D. Clarke Evans Photographer

Irving O’Neal

Private First Class, U.S. Army
1943–1945

Pvt. Irving O’Neal
San Francisco, CA, 1943

We formed the 648th Tankers Battalion, training as a tank destroyer unit. We were training to go to Africa, but they just finished that campaign and re-formed us to an artillery outfit.

I was born November 1, 1924. My dad raised cotton and had a bakery in different parts of California’s San Joaquin Valley. I went to high school in Turlock, which is between Modesto and Merced. The B-52 bombers flew out of Merced. I was a junior in high school when I got my draft notice. I went to San Francisco down on Market Street and volunteered for the Army. I got sworn in, and reported to the railroad depot and caught a train to Monterey, California. That’s where we got our shots and clothing.

We did our basic training in Brownwood, Texas and then went to Camp Hood in Killeen. At Camp Hood, we formed the 648th Tankers Battalion, training as a tank destroyer unit. We trained on M-18 Hellcats, which were much more mobile than the standard Sherman Tank. We were training to go to Africa, but they just finished that campaign and re-formed us to an artillery outfit. We did our artillery training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, then we were sent to New Jersey. We got on the Queen Mary in late 1944 bound for England.

We landed in Glasgow, Scotland and for the next 3-to-4 months did more training. We spent Christmas 1944 in England, and shortly afterward they put us on liberty ships. We went across the English Channel, and up the Seine River a short distance to unload halftracks and equipment. By the time we got there, the Battle of the Bulge was almost over.

We were in Nancy, France and were ordered into a little town near Forbach in Alsace-Lorraine. We set up on a hillside looking down into Saarbrücken, caught a lot of artillery that night, and lost a few fellows. At that time, I was a jeep driver for headquarters. A couple of fellows and I went driving around and ended up in Saarbrücken. An elderly German took us to a winery he knew. They had huge wooden wine vats. We had a 5-gallon can of water and we poured that out, filled it up with wine, took it back and shared it with the outfit. Captain Crocker found out and was raising all kinds of Cain about who was responsible. They took my PFC stripes away from me, but they gave them back the next month. We found out later that Saarbrücken was not completely secure. The Germans had pulled out, but we had not gone in and secured the place.

I was discharged in 1945. I went to the Bay area, enrolled in junior college for a year, drove a gas truck for a few years, got laid off, and went to work for the Civil Service at the Presidio in San Francisco. We did all the telecommunications for the Department of the Army, providing telecommunications to the outside plants and inside exchanges for making telephone calls. They referred to it as the 6th Army Area: California, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. We did a lot of work at Yucca Flats near Las Vegas at the bomb sites.

I was in the Civil Service for 38 years. I came upon a referral to Europe, so we went to Germany in 1979 for 3 1/2 years. I was eligible for retirement, but I wasn’t mentally ready for it. In June, 1986 I was doing a job at West Point, and one afternoon I said, ‘I’ve had enough of this’ and finally retired. We came to San Antonio where my wife had a house she rented out. It’s been a good life. {12-06-2016 • Boerne, TX}