5.. Student Army Training Corps [S.A.T.C.]

5. Student Army Training Corps [S.A.T.C.]

Bob Zybach: When World War I was starting, what was the feeling of the people, the Goviers, and your folks, what did they feel about World War I, did they think we should be in it?

Charlie Olson: I never talked to anybody that thought that we should be in it.

Bob Zybach: They pretty much thought we. . . were they in favor of you ttying to stay out of the service?

Charlie Olson: Very much so. The draft was the only thing that would make anybody enlist. If he would enlist, he would be able to get into what he enlisted in. And sometimes they had choice, and if they would be drafted they'd stick them wherever they wanted to. The only thing that seemed to be way off on that was when this teenage group entered the student army training corps, and they put them in an infantry section and fixed that up so that we be nothing but cannon fodder. That's how they controlled us. It was nothing but a profiteering thing. And they could control it by different ways; they could control it by not letting them know how to use their weapons, and of course there would be a loss there. And they could control it in one other way; the captain would have the knowledge of what was going to happen, but he wouldn't have enough ammunition, and they'd soon run out. And about the time they would run out of ammunition they would realize that the captain was gone. And there would be quite a project there of butchering.

Bob Zybach: So the people. . . when you got drafted, is the reason you came into training at Oregon State?

Charlie Olson: I enlisted. I enlisted in a student army training corps.

Bob Zybach: But you could do that without even being a student then? You didn't have to be a student to enlist?

Charlie Olson: I did it, so that if in case I came back, I would have a project, I'd have a trade. And, like I explained before, I couldn't take that trade, and I was lucky that I didn't because the guy that taught that was a goof.

Bob Zybach: What was his name?

Charlie Olson: Manning. And after I started in I went to work for a guy that had been over and his company, he was probably one or two or three out of the whole group that survived. And he started a little garage. And they brought a car that they had drug for about an hour and a half. And they couldn't start it. It had gone completely through his shop.

Charlie Olson: And this Manning, and it wouldn't start. And they pulled it up in front of this house, this guy had started this garage in an old house. And there was the top man in the front part of it putting on tops and side curtains. And we had to go through that in order to go back to the back end where the shop was. And when they pulled that up there and then untied it and took off. So did my boss, he took off too. They pushed it in. First I began to look around for my little tool box, should I put my tools in it and take off? Then I figured no I'll try it, and I got all the levers set just right and then got ahold of the crank and the first pull it took off. Then I got in it and stepped on low gear, and was gonna drive it back quick because oil run out all over it. And this top man didn't want oil on his floor. And I started to go back to the back end and when I stepped on the low gear, it backed up. I knew what was up -- I shut it off. And we pushed it back. They had put the back end in wrong side to. And they had drug it turning it over backwards, trying to start it. So you might know what kind of a teacher they had there.

Bob Zybach: And he was teaching mechanics to the young army men?

Charlie Olson: I hadn't taken very much mechanics. What I did was my own experience, but you'd have to be a nut not to see the whole picture.

Bob Zybach: When you heard about armistice, was there a big celebration in corvallis or on campus?

Charlie Olson: There certainly was. It happened at midnight, and the first thing that we heard was a cannon went off, then we heard some shotguns go off, then there was a lot of yelling and hollering, and the lights went on in the building that we were in. There was lots of those buildings and they were all barracks, everything was barracks. And somebody stuck his head in and said "Armistice, Boys! " And of course every bunk in the house was turned upside down.

Bob Zybach: Did you get to go home right then? Were you able to go back home?

Charlie Olson: I started to go to work in the garage right then.

Bob Zybach: Just within a matter of days?

Charlie Olson: It could have been a week or two. I, of course, went home and began to look for a job, but I wanted a job in a garage, and this was the first one that happened to come up. And from that one . . . you know, I kinda hate to go ahead on this because it happened in my favor, a lot. All the way through, it happened in my favor. There

Charlie Olson: was a fellow that had the Exide battery franchise. And I had worked in this one [garage] that I told you about where this guy had pulled his car up there that had been turned over backwards. Manning, the teacher Manning had overseen that whole thing

Bob Zybach: Did he teach at Oregon State, was that where he was teaching at, at Oregon State?

Charlie Olson: That's right, he was a professor, and he was right in the next room to the guy that I finally got as a teacher, and he was the shop teacher, on lathes, shapers, and the first thing he said, go through that door, and look on the opposite wall is a group of mandrals. Don't look at 'em, just grab one that you think is a 3/4 inch. And bring it to me. Don't look at 'em. I grabbed one, went over and give it to him. He looked at it and he says "you've got a pretty good eye." He said, "I'll take it back" and he took it back, but he had said to me, when I went in, he said, if somebody says something to you don't say anything. Don't answer him, just grab one of them and bring it to me.

Bob Zybach: What was his name?

Charlie Olson: Hill

Bob Zybach: Did you get a certificate from Oregon State, or something then saying that you.

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: You just took the classes and learned, and.

Charlie Olson: No. We didn't, you see we got this as sort of a sideline while we were soldiering. The main project for that thing was so that we could make a good demonstration when Colonel White came out. And when Colonel White came out, he was the top man in the military the United States. And he came out to view us. And of course we marched and he gave us a green light. The only thing he could see was how we could march. I had a little incident that time I maybe shouldn't mention it but its comical. We had a different sergeant, a different lieutenant, we had a different captain, every week they'd switch it around. And that day when this Colonel White came, we had a captain that I had never seen, and in order to make sure that we would be just right when it was our turn to take off and go down to the end and then go left and then turn left again and come back past this grandstand, they had a drum, a big bass drum, and they had a snare drum and they had music. And that darn

Charlie Olson: drum, both those drums and that music would tell you how to step. And that captain that we had that morning didn't have sense enough to realize it I guess because when he started us out he said "Forward, March, one two three four, one two three four, left, left, left right left." I paid no attention to it. I stepped right along with the music and the drums.

Bob Zybach: He was keeping a derent time than the music then?

Charlie Olson: Yes, they were all out of step. I was in the front rank, I was number four in the front rank, and number four in the rear of my squad, kept stepping on the calf of my leg and slipping off. And he kept doing that and I started timing, and it was every third step. I got a good grip on the stock of my Enfield which was on my right shoulder and down, and when he stepped I raised the butt and the barrel came down, and it was a pretty heavy whack, it hit him on the head, and he growled a little gutteral growl, here, and it was about ten seconds, when the captain way back behind the rear platoon, we were in platoon formation. Behind the rear platoon yelled, get in step, and then he fell in with the rest of the group, you know, the one two three four. I didn't change. After a while he had run along the end of the rear platoon and came down to the front platoon and came in and pointed his finger at me and said, "You! get in step." I said "I'm in step with the band, sir." And he took a run, I figured he'd come over and clobber me, but he began to realize that he hadn't said "Halt" and if he'd come over we'd have pushed him over and walked over him. So he turned around and ran so that he could get away from us and then he happened to think, I guess, and he went around both platoons and got in the back. And then he yelled, "Change step. March." Everybody changed step except me. I didn't make my little hippoty hop and change. But I began to wonder what would happen that night, if he'd arrange for KP duty or if I'd get in the brig. And I never heard of it.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever get KP duty or get the brig for anything?

Charlie Olson: Nothing. There was nothing. It wouldn't have happened because actually he should have called me in and thanked me because he'd have went by that bandstand with the whole company out of step. But I never saw him again.

Bob Zybach: Where would you live on campus? Did they have tents that you lived in? Or you lived in the buildings, as barracks, that what you were saying.

Charlie Olson: We stayed in the barracks. We stayed in the barracks.

Bob Zybach: What would you eat? What kind offood would they serve?

Charlie Olson: That's another thing. I'm glad you brought it up. One day, two guys came in, each had a pretty good sized briefcase. They came in and sat down and ate dinner, in the armory. The armory was our feed camp. It was all in bench; everything was benches to sit down. They came in and sat down at one of those benches and ate, then they came back the next meal again, and then in the morning the next day they were there and ate breakfast. And then they got up, and called attention. And they said "This . . ." I don't remember if they called it company or what, camp, or whatever they called them "is receiving" I think they said 97 cents a head "to feed you a day. And you have actually been eating at the rate of 16 cents a day."

Bob Zybach: [A stoty regarding the cost offeeding 12,000 recruits a day has been omitted at the request of Charlie Olson.] How long was the campus there training people for the army? Did that just start right before the end of the war or had that been going on all during the war?

Charlie Olson: No, they started during the war and they ended at the armistice.

Bob Zybach: So maybe for one or iwo years there wasn't any classes going on at Oregon State?

Charlie Olson: Well, we wasn't in there over a year. It . . . They got that organized as the world war was going on, and it ended about a year after they got going.

Bob Zybach: But there was no kids going to classes during that year? The entire campus just became a military base then?

Charlie Olson: It went right back to a regular college. The buildings went back, the women got their dormitories back, and a lot of the buildings . . . one big building that they had built on purpose to have enough barracks, that of course went into a school building. And they have built a lot more since.

Bob Zybach: Did the army give that a name? Did they call that Camp Oregon State, or give it some name, or was it just called the campus? Or what did they call it for the army people?

Charlie Olson: S.A.T.C., Student Army Training Corps.

Bob Zybach: So if you said you were at the S.A. T. C. they would know you were at the Oregon State a7npus, Oregon College of Agriculture.

Charlie Olson: I didn't hear a thing about Oregon State Campus at that time, it was Student Army