Military Service

My draft papers came and I reported to the Percedio of Monterey California on September 23 nineteen hundred forty two there I was sworn into the US Army. As I remember that was like a giant mixing bowl. We were issued clothing and assigned to KP duties and various other pleasant jobs, got lots of shots, answered a lot of roll calls, peeled a lot of potatoes and washed a lot of dirty pots and pans and was eventually was assigned to an outfit.

I was assigned to the Second Infantry Division, known as the Indian Head Division, which at that time was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio Texas. So we were herded on a troop train and headed for Texas. I had never ridden on a train until I went into the Army. I did a lot train riding after that. We spent a couple of days at Fort Sam and were then loaded up in GI six by six trucks (that was a tandem duel axle truck with power to all of the axles front included)and hauled about thirty miles out in the desert to Camp Bullis where we took our basic training. Camp Bullis was just that, a camp, all tents and lots of dust and everything else that goes with a desert, primitive it was. There we were taught all the basic things a soldier needs to know like how to shoot a rifle and various other weapons, fight ,bayonet, kill, and how to survive under not to desirable conditions. This training came in very handy later under combat conditions. I was assigned to Headquarters Battery of the Fifteenth Field Artillery Battalion and our job was to keep communications with the Sixth Infantry Battalion, that combination was called a Combat Team. I was assigned to the wire section and it was our job to keep wire, for telephone communication between the infantry and the field artillery. So I got a lot of training on laying splicing and maintaining wire communications. 
Later on all of that training came in very handy under combat conditions.This is starting to bring back memories that I do not care to recall and I am finding it very difficult to write about. That is all of that for now anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. After basic training we went back to Fort Sam and I don’t think we were there but a short time and they loaded us up on troop trains and hauled us to Camp McCoy Wisconsin for winter training. And winter it was in about a weeks time we went from hot weather to downright cold weather. Most of the division were southern guys so there was a whole lot of shivering going on for a while. While we were at Camp McCoy we went up to Ironwood Michigan for winter maneuvers and there a few nights it got down to forty below zero. We tunneled into snow banks and put pine needles under our sleeping bags and had fires going to try and keep warm. We did keep warm in our sleeping bags however. They were arctic sleeping bags stuffed with down and were two bags. We slept with our clothes on except we took our parkas off and our foot wear, which were called snow packs. You soon learned to put your snow packs in the sleeping bag with you because if you didn’t in the morning they were so stiff from cold that you couldn’t get them on. By the time you got through the chow line your food would be starting to freeze so you had to hold your mess kit over a fire or eat a mighty cold meal and that army chow wasn’t the best even when it was hot let alone eating it ice cold. I don’t remember how long we were there, no matter it was plenty long enough. The ride up there and back in the back of those GI trucks with a tarp and not too tight top and back curtain at below zero weather wasn’t real cozy either.
Back to Camp McCoy for more training and more training . A few more months at Camp McCoy then back on a troop train headed for the east coast, like Camp Shanks New York. Where we were stuffed into an old Liberty Ship named the Hawaiian Shipper and headed for Belfast Ireland. That was anything but a vacation cruise. The cargo space was full of bunks at least four high and barely enough room to walk between the rows and it got pretty stuffy down there. I surmised that nothing could survive down there but GI’s and rats. We then went on a zig zag course across the Atlantic in a convoy. The zig zag course was to not go in one direction long enough for the German U Boats , submarines, to be able to get a bead on our ships with a torpedo. Having a German torpedo come into your bunk house wasn’t really a very pleasant thing to look forward to either. They also warned us to be careful while up on deck, because if you got washed overboard that no one would pick you up and in the North Atlantic water you would only live for a few minutes. We welcomed the fresh air so we went up on deck when ever we could. Of course a lot of us were sea sick so it was a pretty regular thing  to step in or slip and fall in vomit . We referred to it as puke and that didn’t do much for an already upset stomach. I never did get real sea sick but I felt mighty barfy most of the time. I think it took us about twelve or thirteen days to get there As I remember we were about thirty miles from Belfast Ireland. We were next to a small village there but I can not remember the name of it. By this time it must have been in late nineteen forty three or probably nineteen forty four and we were still training and waiting for D Day which was for sure coming but no one knew when. About a month before D Day we headed out, the whole Division I guess took off and convoyed to some port in Wales where we kept a pretty low profile and got everything ready and loaded for the big invasion of Europe. As I recall the weather was miserable rainy and chilly there.

Donald Pointer in Cerisy Forest soon after D-Day
June 1944

I do not remember for sure how long we left before D Day anyway the morning of June sixth we were off the shore of Omaha Beach in Normandy France. I didn’t land until June seventh. I survived the war and came back to the states and was discharged on November thirty nineteen forty five. I pulled a couple of old trucks out of the junk got them running and did odd hauling jobs. Not very profitable so I gave that up got married and went back to California. There I worked for the government on the Security Police Department at the Oakland Naval Supply Center, Oakland California for a little over three years. Gary was born when we lived in California. Then we moved back to Collins and on January  first nineteen fifty started in the Highway Standard Service on highway Sixty Five on the north west corner of Collins. Lisa was born after we moved back to Collins. In nineteen fifty nine I moved down town to my last station. In nineteen eighty one I went to work at the Animal Disease Laboratory in Ames Iowa where I retired from on February One nineteen eighty six.
Right now it is eleven o’clock eastern standard  DST , March tenth 2000 and I am at my daughter’s Lisa Pointer Mitchell house in Alpharetta  Georgia and I plan to return to my home in Collins Iowa on the eighteenth of March ,2000. This is just a brief sketch of my life that I have made up for my two children Gary and Lisa and my six grand children. Stephanie and Melanie Mitchell who are Lisa’s children and Dirk, Gail, Megan and Jacob Pointer who are Gary’s children.


Melanie's note:  To read this story and more about Donald's military service, you can view the photo book I created here or see below.

Click here to view this photo book larger

More Way Back When

More of Donald D. Pointer's Way Back When
{Written by Donald Pointer} September 15,2007 and it is 7:05:37 PM

1914 Family picture
Center row LR should be Gram Julia (Shearer) Williams
Notice the tires on the old car on the right side of the picture.  They are solid rubber, before they had air in them.

Last night as I was making some notes to put on the 1914 family picture of Pointer - Williams - Bears - Shearer - Mcleese - Nokes and more I remembered and wrote a little about Grandpa and Sim. First I would like to tell what little I know about Granma Williams. She was a very frail lady and one of the older kids used to say she coughed a lot. Today I have learned from a very faded obit in Grandma Pointers scap book that my Grandma Nancy Williams was three years older than Grandpa Williams and she died in 1928 at the age of 70. Sometime in the early thirties brother Glen took Granpa and Sim down to Carollton MO and he took me along. We stayed at who I assumed was Granma Williams' sister's house and I do remember that that lady got up the next morning and fed us chicken and biscuits for breakfast. Her maiden(Granma Williams') name was Odell and she was from Missouri in the Carrollton area. 

Back: John and Mary (Williams) Bear, Harvey and Pearl (Williams) Pointer
Front: Alvis O. and Nancy (Odell) Williams

Sim was my Granpa's Williams' brother and never married so he had always lived at home with his mother also, and when Granpa Williams got married I guess Grandma Williams just moved in with them. As far as I know they always all lived together I don't know when my great grandpa Jordan Williams died but I am sure they were all living with him an Julia. By all I mean Grandpa and Grandma Williams and Simeon and Great Granpa Jordan and great grandma Julia Williams. So that made five at that time. No doubt it was considerably cheaper. I never heard Granpa and Sim swear at each other but they argued almost constantly and alway called each other cantankerous, contrary old cussess. They may have swore at each other when they weren't around us boys but they might as well done it in front of us because we all knew how to swear. This all happened before I was born but I remember Mom saying that the two grandmas confused my older brothers and sisters so Julia (who was Sim and Granpa's mom) was called Sim's grandma.

Jordan and Julia (Shearer) Williams
Parents of A.O. and Sim

Grandpa and Sim were always poor they made a living doing cement work, Carpenter work, Just handy man work like that. They had a cement mixer that was powered by a single cylinder gas engine. A team of horses and a buggy and a light buckboard type spring wagon which they used to go to work with and haul tools in. Spring wagon meant that the wagon had springs like a buggy or car which made them ride a lot better. Unlike the farm wagon which had no springs at all. We used to call riding in a farm wagon over frozen ground as gut jarring which it most surely was. They also built new and repaired fence. In those days all of the farms were tightly fenced because all the farmers had live stock. Cows, horses, pigs, chickens, sheep etc. so every thing had to have a fence around it. They also had a buggy that they got around in. There wasn't much work in the winter so I am sure it was slim picking then. They always raised a big garden and had a cave to store their fruit and vegetables in. Also they always raised a pig for meat. Their rent couldn't have been much seems to me it if I remember about 5 dollars a month. I don't know what they got for wages probably two to five dollars a day. I do know what my wages for going threshing pitching oat bundles up on a hay rack all day at least eight hours a day it was one dollar per day and the last year that I went threshing I got one dollar an a quarter a day. They had to buy coal to heat with in the winter. But they didn't have no light nor water nor gas bills to pay. They did have to buy feed for their horses because they have to eat whether they work or not. They also had to buy kerosene for the lamps. PJ Wetrich a guy that run a grocery store in Collins for many many years once told me that one day like Saturday maybe, he pulled a kids wagon around with small spouted kerosene cans similar to the older lawnmower gas cans only with smaller pour spouts and went from house to house filling up kerosene lamps. In those days the kids wagons had wood spoked wheels like farm wagons. So he wasn't the old lamplighter but the old lamp filler of long long ago. I really don't know who handled the kerosene and gasoline but my guess is that standard oil had a small bulk plant and it came in by rail. I think in the early days they did have some sort of tank wagons to deliver gas and kerosene to the farmers with because a lot of the farmers had cars and gas engines and oil lamps. The early tank wagons were pulled by horses. I do remember an old gas barrel at home that had Standard Oil Co or something like that written on it. The first gas tank wagon that I remember was about a 1923 or so International truck that had the head lights up on the cowl right in front of the windshield and the guy who run it was Buck Hienrich probably not spelled right. There were no big semi trailer trucks then so everything. groceries and all had to be shipped in by railroad. Granpa and Sim never owned a car. It was five miles from Collins to our place and in the early days the roads were mud not gravel just old black sticky mud. When the roads were muddy they were almost impossible for a Model T ford to go on because it only had two gears low and high. and if you had to run in low much they got hot and boiled fike a teakettle and also it wore out the low band. The model T Ford car engine whopped out a stunning twenty horse power the trucks like under the school busses were rated twenty three horse power to best of my recollections. So most of the traveling to town was with team of horses and an old farm wagon when it was muddy. Some of the farmers had spring seats that set on top of the wagon box, not us we just put a board across the box or stood up in the box. We had kids not money. 

A.O. and Sim Williams circa 1936
Cantankerous, contrary old cusses.

Hey I kinda got off of my subject of Grandpa and Sim. I don't remember when grandpa and Sim had two horses I only remember the one they had left and he was a spirited old horse and as old as he was once he was hooked up to that buggy he wanted to trot and trot fast. His name was Sam. He was a tall long legged black beautiful horse. Of course I didn't realize that at the time, like a lot of other things, but I do now. They used to joke about when Sam was hooked up to the buggy he didn't need tugs he pulled it with the lines that were attached to the bit that was in his mouth. I could explain that in detail but not today. Anyway old Sam could go anytime mud snow rain or whatever. I only remember him driving Sam out there very many times and then Sam died of old age and that left Grandpa and Sim afoot. Somtimes I do remember them walking out to our place but not together I think they needed all of their energy to walk with none to spare for bickering. Uncle Sim used to say that walking wasn't very crowded but it was kinda lonesome. Grandpa and Sim never owned a home nor car so I guess the only thing that they owned was their tools what little household furniture the had. They were both pretty good handy men and they definetly excelled in arguing especially with each other. Harold would to go in and get them and then take them back home in the evening. They used to come out and help us butcher in the fall. They would also help do any carpenter work that was needed. 

Front:  A.O. and Nancy Williams
Back: Mary and Pearl Williams
Appears to be taken about the same time they moved to Iowa.

I think Granpa and Sim were both born in Iowa and their folks moved to Missouri when they were small. My mother Pearl May (Williams) Pointer and her older sister Mary Etta (Williams) Bear were both born in Missouri and I think Mom said she was about seven years old when they came to Iowa they came in a covered wagon of some sort and the two girls walked all of the way only when the came to a town did they get on the wagon and ride through town. One of them said it was a seven day trip and the other said it was a nine day trip and if I were to guess I would say nine. Mom said they came to a mile west of Collins where Bill Wilkening lived later on. Gary and Lisa would know where that is. Gary Pointer and Lisa (Pointer) Mitchell that is. They must have had relatives living there Mom probably told me who they were but I wasn't paying attention as usual. That is why I am putting this in writing and on a CD because if it hasn't been thrown away later on in life someone might run acrossed it and by then it may have aged enough to be interesting. I'd guess this is enough on grandpa and Sim Williams. If I think of anything else I will just come back to them.

Now for my other Grandpa Daniel Pointer. I just found an error in his date of birth because I have a picture of his tombstone that is in the Iowa center cemetery. He was born Aug 29 1829 and died Nov 12 1909 so if he had lived he would have been ninety one years old when I was born. He was twenty two years older than my grandma Pointer (Emma). They are buried in the Iowa Center Woodland Cemetery approximately 100 feet west of the south gate on the south side of the road that goes through the cemetery. So my dad Harvey L. Pointer would have been about 20 months old when she (Emma Pointer) his mother died that is why my dad's Uncle and Aunt John Belcher took my dad and raised him. Grandpa Gilley told me once that he grew up knowing my dad as Harvey Belcher and he always went by that name until he married my mom. I have him down as born 1838 but he was born in 1829 in my family stats and my computer refuses to let me change the dates. So I guess he will just stay nine years younger than he actually was. He lived to be about eighty years old.  

Memories Back Then

Memories by Donald D Pointer  9-28-07

In Memory of Staff SGT Wayne Harvey Pointer

SGT Wayne Harvey Pointer
US Army Air Force
May 21, 1918 - March 14, 1943

   I remember when my dad used to drag roads for the county. The county furnished the road drag and dad furnished the power and the operator. Four head of horses was the power. The road that went by our place on the west wasn't a mile square like most were in that area.  It was one and a quarter mile  long and a mile wide. Dad didn't drag the full square but went north a quarter of a mile turned left at the old Hientz place and drug a mile west then turned south and drug to the next corner which was a mile and a quarter. There he turned around and went back the same way because it took two drags to cover the road. Those old road drags pulled real hard and the horses had to be rested pretty frequently. If I remember right it took them about all day. That would be over five miles of dragging and then another half mile to and from our house. The roads at that time were all dirt no gravel. The horses would be pretty tired and wet with sweat after that job was completed.

Harvey Pointer Home Farm - 5 miles Northeast of Collins, Iowa

   I remember brother Harold dragging after dad died but I don't think he drug long because it was about that time that they graveled the Collins to Rhodes road and probably the county took over the road dragging.  The first road drag that the county furnished was an all steel drag which had a lever to adjust the pitch, which was almost useless, and also had a seat, but it was too light and dad had rocks on it for weight. They replaced it with a drag made out of about three inch by eighteen inch wood bridge plank with metal cutter blades on the bottoms and about seven feet long and it didn't need any weight on it because it was one heavy sucker. The horses were hooked four abreast (abreast means side by side).The old saying is that a dog is man's best friend and I do love dogs, but I would have to put horses right in there with them because they would have been unable to establish and settle the midwest and the west without horses. At least it would have taken longer.  Also before trains horses were the only sourse of overland transportation, except oxen which were strong pullers but were slower and they had no way of holding back on a load like on a wagon. Horses harness had what we called a britchen. It went around their lower buts and was strapped up under their belly and ended up being hooked to the neck yoke (which was the cross piece between the two horses which held the wagon tongue  up  which guided and controlled the wagon, damn this is getting complicated) our farm wagons had no brakes and were completey controlled by the horses. I am not sure that horses have been given the recognition and credit that they really deserve. At home we liked our horses and treated them and fed them well, curried them, combed their manes, kept their foretops and hoofs trimmed. I am sorry to say that not all farmers treated their horses that well.

Wayne with the horses -  Jim, Joe, Pearl, John

   I need to talk about John the horse more. I guess he was about four years old when I was born. And Mom said they raised him on a bottle like any bottle fed baby. I don't know what happened to his mother evidently she died soon after he was born. And as a result he thought almost like a human. One of the things that he would do when I was riding him was gallop full bore and he had a way of turning sideways and stopping on the spot and of course me a little kid riding bareback I would fly through the air and land with a thud. I usually would get ahold of his mane which might slow my flight down a little. Then he would stand there and eat grass looking innocently at me like what are you doing down there. We had an old saddle but he was so round that it just turned on him so that was more dangerous than riding barebacked. Besides that I wasn't tall enough to throw a saddle on him. Another thing that he was good at was if there was a tree with low limbs he would walk under the limb and scrape me off leave me hanging on the limb. However through all his mischieviousness he never ran off and the only way I could get on him was that he put his head down and I would lay over his neck then he would raise his head and I would slide down his neck to his back and get a straddle him again. He would always let me to do that. He also was the horse that pulled the buggy that I hauled water to the threshing workers who were in the field. With the burlaped wrapped glass jugs with corn cobs for corks. The burlap was held on the jugs with binder twine and was kept wet so the evaperation helped keep the water cooler. Mom said when he was a colt he got in the house a time or two. He was one smart old horse we grew up together and I still have a lot of fond memories of him. One good thing about him he wasn't very tall so I didn't have very far to fall.
  The first thing that I remember about when the county started dragging the roads they had a World War 1 four wheel drive army truck and it had a blade mounted beneath it just behind the old open cab which didn't have doors on it. The truck had solid rubber tires, no air solid rubber. I don't know how they controlled the blade it may have had some sort of a hydraulic system on it but I rather doubt it. I remember that  it did a lot of spinning jumping and bucking etc. I think as Granpa used to tell me when tried to do something that was more than I could handle, "that it was too light in the poop". I don't think that it was it very successful.   Come to think about it , it was very simular to the maintainers they use today but it took it about thirty years to catch on.
   I have seen my dads name listed as Harve and Harvey. His name actually was Harvey because that is how it is listed on his tombstone and also on the mortgage when he bought the home farm so that should clear that up in case anyone had noticed. When he would find a big bull snake out in the field he would bring it in and turn it loose in the barn. The idea was that they ate rats and mice. They did that all right but it also kept some of the neighbors out of the hay mow when we made hay. A full grown bull snake is about five feet long and two and one half inches in diameter. They are non poisonious but they would strike and bite and the make a sizzling sort of a noise and wiggle their tail like they are trying to imitate a rattle snake. When they get all puffed up and coiled making that rattling sort of noise they were pretty fierce sounding and looking. After dad died the snakes got to getting in the cows feed troughs and the cows wouldn't go in to their stanchions so the older boys whopped them with a pitchfork and tossed them out on the manure pile. I only remember about three snakes that had to be eradicated. One of my greatest joys was to hold a snakes head down with a stick so I could pick him up just behind his head and chase my older brother Glen with it. I had to quit that because he threatened to kill me and probably would have because I couldn't carry a snake around with me all time  Brother Glen was very mean to me he degraded me on any and everything that I ever did and I never ever remember him saying anything good to or about me all criticism. He always acted as if I was a discrace to him, maybe I was. I needed to tell this and I just did. Anyway I could buffalo him if I had a snake in my hand. In later years after he had a stroke he mellowed out and was decent to me. Through the years he had always been stronger than me but after he had a stroke that was no longer true so he just backed off and no longer belittled me at my every turn.

Wayne (Army Air Corps) & Donald (Army)
Taken while they were home for Lester's funeral.

   Now my brother Wayne the one that I have dedicated this writing, or whatever it is to. He started out on me like brother Glen did and one evening after we had milked the cows and were carrying the milk from barn to the house to run it through the cream separator. We got in a squabble so we just set the milk buckets down and went at it. I got in a lucky haymaker swing and hit he square in the face and it knocked him back on the fence he laid on the fence for a while got up spit out a little blood we picked up our milk buckets and carried them to the house. I thought sure he would tell Mom and she would get after me but he didn't. Anyway that ended all of that and we got along fine from then on. Wayne had a twin brother that was still born and he must got some extra energy or whatever from him because he could do twice as much work and in less time than I could. He had stamina that wouldn't quit. He was born on Mom's birthday May 21, 1918. He also had keen eyesight I always had trouble even reading what I had to to get a drivers license and Wayne said he could read the whole chart even the smallest print plus the manufacture of the chart listed on the bottom. Guess that is probably why he was a gunner on a bomber. He had a hip that bothered him and he called it arthritis and walked with a limp but that didn't keep him from working or joining the Army. He volunteered for the Army. Me I was drafted. No one was more surprised than me when I heard that he had voluntarily joined the Army and was in the Army Air Force. The Army Air Force at that time was a branch of The Armed Forces. I guess that he could see no future in staying on that farm for the rest of his life and the opportunity showed up and he grabbed it. It is very sad that it ended costing him his life. The last time that I saw him was when Lester died. The Army gave us both two week furloughs and we came home. I had been in the Army only a short time and was in Camp Bullis Texas taking what the army called Basic Training.  We didn't get home in time to go to Lester's funeral but we got to come home. Brother Forrest was in the Navy at that time and he was around the Aleutian Islands somewhere and was unable to come home. Anyway Wayne was a Sergeant and I was a buck private in the rear rank. I guess that I didn't realize it or time erased it from my memory that in less than six months Wayne went down in a B17 bomber, on which he was a gunner and assistant engineer, in South America on their way to the ETO (European Theater of Operations). Man as I look back those were pretty sad time especially for Mom. They called him missing in action for a year and then declared him dead. Lester was 26 when he died and Wayne was 24.

Wayne and Donald in front of Donald's 1939 Ford.
Possibly the one he borrowed money from Wayne to buy?

   Before I forget it. I forgot to mention the horses names they were from left to right  Jim - Joe - Pearl - John and the dog was Ring. Wayne had a pretty good disposition sorta easy going I would call it. When we used to pick corn by hand there at home we always picked three rows . Wayne picking most of the two rows to my one. I picked the inside row between him and the wagon. However I spent a lot of time recovering from getting hit in the head with a big old hard ear of corn as he threw them into the wagon. Some of them hits seemed to be intentional rather than accidental. Most of them really hurt and I seen lots of stars when I got whopped. Some of his friends called him skiff I don't have any idea where that name came from. He always smoked a pipe and smoked velvet smoking tobacco. He was just a good ole boy. If my memory serves me right I think I borrowed fifty bucks from him to buy my first car and I doubt if I ever paid him back. I was in the CCC camp in Ames then and we weren't supposed to have a car so at least he got to drive it because I had to leave it at home.

Granpa A.O. Williams and Brother Sim 1936

    I think that I will end this up by telling about Granpa Williams chewing tobacco. He chewed plug tobacco called Days Work he used to cut a piece off of that plug with his pocket knife and chew it like it was real good. Years later when I was smoking and chewing tobacco too I remembered the name and bought a plug of Days Work and I couldn't chew it it made me sick. So another guy said give it to me I can chew anything but he found out that he couldn't chew it either so we had to throw it away nobody could chew it. Granpa Williams must have been a tough old guy because he really liked it that Days Work.

The History of Collins

Here are some old pictures he had of Collins Main Street.  I don't know the date of this photo.

This picture is of Collins Main Street looking north in 1913

Exchange State Bank & Hotel

Milwaukee Depot in Collins, Iowa

Collins Old Water Tower

This is a copy of a writing Donald wrote in about 4th or 5th grade, 1929 or 1930.

In Loving Memory