Below is the second interview with Mr. Richard Cromer.
During this interview, I used the information that I learned from the first interview to create questions specific to the experiences and activities of which Mr. Cromer had participated. This interview served as a follow-up and some background research had to be done to have a better understanding. Co-currently I had been taking Advance Placement United State History, which served as a great research tool to comprehend the different historical events that took place during his service.
Interview #2:
Interviewee: Richard Cromer
Interviewer: Vidya Lala
Assistant Interviewers: Amisha Lala, Nita Lala and Rohan Lala
Interview Date: Saturday, June 03rd. 2012
Interview Place: Mechanicsburg, PA
(Vidya Lala) Recalling that you were first in Regular Army and then after being discharged you became a Sergeant and after getting an education, you returned to become Lieutenant, could you share some information on the differences between these different positions?
(Richard Cromer) Sure. The differences between which?
(Vidya Lala) These positions—the different positions
(Richard Cromer) Oh, well Sergeant is enlisted man. Okay. And that’s about a third rank up—well it’s fourth rank. Well you have Private, you have Private First Class, you have a Corporal and then you have Sergeant. And then they go up—Staff, Master, First—you know, that kind of thing. And then the Lieutenant is the—he is the step into being an officer. First is the Second Lieutenant, then a First Lieutenant and then you go on up to General. So, as you can see I was down the ladder.
(Vidya Lala) What were--
(Richard Cromer) Does that answer the question?
(Vidya Lala) Yes.
(Richard Cromer) It does
(Vidya Lala) Yeah. Were there specific roles or responsibilities that come with each job?
(Richard Cromer) Sure. Yeah. So now what? Now you going to ask me what I did, huh?
(Vidya Lala) Yup.
(Richard Cromer) Well, it’s difficult for me to answer that because I was in security work. And a lot of the stuff is rated as secured and not to be published. Okay?
(Vidya Lala) Yeah, I understand.
(Richard Cromer) Not for general information.
(Vidya Lala) Yes. I completely understand. Alright. Could you describe the typical training that you received?
(Richard Cromer) Well, I don’t know about typical training. When I first went in the service, I went through basic training in Fort McClellan, in Alabama and that was in infantry training. After that was completed I was selected to go to this school in Virginia and that’s where I went then for security work. And we had to learn, one of the things we had to learn was code. And you know all of those things fall into place. And as an enlisted man I was working with several other enlisted men and then when I became an officer I had charge of a couple of guys that were into this security detail. Alright?
(Vidya Lala) Okay. Were you trained in first aid, signaling, radio or the use of any special equipment?
(Richard Cromer) I’m not following you. First aid?
(Vidya Lala) Were you trained in first aid or signaling or radio?
(Richard Cromer) Oh. Or. Okay. No, no, no. I don’t think I was trained in first aid. That’s a Corman.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. How about
(Richard Cromer) It falls into that category. But your next question was?
(Vidya Lala) Signaling?
(Richard Cromer) Yes.
(Vidya Lala) Radio?
(Richard Cromer) Yes.
(Vidya Lala) Is there specific details you could tell us about the training?
(Richard Cromer) Well, we spent a number of weeks learning code. You had to be able to send and receive code. And then after we finished with the schooling, then we went to were assigned to a unit and went into that unit then and did our work we were supposed to be doing.
(Vidya Lala) Okay.
(Richard Cromer) That doesn’t answer that too good for you does it?
(Vidya Lala) No! No, it does actually.
(Richard Cromer) Okay.
(Vidya Lala) It’s perfect! What was your opinion on the political atmosphere during this time?
(Richard Cromer) Well. Good gravy! President Roosevelt had, had just died about the middle of ’45 I don’t remember the exact date. And Truman—Harry Truman—took over, and he was an old, ex-army man. I think he was a captain in the army, in World War I. I didn’t think too much of him, but you know he… our country was in some trying times at that point. And we were trying to come out of the recession that we had been in, in the ‘30s. And of course the war pumped that thing up because there was a lot of war productions that were being done and gave a lot of jobs out while then when the war is over, a lot of those jobs became non-existent, so it was another time of… Well I think in the ‘40s with the advent of the war, gave a lot of people jobs and a lot of people who were unemployable had jobs and became more incapable of handling their family with their finances and that type of thing. So after the… let’s see go ahead. Truman went out, then a great General by the name of Eisenhower came in and he really… He was an army man and he really took charge, as an army man would take charge and proceeded to guide the country into a good program of getting out of that problem, you know. It’s a shame that we had term limits at that point and Roosevelt started that thing, thankfully because they were afraid that somebody would step in and become a dictator. So by limiting it to two terms, it gave a man a chance to work a program he believed in. I’m not sure about this regime today, I think it took him four years to convince himself, he was doing something, now he’s going to take the next four years and try to do something else. Okay. Let’s get off of that part of me.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. Sounds good. Describe your experiences in the Fifth Air Force Unit.
(Richard Cromer) I wasn’t really in the Fifth. I was just assigned to the Fifth because of our security unit. And they had an area on their base that we could set up our program. So I really wasn’t in the Air Force. I was strictly Army.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. What were your views on the use of the atomic bomb?
(Richard Cromer) Had to be done. The Japanese were prepared to kill everybody they could kill. And they were preparing for some big movements and we just… I don’t like these atomic weapons. They are disastrous. But somewhere along the line, something has to be done with them and I’m very concerned with Iran now, with them trying to get this nuclear thing going over there. Nobody seems to know how to stop it.
(Vidya Lala) Agreed. Was it difficult to readjust to society?
(Richard Cromer) No, I loved it! I didn’t have any problems, but again, I wasn’t in that—I wasn’t laying down in the jungles with snakes and everything imaginable—ticks—crawling all over me, like the boys in the infantry units were. So I didn’t have that problem of coming back. And as soon as I got out of the service, I enrolled in school, so I had four years there to try stuffing things in my brain.
(Vidya Lala) Did you work after?
(Richard Cromer) After what?
(Vidya Lala) After you came back.
(Richard Cromer) Well, just part time jobs. No one wanted to hire you. I was in the Army Reserves and well it was against the law to restrict you from being hired. But it just happened to be that there weren’t any jobs available that you were looking for. That’s one way they could get out of it. But going to school, I had part time jobs in the summer, each summer. I even drove school buses for two summers so. You know I had variety of things to do. But, I wasn’t on Wall Street, if that’s what you meant.
(Vidya Lala) Oh, yeah. I know what you mean. What was your favorite memory of being in the war.
(Richard Cromer) I don’t know. I… One of the things that I did enjoy was when I got into Japan on the Occupation Forces, there were two other guys and I got involved in a little church in a town outside the base and these little kids in there never heard of ice-cream, basketball, baseball, so we got those things—we got baskets and basketballs and we got baseball bats and gloves and balls—and we made ice-cream a couple times for them and just to see all those kids, you know, screaming in delight, I thought oh boy, this is pretty good, so. I think that we really helped the—and I’m sure it happened in a lot of places throughout Japan—but I felt that we contributed something to these young people in trying to understand that we weren’t beasts out there that tried to kill them and that we were trying to teach them some of our sports
(Vidya Lala) That’s wonderful. Did you build strong relationships with your comrades? And are you still in contact?
(Richard Cromer) No, no. I don’t know… There was one guy that I was… We palled around together because he was from Mechanicsburg. And we both had different things that we wanted to do. I wanted to travel and I’d hope on a train—we’d have free access to the trains over there, the service people—so I could hop on a train and go it on a weekend, I’d get a pass and go any place I wanted to as long as I was back on Monday morning. And I did. I travelled around a lot through there. And that was an ambition of mine. I thought that a lot of Japan was familiar—was similar, not familiar, to Pennsylvania. And I was surprised to see that. Now, of course the rice patties and that type of thing, where they had their farming was on a hillside, we don’t do that. And I didn’t see horses that used for pull their equipment but I don’t think the parts that I was in I don’t think they had farms that were that large, you know they were sort of small, family type things.
(Vidya Lala) What was your favorite place that you went?
(Richard Cromer) Favorite place that I went? Oh, well Mount Fuji Islands.
(Vidya Lala) The volcano right?
(Richard Cromer) Yep, yep, yep. While I was there, I picked up, I picked up a painting on rice paper of Mount Fuji and it shows a little village of it and I can see if I can find it before you go.
(Vidya Lala) Okay.
(Richard Cromer) Yeah. That was pretty neat. And then I got down to the… I got down into the Southern part of Japan and I got to swim in the East China Sea, well you don’t do that too often, do you, right?
(Vidya Lala) Yeah. That’s actually really cool.
(Richard Cromer) That was neat.
(Vidya Lala) Describe the ROTC Program at college
(Richard Cromer) Well, its ROTC. Did you take ROTC at school?
(Vidya Lala) There’s actually a program at our school.
(Richard Cromer) Yeah. I know, I’m happily—well not involved yet, but we are trying to come up with some medals for the kids over there. Well, you just start out as basic training and of course it was after—it wasn’t a full time thing. It was a lot like a regular class. Well you took a class that had three credits, you took ROTC. And each year well you moved up and advanced into what all you were learning, until the time of graduation. And you got your gold bar pinned on you, as Second Lieutenant. And I was, I was lucky because some of the boys that I was in the ROTC with got called back in for Korea. And I did not get called back. I don’t know if it was because of my flat feet or what happened there.
(Vidya Lala) Describe your experiences in the Reserves.
(Richard Cromer) Well, it was basically you… I think we, at that time, I think we had a meeting every other week. And you went to it per week. In a case, I lived in Carlisle so we had a Reserve Unit at the Carlisle Barracks, as we called it then; now it is War College. We’d go for meetings and we’d have a Reserve Unit there—maybe fifty sixty guys. And we’d get involved with the training. And every summer, we would go to a two weeks summer camp, and of course with me being in army security that Reserve Unit at the Barracks was infantry, so I went up to… well I went down to Virginia to a base down there for a couple years and then I went up to Fort Devon, Massachusetts for two years and then they disbanded that. And then I got out of the Reserves, so. But it was, it was basically a Reserve Unit type of thing that they tried to keep your training updated, in case we had to be called back in. I don’t… I don’t know if I agreed with all that but anyway.
(Vidya Lala) Did anyone in your… Did anyone else in your family or any friends serve in this war or any previous war?
(Richard Cromer) Oh my gracious. Yes! Absolutely! I had a great, great, great uncle that was in the Revolutionary War. I had a great grandfather that fought in the Civil War. He was in the Maryland Calvary on the Union side and he was wounded and he was captured as a prisoner down in Virginia. I had two uncles that were in World War II at the beginning. And then my brother, Wendin, he was six years younger than I so when he turned of age, I took him down and enlisted him into the Air Force. And then when my daughters go old enough to be married, why my one daughter married a young man who had been—he joined the Reserves I guess it was—anyway he, when he finished college he joined in with the Pennsylvania National Guard and he got called over. He was into Bosnia for almost a year. And then, and then for this war, I have a grandson who was in Iraq for three one year terms. And he was with the Eighty-Second Air Borne and he is now out and doing a good job. But you know we’ve had, we’ve had family in protecting our country, you know.
(Vidya Lala) Describe your nationalism towards America and what influenced it.
(Richard Cromer) Describe my who?
(Vidya Lala) Your nationalism towards America.
(Richard Cromer) I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me. I’m an American. Is that what you mean? No, you don’t mean that.
(Vidya Lala) I know you’re American. I don’t know we can skip this question.
(Richard Cromer) Well, no. You’ve must have some reason to ask me that. What were you—I’m not sure what you are looking for.
(Vidya Lala) I was just wondering if you could explain how you feel about America and…
(Richard Cromer) I love it! It’s my country. Yeah. I think we’ve got some… We’ve got a lot of problems in Washington. And I’m scared to death that they are going to mess this up with some of this stuff that they’re trying to shove down everyone’s throat, but I don’t know. We’ve been in bad spots before and we pulled out of it and I hope we can do it this time.
(Vidya Lala) Did religion affect your views on war?
(Richard Cromer) Did who?
(Vidya Lala) Did regligion.
(Richard Cromer) No. No, because if you look at the bible, they have been fighting ever since the beginning of time, right? I don’t know why. Nobody can ever get settled.
(Vidya Lala) Have you discussed your war experiences with members of your family?
(Richard Cromer) Yeah, my grandson and I talked. I wanted to hear about his ‘cause he was in the worst messes than I was over there. That mess over there is terrible. Our boys are all coming back—a lot of lot of mental problems, you know. I just hope the country stands in back of these boys and takes care of them. We called it battle fatigue—I forget what they, they got a name now for it--
(Vidya Lala) They do have a name; I don’t remember it. [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]
(Richard Cromer) No, I don’t either. But that’s not important now, we know what it is.
(Vidya Lala) How has your experiences changed your views on life?
(Richard Cromer) Give me that again.
(Vidya Lala) How’s your war experiences changed your views on life?
(Richard Cromer) Well, I don’t know if it had changed it any. I just sorta went along, you know. I grew up in a period of a war and I knew that one day I was going to have to go in. And I think, I think all young people should serve two years in the service. I don’t care who they are or what they are, they should serve two years. You really learn a lot in there. And there’s some valuable lessons that you can… Now you can be a real knucklehead and get in trouble all the time and that doesn’t work but the Army has a way of taking care of those guys, too. So, it was, I think it made a better person out of me and being able to learn how to get along with other people. That’s a hard job sometimes, you know. I may not like you, but if I got to work with beside of ya, I better figure out how to do that without being antagonistic to you all the time, so.
(Vidya Lala) What would you say is your philosophy of life?
(Richard Cromer) Live and let live. Right? Yeah. I don’t know what else to say. I’m… I feel we have to protect ourselves in today’s world because Jolly Rodger, Joe Blow, whoever he is out there doesn’t like our way of living and he’s out to destroy us, so if we want to continue living like that, we’ve got to learn how to combat that type of thing. And that, that takes some lives, unfortunately. We’ve, we—I’ve belong to this organization called the Sojourners, I don’t know if I told you that before. We were made up of ex-military, all branches—and officers and masons. And we started a program of putting flags out for the service people that’d been killed and I think first time I think it was only four hundred. This time it was seventy-two hundred. That’s a lot of lot of people. But we put flags, we put flags up around Memorial Day down at the Indian Town Gap—have you been down there?
(Vidya Lala) No.
(Richard Cromer) Oh you’ve got to go see that that is beautiful down there. Good gravy that’s—I mean it’s a cemetery but it’s really done up nice. And then in November, last year we went down to the Masonic home in Elizabethtown and put the flags up out there. An that’s over Veteran’s Day, so you should try to talk your parents into driving down to Elizabethtown and see that. They’re up for a couple of days. They don’t leave them there for weeks because the flags deteriorate too fast. But you’d be shocked when you see it.
(Vidya Lala) Well thank you so much for your--
(Richard Cromer) That’s it!
(Vidya Lala) That’s it.
(Richard Cromer) You didn’t even ask me what kind of ice-cream I like!
(Vidya Lala) Which kind of ice-cream do you like?
(Richard Cromer) I like butter pecan!
(Vidya Lala) Well that’s good!
(Richard Cromer) Did you bring some along?
(Vidya Lala) No I didn’t! Next time.
(Richard Cromer) Okay.
(Vidya Lala) I’ll come and visit.
Interviewee: Richard Cromer
Interviewer: Vidya Lala
Assistant Interviewers: Amisha Lala, Nita Lala and Rohan Lala
Interview Date: Saturday, June 03rd. 2012
Interview Place: Mechanicsburg, PA
(Vidya Lala) Recalling that you were first in Regular Army and then after being discharged you became a Sergeant and after getting an education, you returned to become Lieutenant, could you share some information on the differences between these different positions?
(Richard Cromer) Sure. The differences between which?
(Vidya Lala) These positions—the different positions
(Richard Cromer) Oh, well Sergeant is enlisted man. Okay. And that’s about a third rank up—well it’s fourth rank. Well you have Private, you have Private First Class, you have a Corporal and then you have Sergeant. And then they go up—Staff, Master, First—you know, that kind of thing. And then the Lieutenant is the—he is the step into being an officer. First is the Second Lieutenant, then a First Lieutenant and then you go on up to General. So, as you can see I was down the ladder.
(Vidya Lala) What were--
(Richard Cromer) Does that answer the question?
(Vidya Lala) Yes.
(Richard Cromer) It does
(Vidya Lala) Yeah. Were there specific roles or responsibilities that come with each job?
(Richard Cromer) Sure. Yeah. So now what? Now you going to ask me what I did, huh?
(Vidya Lala) Yup.
(Richard Cromer) Well, it’s difficult for me to answer that because I was in security work. And a lot of the stuff is rated as secured and not to be published. Okay?
(Vidya Lala) Yeah, I understand.
(Richard Cromer) Not for general information.
(Vidya Lala) Yes. I completely understand. Alright. Could you describe the typical training that you received?
(Richard Cromer) Well, I don’t know about typical training. When I first went in the service, I went through basic training in Fort McClellan, in Alabama and that was in infantry training. After that was completed I was selected to go to this school in Virginia and that’s where I went then for security work. And we had to learn, one of the things we had to learn was code. And you know all of those things fall into place. And as an enlisted man I was working with several other enlisted men and then when I became an officer I had charge of a couple of guys that were into this security detail. Alright?
(Vidya Lala) Okay. Were you trained in first aid, signaling, radio or the use of any special equipment?
(Richard Cromer) I’m not following you. First aid?
(Vidya Lala) Were you trained in first aid or signaling or radio?
(Richard Cromer) Oh. Or. Okay. No, no, no. I don’t think I was trained in first aid. That’s a Corman.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. How about
(Richard Cromer) It falls into that category. But your next question was?
(Vidya Lala) Signaling?
(Richard Cromer) Yes.
(Vidya Lala) Radio?
(Richard Cromer) Yes.
(Vidya Lala) Is there specific details you could tell us about the training?
(Richard Cromer) Well, we spent a number of weeks learning code. You had to be able to send and receive code. And then after we finished with the schooling, then we went to were assigned to a unit and went into that unit then and did our work we were supposed to be doing.
(Vidya Lala) Okay.
(Richard Cromer) That doesn’t answer that too good for you does it?
(Vidya Lala) No! No, it does actually.
(Richard Cromer) Okay.
(Vidya Lala) It’s perfect! What was your opinion on the political atmosphere during this time?
(Richard Cromer) Well. Good gravy! President Roosevelt had, had just died about the middle of ’45 I don’t remember the exact date. And Truman—Harry Truman—took over, and he was an old, ex-army man. I think he was a captain in the army, in World War I. I didn’t think too much of him, but you know he… our country was in some trying times at that point. And we were trying to come out of the recession that we had been in, in the ‘30s. And of course the war pumped that thing up because there was a lot of war productions that were being done and gave a lot of jobs out while then when the war is over, a lot of those jobs became non-existent, so it was another time of… Well I think in the ‘40s with the advent of the war, gave a lot of people jobs and a lot of people who were unemployable had jobs and became more incapable of handling their family with their finances and that type of thing. So after the… let’s see go ahead. Truman went out, then a great General by the name of Eisenhower came in and he really… He was an army man and he really took charge, as an army man would take charge and proceeded to guide the country into a good program of getting out of that problem, you know. It’s a shame that we had term limits at that point and Roosevelt started that thing, thankfully because they were afraid that somebody would step in and become a dictator. So by limiting it to two terms, it gave a man a chance to work a program he believed in. I’m not sure about this regime today, I think it took him four years to convince himself, he was doing something, now he’s going to take the next four years and try to do something else. Okay. Let’s get off of that part of me.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. Sounds good. Describe your experiences in the Fifth Air Force Unit.
(Richard Cromer) I wasn’t really in the Fifth. I was just assigned to the Fifth because of our security unit. And they had an area on their base that we could set up our program. So I really wasn’t in the Air Force. I was strictly Army.
(Vidya Lala) Okay. What were your views on the use of the atomic bomb?
(Richard Cromer) Had to be done. The Japanese were prepared to kill everybody they could kill. And they were preparing for some big movements and we just… I don’t like these atomic weapons. They are disastrous. But somewhere along the line, something has to be done with them and I’m very concerned with Iran now, with them trying to get this nuclear thing going over there. Nobody seems to know how to stop it.
(Vidya Lala) Agreed. Was it difficult to readjust to society?
(Richard Cromer) No, I loved it! I didn’t have any problems, but again, I wasn’t in that—I wasn’t laying down in the jungles with snakes and everything imaginable—ticks—crawling all over me, like the boys in the infantry units were. So I didn’t have that problem of coming back. And as soon as I got out of the service, I enrolled in school, so I had four years there to try stuffing things in my brain.
(Vidya Lala) Did you work after?
(Richard Cromer) After what?
(Vidya Lala) After you came back.
(Richard Cromer) Well, just part time jobs. No one wanted to hire you. I was in the Army Reserves and well it was against the law to restrict you from being hired. But it just happened to be that there weren’t any jobs available that you were looking for. That’s one way they could get out of it. But going to school, I had part time jobs in the summer, each summer. I even drove school buses for two summers so. You know I had variety of things to do. But, I wasn’t on Wall Street, if that’s what you meant.
(Vidya Lala) Oh, yeah. I know what you mean. What was your favorite memory of being in the war.
(Richard Cromer) I don’t know. I… One of the things that I did enjoy was when I got into Japan on the Occupation Forces, there were two other guys and I got involved in a little church in a town outside the base and these little kids in there never heard of ice-cream, basketball, baseball, so we got those things—we got baskets and basketballs and we got baseball bats and gloves and balls—and we made ice-cream a couple times for them and just to see all those kids, you know, screaming in delight, I thought oh boy, this is pretty good, so. I think that we really helped the—and I’m sure it happened in a lot of places throughout Japan—but I felt that we contributed something to these young people in trying to understand that we weren’t beasts out there that tried to kill them and that we were trying to teach them some of our sports
(Vidya Lala) That’s wonderful. Did you build strong relationships with your comrades? And are you still in contact?
(Richard Cromer) No, no. I don’t know… There was one guy that I was… We palled around together because he was from Mechanicsburg. And we both had different things that we wanted to do. I wanted to travel and I’d hope on a train—we’d have free access to the trains over there, the service people—so I could hop on a train and go it on a weekend, I’d get a pass and go any place I wanted to as long as I was back on Monday morning. And I did. I travelled around a lot through there. And that was an ambition of mine. I thought that a lot of Japan was familiar—was similar, not familiar, to Pennsylvania. And I was surprised to see that. Now, of course the rice patties and that type of thing, where they had their farming was on a hillside, we don’t do that. And I didn’t see horses that used for pull their equipment but I don’t think the parts that I was in I don’t think they had farms that were that large, you know they were sort of small, family type things.
(Vidya Lala) What was your favorite place that you went?
(Richard Cromer) Favorite place that I went? Oh, well Mount Fuji Islands.
(Vidya Lala) The volcano right?
(Richard Cromer) Yep, yep, yep. While I was there, I picked up, I picked up a painting on rice paper of Mount Fuji and it shows a little village of it and I can see if I can find it before you go.
(Vidya Lala) Okay.
(Richard Cromer) Yeah. That was pretty neat. And then I got down to the… I got down into the Southern part of Japan and I got to swim in the East China Sea, well you don’t do that too often, do you, right?
(Vidya Lala) Yeah. That’s actually really cool.
(Richard Cromer) That was neat.
(Vidya Lala) Describe the ROTC Program at college
(Richard Cromer) Well, its ROTC. Did you take ROTC at school?
(Vidya Lala) There’s actually a program at our school.
(Richard Cromer) Yeah. I know, I’m happily—well not involved yet, but we are trying to come up with some medals for the kids over there. Well, you just start out as basic training and of course it was after—it wasn’t a full time thing. It was a lot like a regular class. Well you took a class that had three credits, you took ROTC. And each year well you moved up and advanced into what all you were learning, until the time of graduation. And you got your gold bar pinned on you, as Second Lieutenant. And I was, I was lucky because some of the boys that I was in the ROTC with got called back in for Korea. And I did not get called back. I don’t know if it was because of my flat feet or what happened there.
(Vidya Lala) Describe your experiences in the Reserves.
(Richard Cromer) Well, it was basically you… I think we, at that time, I think we had a meeting every other week. And you went to it per week. In a case, I lived in Carlisle so we had a Reserve Unit at the Carlisle Barracks, as we called it then; now it is War College. We’d go for meetings and we’d have a Reserve Unit there—maybe fifty sixty guys. And we’d get involved with the training. And every summer, we would go to a two weeks summer camp, and of course with me being in army security that Reserve Unit at the Barracks was infantry, so I went up to… well I went down to Virginia to a base down there for a couple years and then I went up to Fort Devon, Massachusetts for two years and then they disbanded that. And then I got out of the Reserves, so. But it was, it was basically a Reserve Unit type of thing that they tried to keep your training updated, in case we had to be called back in. I don’t… I don’t know if I agreed with all that but anyway.
(Vidya Lala) Did anyone in your… Did anyone else in your family or any friends serve in this war or any previous war?
(Richard Cromer) Oh my gracious. Yes! Absolutely! I had a great, great, great uncle that was in the Revolutionary War. I had a great grandfather that fought in the Civil War. He was in the Maryland Calvary on the Union side and he was wounded and he was captured as a prisoner down in Virginia. I had two uncles that were in World War II at the beginning. And then my brother, Wendin, he was six years younger than I so when he turned of age, I took him down and enlisted him into the Air Force. And then when my daughters go old enough to be married, why my one daughter married a young man who had been—he joined the Reserves I guess it was—anyway he, when he finished college he joined in with the Pennsylvania National Guard and he got called over. He was into Bosnia for almost a year. And then, and then for this war, I have a grandson who was in Iraq for three one year terms. And he was with the Eighty-Second Air Borne and he is now out and doing a good job. But you know we’ve had, we’ve had family in protecting our country, you know.
(Vidya Lala) Describe your nationalism towards America and what influenced it.
(Richard Cromer) Describe my who?
(Vidya Lala) Your nationalism towards America.
(Richard Cromer) I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me. I’m an American. Is that what you mean? No, you don’t mean that.
(Vidya Lala) I know you’re American. I don’t know we can skip this question.
(Richard Cromer) Well, no. You’ve must have some reason to ask me that. What were you—I’m not sure what you are looking for.
(Vidya Lala) I was just wondering if you could explain how you feel about America and…
(Richard Cromer) I love it! It’s my country. Yeah. I think we’ve got some… We’ve got a lot of problems in Washington. And I’m scared to death that they are going to mess this up with some of this stuff that they’re trying to shove down everyone’s throat, but I don’t know. We’ve been in bad spots before and we pulled out of it and I hope we can do it this time.
(Vidya Lala) Did religion affect your views on war?
(Richard Cromer) Did who?
(Vidya Lala) Did regligion.
(Richard Cromer) No. No, because if you look at the bible, they have been fighting ever since the beginning of time, right? I don’t know why. Nobody can ever get settled.
(Vidya Lala) Have you discussed your war experiences with members of your family?
(Richard Cromer) Yeah, my grandson and I talked. I wanted to hear about his ‘cause he was in the worst messes than I was over there. That mess over there is terrible. Our boys are all coming back—a lot of lot of mental problems, you know. I just hope the country stands in back of these boys and takes care of them. We called it battle fatigue—I forget what they, they got a name now for it--
(Vidya Lala) They do have a name; I don’t remember it. [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]
(Richard Cromer) No, I don’t either. But that’s not important now, we know what it is.
(Vidya Lala) How has your experiences changed your views on life?
(Richard Cromer) Give me that again.
(Vidya Lala) How’s your war experiences changed your views on life?
(Richard Cromer) Well, I don’t know if it had changed it any. I just sorta went along, you know. I grew up in a period of a war and I knew that one day I was going to have to go in. And I think, I think all young people should serve two years in the service. I don’t care who they are or what they are, they should serve two years. You really learn a lot in there. And there’s some valuable lessons that you can… Now you can be a real knucklehead and get in trouble all the time and that doesn’t work but the Army has a way of taking care of those guys, too. So, it was, I think it made a better person out of me and being able to learn how to get along with other people. That’s a hard job sometimes, you know. I may not like you, but if I got to work with beside of ya, I better figure out how to do that without being antagonistic to you all the time, so.
(Vidya Lala) What would you say is your philosophy of life?
(Richard Cromer) Live and let live. Right? Yeah. I don’t know what else to say. I’m… I feel we have to protect ourselves in today’s world because Jolly Rodger, Joe Blow, whoever he is out there doesn’t like our way of living and he’s out to destroy us, so if we want to continue living like that, we’ve got to learn how to combat that type of thing. And that, that takes some lives, unfortunately. We’ve, we—I’ve belong to this organization called the Sojourners, I don’t know if I told you that before. We were made up of ex-military, all branches—and officers and masons. And we started a program of putting flags out for the service people that’d been killed and I think first time I think it was only four hundred. This time it was seventy-two hundred. That’s a lot of lot of people. But we put flags, we put flags up around Memorial Day down at the Indian Town Gap—have you been down there?
(Vidya Lala) No.
(Richard Cromer) Oh you’ve got to go see that that is beautiful down there. Good gravy that’s—I mean it’s a cemetery but it’s really done up nice. And then in November, last year we went down to the Masonic home in Elizabethtown and put the flags up out there. An that’s over Veteran’s Day, so you should try to talk your parents into driving down to Elizabethtown and see that. They’re up for a couple of days. They don’t leave them there for weeks because the flags deteriorate too fast. But you’d be shocked when you see it.
(Vidya Lala) Well thank you so much for your--
(Richard Cromer) That’s it!
(Vidya Lala) That’s it.
(Richard Cromer) You didn’t even ask me what kind of ice-cream I like!
(Vidya Lala) Which kind of ice-cream do you like?
(Richard Cromer) I like butter pecan!
(Vidya Lala) Well that’s good!
(Richard Cromer) Did you bring some along?
(Vidya Lala) No I didn’t! Next time.
(Richard Cromer) Okay.
(Vidya Lala) I’ll come and visit.