Skip to main content

Search the Special Collections and Archives Portal

Interview with Roger Ray, October 29, 2005

Document

Document
Download nts_000057.pdf (application/pdf; 1.31 MB)

Information

Date

2005-10-29

Description

Narrator affiliation: Deputy Manager, Nevada Test Site; DOE Marshall Islands; Colonel. U.S. Army

Digital ID

nts_000057

Physical Identifier

OH-03104
Details

Citation

Ray, Roger. Interview, 2005 October 29. MS-00818. [Transcript]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1kp7v33t

Rights

This material is made available to facilitate private study, scholarship, or research. It may be protected by copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity rights, or other interests not owned by UNLV. Users are responsible for determining whether permissions are necessary from rights owners for any intended use and for obtaining all required permissions. Acknowledgement of the UNLV University Libraries is requested. For more information, please see the UNLV Special Collections policies on reproduction and use (https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/research_and_services/reproductions) or contact us at special.collections@unlv.edu.

Standardized Rights Statement

Digital Provenance

Original archival records created digitally

Date Digitized

2005-10-29

Extent

126 pages

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Roger Ray October 29 and 30, 2005 Middletown, Maryland Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Roger Ray October 29 and 30, 2005 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: birth, family, early education, death of mother, father’s military career 1 Education: West Point, memories of Pearl Harbor and wartime atmosphere 4 Military career: training as infantry platoon leader, service in Europe during World War II, wounded at Normandy, rehabilitation in England, return to European theater in Army Intelligence Branch ( G- 2), Battle of the Bulge, brother Lieutenant Colonel John Ray captured by Germans as prisoner of war, released after German surrender 8 Military career: Army Intelligence Branch studies German V- 1 rockets, discusses the German V- 2 and its technological importance 30 Military career and education: attends Army Command and General Staff School and then New York University for master’s degree in aeronautical engineering 34 Military career: transfers to Naval Ordnance Test Station and Naval Air Missile Test Center ( California) to study Navy guided missile program, transfers to Fort Sill, OK to become artilleryman, backtrack to end of World War II when he transfers to Fort Bragg, NC to restructure counterintelligence section for Japan invasion, and end of war 36 The end of WW II, personal awareness of atomic bomb and German bomb projects 39 Military career: transfers to Los Alamos laboratory, NM to work in J- Division under Alvin C. Graves and William E. Ogle, talks about “ free atmosphere” of working at Los Alamos, collegiality between physicists and non- scientists 42 To Bikini for Operation Castle: participation in Los Alamos experiment, physicist Robert England���s accidental electrocution, work with physicist John Malik 50 On USS Ainsworth for Bravo test, the first nuclear test he had witnessed “ my baptism” 55 Experiment moved to Japtan Island, Enewetak, work with John Malik 61 Muses on integration of military career with science and engineering career, and tension between scientists and the military 63 Designs and conducts successful experiment for Los Alamos at Nevada Test Site 66 Reflects on Army career and experiences at Los Alamos 68 Discusses Wernher Von Braun and U. S. Army rocket program 71 Military career: becomes executive officer and later laboratory director of Feltman Research and Ammunition Laboratories, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ 74 Military career: transfers to NASA to work with Werner Von Braun and his team on rocket development and testing 78 Military career: works with General Alfred Dodd Starbird on rocket testing and high- altitude nuclear testing on Johnston Island 81 Failure of missile test, warhead section blew- up and aftermath 83 Military career: becomes Special Assistant to the Director of Defense 90 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 Communication Agency [ DCA] in Washington, DC Military career and education: attends Industrial College of the Armed Forces 94 Military career: becomes Army assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy W. J. Howard 95 Military career: becomes Director of Research and Engineering Laboratories and Commander of Picatinny Arsenal, NJ 96 Military career: becomes Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy and then retires from the U. S. Army 97 Accepts position with DOE as Director of Operations, Nevada Operations Office [ NVOO] 98 Discusses moral obligation of United States to the people of Enewetak and the Marshall Islands after testing ended, more detail on work with John Malik during Operation Castle and their discussions regarding U. S. responsibility for the people of Enewetak 101 Forward again to his work with Defense Nuclear Agency [ DNA] in contamination cleanup operations in Enewetak, and return of Enewetak to self- government, Chief [ Iroij] Joannes Peter 109 Reflects further on the issue of American responsibility for the Marshall Islands in light of growing fear of the USSR during Cold War, and then talks about return visit to Enewetak and his role in the cleanup done by U. S. Government of the islands 114 U. S. officials shocked by conditions on Bikini, more remembrances of [ Iroij] Joannes Peter and wife Bila 118 Formal turnover of administration and operation of Enewetak from U. S. Government to Enewetak government 123 Conclusion: “ I think we can never do for the people of Enewetak or the people of Bikini enough to repay them for what they did for us” 124 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Roger Ray October 29 and 30, 2005 in Middletown, MD Conducted by Mary Palevsky October 29, 2005 [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. 10/ 29/ 05 Mary Palevsky: Roger Ray, thank you so much for speaking with me this morning. I thought we could start by you telling me your full name, date of birth, place of birth, and something about your family background. Roger Ray: Well, first of all, Roger Ray is my full name. My mother is said to have said that she didn’t want nicknames, so she was going to give all of her children short names and they could pick their own middle names, but no nicknames. I was born in Yonkers, New York in what was called Bronxville at the time, a small village town at that time, 1922, on February 26, 1922. I was one of five children, four boys and one girl, and I was the youngest. My oldest brother very soon entered the [ U. S.] Naval Academy [ Annapolis, Maryland]. This was my brother Martin, who graduated then from the Naval Academy in 1934. Next came Margery who followed her mother’s footsteps into Barnard College and graduated in 1939. Next came John. John was four years older than I and entered West Point [ U. S. Military Academy, New York] in 1935, to graduate in 1939. Then came Alan, two years younger than John, two years older than I, and we were probably the closest pals in those times, being but two years apart in age. All of us five children attended the same grammar school, Public School [ P. S.] Number 8 in Yonkers, and all of us attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers and graduated in the sequence that I’ve given you. Let’s see, where do we go from here? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 A couple of questions were raised. Two of your brothers, you said, one went to the Naval Academy, the other to West Point. Was there a military background in your family? Well, there had not been before my father [ Martin Hasset Ray]. I neglected to mention that Father graduated from West Point in 1910. We lived about fifty miles from West Point, so as you can imagine, that became part of America, as far as we were concerned, and part of our family. We made fairly frequent visits to West Point and encountered many of Father’s old associates over the years. Father had served in World War I and then left the Army, resigned from the Army, and spent the rest of his life in private business; he based himself in New York City about a thirty- five- or- forty- minute ride on the train from Bronxville. What was his business? His business was largely business management, but with an engineering bent, and he really was a very versatile man who found himself supporting the management of large construction firms, aircraft firms, all sorts of commercial businesses. He also engaged in some professional support [ 00: 05: 00] of city, county, and state governments. I should mention there that Mother [( Josephine) Ray West Ray] was a professional person, too, graduated from Barnard, and I think that most of her professional resources were invested in public affairs, for the most part voluntary. She, as I remember, was the spark that started our library system in our town and the spark that introduced new innovation in our schools. She was very strong in our church, and so we all became members of the same church. What church was that? It was a Congregational church, but it had grown out of a number of antecedents and I won’t try to go into those. Most of that happened before my time of awareness. [ Pause] UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 Let’s see, you don’t have to give me all the antecedents, but you’ve whetted my curiosity. So this church had some sort of long history there? No, actually we had a picture somewhere in our scrapbook of me attending the laying of the cornerstone of the church when I was four or five years old. OK, so I misunderstood. It was an outgrowth of a local Dutch Reformed church that we had belonged to. What were your parents’ names? Father’s name was Martin Hasset Ray. Mother’s last name was West. I’m hesitating because she didn’t go by her— she went by— incidentally her middle name was Ray, so named because they had very good neighbors, good friends nearby who admired her parents very much. And these families became so intermingled socially that it was just a natural thing for her to be known as Ray West Ray. But her real name was Josephine. I supposed I mentioned, or perhaps I didn’t, that Mother died when I was eight years old, so I’m a little bit fuzzy on some of the details of her life, but not of her character and the strength that she gave our family. She was an educator, a public activist, public- spirited lady. Despite her five children, she still had lots of time for community activities and church activities and school, someone that we all learned to admire very young. Now she died when you were so young. What happened? How did she die? She had a tonsil infection that became a chest infection, and in those days there were no antibiotics, and so she succumbed after a fairly short illness. And I remember that day vividly, and the ensuing days of trying to become upright again myself, and I’m sure that my brothers and sister shared that. It was such a blow and unexpected. She was vibrant, she was athletic, she UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 was a sailor, she taught us all to sail and to swim, and we very much needed her in our young lives, and so that was a terrific blow, and of course it was to my father. [ 00: 10: 00] Sure. That must’ve been hard. Lots of good, supportive people elsewhere in the family and in our neighborhood. I’m still in close touch with those who survive in that latter category and grateful to them for keeping us identified with home and identified with our neighborhood and with them. I suppose you want to move from there to— One last question about your parents, which is your dad, he served in Europe in World War I, is that right? He was in Europe but only briefly. This was at the time of the inception of the Air Corps, the United States Army Air Corps, and he established a school for pilots very early in the war and was identified with what later became the U. S. Air Force. So he had an engineering background already, is that right? Well, he was a West Point graduate, and that in those days meant an engineering background. I guess I should’ve said that all four boys and Father all attended either one or the other of the academies, alternating, interestingly, between West Point— Father graduated from West Point, then his eldest son from Annapolis, then the next son from West Point, and the next son from Annapolis, then I from West Point. Well, that’ll be a good transition, then, for you to West Point. So what years did you attend? I reported to West Point on July 1, 1940, and at the end of our second year, which is 1942, we were informed that we would graduate in three years rather than four, and so we were converted from the Class of 1944 to the Class of June 1943. And interestingly that made it necessary to take our last two years in one academic year, and I mean truly that we did every assignment, took UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 every course, did the entire program of those last two years in the last year. Graduated in June 1943. And this is happening because of the war [ World War II], is that right? Oh, yes, indeed. We were terrifically short of young officers to lead this army that was burgeoning, and we had more military training under our belt than could be passed on to a civilian being brought into the service and in the comparable period of time, so we were a resource that was running short but was very much needed at that time. We don’t have time to go into a lot of detail, but just a little bit about the West Point experience. You were there at the time of Pearl Harbor. Yes, we were. So what are your memories of that era? Or maybe more generally, I guess I’m asking what the atmosphere was like to be there during wartime. Well, I remember the day very well. A rather substantial fraction of the cadet corps were at the movies that afternoon, that Sunday afternoon when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. And suddenly the movie stopped and a man came out on the stage and said, We’ve just had word that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. I had a brother that was in that part of [ 00: 15: 00] the world, in the Navy, and others coming along very soon, and we all just ran out of the movie house and over to our barracks, and there turned the radios on to find out what we could, and of course it was very muddled. We had been given some warning as cadets in various classes that the Japanese were on the march and that anything could be expected, but it certainly didn’t include that such severe damage could be done to our fleet and to our facilities in the Pacific in one bold strike. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 We had hardly become aware of all of that when we received orders to appear in the lecture room by, I don’t know, six o’clock in the evening. And we did go in class formation to that lecture room, and there a group of instructors, officers who were instructors in various things in the military academy, gave us a summary of what was then known. And in retrospect, I have a tremendous respect for the men who did that. These were young officers who had been just as surprised as we, four or five hours earlier, and they had a comprehensive look at the world. They had maps all drawn to show not only what had occurred in that attack but the strategic significance of the various things that the Japanese had done. It has lived to impress me for years that these men immediately turned to and got that information out to us and available to us, and that it was so good. In retrospect it was tremendous that we suddenly went from being comfortable students in that institution to being most anxious to get up and go ourselves and to finish our qualifying years and our months and get over and join the fray. So you were in what class, then, at Pearl Harbor? You were middle of—? Well, Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941. We had by that time been in the military academy for about a year and a half, so we were just about halfway through, a third of the way through our original contract but by the end of that day, I should think, it was concluded that we would graduate a year early. And that of course had a terrific effect on a lot of things. It changed our academic curriculum but mostly by compressing it. We did not eliminate even the humanities and the languages and other things that might not have been thought essential for people who were training for war. But we were training for a lifetime still, and again I compliment the administration, not only the administration at West Point but the national administration for recognizing that that was an asset that must not be squandered, that we must finish our education UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 sufficient to do what we had set out to do in the first place, but it get it done in a shorter time. And we really did work very, very hard from then on through that year. Thank you very much. That answers several questions. You anticipated several of my little detail questions. So you graduated then from West Point in ’ 43? [ 00: 20: 00] June of 1943, yes. And so the war’s pretty much still— we’re right in the middle of it at that point. Yes, well, we’re really just getting in deep. We had not mobilized as much as we needed to, for sure, and we had not brought into the military services nearly as many of the so- called civilian components that were going to be needed to fill out the ranks. The Army had to expand, Army, Navy, and Air Force— the Air Force didn’t really exist, of course— Army, Navy, and the U. S. Army Air Corps was in its infancy. All of those had to expand and grow and mature. You mentioned your brother having been in the East at the time of Pearl Harbor, did I understand you correctly? You said when Pearl Harbor was attacked, you were concerned because of one of your brothers? Right. He was in the USS Pennsylvania [ BB- 38], a battleship, and the Pennsylvania was one of those that, as I recall, now my memory isn’t very clear on this but at least the Pennsylvania was not attacked by the Japanese. I believe that it got out of Pearl Harbor. It had been in Pearl Harbor and it got out of Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came. Of course you know that we lost many of our capital ships right then in that attack. Of course we were grateful that his ship had not been hit and that he was well, and I don’t remember how long it took us to find that out but it was certainly a time of concern for my parents. Now was that your oldest brother? Yes, it was. Class of 1934 at Annapolis. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 So where do you go after graduation? After graduation I went, after a brief leave, to Fort Benning, Georgia for training as potentially an infantry platoon leader, and that was all focused instruction, focused on that particular job. There was no longer any of the what we might have called frills of economics and finance and politics and all that, but no, this is entirely military instruction for I think it was about six weeks. And it was the equivalent of what the drafted new member of the Army would have taken in Officer Candidate School [ OCS]. Had he been selected after his recruit training, he might be selected then as a potential officer and sent to that school where he would not only gain his education but his promotion to second lieutenant. We came out of that school with the professional training we’d had at West Point, followed by that tactical and technical training that we’d gotten at Fort Benning, and we came out still as second lieutenants and reported to our assigned divisions, most of these being combat divisions: infantry, artillery, armor. And I and my best friend and roommate chose infantry and chose to be together and to join the same infantry division where we had a little bit of choice. What was his name? [ 00: 25: 00] His name was Arthur H. Rasper from Cincinnati, Ohio. Art survived the war all right, but he died young. After World War II he died of— I don’t remember what the disease was. He was on vacation in South America and it was a very, very unexpected and tragic thing. His parents became Mom and Pop to me, they had a long time ago, and mine similarly to him, and I kept in touch with them as long as they lived afterwards. So then where do you go after you become the second lieutenant? We trained at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky with the 83rd Infantry Division, and I was in the 329th Infantry Regiment. Art was in the 330th, the next- door regiment. We didn’t live next door, UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 we lived quite some distance across the post, but we saw each other fairly frequently and when we were able to get a little leave, we would visit either his parents or mine, who were both in the Midwest at that time. Our division was ordered to Europe in mid- 1944. In fact, I guess it was probably April or so. And we were in the 83rd Infantry Division, went to Europe, went first to England for further training and indoctrination and just conditioning, getting more focused on the war that we were really going into. And that was during the time that the United States and Britain were very tightly bonded in their purpose to invade Europe and retake the Low Countries and work their way across France and Germany. And of course the first step in that was the invasion of Normandy, which occurred on June 6, I think it was, of 1944. We were not in that first wave of invasion. We were too green a division to be in the front lines at that time, or to be in one of the key slots. The divisions and regiments that formed that invasion force had been in intensive training probably for at least a year more than we had. So we prepared ourselves to be in what was called the second wave. The second wave came very quickly after the first wave; we left training camp in Britain and went to the port of embarkation in the south of Britain sometime very soon after D- Day, and then sailed across the [ English] Channel by the time they’d established a beachhead, and we set up camp just out of that beachhead just up on the dry land and prepared to take over whatever position we might be ordered to take. As it turned out, the two airborne divisions that had led a good part of that invasion, the 101st and the 82nd Airborne, were in the sector that we were backing up, and so as soon as one of those divisions had really exhausted its resources for the intensive warfare they [ 00: 30: 00] had fought, fighting their way ashore and then up the cliffs of Normandy and onto the plains of UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 France, by that time they were just about exhausted and had to get replacements. They’d had heavy casualties, had to get many replacements and get a chance to rest up and replenish their ammunition and guns they’d lost and so forth. It had been a very tough battle to get off the beach and up onto the plains. So we relieved one of those airborne divisions in a movement known as “ passing through.” They had their position on the front line and we went up the night before and met, platoon leader meeting platoon leader and company commander meeting company commander and getting a quick briefing on where they are and what their intentions seem to be, and then by daylight they had moved out and we were in their foxholes and ready for our assault. I think our assault started on July 4. I’m not sure of that. And we were to do essentially what they were doing, to try and drive into the heartland of France and get into the rear areas of the German Army and disrupt their communications and disrupt their supply lines so that we could then overwhelm them and go on. One of the next targets was the city of St. Lo. As we launched our attack toward St. Lo, I think that was on the morning of the fourth of July. It was quite close to the fourth of July because I remember writing to my parents later and saying it was the noisiest, brightest fourth of July I’d ever experienced. The firecrackers were a great deal louder and a little more scary. And we proceeded with a successful advance against the Germans and were into what was called the hedgerows. Hedgerow fighting was in areas that were broken up by mounds of earth separating I suppose different landholdings of different people, and so those made convenient hiding places, convenient protected places for the defenders, the Germans, and made it much more difficult for us to try and cross the open terrain and attack. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 In one of those attacks, I was in command of my platoon and as we started forward, a mortar shell struck fairly close by and I was knocked down and my leg had been wounded. I didn’t know how badly but I knew that I couldn’t stand, so my platoon sergeant had to take over the platoon, and that was the last I saw of 83rd Infantry Division. For some hours I stayed there, used my first aid training to not lose my head and try and keep under control; I don’t know at what time of day, a couple of soldiers, medics came by with a stretcher, a litter, put a splint on my leg, and rolled me onto the stretcher and drove back [ 00: 35: 00] to a hospital somewhere between there and the Normandy beach. So I was headed back. That led to a wait of I think it was three days down on the beach, just lying on a litter, and somebody came by every few hours and gave us a box of food and saw that our canteens were full of fresh water, and we just lay there. The man next to me on that night was a German soldier who too had been badly wounded. I spoke some German and I spoke to him and I suppose you could say befriended him. Certainly I extended him the courtesy of soldier to soldier. And we didn’t talk very much but I came to think that he was much like me and that we could get along. We waited almost three days and finally a ship came in offshore and they sent in boats to take us out to the ship. Our litters were carried and put across a landing craft. They could get about six across one of these landing craft and we’d putt- putt out to the large ship and were carried aboard, and I guess it was about dark when we finally got the whole beach cleared. And they had a ship full of litters with guys who really didn’t know where they were going and who was going to take care of them or for what; but all right, we did, and we got into Liverpool and there went by ambulance, which is a two- and- a- half- ton truck with a red cross on it, again stacking litters in that to get to the hospital. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 I went to a hospital in Bournemouth, England, the 188th General Hospital, and there was very soon in bed and for the first time with real sheets and a beautiful nurse named Goldie with a very, very comforting personality. I dragged that out. I stayed in that 188th [ General] Hospital, I think, for four months, in the whole hospital chain. Bournemouth was probably about a month or six weeks of that, but I had to go to a rehab hospital after I was released, and there to get re- equipped and be ready to go back to Europe. Let me ask you, without getting too deep into it, but during this whole experience, that’s really an intense experience, I guess I would say, but what’s going through your mind when you said early on when you were first injured, what was going to happen, were you in pain, and then what kinds of things are you thinking? Well, yes, I was in pain but we had been given some pain relief, medication we carried ourselves. We had also been given Sulfanilamide pills. We didn’t have penicillin, we didn’t have a lot of the other fancy stuff, but we had I think it was twelve pills. Most of us for whom that’s a dim, distant memory think of that pill in such a way that it grows with each year that we tell the story. They were pretty damn big and you were to drink a canteen full of water to follow the twelve pills. And I took mine and started to drink my canteen full of water and a German [ 00: 40: 00] machine gun bullet hit my canteen and tschoo, it went south. So I got about a half of the amount of water I should have taken with that number of pills. It was many hours later before I got a place where I could get a drink of water, and by that time I was sweating profusely and very uncomfortable from it. That was explained to me later by either a nurse or a doctor as not uncommon if you don’t drink all the water with your pills. That’s just an aside of no particular consequence, but it probably describes rather than being a variance from the norm, that probably UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 describes the norm for most combat wounded. Nothing goes exactly as planned and exactly as you trained for. Nevertheless, I got into a hospital at some very late hour of the night. I guess I should back up a little bit and say that my brother John, four years older, who was by this time probably a major, had been in France since the initial invasion. I think he went in in the second wave perhaps. Anyway it was soon after the opening of that campaign. And he was uncanny. He still is. He kept track of me. Some way or another, he knew where the 83rd Division was going to land and where my regiment was deployed, and he came and visited me. The night before I was wounded, he visited me in our last foxhole before we were breaking out on the German lines. We were to launch an attack on the fourth of July, and John visited on the third of July just to buck up my morale and see that everything was fine. Yes, it sure was, and I felt on top of the world and my division was a good one and my platoon was the best one and that sort of frame of mind. So John just visited for a few minutes. Oh, he said, Is everything all right? Do you need anything? I said, Yes. We lost a machine gun coming ashore. And John said, Ah, well, I’ll see what I can do. And later that night, perhaps two o’clock in the morning, a Jeep came into our area and the driver of the Jeep was calling out in a whisper, stage whisper sort of, Anyone know where to find Lieutenant Ray? And I said, Yes, I’m it. He came over and said, Your brother sent this. A machine gun. I won’t explain except that it was one that had been lost on the battlefield by its gunner probably and someone had found it and turned it into the ordnance people to reissue and John went by there and found it and took it to me, or sent it to me. That was one of UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 many encounters that he and I have had in our whole lives that are similarly coincidental and interesting. We launched our attack on the fourth of July and were successfully subduing the German resistance. It was pretty clear that we were going to achieve our goal, which was to get to the [ 00: 45: 00] very important junction and city of St. Lo. On the night of I think the sixth or seventh of July is when I got hit. I guess I got ahead of myself before a little bit and I guess you’ll have to unscramble this or I will. Well, let me just make a comment here about that. It’s really common, both based on how people tend to remember things and my questions, to go back and forth, so I’m not ever concerned about exact chronology and you don’t need to be. OK. Well, the night that I was wounded and I was finished, of course, and had to be taken out in the medical evacuation, I stayed overnight in a field hospital, which is not much more than a big tent with a nurse and a corpsman and a doctor occasionally. And it was on that occasion that my brother John discovered where I was and came to see me. And that’s where I got mixed up before on John’s visit. I had two visits from him. It’s perfectly clear what you’re saying, yes.