that, We did
a lot of mind sweeping to the area where we was going to built them.
But we came across the five hundred pound bomb that was had the fins
still stick it up. It didn't go off, so our new lieutenant he
wanted to put a rope on the fence and pull it out with the truck,
and so that's still everybody running. We took off and he's there by
himself. He called us to come back and he said, but we count
we're not gonna follol with that. He said, well, if I give
you an order to do it, you're supposed to do it. I said,
well, this is one case. Well this boy is not going to
do it. MacArthur first walked ashore the Philippines at Leta, but the scene
was very similar on Saboo and Buck Winters remembers it well. And we escorted
General Dougets. We called him a dugout dug and I don't know, it's
probably not a nice thing to say, but that was all over the place
over there. Everybody called him that that but didn't reference you know. But
anyway, we got them settled out and they're supposed to supposed to come to
the front there was still action going on that we were not involved with in
the area where we were. But we took him up to an area where
we dug in around four topical areas as an ex court, and they stayed
up there two days and two nights, and we escored him back down.
And I did not get to shake Doug's hand. He only shook hands with
the big boys, you know. Looking back now, Winters realizes he was
part of a critical moment in World War Two and the twentieth century. He
has great respect for MacArthur, but ultimately thinks that was probably best that the
general did not pursue a career change. I was very elated because I knew
the fact about when he had made the statement that said I shall return that
when he completed what he was going to do in the Filipinos, they were
all all elated, happy, and it made it made my heart feel good.
It made me realize that he was a very very important person. He
knew the lay of the land, and he had the plan and his plan
worked out his will that probably could ever have been. I have higher rigords
for him. And the only thing about it is when he wanted to talk
about being the president later, that's all. I don't know where I'd vote
for him, and he'd be a warmonger. In August of nineteen forty five,
the war in the Pacific ended following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but much to the chagrin of buck Winters, he would not be going
home for a while. We were stuck over thereive and a half months after
VJ Day because they're using all the ships at hand to chas verse the prisoners
back to Japan. We had somewhere in the neighbors ten thousand on low island
called Las Vegas, between Manilo and Sabu. That's one hundred year old.
Roger buck Winters a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a
combat engineer in the Pacific theater. He's a witness to General Douglas MacArthur returning
to the island of Sabou in the Philippines. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to
Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter. Dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans
Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American
Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course,
please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks
again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles