WWII Veteran Transcript

Subject: Arnold Franco

Interviewer: William Spisak

Tape Number: 01 of 02

Interview Date: January 31st, 2010

Transcriber: Kevin Lin


Transcription Date: January 02, 2011



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Interviewer: Arnold Franco, Tape 01, Side 01.  So could you just tell us 
your full name and...

Franco: Arnold Clement Franco.  Use Arnold C. Franco.

Interviewer: And your highest rank?

Franco: Corporal.

Interviewer: So, tell me about your background before your involvement in
the military.  Where you grew up.

Franco: I grew up in Richmond Hill in Queens and the various schools 
roughly, but I ended up in Queens College in September 1940.  I started 
Michigan in January '40, but due to an illness on campus which I got, I 
didn't go back.  I went to Queens instead.

Interviewer: And you lived in Queens your whole life?  How was your 
family, were they well off?  Were they…

Franco: My father had been originally well-to-do, he was a stockbroker 
in Wall Street in the 1920s.  Of course, like everyone else he lost his 
fortune in the crash and then like a few years, he became an insurance 
agent…life insurance.  He spent eight or nine years doing that, he was 
quite successful.

Interviewer: Now how old were you, if you could remember when Germany 
invaded Poland in ’39?

Franco: I was sixteen.

Interviewer: You were sixteen.

Franco: In fact, my birthday was in that month, September.  When Germany 
invaded, my birthday was at the end of the month.

Interviewer: And you remember your initial reaction to…

Franco: To the war?

Interviewer: …battle.

Franco: I expected it for many years.  When I was younger...when I was 
fifteen, I wanted to leave home and join the guys fighting with the 
Germans in Spain.  I was too young.

Interviewer: And your neighbors and your relatives, what was the general 
consensus about what was happening?

Franco: In my own family, my father was a very well educated man.  He had 
family aboard, so he was always in touch.  He was well aware of what was 
going in Europe all the time.  Most Americans were not.  Most of them were 
in the late 30s ’36-’37.  My mother would come from Vienna, started 
receiving friends came over or refugees.

We were having a weekend to come to our house because they didn’t get a 
good meal all week.  And my mother would have a buffet table every Sunday 
and people would come from all over just to get their meal of the week.  
And even though we lived in Richmond Hill, we had people come from 
Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.  It was the place to be and I was always 
kept abreast of what was going on.  We were very much aware, much more so 
than the average American family and the war was fully expected.  
Especially after the Munich Pact of 1938, it was only a question of time.

Interviewer:  Now your family was Jewish, were they active in the Jewish 
community at the time?

Franco: No.

Interviewer: They were not?

Franco: They were very secular.

Interviewer: Was there a particular awareness you might have noticed 
being Jewish about…

Franco: In America?

Interviewer: In America.

Franco: Oh, definitely always was.  But aside from the usual prejudices, 
they were not that bad.  They called names, that was sticks and stones.  
But we were a very typical American community, lot of different groups 
that time in Richmond Hill.  We had Irish and English, the English 
weren’t Irish.  Germans, quite a lot of Germans.  Italians, Jews, and 
then we had one Hindu guy who took care of our stove.  It wasn’t an oil 
burner, it was a coal burner, he was the specialist who could take care 
of it.  He was from India, but purely exceptional.

Interviewer: So when you get to college, of the first year in 1940.  
What was the general feeling about the pending war in Europe amongst 
the students?

Franco:  There was an enormous split in the college.  There was those 
who said they would not get involved with European affairs again.  
They did it in 1918, they lost 100,000 men and here they are twenty 
years later in the same old pot and there were those of us, I joined 
with Aides of Britain a few guys with me at Queens College.  We were 
arguing that we are going, our own interests are involved.  The Germans 
aren’t going to stop at England and England by the way is going to be 
conquered.  They holding on by the skin of their teeth.

Interviewer:   What kind of activities did you do in convincing people?

Franco:  Well there was a lot of meetings, raising money, letter writing.  
I wrote letters to the Crown, a lot of turmoil which didn’t end until 
Pearl Harbor.

Interviewer: Now, when Pearl Harbor, do you remember where you were when you heard of the event?

Franco: Sure, I was listening to a football game 

Interviewer: Listening on the radio?

Franco:  By the way a lot of boys I know, were all listening to the same 
game.  Big football game, but that was interrupted at 2 o clock in the 
afternoon.

Interviewer: And then do you remember the initial reaction in the 
community whether it be at school or in the family?

Franco: The reaction was of course astonishment, stunned.  But the most 
of the interesting thing happened the next day when we went back to 
college and President Klapper at that time called for a meeting of the 
whole student body on campus.  It was right where the flag pole is now on 
campus and the Jefferson Hall in those days had verandas opened in the 
back.  

They’re closed in now, you can see the arches and President Klapper and 
the staff are standing with microphone and the student body which at the 
time were 1400-1600.  Those were available, they were all clustered around 
and he was talking with the microphone.  I don’t forget, he started 
talking about what happened, what might be the duties of us as students in 
the colleges.   He didn’t get too far.  Because somebody came running up 
to the podium where he was and whispered something in his ear and he was 
very startled.  

He stopped for a moment and then he said, “I just received a report that 
the German aircraft carrier has been sighted in Long Island Sound.”  I’ll 
never forget this.  “ And I deem it unsafe for us all to be gathered here.”  
Implying us as a target. “And so I order you all to disperse and go home.”  
They’re saying that the Germans don’t have any goddamned aircraft carrier.  
That’s ridiculous what kind of goddamned rumor that he would believed.  
I was so furious, that was the beginning of the war for us.  That’s how 
it started, I never forgot that.

Interviewer: Ended up there wasn’t anything that became of that threat.

Franco: They didn’t have an aircraft carrier, so how could they be off 
Long Island Sound.  I knew from the beginning that it was complete…but 
there was such a tension in the air.  That the president of the college 
should believe that horseshit.  I was furious.

Interviewer: As soon as that happened, as soon Pearl Harbor occurred, all 
of the debate that was there stopped.

Franco: Yes.  Well, let me put it this way, the debate about aid to 
Britain and neighbors stopped.  Of course, three days later the Germans 
declared war on us, which of course put the finishing touch.  We didn’t 
have to fight them, they declared war on us.  It wasn’t Hitler’s smartest 
move.

Interviewer: What was the reaction of the young men in the community?

Franco: Well there was outrage, everybody was…most of the men…it became a 
question whether to be drafted or we volunteer.  For of us, certainly 
including me the idea of volunteering not because we were more patriotic 
than the other guy but we thought we had a better chance of what we do in 
the military.  Of course the army fed into that idea and in January after 
we were offered a program the Enlistment Reserve Corps.  It's something 
like if you were finishing your sophomore year.  The last half of your 
sophomore, beginning of your junior year and you volunteered in the army 
they would let you finish your studies and then you would be called into 
active duty.

Which we thought was…many of us thought was a marvelous choice.  So there 
were about fifty or sixty of us who went down to Whitehall Street and 
signed up our papers and then they put us on the ferry, took us to 
Governor’s Island.  Where we were actually sworn in, that was February ’43 
that was two months after Pearl Harbor and we could see, those of us who 
enlisted by May or June ’42 the Army was probably not going to adhere to 
their promises and in my own case I said hey, got to do what I can.”  So 
I end up taking sixteen credits over the summer, summer school.  32 
credits in the September semester.  So when we were called in March 
…February of ’43 to report to duty March ’42, I was only ten credits short 
of graduating and I went to see the registrar at the time was Howard Lens, 
if I’m not mistaken.  He was German, actually German but very nice guy and 
the student body was very close and the college did whatever they could.  
They were very flexible about what you can do and so forth and he said, 
“You’re lucky we’re going to give you ten credits for the military service 
you going to be performing.  You will have enough to graduate.”

And of course, that took a load off my mind.  I had the fear that I went 
into the service I would never go back college.  I felt that I couldn’t 
depend on going back, I thought I would change because I did.  I wanted to 
finish that and get it out of the way.  So what happened was I went into 
service in March ended up in infantry in Georgia…Camp Wheeler, Georgia.  
And we graduated from the infantry in June of 43.   And I was graduating, 
my parents were at the graduation in Queens getting my diploma.

Interviewer:  So you go to Georgia, could you describe your basic training 
experience?

Franco: Oh, hehehe.  Basic training is basic training and the Army has 
learned from its mistake.  Especially in the early fighting in Tunisia and 
what happened there.  So the training program was much more advanced than 
it used to be.  There was not just fighting with rifles and marching, you 
actually had squad  and platoon maneuvers attacking a pillbox, attack a 
trench.  It was much more advanced, and we also shooting all kinds of 
weapons...

I was trained to fire everything up to a 30 cm anti-tank round, 
fired machine guns, Tommy guns, mortars.  It was a much broader better 
training, but let’s face it everybody knows anything about the war or the 
military.  If you’re a infantry replacement, you’re at the bottom end of 
the totem pole and the guys were sent out in my training battalion, I met 
a couple of them towards the end the war.  They were one of the few 
survivors, because in my case I had a bizarre situation. 

Interviewer: Is that because you were unique.

Franco: Yeah, I was rather unique because I knew Spanish well in my 
family background.  I studied it in college, I was very good and I also 
been in the fencing club in high school, not college.  So when I did 
bayonet training, in my infantry training I was very good in Camp Nabb.  
Move quickly , do it, and finish up your third rails, you know and knock 
off all of the targets.  And I was noted and my Spanish expertise was 
noted.

So when I had to be shipped out, I was held over to teach…train 
a battalion of Puerto Ricans in the bayonet and I can speak Spanish.  
I have no recollection doing it by the way, I mean I did it,  but how I 
is…I’m surprised because usually my memory is very good with that sort 
of like…Then I got sent to a Army language school, I was realized the 
Army followed through on my good qualities.

Interviewer: Was you the only individual you knew who took this 
secondary path as someone who spoke a foreign language and was picked?

Franco: Well there’s one other guy who was in my squad.  Happened to go 
to military school, his name at the moment escapes me.  He ended up I 
think sent to Queens College, enlisted a few people.  He met one of the 
girls who had been my classmate and married her.

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Franco: It was pure, his name escapes me for the moment.  He died and 
everything, he sold shoes.

Interviewer: You attended AS…

Franco: It was called the Army Specialized Trainer Group.  I ended up 
being sent to Michigan State and the Colonel in charge of the program 
lined us all up in the gym and there were three groups there.  The 
German, French, and Spanish qualifiers and he said “All you guys came 
here, your ADF qualification language.  Pick another language.”  I 
tossed a coin, I said I’d take German I want to learn the language of 
my enemies.  Then we had six months, eight hours a day of German and 
six hours of language and two hours of culture, history, geography 
including learning German songs, German poetry.  We had a rounded 
education in German, and we were very fortunate because the group that 
was…the group of trainers were led by a German refugee judge whose 
wife was Jewish.  She was a teacher in German, he was knowledgeable, 
and she was a teacher and they set up the program, they were very 
good.  We had a very intensive…effective training program.  I don’t 
know if it that was true of others, this school and this program was 
great.

Interviewer: And how long were you there?

Franco: I was there.  I think we got in July 43, I was there until 
Christmas of 43..six months.  And then.

Interviewer: And no breaks in that training period.

Franco: No, no breaks…Oh yes, weekends.  Weekends were off.  I had a 
girlfriend in Michigan, who I knew in that six months I been there, like 
a freshman at the University of Michigan now Michigan State.  But you 
know as ninety miles away.  Anyhow, comes just before Christmas they give 
two days of exams, one day oral, one day written and they were quite 
extensive.  We took the exams, then we had this pass furlough.  I was 
home two days, I got told to report back to the college and what 
happened after that I was very confused.  The ten guys who did the best 
on that exam were pulled out.  And we ended up…I’ll make it sure we 
ended near Washington D.C., place called Warrington, Virginia where 
they had a secret signal intelligence station and we got there at night 
and we could see the big antenna sticking out of the buildings there.  
Forty, fifty feet tall.  And that was called Vinthill Farms, which until 
three or four years ago was a secret base.  The Army changed the radar 
and the CIA was formed they brought it to Washington, this was what they 
used originally.  Which was Warrington, Virginia which was maybe forty 
‘miles away.  Not a sub ripper?  We stayed there from January to April 
’44  and then we were in a class.  The same ten guys from Michigan State 
and the master sergeant walks into the classroom says, “You, you, you, 
you…”  The same ten guys, “come with me” and marches us into the hall 
and we’re walking down the hall and out of the corner of his mouth he 
says “You guys are going right now to your overseas physicals.  You’re 
flying to London tomorrow.”  Let me tell the impact of that.

Interviewer:  Now at this point you had no idea you would be going over 
to Europe or anything.

Franco: We had no idea.  Hey, we were just in the classroom, you know 
studying code breaking.  I mean...

Interviewer:  So you were no longer studying German at this point?

Franco: No.  Vinthill Farms was code breaking.  German was done.

Interviewer: Were you confident in your language and code breaking skills 
at this point?  When they mentioned that…

Franco: Well, they were flying us to Europe.  So, we had no idea what 
they were going to do.  But we assumed it was something to do with our 
knowledge of German and our code breaking, now…

Interviewer: All ten guys were…

Franco: All ten guys, it’s the same ten.

Interviewer: Were German speakers and code breakers.  So how did this 
medical exam?

Franco: Uhh, the medical exam.  First place, we sit in this room for 
maybe fifteen..twenty minutes.  Finally the door opens and the doctor 
in a white coat looks around “Anybody here with a glass eye?”  “Nope.”  
Closes the door, that was it.  And the next step we went to dental and 
there’s six dentists with chairs and each one fills in their chair.  I 
get the guy looking at me, poking around in my teeth asking me a couple 
of questions.  He’s talking “You know, your right rear molar looks 
pretty badly…I don’t think I have time to fill it.”  Then at the same 
moment he puts forceps in my mouth and yanks the tooth out as he was 
talking.  So I didn’t have time to reach, [laughs] I just..my mouth 
was open and out came the tooth.

Interviewer: And that was the extent of your medical exams?

Franco: That was it.

Interviewer: So, how did you feel?  Did you feel confident…

Franco: I was so surprised, I didn’t feel anything…I was…bloody shocked.

Interviewer: It was relatively superficial to begin with..

Franco: But I did something I wasn’t supposed to do, I called my 
parents.  I said, “listen, I’m at this place, but I can’t get out.  But, 
you can come visit me.” Finally they can come, I could meet them at the 
gate.  But they came from New York and I spent an hour at the gate.  
There was a divider.   The funny thing, I told them “Listen, I’m 
breaking security but we’re flying to London tomorrow.”  They knew we 
were leaving, which created a big problem.  I’ll tell you about it now, 
because it’s part of the story. 

Just at the time we left, which was April..end of April.. Eisenhower for 
security reasons on the invasion put a clamp down on all mail.  He 
didn’t want any mail being sent out, including diplomatic mail, he 
wanted no mail sent out for I don’t know what was it five…six weeks.  
And then when it was sent out there was such backlog, so my parents 
didn’t hear from until me until they got a letter from me from Normandy.  
All my time in England, which was two months they didn’t hear from me.  
And my mother was desperate, she was absolutely in a…she assumed I got 
killed.  The plane went down, it was a secret thing…she was bombarding 
the War Department.  My father thought I couldn’t keep it from him.  
She was absolutely distraught, understandably so.  It appears I haven’t 
written for a few months, then of course the first letters from 
Normandy.  [Laughs]  That was a side issue, but all of this...you 
know… So anyway, we get down to I think it’s Andrews Air Force 
Base…Bowling Field…one of the two, I forget which.  And the ten 
privates, the others who are flying are generals and colonels.  I mean 
we didn’t fly in those days, you went by troop ship.  But, we were 
special.

Interviewer: [Sound lab?]

Franco:  The plane of course, I’ve never been on a plane before.  I was 
sitting with my buddy Teddy Hansen, who’s now in San Diego, quite ill.  
And we took off towards evening and the exhaust flames spit out.  We 
thought the plane was on fire.  I said, “Should we tell the pilot?  
There are flames coming out of the engines.“  It shows how ignorant we 
were.  Then we went the long route we went to Labrador, and we went to 
Greenland, and Iceland, and we end up in Scotland.  We take another 
plane to London and there we were in London, at the airport, no one 
there to greet us.  The same ten guys, we’re sitting on the tarmac and 
some English guy came over…sergeant says, “You know, Yanks.  We were 
going to pick you up, but you know we’re going to serve you some 
chow…some food over there in that building.”

So we walk over, there’s a long line of English guys ready to eat.  We 
started get this smell, they were serving mutton and sprouts.  Now I 
don’t know if you’ve ever had English mutton, it had this stink and 
even through we were hungry, it turned our stomach.  We had this long 
flight, we all felt nauseous so just we got off the line.  Nobody even 
went for dinner.  I’ll never forget that.  

Hey, so the next day we get picked up.  Finally, a truck comes in to 
take to this squadron we are being attached to, called the 3rd Radio 
Squadron Oaklum.  And they were out in Buckingham, 
Buckhamshire…beautiful place…beautiful area.  On the fields of some 
estate, there was a manor house.  We were in the fields you know, tents 
were set up all over the place.  We and the cows.  First thing we did 
when we got there, someone said to us “Go see the first sergeant over 
there at that tent.  And watch out for the cow flop when you go to the 
latrine at night cause it’s all over the place.”

Interviewer:  Probably good for the earth.

Franco: I don’t know if I go to many details.  So we get there and the 
sergeant says, “Hey, I didn’t expect you guys for another week.”  
Difficult,  so he says “There’s a tent over there, go throw your 
belongings there and you have nothing to do want to sleep then.”  I was 
so excited from the tension I didn’t feel the fatigue and so he said, 
“I’ll give you guys a pass if you want to this little town a mile or two 
away called Chaufrand St. Giles.”  I got that on reserve, the home of 
John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost, of course.  We all read his as 
students at Queens.  And on the way down, it’s a beautiful countryside, 
Buckinghamshire, it’s full of gardens.  And there’s a little trail next 
to a little stream and then as I pass there’s little houses with a guy 
clipping his hedges.  And it’s a warm day, it’s April.  Say ought be in 
England lots of Aprils there.  One of the few nice times in England, 
sunny, warm and he says to me “It’s a bit hot Yank.  How would you like 
a beer?”  I say, “Sure.”  He invited me in and said, “Mother, bring out 
two beers.”  There’s a  little garden a little table, we sat down.

Interviewer: So this was someone’s personal home?

Franco: Yeah, it was the gardener’s house, he was clipping his hedges.  
I’m walking by this little lane.

Interviewer: Did you find that generally the reception over there?

Franco: Oh yeah, very much.  The English and the French…we’ll get to 
French later.  So anyway, I spent twenty minutes drinking the beer and I 
say, “Now listen, I walk down to the town and see Milton’s house and 
walking in there.  Here I am one day out of New York and I’m already way 
out in the country.”  And of course as soldiers do when you have time, 
you find your way to the nearest pub.  This is called the Pheasant.  It 
was an old-fashioned English pub it was built around a courtyard and in 
the courtyard was a hayrick.  You walked in one side and you could walk 
across to the other side.  And I walked in there, and the place was 
jammed with soldiers, that’s where soldiers go.  And the soldiers there 
were called WLA, Women’s Land Army because the English had used a lot of 
women from the cities to grow the crops since the men were in the army.  
I always remember walking up to the bar and saying “What’s there to drink 
around here?”  They say, “We have milds and bitters and gin and orange.”  
So I said in my ignorance, “I’ll have one of each.”  Mild was a form of 
beer and gin and orange was gin with some orange juice.  It was orangeade 
not orange juice, we didn’t have orange juice.  And so, I got pretty high 
pretty quickly.  All I remember was that one of those Women Land Army 
ladies and I were in the hayrick.

Interviewer: Not bad.

Franco: And I walked home, I was dizzy, I walked back to the camp and 
plopped on my bed and said “What a marvelous country.”  This was twenty 
four hours after I left New York.  So the next day, the first sergeant 
comes over, there’s four of us.  “I need four of you guys,”  and I’m one 
of the four.  “Come with me,” so we go and he brings us to the rear of 
our mess tent where they all the garbage.  After you’re finished eating, 
you have a mess plate…you got a tin thing.  You throw the food out when 
you’re finished, you take the plate and you scrape it off into the 
garbage bins and then you wash it in some steamy water they put there.  
So we’re standing there and he comes back and gives us four shovels.  
And he says “A guy coming over here in two minutes, he’ll give you 
instructions.” So a few minutes later a British farmer comes over with a 
truck.  He says “Okay boys,  haul these trash buckets up into the back 
of the truck and climb on.”   And we do, haul them up and then we go two 
miles away to this pig farm.  And we stand there on the truck and start 
ladling the slop into the pig thing.  So I remember coming home and 
saying, “This is what they flew us to England for in such a hurry with 
generals and colonels.”

Interviewer:  Were you demoralized or just…

Franco: No it wasn’t because of demoralization.  It was soaking everything 
in.  Everything was a new experience.  I mean, we knew there was an 
invasion coming on, we knew everything was going on exactly.  There was 
that tension or readiness thought the invasion was only six weeks later.  
At the end of April at June 6th.  Of course, then we go train…our training 
started.  We had British instructors, the British knew the whole score.  
We had some of the best British instructors who were sent to train us by…

Interviewer: Was it the Royal Air Force?

Franco: Yeah it was the Royal Air force by Churchill.  The chief English 
officer in charge of the training was …we had two…three officers and some 
enlisted men training the whole squadron.  Later on by the way this English 
officer wrote a letter of commendation six months later that we were the 
most effective unit on the continental Europe, intercepting and breaking 
German messages.

Interviewer: The Third?

Franco: The Third Radio Squadron.  We had learned more than our 
instructors, we had learned…

Interviewer: Is this your first training with wireless intercept?

Franco: Yeah, well I’m not doing the wireless intercept.  The radio 
operators, they do the intercepting, they do the direction finding.  
Cause once you get a signal, you can hone in on the signal and find the 
direction of which the plane sending the message is going and now you 
know the direction you can find the height the altitude, you know it’s 
very important.  But when they finally hooked onto a sender, they took 
the message down in code, Morse code.  Then they brought it to another 
caravan where code breakers were.  We had to break those messages, decrypt 
them.  That was our job, which we did quite well.  We had to do it.

Interviewer: How did you do it?

Franco: There are tricks in every trade.

Interviewer: Do you think your training in Washington was sufficient?

Franco: The training in Washington was good in general.  What we learned 
from the British in those four five weeks was far more important.  But it 
was based on what we learn, it’s like studying basic arithmetic and then 
getting into algebra and then….  Algebra after algebra comes…

Interviewer:  Trigonometry.

Franco:  The one you learn in college, calculus.  But the British taught 
us some of the tricks of the trade.

Interviewer:   Now were you divided up into detachments?

Franco: Yeah, it was a complicated…the Third Radio were trained to go 
along with the Armies that was going to invade France.  And we ended 
up…there was a detachment for each air force.  Because we have an air 
force attached to each army.  The first army under Bradley had the 9th 
Tactical Air Force and our detachment B was assigned to them.  Detachment C
 was assigned to the 3rd Army of Patton and Detachment D was formed later 
 and was assigned to the 9th Army of General Simpson which was the 29th 
 Tac.  But each army had a tactical air force and one of our detachments 
 were attached.  So after we got to Normandy, A,B, and C Detachments when 
 we broke out of Normandy we all went with different armies.  So we 
 criss-crossed very often, but we never got together as a unit except 
 that our commanding officer.  We had an headquarters detachment, which 
 had eight or ten people.

Interviewer:  So you had an adjunct and executive and some people.

Franco:  They were in charge of everybody.  Because each one worked on its 
own.  Detachment A was not doing the intercept…a intercept I must say. B, 
C, and D were listening to German pilots.  Which was mostly German fighter 
pilots, because they had radio telephone.  Other German planes, the 
bombers, the reconnaissance planes, the multi-engine Navy transports…all 
those radio operators were sending messages in code.  That was Detachment 
A, my job.  So we were super over the others, the others weren’t 
really..their radios were also of limited ranged.  We got pick up messages 
from Norway and Russia.  We had shortwave radios and we were picking them 
up.  Because my job was to break them and then we were very successful 
and very exciting messages.  We were in the war for an year and a half so 
a lot of things happened.

Interviewer:  Well before arriving on the continent when you’re still in 
England.  When did you become aware that you would be sent to France?

Franco: Oh, it was almost immediately.

Interviewer: And then…

Franco: We were told our function would be to work along with the armies 
when they got to France.  

Interviewer:  When they got to France.

Franco: Actually while we were training with the British, we were training 
with actual German messages right then coming from France.  I mean they 
were coming from the continent, so we were actually dealing live in-time 
messages as part of our training.  And we kept it going when we got to 
France, no changes.  We knew the frequencies the Germans were sending on, 
we had our basically what they called cribs.  A crib is a clue as how you 
can break a message.  Certain amount of cribs which helped you.

Interviewer: Now tell me about your squadron.  What was the demographic 
make up of the…

Franco: Ohh, guys from all over.  We had Southerners, Texans, we had three 
Indians who were marvelous guys except when they got drunk.  They became 
menaces, one guy almost killed me but that’s another story.  But it was a 
complete…and you had unfortunately the Southerners…  Let me put it this 
way, in the intelligence group were guys mostly from the East-Northeast.  
One of our officers was an excellent Southerner, but he was a professor 
at the University of Chicago and he was really a…. There were two guys 
who originally from Chicago by coincidence and one of excellent officers 
was the son of the governor of Vermont, Mortimer Crockler.  Whom in the 
town of Crockler, Vermont there was a marble named after that family.  
He was a very excellent officer, and I got very close to him.

Interviewer: And could you describe your superiors?

Franco: Well, aside from Crockler and Davidson who was the Southerner, 
who by the way, specialty was 17th century French literature.  [laughs]  
He spoke a very literary French.   By the way I picked up French when I 
landed in Normandy and I ended up speaking it quite fluently.  It was 
the language of the street, I picked up street French fluently, but 
that’s besides the point.  But the messages…makeup.  What happened was 
that the jobs would hire sergeants, the supply sergeants, the mess 
sergeants, the motor pool sergeants.  They’re all sergeants, staff 
sergeants, master sergeants.  Because they had been around in the army 
before and they got transferred to this outfit.  Everybody’s new in this 
outfit and they had the rank and we were the privates.  We were the 
corps, we were the intelligence corps, which is the reason for the whole 
squadron, us ten guys which became twelve.  Two guys were there already.  
We were the ones with the least rank, I didn’t become a corporal until 
the war almost over.  [laughs] And I was doing major work.  But that’s 
typical of the army.

Interviewer: Was there ever any tension between your squadron being 
that combined?

Franco: Oh yeah, there was always north and south...Southerners.  And 
that we were a Northerner...a New Yorker, and a Jew that was the three 
things you know.  You didn’t need to be a Jew, but just a Northerner 
and a New Yorker that was already difficult.

Interviewer: Did you personally encounter any hostility for being 
Jewish or…

Franco: Not so much that it was in basic training.  There were fights, 
fist fights in Georgia.  I was involved with some of the other guys.

Interviewer: So you arrived in France after the D-Day invasion.

Franco: Yes.

Interviewer: before you arrived though, was your squadron involved at 
all during the planning…

Franco: The planning for D-Day?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Franco: Yes, our commanding officer whose name was Turkel.  He was a 
major who became a colonel.  Very great guy, he was briefed…what do 
you call he was bigoted.  To be bigoted was to be informed about the 
invasion.  And when he was informing the squadron, because he picked 
all the members of the squadron.  He had the right to pick whomever 
he wanted because the squadron was only formed in March.  No the 
squadron was formed…no at the end of March...April.  Yeah, and April 
was when they sent for us.  And he had to put this squadron together 
from different pieces in time for the invasion.  So he had a hell of 
a job and they realized they gave him what they called a lucky 
letter…no, I forgot the phrase.  But he had the right to take anyone 
he wanted to take, plus the guy had to agree.  The officers, his 
commanding officers couldn’t stop him.  Our major came and said 
“Listen, we want to see your guys on it.”  And he would pick guys 
from all over.  He got hold of some of the officers  who were on 
personal interview and some of the men.  He would take from the 
enlisted men too.  And he spoke four languages.  They had some very 
brilliant guys in that squadron.

Interviewer: So, he was well aware of what was happening.  Was there 
any…did he give any indication of when D-Day was…

Franco: Nah, nobody…I don’t think they were told.  They were told 
about the plans but not the date.

Interviewer: So after D-Day is launched you arrived.

Franco: Err, I probably got there… You know it’s confusing because 
we left England just after that big Channel storm, my group.  Our 
first group was Detachment B landed on three days after D-Day.  
They were off-shore on D-Day.  They were in a transport hanging 
around.

Interviewer: Were they actively trying to intercept…

Franco: No.

Interviewer: …from off-shore?

Franco: No.

Interviewer: They were just trying to..

Franco: They had to get to the shore and set up their radio and their 
landlines.  They were called landlines, which was a lot of crock but 
that’s another story.  But they had the first casualties when landing, 
they got into.  The only guy killed in the squadron  were the guys who 
got wounded but that’s a whole story itself.  Uhh, I left after the big 
storm on the 18th of June and we left after that.  Then, something 
happened to our ship.  A torpedo hit a mine or…I don’t know so we were 
in South Hampton at the pier and we lost our turn.  We were supposed 
get…our boat didn’t come in.  So we got shunted aside while other boats 
came in.  In fact we were the first ones of Detachment A to go over and 
the section of Detachment A came over while we were still at the pier.  
We were there three days waiting and the second attachment came and their 
boat was there  and they took off so they landed before we did.  So, I 
finally landed on July 1st, I left one place but I hadn’t been at the 
other place and of course the second echelon.  We called them echelons, 
of Detachment A had already preceded us and the First echelon was 
hanging around.  It was a very bad time to just…the Germans had started 
that bombing with buzz bombs and they were going all over the place.  We 
can’t go anywhere, we’re at this port and there’s no place to sleep.  
It’s concrete piers and I ended up sleeping in a toilet, you know with 
benches there.  It was a very uncomfortable time.  You were neither here 
nor there and nobody equipped for handling it, you know.  We’re hanging 
around.

Interviewer: Were you nervous about going to the continent?

Franco: No, I was more upset about.  We were all eager to go.  I mean 
stupid, I mean we didn’t know it hell.  So finally we got a boat, that 
took us at night. It came in late, by the time we got to Normandy it 
was evening and we arrived offshore.  It was very calm, the English 
Channel wasn’t in one of its rages.  It’s calm, we were on a big boat.  
In the morning, we were going down the rope ladder to the landing craft.  
All of a sudden, at one o clock in the morning everything’s quiet 
everybody’s on deck with the form.  All of sudden the horizon explodes 
with guns and tracers, I mean it was the Fourth of July a little early.  
One of the guys suddenly said [affects Southern accent] “Am I early for 
the Fourth of July?”  I’ll never forget that and it was a real show.  
The Germans used to come over at one o clock.  They didn’t have any 
strength so they would sneak in bombers you know here and there.  Never 
together but one or two from here..to spread our defensive fire.  And 
the goal was drop mines in Omaha Beach area which was a major discharge 
with all our troops and all our supplies.  We hadn’t captured Cherborgen 
or Le Meuse and Utah Beach was a much smaller beach.  Omaha was the mean 
place and stuff was coming in like rations and the Germans were trying 
to interrupt that.  So they dropped these mines because mines blow up 
ships and that’s another story.  A few weeks later, when we were there 
what happened was they dropped a mine on us instead…that’s another story.  
But uh, that was a tremendous night we all.. Then of course comes the 
morning, we’re ready to go into these landing crafts and we look around 
and we see all these sunken ships with the masts and the funnels are 
sticking up.  Dozens of them sunken, we don’t know if they did that on 
purpose, we assumed that the Germans sunk all the ships that landed.  
What the fuck are we getting into, you know what I mean?  But at the 
same time they kept us in.  Nobody said anything, everybody just looked.  
Eyes wide…then of course I go down the rope ladder.  I was trained in 
the infantry so we did a lot of that.  I had no problem with that and I 
was ready to jump into the landing craft maybe a three to four foot 
jump.  You know get down to rope ladder and then there’s this spot but 
you sort of leap and you’re in the….  It wasn’t that difficult, but 
some son of a bitch above me drops his rifle, hits me on the helmet 
just as I’m jumping.  I ended up falling between the landing craft 
and the mother ship…

[Side A Ends]

[Side B Begins]

Interviewer: You were describing going from one ship to the next.

Franco: Yeah, back and all of the guys were going to land.  I wasn’t 
looking to the beach, I was looking behind me to the guys who got into 
the boat, trying to find the guy who dropped his rifle so I could kill 
him.

Interviewer: You never found him?

Franco: Nah, whoever it was, wasn’t owning up to it.  I found out 
someone told me later, he tried to smuggle a radio under his jacket.  
He couldn’t juggle it, radios by those days were not very small they 
were much bigger they had bags.  He was trying to hold it under his 
jacket and he couldn’t juggle the rifle and this, so he dropped the 
rifle.

Interviewer: So you made it to the beach safely?

Franco: Yeah, made it to the beach safely.  I always remember 
seeing all the things that were going on and I remember I get to the top 
of the hill because I remember we got a truck and I was in the truck with 
a chief I don’t remember his name.  Then we got into the main road and 
we look left and right and the French had these little road markers in 
blue.  I saw it says Coleville with an arrow to the right.  Coleville is 
one of the three…four villages that formed Omaha Beach.  Vierville, 
Coleville, San-Lorand, and…  We turned right and we ended up in a little 
village a mile or two away called Creek Villaund Desand, which is a 
village with maybe two hundred people maybe eighteen-twenty houses and a 
church.  The church had a spire and this spire is what guided the Rangers 
who landed in Point New York to their landing.   It was their landmark 
and it was a landmark for us too because normally it was just a lot of 
flat ground farming area with theses hedges of course, the hedgerows.  
But we don’t see from one field to another, the spire…the church was 
your guardian landmark.  I never went to the church at all, in all the 
time I was there until the end of the war.

Interviewer: So you started setting your landlines?  When did you start 
setting up the landlines?

Franco: Oh, well the landlines were set up really to pass our information.  
Because when we broke a message, there was six or seven groups who wanted 
to know what we did.  One was Supreme Headquarters…Shafe, one was Ninth 
Air Force which was our immediate forces,  one was AI4F…Air 
Intelligence…Department of Air Intelligence which had to do with signal 
intelligence so they would get a message from us, and Cheadle another 
place in Northern England where the RAF had its main headquarters for 
signal intelligence.

So Cheadle, AI4F, Ninth Air Force, Supreme Headquarters, and maybe a few 
others but those were the ones I remember got all our messages.  And we 
used to have also two RAF motorcyclists on duty outside the crypto 
caravan.  So when a message was broken and we thought it was important 
we could give it to these guys and they could take it by motorcycle 
direct and we didn’t have to use a radio or anything else because things 
were very close.  The whole beachhead was only thirty miles wide and 
only five or six miles deep.

Interviewer: So you mentioned that Germans were flying at this point but 
not in numbers but at least…

Franco: They were almost rarely coming over in daytime.  One of the 
bizarre things happened, right next to where we were in Creekville, they 
established the first landing strip for US fighters.  They had P-51s 
coming in which were the Mustangs and we were maybe two hundred yards 
from them.  Land was precious in Normandy, every field had something 
in…soldiers, supplies, I mean jammed.  So one day, a German fighter 
plane during the day comes around lands at the strip, obviously they 
realized it and then they took off.  And we had a lot of anti-aircraft, 
but that was for the night because the Germans only came over in the 
night.  Nobody thought they would come during the day, they would never 
come over they were too weak, especially the fighters.  This guy landed 
and then took off, it was very bizarre.  But the other thing that 
happened, the Germans would come over at night as I said to drop mines in 
the landing areas.  And one night, they came after 12…after 1, because 
Normandy… England was double summer time.  You have light til to 10:30 
to 11 o clock at night, in fact our fighter planes used to make their 
last forays at 10:30 at night.  They come zooming in…you always thought 
they would land on your head cause the time they got down they were right 
over your head.  But we got used to that, they were taking off and 
zooming back.  Anyway, this night because every night we acted as we had 
a Fourth of July every night and the real reasons we kept our helmets on 
all the time, not because the German shelling cause our own ack-ack our 
own artillery fire would rain down on our head.  [Laughs]  Any way this 
plane, one plane was low and was hit.  Its tail was on fire, by the way 
we were in the next field Detachment B listening to the German pilots 
heard this guy said in effect “I’m hit and I’m losing altitude.  I got 
to jettison my load.”  He wrote this down in his memoir, this same guy.  
As he said that, I wrote it down, there’s a huge explosion in the field 
next to me which was my field.  “Duck!”  The guy was getting in-time 
intelligence.  Anyway, I wasn’t on duty so I was in my foxhole and I’m 
watching this plane coming low and I see what looks like a small man, 
two parts to him a top…torso and legs you know.  I didn’t know it was 
a mine.  Parachutes, they dropping them by parachutes and then the 
thing hits and it hits near one of our radio vans blew it up.  There 
was a tremendous…and the effect of a mine is pressure.  The pressure 
breaks the hulls of vessels in the water.  In the air its dissipated 
but it created a tremendous wave of air some guys who had just got into 
their tent and went to bed and the tent was blown away and he ended up 
being blown into a bramble bush and he was nude.  I was in this thing 
and I thought an elephant stepped on me.  The pressure was…you lose 
your breath and then I staggered up stupidly.  I looked at the back of 
my hole and see where the plane was going and I could see it going 
another mile or two which was right at the beaches.  We were only about 
a mile or two inland and we could see it going down.   It must have 
crashed in the water.  But as I’m looking a piece of our aircraft fire 
gets into my left eye.  As I was looking and it was two o clock in the 
morning and there was nothing I could do.  You know there’s something 
in your eye and it feels like its enormous and I wait until 6 o clock 
in the morning and I go to the First Sergeant and “Hey, I got this 
thing…”  I tell him what happened last night, the whole squadron…guys 
were blown all over the place.  We had no casualties, the other guys 
were scratched and I had this thing, so he says “Go down, there’s a 
CCS half a mile down the road.”  CCS is a casualty clearing station 
and “go down there and someone will take care of you.”  I walk down, 
I get to the clearing station and all the wounded are lying down in 
stretchers.  Guys were moaning, bloody bandages, right at the front 
and there’s a line for the walking wounded.  If my eye wasn’t 
hurting me and I would have turned back.  So I finally get to a 
guy..medic sitting on an ammo crate and I tell him what’s wrong and 
he says “Okay.”  He takes two Q-Tips, I’ll never forget this…and 
puts my eye back and takes a look and says “Uhh, lucky I see it.  
It’s right on the surface.”  He just takes it out like that with a 
Q-Tip and then he said something I’ll never forget, “I want to show 
you, I took it out because your eyes will be so irritated for next 
week or ten days that you’ll feel that it’s still in there.”  He 
was right, for a week I felt like…he didn’t give me anything, there 
was nothing to treat it with.  That was it, the irritation was 
there and I had to wait until it was over, but that was my wound. 

Interviewer: [Laughs]

Franco: For which I did not a Purple Heart.

Interviewer: Okay, so during this time what your average duty 
day in, day out?

Franco: Day-in, day-out we would get on duty messages would be 
brought in and we would try to break them.  And we had our crews.  
Now this is hard to do without being technical, the Germans were 
very methodical and very.  They would change their code every day, 
and then they changed their codes…they’d change their frequencies 
at which the operators would use.  They had a whole chart, so you 
couldn’t get used to a guy showing up at Seven-Seventy KCs and 
you recognize your guy because you recognized his fist.  He 
would change all the time.  You would have to chase all over the 
spectrum, by the time you got on to him you missed the whole 
day’s messages.  The British had figured out what the method the 
Germans use to change the code name and the frequency of each 
operator, they figured it out.  Then they found out that at one 
o'clock in the morning in Norway which is the land of midnight 
sun, the Germans had a weather squadron called Weather Squadron 
One, in German it’s Vester Einst…Veterstappel Einst…Vester Einst 
we called it.  And those guys would go out early in the morning 
and go on a preordained route every day and take weather 
measurements.  It was very important because this was the weather 
for Europe for the day.  They were getting it first because our 
northernmost place was Iceland, they were at the northern end of Norway 
which is near the Arctic Circle.  So the measures were sent out in a 
preformed way.  We knew the intersection…the cross we called it.  
Latitude longitude, each spot we plotted them out with our direction 
finders and their messages was always the same.  The first message was 
wind speed, the second was temperature, the third was a weather report.  
So we knew whatever the code was, the third group was weather and the 
fourth I believe was…  So we could break the damned message almost as 
fast as they could send it and the value of that.  Not only was it 
valuable information for our weather people it was the code of the 
day.  Which was going to be used at Six o clock in the morning when 
the German bomber planes would go up and the brettle plane.  That 
was the code they used all day.  So we had to start the program at 
three in the morning so we could break their messages with relative 
ease…the whole day!  So our crib was Vester Einst and one day Hugh 
Davidson who was our French professor was on duty and he had a call 
from Ninth Air Force who was just commanded by Hoyt Vandenberg, I 
don’t know if you’ve heard of him.  Vandenberg Air Force Base, 
that’s named after him, he was the new commander of the Ninth Air 
Force and he was very interested in this stuff.  And he said that, 
“Why are we letting this guy.  We know he flies.  Why don’t we go 
and shoot him down?”  And Hugh Davidson was on duty and ran to 
headquarters spoke with the colonel and the colonel went to him.  
“We can’t shoot him down, he’s our golden goose.  He’s the guy we 
use.” So that was one of the little…

Interviewer: And how long did you continue monitoring?

Franco: Oh, that went on for the whole war.  Norway was in German hands until the end of the war.  We never invaded Norway.

Interviewer: And how did you make sure the Germans didn’t figure out you…

Franco: They didn’t.

Interviewer: They never found out?

Franco: Yeah.  Listen, they found out it’s something we did, stupidity.  
Something we made our share of stupidity.  But the other thing…Detachment 
B broke a message…I’m not sure Detachment B or the regiment.  When we 
landed in Southern France which was August 15, the German Nineteenth Army 
was defending Southern France, based in Marseilles.  Soon realized they 
were going to have to retreat and we were coming out of Normandy by 
that time across the Rhea.  And they got the army command, the top 
brass got nervous and requested that the homeland send them transport 
planes to fly them out.  

And we broke that message and more importantly we broke the reply from 
the homeland saying, “Yes we going to send transport planes to these three 
airfields.”  I remember it was Cognac, and one was Boursch, and the third 
one and we’re sending them at this and this time.  So this message was 
given to Vandenberg and he of course gave him a sword.  So he sent 
squadrons of fighter planes over each of these air bases hovering in the 
clouds.

When the German transports arrived and all these officers got into them.  
He let them take off and as they took off he shot them all down.  So we 
destroyed most of the headquarters of an army, the German Nineteenth Army.  
Which was a huge coup and normally you do you work, your messages are sent 
and you don’t hear what happens.  But the day after that we hear that 
General Vandenberg is coming to inspect us.

Of course, by that time we had just gotten out of Normandy.  We were on our 
way towards Paris, stopping in the fields to set up our antennas.  
Everybody was running, the Germans were running away and we were running after them 
and it was a period of tremendous flux.  The month of August was the 
month of the war for us.  So he’s coming to inspect us, we’re all 
pretty scrungy.  Hadn’t have a bath, so we cleaned right up.  I 
remember he walks into the caravan and I’m standing at the door, he’s 
a very handsome tall general.  He says “I want you guys to know that 
the work you did is fantastic.   And we finally found out that we got 
credit for these  I’m recommending you for the Presidential Unit 
Citation.”  And all the equipment that we couldn’t get, he says, 
“Whatever you need, you talk to this guy in my office. ”  And all 
the spare parts we needed, we didn’t get we got.  You know, 
everything turned around we were his favorites and we got the Unit 
Citation six months later.

Interviewer: Wow.  So you’re on the move at this point.

Franco: Yeah, well we had moved out of Creekville.  We moved a 
couple of days we went down to a place called Grandville.  Then 
we went to Croutos… Mount Dushon.   Then we passed through Antlas, 
everybody was going to Antlas because that was the key place where 
if you fanned out towards Paris, towards northern Normandy, 
towards Southern France.  That was the village at the bottom of 
the peninsula.  Yeah, that was a famous place where the Navy…the 
USS Texas shooting its 16 inch guns had fired a shell that hit the 
intersection of two main streets in that barrage. 

There was a huge shell hole and all the traffic had to go around it…inch 
their way along it.  On the left side, I’ll never forget this there is a 
tree still standing and maybe twenty or thirty feet up in the tree is a 
cow.  In full walk, you know Cow walking south of the direction we’re 
going…everybody looks at the cow.  He was blown up there by the 
explosion.  I don’t know how long it was there but it was over a period 
of days but it looked perfectly normal.  Everybody been through Antlas 
at that time and remembers the cow up in the tree.  That was the…

Interviewer: Landmark.

Franco: The landmark.  I mean I’m all of these out there because 
these are things only guys who were there knew and remember.  
Anyhow, I‘ve doing a lot of talking.

Interviewer: So when did you arrive in Paris?

Franco: Ah, I’m not sure.  Detachment B got to Paris because Major 
Turkell had gotten some way got permission for them to go into Paris 
the day the Air Force to Take over the Eiffel Tower.  It was a 
marvelous antenna for them.  We came a day or two later, but that was 
the liberation of Paris.  That was the twenty-fifth…we came around the 
twenty-eighth twenty ninth.  But the liberation was going on for ten 
days.  It was not just the fighting but the celebration after the 
fighting.  We actually got sent to a chateau, B took over the Eiffel 
Tower.

A took over the chateau overlooking the Seine in a place called La Sou 
San Creux.  Beautiful chateau, the Germans had been…another German unit 
doing code breaking and we knew where they were.  We took over right 
after they left.  We came right on their heels.  I remember the French 
who lived around there saying “What are you guys doing?”  So “Well 
we’re communication guys.”  They said “You know, we know what the 
Germans were doing.”  So they sort of winked and we didn’t say anything, 
but they sort of knew that we came right afterwards and maybe we were 
doing what the Germans were doing.  Which we were.

Interviewer: So how did the local population reaction to you?

Franco: Oh, open arms.  Yeah, they couldn’t do enough for us and they had 
very little.  But this chateau, it’s called the Chateau de la Chatelaine 
which means the Chestnut Grove and chestnuts they had plenty of.  And the 
locals used to make chestnut cakes and dip them in cream and milk from 
cows they made whipped cream out of it . It was delicious.  It was the 
period, it was at the end of August and September when the chestnuts you 
know.  And they arranged these meetings where we met the local girls and 
they called it the tay don son.  They would invite us over for tea and 
had some old records and we would dance with the girls.

Interviewer:  Did you have some liberty to buddying up with the locals 
and…

Franco: Oh yes, we worked on shifts.  So on the off shifts you did what 
you wanted.  So out of twenty four hour shifts, eight hours each.  Of 
course we were going to Paris that was the thing [laughs], the local 
girls were second because they were nice.  I mean Paris was much more 
interesting.  But I met a girl there that I still see, she’s now in a 
home.  But I see her and her grandchildren…children and grandchildren.  
Still in touch with their whole family.

Interviewer:  So you were able to form a…

Franco: Oh yes.  I mean we had a very close relationship.  For a while, I 
thought romantically you know it would be nice to stay in Paris after the 
war.  You know, the family was so receptive but I realized they were 
different people.  We became very good friends, I talked to her last year 
when I was in France.  She’s in a home and she’s chat with my wife a few 
times.  We’re all friends.   But when I called on the phone and I say 
“Christiane how are you?”  She says, “Arnold.”  She knew my voice right 
away.  You know, we go back 65 years.

Interviewer: How was this…you think this was unique to your situation?  
Or was this typical of the Americans to meet locals and…

Franco: I think it was typical.  I don’t think it’s odd.  Any soldiers 
going into a new town where the population is willing…more than willing, 
they’re happy to receive you.  By the way this goes on today.  In spite 
of all the talk of the French.  An American veteran of World War II is 
the most honored man you can make.  I’ve been back…I was back three 
times last year.  I gave a lecture in a French high school, about D-Day 
and the landing in Normandy.  Four hundred students and I’m 
received…not just me because I speak French.  Any American soldier I 
think they can’t do enough for you.   And it’s their grandchildren who 
are doing it now.  Our generation is gone, like us.

Interviewer: So it’s a tradition passed down.

Franco: To give you an idea after the war, on the French and all other 
prisoners it was far more severe.  It left reverberations that go down 
generations, not like here.  I mean, World War II you talk about 
someone who was a kid, “Oh yeah, we had rationing…you know.  My father 
was an air raid warden.”  I mean, they remember it because that was 
unusual, but that was the extent of the unusualness.  They here lived 
five years through bombardments…war…and privations and that’s a 
different…that echoes.  The grandchildren know about, I think they get 
in their blood.

Interviewer: Now was the physical damage pretty obvious when you arrived 
in Paris?

Franco: Oh, Paris was not that damaged, Normandy was destroyed.  Oh god, 
we got through San Lou, it was a constant cloud of dust.  The buildings 
were razed and all this concrete dust…we drove through dust.  The dust 
was there, it didn’t go away the wind didn’t blow it.  I think it blew 
it away and more dust came up.  The town was just razed.  We went to a 
little place called Baiyur, Baiyur was only minorly damaged and we used 
to sneak over to the British sector.  We’d sneak in there because they 
had some stores you could buy stuff.

Interviewer:   Now why you’re in Paris, what kind of work are you doing 
there?

Franco: Same work.

Interviewer: You’re doing the same work?

Franco: We had this…look at that picture over there.  I want to show you 
something.  That castle, you see the tower over here…fourth floor.  The 
top floor there had an outdoor turret opening and that’s where we broke 
our code.  There was the fireplace in the big circular room, marvelous.  
In the morning if you walk out you could see Paris in the distance and 
Sacre Fleur which means the sun would hit it and glisten off its golden 
dome, it was fantastic.

Interviewer: And prior arriving in Paris, you’re constantly setting up, 
breaking down, and moving.

Franco: Yeah.

Interviewer: How long do you stay in Paris?

Franco: Oh, in La San Seine Clu we stayed there…Attachment A after that 
the end of August…September.  I think we were there until February.  
So we went through the whole Battle of the Bulge, we were there.  Even 
though we were very involved there in the Battle of the Bulge by our 
code work.  We weren’t physically there at the Battle of the Bulge.  
Other detachments by the way were, B and D were very heavily involved.

Interviewer: They were closer to the front?

Franco: They were in Belgium and Holland right at the border.  But 
that brings up one of the most important messages of the war we 
had…we were involved with.  On December 14 or 15, which one of the 
morning we get a message in a code we could break.  It was a code 
used by the Germans to sent messages to their anti-aircraft units 
and they had plenty of them.  It was certain code they used just for 
those guys and it was a very short message saying “Ein di vooting to” 
which was a German transport.

The airfield I remember catapult launches maybe hundred miles behind 
the front and coming across the front with Belgium there they gave us 
coordinates.  We could see from our maps, the area of Monchelle and 
returning by the same route.  That was the message, Leaving at 4 o'clock 
at the morning…2 o'clock whatever it was coming back.  Then for the 
first time in the war in they repeated the message, so if the operator 
got down wrong and that ninety was not really ninety it could have been 
an incorrection or he heard it wrong or static you know crackling who 
knows what. 

And it was repeated ninety, and everybody’s eyes popped, everyone who 
was on duty…the midnight shift.  And the officer on duty again Davidson, 
he sent the message on and said during the war the Germans never sent 90 
Air Force planes out.  We assumed it was a paratroop operation.  What 
else could it be?  Got to all these units you know, Shea, Air Intelligence 
London, and all that.  Everybody acknowledged, you had to acknowledge 
receipt…matching receipt.  You can’t say you got it otherwise, that’s all.  
Never heard a word.  The next day the Germans dropped paratroopers, 
started the Battle of the Bulge and what happened was the story itself.  

The Germans, now by pure coincidence Detachment B is in the area where 
they’re dropping the paratroopers…not the Detachment, but the direction 
finding guys who have to be four or five miles away from the main base.  
Because you had to establish a base line in order to get your triangulation 
to correctly find them.  They need one van over here and one five miles 
away and the one on the five miles away was just where the Germans were 
dropping the paratroopers and that’s coincidence.  And we break the 
message but we don’t know where they’re landing…nobody knows.

Now Captain Silverstein was in command of Detachment B, by the way his 
wife I saw this weekend…he died…his wife I saw in Chicago after dinner.  
He doesn’t know about the message even through we may have sent all our 
Detachments our messages.  In the morning his relief team that goes to 
relieve the direction finders from Joliet which was where they were to 
Barack Besheder which was a high point in Belgium.  They see German 
paratroopers alongside in the woods…alongside the road.  So they drive 
up to the direction team and goes there and the guard on duty says, “Guys 
walking around the woods.  They look like they have British uniforms on.”  
The German paratroopers had on uniforms like British.  “I don’t think 
their British so I’m not doing anything.”  So he said, “Okay, ignore 
them.”  So they replaced them, the new crew came on and the old crew left 
and went back and reported back about the paratroops.  

Silverstein of course doesn’t know, he thinks the Germans are after him 
because of secret stuff so he calls Ninth Air Force and says “Hey 
paratroopers.”  They of course, by that time were getting reports of 
what’s going on.  They said “Don’t do anything, sit and wait for orders.”  
Meanwhile he’s getting more and more nervous and they’re bringing in 
some more paratroopers.  You know guys all over the place, they supposed 
they dropped 1,200.  They didn’t, they dropped maybe 300.  That’s another 
story.  He doesn’t wait and he takes off that night, meanwhile activities 
starts German planes come over and start bombing, artillery is going, 
the whole battle.  He takes off on his own, he doesn’t wait for orders.  
He joins Detachment B who’s up near the Dutch border whose also not under 
attack but they also see…there’s over an ninety mile front, there’s action 
all over the place.

Now, this is what happened to the Third Radio Squadron.  Detachment A 
broke the message, by the way we found a British similar unit also broke 
the message.  So we weren’t the only one who told them, but nothing is 
done…typical.  Years later I’m trying to write this book, “Codes of 
Victory.”  I interviewed various guys, my memory was quite good.  
Davidson, I went to interview him in Dayton, Ohio.  Had no memory of the 
message at all and of course other guys who knows.  After a while I 
started doubting myself, maybe it was a figment of only my imagination.  
I wasn’t on duty by the way, I didn’t mention.  I came on duty at 8 
o’clock but I read the message, it was there.

Interviewer:  And you never found anyone to confirm?

Franco: No, until 1996 when the NSA finally released a bunch of documents 
from the National Archives and my favorite informant in Washington a man, 
Butney called me to say “Hey, a bunch of documents are being released.  
You’re going to find good stuff to mine.” And I said, “I don’t know what 
I’m going to find.”  And I went to Washington and ordered a bunch of 
documents…went for a few hundred dollars and they sent it to me.

Over the months I was reading this pile of documents and Christmas of 96 
I’m at my country home around the fire it’s snowing outside.  As I’m 
reading the documents and the documents says “Prior intelligence 
indications that the Germans planned for the Ardennes invasion.”  And 
I’m reading and reading and all of sudden there’s a paragraph, “One of 
the clearest indications we had was the message received from Detachment 
A.”  And they repeat, “Ninety planes could be two things.”  Well I got so 
fucking excited I jumped up and ran up to my wife.  We had the fire going 
on and I’m reading  it and my wife is reading a book and she says I’m 
going crazy.  I jump up and I’m running around screaming and yelling.  
“That’s the very…they gave us the exact number!”  So that was a sixty 
five year vindication of memory. 

Interviewer: So throughout the battle of the Bulge you remained in…

Franco: Yes

Interviewer: Paris?

Franco: We were not exposed, Detachment A.  All we had to do of course 
was..they were afraid of German paratroopers so we had to do guard duty 
in this freezing weather.  We never forgot that cause we had to do four 
hours off and then two hours rest and then four hours on.  It was 
miserable weather, that we remember and of course all sorts security but 
we weren’t faced with like Detachment B had it and Detachment D.  But 
even they escaped it because they took off.

Interviewer: And did you remain in Paris until the end of the war?

Franco: No, we left in February and went on to Rhemes.  Cause by that time, 
Supreme Headquarters Shafe had become very interested in our work.  They 
wanted us more than Ninth Air Force, Detachment A.  B, C, and D were still 
with Ninth because they were doing the interception of the German fighter 
planes.  We were doing much more work than that.  We were getting more 
strategic information because the rest were breaking, although tactical 
had to do with movement of German planes…all sorts of kinds of things 
which was valuable to Shafe.

Even though they weren’t using ENIGMA which was the highest code, they’re 
using tactical codes.  But the information we got from tactical codes 
were valuable.  Like the information about the paratroopers.  They didn’t 
get it from anywhere else but we broke the message.  Which if they had 
paid attention to this tactical code breaking would have given one day 
warning.  So Shafe realized we had a value as an adjunct to the ENIGMA.  
So from then on they wanted us near so when they moved to Rhemes we moved 
to Rhemes.   And when they went to Germany, we went to Germany and we 
were in the town three or four miles away near Frankfurdel Mine.  It was 
a town called Vanshilda.  It was a small village.

Interviewer: What was your experiences actually inside?

Franco:  Inside what?

Interviewer: Inside Germany, what was your experiences?

Franco: Well inside Germany, I was not being in Germany in the first place.  
I had a lot of antagonism with the Germans, both political and personal.  
Paris I seen what happened, I found members of my family who had escaped 
Europe.  Of course I spoke fluent German, but first thing we got to this 
little town.   Had a list of Germans who were Nazis and told what they 
did…this guy was an informer, this guy was a Gestapo leader, this guy was 
a Jew harasser.  Can you imagine that?  The guy had a title of just 
harassing Jews, looking for them and finding them.  I thought I had a 
list by the way, I kept a thin paper I can hardly read the words here.

Interviewer: What was your reaction upon seeing them?

Franco: Well, we captured some of these guys.  We go around, we had their 
addresses and we put them in jail.  Two days later we get a message from 
Franklin, “Release them.”

Interviewer: No reason?

Franco: Eh, there was a reason.  The reason was that these guys were useful 
in running the town.  Without them you might have chaos.

Interviewer: So did you have any personal encounters with German citizens?

Franco: Yes we did have.  Those of us who spoke fluent German we were 
sought after by the Germans and they wanted to get to know us for obvious 
reasons because of favors.  So there was one bar…it was a civilian’s as 
well as soldiers.  We had our own, there was no mixing for a while…no 
fraternization.  But then it got eased off.  I met some Germans, it 
wasn’t a particularly happy time.

Interviewer: No.

Franco: Would you like a story?

Interviewer: Which one?

Franco: Well there was one couple that hanged out in the bar.  And one day 
they said,  “Come over to my house and have some drink.”  So I went there, 
nothing much to do.  They had a little apartment and we were there 
drinking and talking.  I said, “Oh, I have to go somewhere.  I have an 
appointment.”  They said, “No, no, you don’t have to go.  You stay here, 
you stay here.  I’ll be back.”  Next thing I know the wife made a drink 
and I had drinks in the bar and drinks there.

It was one of these unhappy affairs that was going on out of disgust for 
them to be doing that.  The guy’s prostituting his wife.  I was disgusted 
with myself.  It bothered me and I remember talking to one of the other 
guys and he said “Oh don’t carry on so much.  All that happened was that 
you had a revenge fuck.”  So I said, it explained everything but it was 
not nice period.  I never forgot it and I about wrote it in my book.  I 
wanted to be honest what happened is what I did, good and bad and all that 
stuff.  But it shows you the what’s in all of us.   I never saw him again.

Interviewer: Were you aware of any looting or anything occurred in the 
squadron in Germany?

Franco: Well we captured the Germans in Normandy, that’s how we all got 
cameras…good cameras.  We didn’t have those browning box cameras you know 
you the German Voightlanders you know with reflex…you could look down 
and see the film.  We had real cameras, of course it took us awhile to 
learn how to use them.  We spoiled a lot of film but we ended getting 
to use them.  I never went got these pistols, I wasn’t interesting in 
pistols.  I was interested in cameras and I got a good camera.  But 
that was going on…that’s part of war.

Interviewer:  Now during the war experience itself, did you encounter any 
African-American units?

Franco: Oh yeah, in fact, when we were near Reeds.  A little village and 
one of the main roads going to Paris to Reeds and onto the frontier was 
about a mile or two to the south of where we were.  About a mile on the 
other side of the road was encampment of Negro engineers.  And that 
little town they had a little dance, the barn and earthen floor and we 
were invited.  I mean we heard about it, so we had a lot of Southerners 
in our outfit.  

And I’m dancing there with one of the French girls and the blacks are 
too.  And my back is to the door and I hear an altercation but the girl 
I’m dancing with can see over my shoulder.  She says “Quick come with 
me.”  And I thought for a moment she really wanted me to…you know.  
She’s taking me, of course as I started running I could hear the 
noise.  I realized and I ran with her without even looking we hidden 
somewhere just like that because she was smart.  And there was a big 
fight, some southerners against blacks.  And the blacks outnumbered 
us, there was a big fight and I was hiding in this place all the time 
and of course some of the guys in my outfit came back with black eyes 
and so forth.  And then they passed a ruling you couldn’t …you could 
only go to that town on alternate nights.  But that was a real fracas.

Interviewer: And that was your only encounter with them?

Franco: That’s my only direct encounter, I was involved.

Interviewer: There were no intelligence…[?]

Franco: I don’t think so, most of the guys from our outfit at the time of 
the support groups.  Those would more be the southerners.  Motor pools, 
supply sergeants, cooks…

Interviewer: And that was just in France?

Franco: Well I wasn’t in England long enough to see it.

Interviewer: Not in Germany?

Franco: Germany, no.  I didn’t see them there.  Don’t forget I mentioned 
it to you, when the war ended we were in Germany.  The army had a problem, 
couple million men with nothing to do while they’re waiting to be 
reshipped and retrained to go to Japan.  And that was dangerous, soldiers 
with nothing to do.  

So they came up with all sorts of ideas to keep the boys busy.  One of 
which was you had choice to go to a French university and learn French 
because I jumped at it and I did.  I went to the University of Nonsuis, 
and there I was able to improve my sidewalk French.  I took French 
literature with a Professor who spoke no English and I really improved 
my French with a little class here.

Interviewer: And how long did you stay there?

Franco: About two months.  It was the summer of '45.  In fact while 
I was there the Japanese surrendered.  So by the time I got back to 
my unit the war was over.  I got back in September I think of '45.

Interviewer: So where you found out victory over Nazis…

Franco: When the war ended?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Franco: Yeah I was in the University of Nonsui.

Interviewer: And then from that point you stayed in the military?

Franco: There was a lot of shifting around and movement of troops.  Third 
Radio Squadron was replaced by the Second Radio Squadron.  Different 
groups were put together and there was a lot of..between September and 
December I don’t really remember what I did.  Lot of movements, I was 
Germany they sent me to one town and another town.  By the time I got 
on a boat, I got on a train to go back to States we went to Marseilles.  
By what they called Forty-Eighters.  Do you know what a Forty-Eighter is?

Interviewer: No.

Franco: The old railcars in France they could forty men or eight horses.  
That was the main road where stuff was sent.  And we went on a forty and 
eight.  It took about three days in the winter to get to Marseilles.  
Then we went on a tramp boat, it took us seventeen days to get to New 
York because there was a big storm in the Atlantic and we tried to avoid 
it by going south..way south then came North.  We hit the fringe of it.  
It was bad enough…

[End of Tape 1, Side 2]


[END OF RECORDING]

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