Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
6:45 | He didn't get the triumphant parade down Broadway that he dreamed of, but Andy Flock was still glad to be home. The news of the Atomic Bomb was nice, but he still had orders to report to Camp Cook. Some MP's needed their dishes washed.
Keywords : Andy Flock troop ship USS General McRae Le Havre France 101st Airborne deck bunk rain Jimmy Cagney Pat O'Brien Broadway Newport News Virginia train furlough Bronx mother Truman A Bomb Japan Times Square Camp Cook California KP MP chaplain bean Hollywood Hollywood Canteen boarding house Venice Muscle Beach
He'd been busted from Sergeant down to buck Private, so the PFC stripe he got in France didn't excite Andy Flock very much. He was only a tank gunner, but proved very valuable as the unit's translator. In every German town, his first job was to find the Burgermeister and tell him to gather up everyone's guns.
The first encounter with death was less striking to Andy Flock than the absurd aspects of the war, like invasion scrip and non-fraternization. He recalls his youth in the Bronx as he explains why he never liked the police, and by extension, the MP's.
The war took him right to Hitler's birthplace, Braunau. Andy Flock was in a foxhole in a potato field when he was shaken awake and told the war was over. Before long he had financed a trip to Paris with 12 cartons of cigarettes.
