November 18, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, John Defoore went to war at nineteen years old. He earned …Today, at 103 years old, he shares some of his stories from war and how they still affect him today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the American Stories podcast, go to the
iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We recently had the pleasure of bringing World War Two
(00:30):
veteran John D four one hundred and three years old
into our studio with his entire family and listen to
his incredible life story. This next story is all him
sharing a bit about his early life and the unlikely
events that led him to serving in the army. Here's
John Saton, Mississippi, who that grub had turn fit to
(00:57):
people and it's cotton Country. I started to Greenwood High
School and I was taking Latin and I asked a
question and the teacher and this may have been my
imagination because I didn't have a very strong self image,
(01:17):
but the teacher kind of made fun of my question,
and so I just walked out of the class. I
think I was a little arrogant, maybe more than a little,
but anyway, I walked out. And I walked out of
the building and turned and go down the side of
(01:37):
the building. And when I was walking down by the classroom,
I noticed a brick and the flower bread, so I
just picked it up and through it through the window.
And then the school decided that I wasn't a very
good fit. So I didn't even know what expelled meant,
(01:59):
but I learned. So I had to go home and
tell my school teacher mother that they no longer wanted
me in Greenwood High School. And so she said, well,
thank god there was no communication between schools. You can
go to Edabina High School. Edabina was about fifteen miles
(02:24):
in another direction. They ran a school bus there too. Well,
my second day, I got in a fight with the
school bus driver and they were very narrow minded, and
they decided that maybe I did not need to be
(02:44):
a student there either. And my mother, she was a
good woman, but my mother had problems, and I left
home and I walked up the railroad and slept under bridge.
I got a job on a construction crew, and I
(03:05):
got a room and a boarding home, and I worked
there all summer and September came and the foreman said, well, John,
I guess you'll be leaving now because school started. And
I said, no, I'm not going back to school anymore.
(03:28):
I've quit and he looked at me and said why.
I said, I don't like schoogle and he said, your
damned fool. And he said you're fired. Get off with
this job. And so I had heard about Morehead. There
was a agricultural high school and junior college there. So
(03:52):
I hit chacked to Morehead and I went in and
I found the president's office and I told him I
didn't have any money, but I wanted to go to school.
There was boarding school also, and so he said, well,
will you work? And I said of course, and he
(04:12):
said okay. So I had a roommate named Robert, and
Robert and I got to be good friends. Every weekend
we would slip off campus and get drunk, and Robert
and I decided we didn't need any more education, so
(04:33):
we went to work on the construction job. We would
work all week and go to the bars or wherever.
And September the second of the third, we went to
a little bar and got drunk, and I came home
(04:54):
about two o'clock and the next morning that laid in
the boarding house came in and woke me up and said,
Robert killed himself last night. And I could not believe
it because he and I had played football and run
(05:15):
track together for years, and he never mentioned suicide. And
I was Paul bearer and these they put the casket
in a pine box and everybody left, and there were
(05:37):
two men throwing dirt in on top of this pine box.
And I sit there and I watched those clods bouncing
off the top of that pine box. And you're not
don't believe this, but I don't expect you to. But
(05:59):
I heard of and have never forgotten John Before you
keep living the way you're living, and a few months
some clouds just fuck this will be bouncing off your
casket and the world will never know or care that
(06:20):
you have lived. And I was no mistaken now it
was God or somebody looking after me. I went to
my boarding house and I got some clothes and I
went straight out on the highway and hitchhocked to Jackson, Mississippi.
(06:42):
I had heard that Mississippi College was a Christian college
and that everybody there was a Christian. It was a
perfect place. In my mind. I was scared to death
that I was going to kill myself light Robert. And
(07:03):
after I heard that voice, I knew it was time
for me to change and you're listening to John Defour
tell his story, and my goodness, what a story it is.
Growing up in a town with two hundred and fifty
people getting thrown out of school not once, but twice,
and so he decides to hitchhike to a Christian college,
Mississippi College. When we come back, more of the story
(07:26):
of World War Two veteran John Defour here on Our
American Stories. Lee Habibi here, the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
(07:48):
free to make. If you love what you here, go
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give. And we returned to our
(08:10):
American Stories and to John Defour, who's sharing his life
story and ultimately how we ended up in the army
during World War Two. When we last left off, he
just decided to go to Mississippi College, a Christian college
in Clinton, Mississippi, not far down the road from where
we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi, which is in the northern
(08:32):
part of the state, about an hour south of Memphis.
Let's pick up with John where we last left off.
I wasn't a Christian, of course when I went there,
but I studied like crazy, and after about two years,
the professor offered maya scholarship for the next semester. And
(08:55):
I had a lady in one of my classes, and
she was excellent student, and she kept talking to me
about becoming a Christian, and I got really irritated. And
when the semester ended, I gave her a D on
(09:17):
the course. And she was a straight A student. And
the professor who had sought her become a friend, said
why didn't you do that? And I said because I
don't like her, and he said, well, you can't give
her bad grade because and so I changed it, of course,
(09:38):
But anyway, she was very kind. She didn't tell the
professor that I'd given her D. He founded himself. She
didn't report me, and she talked to me about God.
The God that I had learned about was my mother's God,
(09:59):
and that would be the antithesis of everything that I
would describe to any form of divinity. And so after
she kept talking to me about Jesus Christ. I got
a whole new message from this woman, and so I
became a Christian. I was talking one day to this
(10:21):
guy on campus and he said, John, don't you pay
a musical instrument? Now? I said, yeah, I play three
or four. And he said, well, the man here pays
a dollar a rehearsal. Why don't you join? And I thought, boy,
four dollars a month, And so I didn't ask any questions.
(10:43):
I just signed up. But what I didn't know. I
didn't know was it was a National Guard man and
that's why I was made. And so I did find
any and a vite. Six months after I joined, I
(11:05):
came one day in the van. Director said, gentlemen, I
have an announcement. We are being inducted into the Federal Service.
And I didn't know what inducted meant. I found out
but after the band rehearsal, I went up and I said,
(11:28):
mister Macaw'm very sorry, but I can't go. He said,
We're going to Camp Landing, Florida, four years training and
then you'll come back here. I said, I'm very sorry,
but I can't go. I have other plans, and he said,
young man, you're in the army. I said, well, I'm
(11:49):
not going. He said, if you do not show up,
do you know what we call that in the army?
And I said no. He said we called it desertion.
He said, you know what we'd do with deserts. I
said no. He said we shoot him. And I thought, well,
that doesn't sound very good. So so I went for
(12:13):
one year's training. Oh seven years later I finished a
one year's training because pretty soon Pearl Harbor came and
after that, man, that was all she wrote, you know,
And I had had some previous military training. I went
(12:35):
in as a private first place, and I saw I
noticed that they were allowing people with previous military training
to take an examination to see if they could qualify
foalks commission as an officer. And so I took the
examinating with two hundred and fifty people, and I came
(12:59):
out at the top of the class. And I was
one day working in the latrine with my friend watching
church one day and someone said, you got a message
in the orderly tenth and so I went to the
orderly tent and they said you wanted a division headquarters. Well,
(13:23):
division headquarters. That's like Washington d C. I mean, like
it used to be. And so I went to division
headquarters and I met one of the finest human beings
I've met in my life. His name was General Major
General John C. Persons, and he said, Private de four,
(13:49):
you are now a second lieutenant, and he saluted me.
He pinned my bars one and man one minute, I'm
private first class. In one minute with those bars, I'm
a second lieutenant. And so I was assigned to another
unit and I was in a rifle company. And that
(14:13):
was the beginning really of my military career. When I
became a Christian at Mississippi College, and then I realized
I was in the army. I knew I could never
kill a human being. I just knew I could not
(14:33):
kill a human being. And I'm teaching these guys about
trench warfare and particularly about being at practice. But even
while I was doing all that, I knew I couldn't
kill a man if I had to, and I thought
(14:54):
about it. But then I go to New Guinea and
I'm still processes in't in mine. And one day I
was on patrol and there were these long, tall grasses
that grew in the jungle called kin our grass, and
(15:17):
wherever there was a water hole, the grass grew around it.
And so one day we were on a patrol and
we ran into water and I stopped and lay down
on the edge. And we hadn't had no water all day,
so I was drinking out of this pond. It wasn't
(15:42):
very clean, but I picked them in my hand and
I was drinking, and I lay there just a minute,
and all of a sudden, I hear nos, and a
chap comes breaking to the grass, and he eyes down
there and starts drinking water, and all of a sudden
(16:07):
I saw him see me. He turned his head and
he saw me, and then he whirled his rifle around
and pointed it at me, and I had atomach and
I shot him six times, and I got back to
(16:27):
my safe area. That night, we were all sleeping in
the hold, and I started getting my hole, and I thought, well, John,
your murderer today. You killed a human being. But that's
just kind of the way it is. When we were
(16:50):
in these tints, right way we'd come off the ship,
my neighboring unit got a call that the first Battalion
was going on the combat mission up the coast, they'd
located in Japanese airstrip and they were kind of plotting
a course and dup and bombs him artillery. So this
(17:11):
time we hadn't seen any combat. Well, man, I didn't
know how I was going to function when I was
being shot at. So I'd just signed up to go
as an observer with this outfit. And you've been listening
to John dufour share his story, and what a story. Indeed,
he gets back to Mississippi College, joins the band. Turns
(17:35):
out it was a National Guard band. He finds out
he has to go and train. He goes for a
one year stint, ends up staying seven and finds himself
in the Pacific Islands face to face with his own death.
When we come back, more of this remarkable life story.
World War Two veteran John Dufour's story continues here on
(17:55):
our American Stories. And we're back with our American stories
and with John de four. When we last left off,
he just signed up to be an observer on a
(18:16):
combat mission fighting the Japanese. Let's pick back up where
we just left off. There was another officer who was columnist,
an observer, and a chaplain and a medic, all gone
this observers and we kind we went up kind of
(18:37):
along the beach, half in the beach, in half in
the jungle, and it wasn't really a bad trip up.
But what we didn't know was, see, we are brand new.
We didn't know these chap troops had been there for
three years and they are seasoned battle troops and we
(18:58):
are rank were kiss and when they found out we
were coming up the beach, they just vacated the airstrip
and moved back out on the back side option from
the way we were approaching, and built up a whole
fireline and we came to this airstrip and it looked
(19:21):
like it wasn't deserted, and stupid yankes, we go in
and everybody's just having a good time walking around, playing
looking at things, and then all of a sudden, all
hell broke loose. They had snipers in the trees, They
had men dug in in the middle of the area
(19:45):
with hops made to their foxhold and they were popping
out of these foxholds, and all of a sudden, every
way you looked, somebody was shooting. And there was a
heavy machine gun that was about fifty yards in front
(20:05):
of me, and I hit the ground, and I was
absolutely panic stricken, and my blood turned to ice water,
and I could not move. I was lying on the
ground with my arms out stretched, but I couldn't move,
(20:26):
and I thought, I've got to do something. I've got
to move, and I was terrified. I couldn't think. I
couldn't move, but I could feel. I could feel the
bullets when that guy would make it sweep. I could
(20:47):
feel the bullets cutting the grass, and the grass was
falling down my neck. And all of a sudden, someone said, hey,
luncha and I turned and looked, and here's a Catholic
chaplain over there. He said, you want have anittle wafer,
(21:10):
I promise you. And he's digging in his fatigue jacket
and he pulled out a box of the nor wafers
and slides them over the press and said, my mother
sent him to best for anitherle wafers you will ever eat,
help yourself. And I thought, well, I'll be there, and
(21:34):
I took a couple of anttle wafer and my ice
water all turned to blood, and my panic and fear vanished,
and I ended in the box back and then I
kind of took charge and got a few in together,
(21:56):
and we got together a little firefight and got out
of that trap. But the aniddle Wafers saved my life.
And this is a great guy. He was killed a
couple of weeks later trying to rescue a man who
was stranded out and wounded. The Chaps had a habit
(22:19):
they would would get a man wounded, and they put
machine guns covering to take care of the people who
came to pick him up, you know, And they'd been
given orders nobody could rescue him, and Chaplin o'connin went out.
(22:40):
I wasn't I wasn't there. He was with another outfit.
And but they talked to some of the medics who
picked up the body, and they said he had a
boxman the Wafers in his pocket when they found him.
(23:01):
And if you ever come to my office looking the
bottom right and draw up my desk, I got a
box right there right now. I've kept them since the war. Oh.
I don't like to tell this, but the Japs were
smarter soldiers. They had one contingent that we hit one time,
(23:26):
called them Imperial Marines. They were all over six feet
tall and had all been trained in jungle fighting. They
all carried Samurai swords, and they were great swordsmen. But
one day, just by accident, I ran into a bunch
(23:49):
of Japs and we killed all them but one. And
this was prior to the operation to the landing on Luzon,
where my coffer went back to, and we needed all
the prisons we could get to try to get information
about the placement of troops on Lazarne. And we were
(24:12):
marching him back to our area, and the peat boat
was supposed to come along the beach and pick up
these prisoners of war, but he got dark and the
peat boat couldn't come, and so we had to keep
him overnight. And my men, this was late in the war,
(24:34):
and nobody wanted to keep him because they were not
safe to be around prisoners or not. I had heard this,
thank God, that this Japanese officer had been captured and
he was being brought back to the lines, and he
(24:59):
spoke perfectly English, and he begged the capturing officer not
to kill him. He said, I have a wife and
I have children, and this war will soon be over
for me and for you, and you will go home
and do anything with me, but please please don't kill me.
(25:20):
I don't want to die, and this officer gave in,
and then he let his guard down, and this man
who had begged for his life took this guy's pistol
and killed him. Well, this tall guy that I had
was talking to me the same way. He said, do anything,
(25:44):
but just don't kill me. He said, I'm not mad
at you Americans, You're not mad at me. And he
said you don't know me, and I don't know you,
and just whatever you do, don't kill me. Well, I'll
listen to this, I guess. Maybe. It took us an
hour to get back to the area, and he was
(26:08):
fair convincing. And then I remembered this into it that
had happened where this man had done the same thing.
So I turned around and and I had to look
him in that ah, and I killed him. I wonder
(26:32):
sometimes about that guy, and what a story you're hearing
from John DeFore. It's true that wore his hell, and
he's describing that hell in vivid to tell he was
a part of it. He recalled that one story when
he used troops were in an airfield that he was
a part of seizing, only to find out that the
Japanese had lured him into a trap. Snipers up high
(26:55):
marksman dug in trenches during that firefight, there was that
chapel and offering him a vanilla wafer and in the
midst of combat and eased Lieutenant Defour's years. And to
this day, John told us those vanilla wafers are still
in his office. They're still close by. When we come
back more of John Defore's story, a World War Two veteran,
(27:19):
a fellow Mississippian here on our American stories. And we
returned to our American stories and to the final portion
(27:42):
of John Defore's story. He told us a few tales
about his time in the war and how he'd struggled
with having to kill. In this final segment, he'll be
talking about life after the war, his family and his
wife Marian Sue, who was joining us during the interview. Well,
you'll hear from them briefly in the end of this segment.
(28:05):
Let's return to John with the rest of his story.
This girl, I had asked her to marry me three
years earlier, before I went overseas. She'd written me a
letter every day. It didn't always get him, but I
went to side in Mississippi and I was ready to
(28:28):
get married the minute I hit Sidon. Of course, she
kept talking about receptions and flowers and things like that,
but I just wanted to go to the justice the piece.
That didn't work. So we got married and we drove
from Sidon. I wanted to spend the night in the
(28:50):
Peabody Hotel because that was where my mother and father
spent their wedding night. And this is a little bit embarrassing,
but we went to bed and in the middle of
the night I had a nightmare. You know, they call
(29:11):
it PTSD. PTSD is when you replay a bad scene
in your mind and it controlled your perception of reality.
And all of a sudden, in the middle of the night,
(29:33):
I was screaming and cussing and fighting Japs like crazy. Man.
They were just flooded over the walls and everything. And
my wife is wide eyed, back leaning against the headboard, saying,
what's the matter with you? Are you crazy? If you
(29:54):
lost your mind? What in the world? And I thought
she was going to leave because she was absolutely terrified. Well,
I was trying to explain what was the matter at
two o'clock in the morning on my red wedding night,
(30:18):
and it was very difficult. There for a while we
almost got a divorce before daylight. But there was no
JP there. But she finally got accustomed to and she
could talk me down. Usually there's an existential philosopher. I
(30:43):
think it's Hans Sir, Yeah, who made the statement there's
no difference between the homicide and suicide. And I want
to tell you that's true, because you can't kill another
(31:03):
human being. You can't cut a man's throat without injuring yourself.
I promised myself when I was discharged from that hospital
that I would never put on the uniform, carry a gun,
(31:26):
or talk about the war. Ever. Man soon I were
working in Manila. We worked for holiday inns, and we
worked mostly in the Eastern area with China, Japan and
places like that. And when we can read, the weekend
(31:47):
off and we were in Manila and I said, I
want to see Corrigador. And so we got on the
boat and we were going to Carrigador and I'm sitting
in the benches across the seats. The boat was just packed,
and I'm sitting there and I see this young man
(32:10):
sitting next to me. He looked like he was younger,
and I said, what were you going to see? Corrycador
and he said, you really want to know. I could
tell he was American. He said, you really want to know,
and I said yeah. He said, well, my father was
(32:33):
over here during the war and said he never talked
about the war. He never said a word about the war,
and up to this time I had never talked to
anybody about the war ever. And he looked at me
(32:54):
and he said, he said, do you have sons. I said, yeah,
I have four sons. He said, have you talked about
the war to your boys? And I said no, never.
He said, this is a total stranger. He said, promise me,
(33:17):
as soon as you get home, you'll talk to you
boys about the war. My dad had never talked about it,
and I've always wondered about this big blank spot in
his life. And he said, I'm over here trying to
put together the little pieces that I found out about
(33:38):
my dad in the war, and I want you to
promise me you'll talk to your sons. And I said,
I promise. I didn't mean it, but we went on
to Carrigadore and looked around. Well late that afternoon women
we were coming back. I was back watching the waves
(34:02):
and he came in found me and I didn't even
know his name. He said, you made me a promise.
I said I'll be to him and he said, you
didn't mean it. I said no, I didn't. He said,
(34:23):
I want a promise. He came the third time. I
want a promise. And when I got home I started
talking about the war. I found that all four of
my sons had had nightmares about the war. What I
(34:44):
had buried on my insides came out in their unconscious
thinking my sons of the four most beautiful men I've
ever known, and they were. They were very kind, and
(35:05):
I could not have asked them to have reacted with
more compassion and understanding. And I wished that I had
started talking years earlier. But you know, I'll laugh and
(35:27):
say funny that I know I'm half crazy because of
what I've been through. I couldn't be totally completely same,
but so far I've been able to pass all the
all the tests. William to Concer German was a Union
(35:53):
general during the war, led the troops all the way
across Georgia, North Carolina to the ocean. One day. Talking
to him, he gave us an often quoted phrase, war
is hell. Every day you get up and you go, honey,
(36:18):
and you just look for somebody to kill all day long,
and you kill him and you don't invar him. You
just walk off after your searching. And that that's crazy.
It is insanity. And I wish that the people who
talk about war had to either send their children or
(36:42):
go themselves. I hope if the man in Washington decides
to protect us, if China attacks from Mosa or whoever
we fight, I hope he'll send his son first. I've
looked in a mirror and said, my God, are you
(37:07):
that Maya? And I had to say yeah. But I
wasn't proud of what everybody in this room as their
freedom today, because yea, and we're proud to say it. Well,
(37:28):
i'd brother had been you. We're proud, thank you, and
a special thanks to Madison Derricott were producing that piece.
And you heard John's family because John was breaking down,
regretting what he'd done in the war, regretting having killed
(37:48):
so many people, and they had to come in and
just help him and save him from his own feelings
of grief decades and decades later, and what a story
he told. There's no difference between a homicide and his suice.
John said, you can't kill another human being without injuring yourself.
The story of John DeFore, the story of war, the
story of its aftermath, and the story of so much more.
(38:12):
Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the American Stories podcast, go to the
iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We recently had the pleasure of bringing World War Two
(00:30):
veteran John D four one hundred and three years old
into our studio with his entire family and listen to
his incredible life story. This next story is all him
sharing a bit about his early life and the unlikely
events that led him to serving in the army. Here's
John Saton, Mississippi, who that grub had turn fit to
(00:57):
people and it's cotton Country. I started to Greenwood High
School and I was taking Latin and I asked a
question and the teacher and this may have been my
imagination because I didn't have a very strong self image,
(01:17):
but the teacher kind of made fun of my question,
and so I just walked out of the class. I
think I was a little arrogant, maybe more than a little,
but anyway, I walked out. And I walked out of
the building and turned and go down the side of
(01:37):
the building. And when I was walking down by the classroom,
I noticed a brick and the flower bread, so I
just picked it up and through it through the window.
And then the school decided that I wasn't a very
good fit. So I didn't even know what expelled meant,
(01:59):
but I learned. So I had to go home and
tell my school teacher mother that they no longer wanted
me in Greenwood High School. And so she said, well,
thank god there was no communication between schools. You can
go to Edabina High School. Edabina was about fifteen miles
(02:24):
in another direction. They ran a school bus there too. Well,
my second day, I got in a fight with the
school bus driver and they were very narrow minded, and
they decided that maybe I did not need to be
(02:44):
a student there either. And my mother, she was a
good woman, but my mother had problems, and I left
home and I walked up the railroad and slept under bridge.
I got a job on a construction crew, and I
(03:05):
got a room and a boarding home, and I worked
there all summer and September came and the foreman said, well, John,
I guess you'll be leaving now because school started. And
I said, no, I'm not going back to school anymore.
(03:28):
I've quit and he looked at me and said why.
I said, I don't like schoogle and he said, your
damned fool. And he said you're fired. Get off with
this job. And so I had heard about Morehead. There
was a agricultural high school and junior college there. So
(03:52):
I hit chacked to Morehead and I went in and
I found the president's office and I told him I
didn't have any money, but I wanted to go to school.
There was boarding school also, and so he said, well,
will you work? And I said of course, and he
(04:12):
said okay. So I had a roommate named Robert, and
Robert and I got to be good friends. Every weekend
we would slip off campus and get drunk, and Robert
and I decided we didn't need any more education, so
(04:33):
we went to work on the construction job. We would
work all week and go to the bars or wherever.
And September the second of the third, we went to
a little bar and got drunk, and I came home
(04:54):
about two o'clock and the next morning that laid in
the boarding house came in and woke me up and said,
Robert killed himself last night. And I could not believe
it because he and I had played football and run
(05:15):
track together for years, and he never mentioned suicide. And
I was Paul bearer and these they put the casket
in a pine box and everybody left, and there were
(05:37):
two men throwing dirt in on top of this pine box.
And I sit there and I watched those clods bouncing
off the top of that pine box. And you're not
don't believe this, but I don't expect you to. But
(05:59):
I heard of and have never forgotten John Before you
keep living the way you're living, and a few months
some clouds just fuck this will be bouncing off your
casket and the world will never know or care that
(06:20):
you have lived. And I was no mistaken now it
was God or somebody looking after me. I went to
my boarding house and I got some clothes and I
went straight out on the highway and hitchhocked to Jackson, Mississippi.
(06:42):
I had heard that Mississippi College was a Christian college
and that everybody there was a Christian. It was a
perfect place. In my mind. I was scared to death
that I was going to kill myself light Robert. And
(07:03):
after I heard that voice, I knew it was time
for me to change and you're listening to John Defour
tell his story, and my goodness, what a story it is.
Growing up in a town with two hundred and fifty
people getting thrown out of school not once, but twice,
and so he decides to hitchhike to a Christian college,
Mississippi College. When we come back, more of the story
(07:26):
of World War Two veteran John Defour here on Our
American Stories. Lee Habibi here, the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
(07:48):
free to make. If you love what you here, go
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give. And we returned to our
(08:10):
American Stories and to John Defour, who's sharing his life
story and ultimately how we ended up in the army
during World War Two. When we last left off, he
just decided to go to Mississippi College, a Christian college
in Clinton, Mississippi, not far down the road from where
we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi, which is in the northern
(08:32):
part of the state, about an hour south of Memphis.
Let's pick up with John where we last left off.
I wasn't a Christian, of course when I went there,
but I studied like crazy, and after about two years,
the professor offered maya scholarship for the next semester. And
(08:55):
I had a lady in one of my classes, and
she was excellent student, and she kept talking to me
about becoming a Christian, and I got really irritated. And
when the semester ended, I gave her a D on
(09:17):
the course. And she was a straight A student. And
the professor who had sought her become a friend, said
why didn't you do that? And I said because I
don't like her, and he said, well, you can't give
her bad grade because and so I changed it, of course,
(09:38):
But anyway, she was very kind. She didn't tell the
professor that I'd given her D. He founded himself. She
didn't report me, and she talked to me about God.
The God that I had learned about was my mother's God,
(09:59):
and that would be the antithesis of everything that I
would describe to any form of divinity. And so after
she kept talking to me about Jesus Christ. I got
a whole new message from this woman, and so I
became a Christian. I was talking one day to this
(10:21):
guy on campus and he said, John, don't you pay
a musical instrument? Now? I said, yeah, I play three
or four. And he said, well, the man here pays
a dollar a rehearsal. Why don't you join? And I thought, boy,
four dollars a month, And so I didn't ask any questions.
(10:43):
I just signed up. But what I didn't know. I
didn't know was it was a National Guard man and
that's why I was made. And so I did find
any and a vite. Six months after I joined, I
(11:05):
came one day in the van. Director said, gentlemen, I
have an announcement. We are being inducted into the Federal Service.
And I didn't know what inducted meant. I found out
but after the band rehearsal, I went up and I said,
(11:28):
mister Macaw'm very sorry, but I can't go. He said,
We're going to Camp Landing, Florida, four years training and
then you'll come back here. I said, I'm very sorry,
but I can't go. I have other plans, and he said,
young man, you're in the army. I said, well, I'm
(11:49):
not going. He said, if you do not show up,
do you know what we call that in the army?
And I said no. He said we called it desertion.
He said, you know what we'd do with deserts. I
said no. He said we shoot him. And I thought, well,
that doesn't sound very good. So so I went for
(12:13):
one year's training. Oh seven years later I finished a
one year's training because pretty soon Pearl Harbor came and
after that, man, that was all she wrote, you know,
And I had had some previous military training. I went
(12:35):
in as a private first place, and I saw I
noticed that they were allowing people with previous military training
to take an examination to see if they could qualify
foalks commission as an officer. And so I took the
examinating with two hundred and fifty people, and I came
(12:59):
out at the top of the class. And I was
one day working in the latrine with my friend watching
church one day and someone said, you got a message
in the orderly tenth and so I went to the
orderly tent and they said you wanted a division headquarters. Well,
(13:23):
division headquarters. That's like Washington d C. I mean, like
it used to be. And so I went to division
headquarters and I met one of the finest human beings
I've met in my life. His name was General Major
General John C. Persons, and he said, Private de four,
(13:49):
you are now a second lieutenant, and he saluted me.
He pinned my bars one and man one minute, I'm
private first class. In one minute with those bars, I'm
a second lieutenant. And so I was assigned to another
unit and I was in a rifle company. And that
(14:13):
was the beginning really of my military career. When I
became a Christian at Mississippi College, and then I realized
I was in the army. I knew I could never
kill a human being. I just knew I could not
(14:33):
kill a human being. And I'm teaching these guys about
trench warfare and particularly about being at practice. But even
while I was doing all that, I knew I couldn't
kill a man if I had to, and I thought
(14:54):
about it. But then I go to New Guinea and
I'm still processes in't in mine. And one day I
was on patrol and there were these long, tall grasses
that grew in the jungle called kin our grass, and
(15:17):
wherever there was a water hole, the grass grew around it.
And so one day we were on a patrol and
we ran into water and I stopped and lay down
on the edge. And we hadn't had no water all day,
so I was drinking out of this pond. It wasn't
(15:42):
very clean, but I picked them in my hand and
I was drinking, and I lay there just a minute,
and all of a sudden, I hear nos, and a
chap comes breaking to the grass, and he eyes down
there and starts drinking water, and all of a sudden
(16:07):
I saw him see me. He turned his head and
he saw me, and then he whirled his rifle around
and pointed it at me, and I had atomach and
I shot him six times, and I got back to
(16:27):
my safe area. That night, we were all sleeping in
the hold, and I started getting my hole, and I thought, well, John,
your murderer today. You killed a human being. But that's
just kind of the way it is. When we were
(16:50):
in these tints, right way we'd come off the ship,
my neighboring unit got a call that the first Battalion
was going on the combat mission up the coast, they'd
located in Japanese airstrip and they were kind of plotting
a course and dup and bombs him artillery. So this
(17:11):
time we hadn't seen any combat. Well, man, I didn't
know how I was going to function when I was
being shot at. So I'd just signed up to go
as an observer with this outfit. And you've been listening
to John dufour share his story, and what a story. Indeed,
he gets back to Mississippi College, joins the band. Turns
(17:35):
out it was a National Guard band. He finds out
he has to go and train. He goes for a
one year stint, ends up staying seven and finds himself
in the Pacific Islands face to face with his own death.
When we come back, more of this remarkable life story.
World War Two veteran John Dufour's story continues here on
(17:55):
our American Stories. And we're back with our American stories
and with John de four. When we last left off,
he just signed up to be an observer on a
(18:16):
combat mission fighting the Japanese. Let's pick back up where
we just left off. There was another officer who was columnist,
an observer, and a chaplain and a medic, all gone
this observers and we kind we went up kind of
(18:37):
along the beach, half in the beach, in half in
the jungle, and it wasn't really a bad trip up.
But what we didn't know was, see, we are brand new.
We didn't know these chap troops had been there for
three years and they are seasoned battle troops and we
(18:58):
are rank were kiss and when they found out we
were coming up the beach, they just vacated the airstrip
and moved back out on the back side option from
the way we were approaching, and built up a whole
fireline and we came to this airstrip and it looked
(19:21):
like it wasn't deserted, and stupid yankes, we go in
and everybody's just having a good time walking around, playing
looking at things, and then all of a sudden, all
hell broke loose. They had snipers in the trees, They
had men dug in in the middle of the area
(19:45):
with hops made to their foxhold and they were popping
out of these foxholds, and all of a sudden, every
way you looked, somebody was shooting. And there was a
heavy machine gun that was about fifty yards in front
(20:05):
of me, and I hit the ground, and I was
absolutely panic stricken, and my blood turned to ice water,
and I could not move. I was lying on the
ground with my arms out stretched, but I couldn't move,
(20:26):
and I thought, I've got to do something. I've got
to move, and I was terrified. I couldn't think. I
couldn't move, but I could feel. I could feel the
bullets when that guy would make it sweep. I could
(20:47):
feel the bullets cutting the grass, and the grass was
falling down my neck. And all of a sudden, someone said, hey,
luncha and I turned and looked, and here's a Catholic
chaplain over there. He said, you want have anittle wafer,
(21:10):
I promise you. And he's digging in his fatigue jacket
and he pulled out a box of the nor wafers
and slides them over the press and said, my mother
sent him to best for anitherle wafers you will ever eat,
help yourself. And I thought, well, I'll be there, and
(21:34):
I took a couple of anttle wafer and my ice
water all turned to blood, and my panic and fear vanished,
and I ended in the box back and then I
kind of took charge and got a few in together,
(21:56):
and we got together a little firefight and got out
of that trap. But the aniddle Wafers saved my life.
And this is a great guy. He was killed a
couple of weeks later trying to rescue a man who
was stranded out and wounded. The Chaps had a habit
(22:19):
they would would get a man wounded, and they put
machine guns covering to take care of the people who
came to pick him up, you know, And they'd been
given orders nobody could rescue him, and Chaplin o'connin went out.
(22:40):
I wasn't I wasn't there. He was with another outfit.
And but they talked to some of the medics who
picked up the body, and they said he had a
boxman the Wafers in his pocket when they found him.
(23:01):
And if you ever come to my office looking the
bottom right and draw up my desk, I got a
box right there right now. I've kept them since the war. Oh.
I don't like to tell this, but the Japs were
smarter soldiers. They had one contingent that we hit one time,
(23:26):
called them Imperial Marines. They were all over six feet
tall and had all been trained in jungle fighting. They
all carried Samurai swords, and they were great swordsmen. But
one day, just by accident, I ran into a bunch
(23:49):
of Japs and we killed all them but one. And
this was prior to the operation to the landing on Luzon,
where my coffer went back to, and we needed all
the prisons we could get to try to get information
about the placement of troops on Lazarne. And we were
(24:12):
marching him back to our area, and the peat boat
was supposed to come along the beach and pick up
these prisoners of war, but he got dark and the
peat boat couldn't come, and so we had to keep
him overnight. And my men, this was late in the war,
(24:34):
and nobody wanted to keep him because they were not
safe to be around prisoners or not. I had heard this,
thank God, that this Japanese officer had been captured and
he was being brought back to the lines, and he
(24:59):
spoke perfectly English, and he begged the capturing officer not
to kill him. He said, I have a wife and
I have children, and this war will soon be over
for me and for you, and you will go home
and do anything with me, but please please don't kill me.
(25:20):
I don't want to die, and this officer gave in,
and then he let his guard down, and this man
who had begged for his life took this guy's pistol
and killed him. Well, this tall guy that I had
was talking to me the same way. He said, do anything,
(25:44):
but just don't kill me. He said, I'm not mad
at you Americans, You're not mad at me. And he
said you don't know me, and I don't know you,
and just whatever you do, don't kill me. Well, I'll
listen to this, I guess. Maybe. It took us an
hour to get back to the area, and he was
(26:08):
fair convincing. And then I remembered this into it that
had happened where this man had done the same thing.
So I turned around and and I had to look
him in that ah, and I killed him. I wonder
(26:32):
sometimes about that guy, and what a story you're hearing
from John DeFore. It's true that wore his hell, and
he's describing that hell in vivid to tell he was
a part of it. He recalled that one story when
he used troops were in an airfield that he was
a part of seizing, only to find out that the
Japanese had lured him into a trap. Snipers up high
(26:55):
marksman dug in trenches during that firefight, there was that
chapel and offering him a vanilla wafer and in the
midst of combat and eased Lieutenant Defour's years. And to
this day, John told us those vanilla wafers are still
in his office. They're still close by. When we come
back more of John Defore's story, a World War Two veteran,
(27:19):
a fellow Mississippian here on our American stories. And we
returned to our American stories and to the final portion
(27:42):
of John Defore's story. He told us a few tales
about his time in the war and how he'd struggled
with having to kill. In this final segment, he'll be
talking about life after the war, his family and his
wife Marian Sue, who was joining us during the interview. Well,
you'll hear from them briefly in the end of this segment.
(28:05):
Let's return to John with the rest of his story.
This girl, I had asked her to marry me three
years earlier, before I went overseas. She'd written me a
letter every day. It didn't always get him, but I
went to side in Mississippi and I was ready to
(28:28):
get married the minute I hit Sidon. Of course, she
kept talking about receptions and flowers and things like that,
but I just wanted to go to the justice the piece.
That didn't work. So we got married and we drove
from Sidon. I wanted to spend the night in the
(28:50):
Peabody Hotel because that was where my mother and father
spent their wedding night. And this is a little bit embarrassing,
but we went to bed and in the middle of
the night I had a nightmare. You know, they call
(29:11):
it PTSD. PTSD is when you replay a bad scene
in your mind and it controlled your perception of reality.
And all of a sudden, in the middle of the night,
(29:33):
I was screaming and cussing and fighting Japs like crazy. Man.
They were just flooded over the walls and everything. And
my wife is wide eyed, back leaning against the headboard, saying,
what's the matter with you? Are you crazy? If you
(29:54):
lost your mind? What in the world? And I thought
she was going to leave because she was absolutely terrified. Well,
I was trying to explain what was the matter at
two o'clock in the morning on my red wedding night,
(30:18):
and it was very difficult. There for a while we
almost got a divorce before daylight. But there was no
JP there. But she finally got accustomed to and she
could talk me down. Usually there's an existential philosopher. I
(30:43):
think it's Hans Sir, Yeah, who made the statement there's
no difference between the homicide and suicide. And I want
to tell you that's true, because you can't kill another
(31:03):
human being. You can't cut a man's throat without injuring yourself.
I promised myself when I was discharged from that hospital
that I would never put on the uniform, carry a gun,
(31:26):
or talk about the war. Ever. Man soon I were
working in Manila. We worked for holiday inns, and we
worked mostly in the Eastern area with China, Japan and
places like that. And when we can read, the weekend
(31:47):
off and we were in Manila and I said, I
want to see Corrigador. And so we got on the
boat and we were going to Carrigador and I'm sitting
in the benches across the seats. The boat was just packed,
and I'm sitting there and I see this young man
(32:10):
sitting next to me. He looked like he was younger,
and I said, what were you going to see? Corrycador
and he said, you really want to know. I could
tell he was American. He said, you really want to know,
and I said yeah. He said, well, my father was
(32:33):
over here during the war and said he never talked
about the war. He never said a word about the war,
and up to this time I had never talked to
anybody about the war ever. And he looked at me
(32:54):
and he said, he said, do you have sons. I said, yeah,
I have four sons. He said, have you talked about
the war to your boys? And I said no, never.
He said, this is a total stranger. He said, promise me,
(33:17):
as soon as you get home, you'll talk to you
boys about the war. My dad had never talked about it,
and I've always wondered about this big blank spot in
his life. And he said, I'm over here trying to
put together the little pieces that I found out about
(33:38):
my dad in the war, and I want you to
promise me you'll talk to your sons. And I said,
I promise. I didn't mean it, but we went on
to Carrigadore and looked around. Well late that afternoon women
we were coming back. I was back watching the waves
(34:02):
and he came in found me and I didn't even
know his name. He said, you made me a promise.
I said I'll be to him and he said, you
didn't mean it. I said no, I didn't. He said,
(34:23):
I want a promise. He came the third time. I
want a promise. And when I got home I started
talking about the war. I found that all four of
my sons had had nightmares about the war. What I
(34:44):
had buried on my insides came out in their unconscious
thinking my sons of the four most beautiful men I've
ever known, and they were. They were very kind, and
(35:05):
I could not have asked them to have reacted with
more compassion and understanding. And I wished that I had
started talking years earlier. But you know, I'll laugh and
(35:27):
say funny that I know I'm half crazy because of
what I've been through. I couldn't be totally completely same,
but so far I've been able to pass all the
all the tests. William to Concer German was a Union
(35:53):
general during the war, led the troops all the way
across Georgia, North Carolina to the ocean. One day. Talking
to him, he gave us an often quoted phrase, war
is hell. Every day you get up and you go, honey,
(36:18):
and you just look for somebody to kill all day long,
and you kill him and you don't invar him. You
just walk off after your searching. And that that's crazy.
It is insanity. And I wish that the people who
talk about war had to either send their children or
(36:42):
go themselves. I hope if the man in Washington decides
to protect us, if China attacks from Mosa or whoever
we fight, I hope he'll send his son first. I've
looked in a mirror and said, my God, are you
(37:07):
that Maya? And I had to say yeah. But I
wasn't proud of what everybody in this room as their
freedom today, because yea, and we're proud to say it. Well,
(37:28):
i'd brother had been you. We're proud, thank you, and
a special thanks to Madison Derricott were producing that piece.
And you heard John's family because John was breaking down,
regretting what he'd done in the war, regretting having killed
(37:48):
so many people, and they had to come in and
just help him and save him from his own feelings
of grief decades and decades later, and what a story
he told. There's no difference between a homicide and his suice.
John said, you can't kill another human being without injuring yourself.
The story of John DeFore, the story of war, the
story of its aftermath, and the story of so much more.
(38:12):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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