Wib Amacher
Finance officer
Wib Amacher
Warrant Officer Junior Grade, Army Air Corps
1941-1946
Pvt Wib Amacher
Biloxi, MS, 1944
My job was centered around paying for supplies for the more than 30,000 troops at Keesler Field. Once a month, I and a whole gang of MPs would go to the train station to collect $2 million in cash to make payroll.
I was born in Sibley, Illinois. I graduated from high school in 1936; it was the middle of the Depression. I ended up in business school and got a job with the bank in Kankakee, Illinois. It was in the late 1930s—my first job making $60 a month. I started out as a bookkeeper—just poked buttons, and recorded checks. Then I was a teller for a while. Nothing exciting, that’s for sure. I received my draft notice in January, 1941.
I joined that month. At first, I was thrown in with the Illinois National Guard. They weren’t a very good outfit. If we had to depend on them, we would have lost the war. Then Pearl Harbor came along that December. I was a buck private and I saw an advertisement to join the Army Air Corps. I wrote a letter to the address in the magazine and said I would like to transfer to the AAC. I asked that I be assigned to Keesler Field, Mississippi because my future wife had a Civil Service job there.
A little over a week later, I had orders to go to Keesler Field. I thought I would just be another dogface and go to aircraft mechanic school, but when I got there they announced they were looking for a finance officer. Doris had submitted my name. I got the job and was there for over four years until the end of the war. My job was centered around paying for supplies for the more than 30,000 troops at Keesler Field. Once a month, I and a whole gang of MPs would go to the train station to collect $2 million in cash to make payroll. Being a finance officer was as near to having a civilian job as you could have and still be in the military. I ended up as a warrant officer junior grade, and was the deputy finance officer for the last three years.
When the war was over, I couldn’t see any part of the military as a career, so I got out in February, 1946. We went back to Illinois and had a few lost years, you might say. I should have gotten an education. Instead, I kept a Civil Service job; I was a budget officer. In 1958 they combined the three Civil Service areas and brought them here to Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio. When they consolidated and pulled us over here, I had already decided that New Braunfels was where I wanted to live. I worked there until I retired in 1976.
I got involved in politics and was on the city council and elected mayor for one term each. It wasn’t like it is now. I think there were 25,000 people; now it’s 60,000. I do have three jobs now, all volunteer; that keeps me busy. I was a volunteer at the hospital for 15-20 years but had to quit and became a caregiver for my wife for five years. We were married for 70 years. After she died, I went back to the hospital. I volunteer for a clinic down the street which is part of the hospital, and at the crisis center doing clerical stuff. I was the Presbyterian Church treasurer for 39 years. I still go down there and help them get the newsletter out. One of the most memorable things I’ve done in my life was to go on the Alamo Honor Flight, which takes WWII veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials. I was impressed by the size of the WWII memorial. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my experience on the Honor Flight. {12-23-2015, New Braunfels, TX}
