2.. World War I

2. World War I

Bob Zybach: When World War I came up, at that time your family was socialist. What did your parents feel about you maybe having to go to war?

Charlie Olson: When they ran in the paper that this student army training corps [S.A.T.C.] was ready to be shipped, they were at the door, and a sergeant came and told me, it was during noon while we were eating, and I went to the door and talked to them and I didn't tell them what I knew was coming. Of course, they came down and said goodbye. But I didn't tell them the situation because it would have worried them quite a lot. We had soldiers and there was no corporals. They just gave the order on this line, fall in, count off, and right dress. One two three four, one two three four, one two three four. Every number one man was a corporal. And when they yelled, right front in to line, that corporal would take his squad and get them in the right position, and right front and on front that would be from a different situation to form a different line. But that guy, whoever it happened to be, the number one man, he would have to take his squad to a new position. We would do everything that they could yell at us, and we carried Enfields [rifles]. And not one word had they given us the entire time on the nomenclature of those guns. They didn't tell us what caliber it was even. And I had started when I was quite a kid to work with guns, and I knew quite a little bit about it. But the kids as a rule, you know, didn't know how to take the safety off or put it on. They didn't know how to set the sights. They didn't know what the trajectory would be on that. I should have kept the magazine that I got right after everything was over with. The captain sitting on the side of a flatcar with these boys sitting as close as they could clear around that flatcar, midnight, and the rest of the company standing, supported by their backs, and the kid next to him put his hand over on the captain's leg and said "I wish you'd show me how to load this gun." The captain used everything that he could to express his feeling. "If they had had a baseball bat, they would have had 90% better chance of living." That was his, that was his statement. He said, "they would have been captured but they had guns and they would be killed." I knew what was gonna happen to us if we went over, and of course, the people read it in the paper. Then hell broke loose at midnight, armistice. So we didn't get to go over.

Bob Zybach: One part we skipped, that we didn't get on recording, and maybe we could go back over it. When you were first hearing about World War I, and afraid of being drafted, at that time you going to school in Albany, and then went to Portland?

Charlie Olson: When I came back from Portland, I went straight to Corvallis, and the college there was an armory.

Bob Zybach: Okay, Oregon State campus.

Charlie Olson: The whole thing. There was no college anymore, it was just an armory, the whole thing.

Bob Zybach: They'd shut down the college?

Charlie Olson: Yeah. There was soldiers in every building they could put them in. And they built an extra one so they would have enough. My number was 8000 and something, I don't remember just what, but there was enough more enlisted afterwards so there was probably 12,000 of us.

Bob Zybach: 12,000 soldiers, or people total?

Charlie Olson: Soldiers, nothing but.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember what year that was?

Charlie Olson: Ummm. I think it was '18.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So you would have been about 20 years old? You were born in. . . I forget I should have checked my notes.

Charlie Olson: Well, would be 2 years old in 1900. '18, it'd have to be 17 at least. I'd have to be 17 at least.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Another part we haven't gotten on this tape is, you had left home, you started working when you were 15. And then, can you kind of cover the time when you were 15 and left home until you went to Oregon State campus to train for the army, can you kind of tell about that part?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, I would have to put dates on all of this, I would have to mark it down and figure a while so that I could get that straight. But the armistice, I don't know for sure, it was signed in 1917, or it happened in 1917. And that is a kind of a question, I think they waited until they considered it was signed. I think it just drug along until 1918. I think their date is 1918, when the armistice was signed. But in 1917, I know it was 1917 when we got out. And when we got out, it was on account of the

Charlie Olson: armistice. They turned us loose. But there was quite a lot happened, that won't get into the school books. It happened in Russia, and I don't know if you have read enough literature outside of the United States version of it, so that you know of this. But when the Russians, drove the sheiks and shahs, and what did they call their rulers that they sat under them?

Bob Zybach: The Tsars?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, the Tsars and priests ruled Russia. And they represented the big powers, Britain, U.S., Germany, and France, and those bigger companies held them in power over the Russian people. And on October 19, 1916, was when they left their guns right where they were and went home. And put people in charge of their country chosen from their own group and something else began to happen. And that's not gonna get into the American history. The American general that was chosen, his name was General Graves. And what they was supposed to do, the US, Britain, France, Germany, go through Russia with a bayonet on their gun and stick that bayonet to every little kid that they could come to, even in the mother's arms.

Bob Zybach: That wa Graves, the American General, that.

Charlie Olson: His name was Graves.

Bob Zybach: Where did you get that information.

Charlie Olson: I got it right at the time when it happened, through a Canadian news letters and George Selds, Anna Louise Strong. George Selds was an American correspondent, and he sent stuff home from these foreign countries, and our press wouldn't print it. They would put it in whatever way they wanted to. Anna Louise Strong was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, and she sent literature home because she . She was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times, and she sat in to all of those meetings between those European governments and the US government, and sent that literature home, but they of course chose to report whatever they wanted to. She wrote a book, and she knew what was going to happen because she sat in when they planned it. And she wrote a book, I've got the book. I bought one and I loaned it to some people that were logging for me, and the wife of one of them burned it up, and I got another one. And it's pretty near wore out.

Bob Zybach: But you think that her book then is an accurate histoiy of World War I?

Charlie Olson: They give the full details of that. Anyway, George Selds, he started a little newsletter, and called it "In Fact." And he quit our newspapers. And he published his little weekly, "In Fact." And a whole lot of the actual things that happened was reported in little papers like that, you know. So I saw the thing pretty straight as it went through. Anyway, we go back to this American General, and a young captain came to him one evening and saluted and said "General, if you send me on another mission like the one I just returned from I'll pull my uniform and go over to their side. I'm not sticking bayonets through little kids." And the General returned the salute and said "I don't blame you a damn bit, I'll do the same thing." End of course. Things bogged down and stood to a standstill, and he got an order to proceed, move on. It came from France, he ignored it. And the next day he got another order through Britain -- move on, proceed. And he made a report on that: "We don't take orders through Britain, let them send it direct." William Randoif Hearst, not Patty Hearst's father, but her father's father, he was pretty much in charge of the US at that time. He owned pert near all of the magazines and newspapers and he could control it by those papers. And then of course he established Reader's Digest, and reported from different magazines, and the public here thought that was a different setup. It was all his own in the first place.

Bob Zybach: Oh I see.

Charlie Olson: Anyway, the people here, the Senate here, began to find some wet spots on the floor that didn't come in from rain or any carried in water. It's run over the top of their boots. They didn't know what to do. Of course they went to William Randoif Hearst. And he said bring them home, and spread them out. Bring 'em home and disperse 'em immediately. So that's what happened.

Bob Zybach: When you first went to Portland, you were saying you were tzying to avoid getting drafted?

Charlie Olson: I tried to be in some kind of work where I would be deferred. I didn't want to go over and try to shoot people and get shot. ff1 could get into something where I could be deferred in, when they drafted Frank Hale, when they drafted him and he was a riveter, and riveting was the top bracket. And this leader on my side of the ship promised me that I would be a riveter pretty soon. I said I was a bolter. And the

Charlie Olson: bolts were staggered, there was three rows between these panels, these steel panels, I think they were 3/4", they were pretty thick. That may not have been that thick, but they were pretty thick, and I had a 1000 feeler gauge, and I was on the outside and my helper was a foreigner, I never knew who he was, he'd stock the bolts through and I'd put the nuts on and then beat the sides of that until I couldn't stick that 1000 feeler gauge in between the panels any more. When they were that tight, they were tight enough. And then the riveters came along, but there was another group of workers first that would take every other bolt out of one row of bolts, and then the riveter would rivet them, and the rivets were not just red they were virtually white hot when they rivetted them, and then they would come back and take out every other in another row of bolts. And when they would get all of them, every other one, why of course then it was really drawn up tight. And they would work at that gradually until they had them all out and riveted.

Bob Zybach: Were you building ships?

Charlie Olson: Building ships.

Bob Zybach: For the war?

Charlie Olson: During the war.

Bob Zybach: Where was the business located at?

Charlie Olson: Northwest Steel in Portland.

Bob Zybach: What year did you start working on the ships?

Charlie Olson: I'm not too sure. When I first went down there, the only job that I could get was with Allen and Lewis on fruit, cans. They were situated right on the river. Then the boats would come in right on their docks, on their back porch. And they would unload stuff, and there was another boy there about my age, redheaded, Irish, and we carried these boxes, not in, they wheeled them in to the building, but we carried them were they were stacked and brought 'em to where there was two women labeling them. And we had nails, we'd strip the strip off of the cans and set them over, and these women would put new labels on them. And there would be salmon caught north of Sweden, and in that northern water, and we'd strip that label off and they would put labels on them "Caught in Alaska" "Caught especially for Allen and Lewis." And we were just kids of course, pranks was kind of a novelty, and we