WWII Veteran Transcript

Subject: Arnold Franco

Interviewer: William Spisak

Tape Number: 02 of 02

Interview Date: January 31st, 2010

Transcriber: Kevin Lin


Transcription Date: January 02, 2011



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Interviewer: Franco Tape 2, Side 1.  So you want to continue where you left 
off?  You were just arriving back in New York?  You just avoided the storm.

Franco: Yeah, we arrived at this New Jersey boat rick and we landed at Fort 
Dix.  And there was some sort of delay…administrative delay and the clerks 
there…  While we came there, a couple of soldiers…veterans.  They weren’t 
going take bullshit any more.  So couple of guys grabbed some of these guys 
by their shirts and said “Listen, we didn’t come home to have to wait cause 
of this bullshit.  You process these papers right now. ” We really stormed 
the barricades.   We were out of there in two days. We were home well before 
Christmas.  I remember calling my father from Dix and saying “Dad, I’m going 
to come home soon.  I’m in Paris and I’m going to get a boat.”  He says 
“You’re not in Paris, the reception’s too good.”   He says, “When are you 
coming home?” [Laughs]  I’ll always remember that.

Interviewer: So how did you readjust to life back in the United States?

Franco: I’ll tell you, first place when I was at Queens College I was a 
major in history and a minor in education.  I was going to be a teacher.  
My goal was to be a teacher in a high school.  Then I got a home after 
being in the army for three years.  Large bureaucratic organizations did 
not appeal to me at all and the Board of Higher Ed or the Board of Ed is 
another bureaucratic organization and I realized that.  I said to myself, 
do I want to live you know…the answer’s no.

I turned my back on education as a career; I’ve never turned my back on 
it.  I’ve taught and lectured all throughout my life…on history and the 
war and stuff like that.  I decided to do something different because 
what to do I don’t know.  The army gave us a test…a personality test as 
part of the mustering out process.   And I had they tell me you’re very 
good talking to people; you should be in a job selling or communications.  

And I talked to my father and my father had been in insurance but he had 
left and gone into the export business.  He said “You know”…I didn’t know
 what to do by the way, I was talking to my father…process of 
 elimination…none of this, none of that, “You know, you’re home…living at 
 home.  Not married, don’t have any commitments, enjoy any girl.”  Got a 
 little money, I saved some money.  I had worked as a bellhop, couple of 
 summers in a hotel, made quite a bit of money in tips.  I had my 
 mustering out money; I had maybe three thousand dollars which in those 
 days was a lot of money.  He says, “You know living at home, you’ve got 
 all that money.  You could invest…start a business in insurance.  Would be 
 hard in the beginning but you get a client…get enough money and you build 
 up.  Then the insurance of your client renews next year, he’s usually a 
 decent guy and you don’t lose the business you keep it going.  You add by 
 accretion and the next year…after two or three years you have a nice little 
 business.”  
 
 I said, “Eh, that’s not bad.”  And I did it, a friend of my father told me 
 of us in the dealership and an insurance company offered to returning 
 veterans…Continental Insurance Company.  I’ll never forget that, they had 
 an office on 80th…89th, and they had a floor where they had a bullpen; it 
 had twenty agents in this room with roll top desks and two secretaries in 
 front.  They had their own phones.  The office of returning veterans…free 
 use of services…secretarial, no rent, and we only paid for calls if it was 
 out of town.  It was very nice for returning veterans, it was there and I 
 took that thing.  I think I started mid-January, I was home three weeks.  
 I had nothing to do, once you get home and you’ve finished college and 
 you’re….you’re really nowhere.

Interviewer: So what was your initial reaction to life back here after the 
climax of the war?

Franco: Oh well….  I’ll tell you something, that time was a real hardness.  
But the years between ‘18 and 1922 was so packed and dense, high emotion, 
high drama.  Then I realized years later that the rest of my life was 
anti-climax.  In fact I felt badly about it and always sorry for my 
kids…my four kids.  Even they had a father whose mindset was with them.  
I mean its sounds stupid, because I started a business and was very active.  
I was very busy with my business had twenty-five employees before I merged 
with another company.  I had a successful business, I was considered a 
successful man but it was a different time.  And I apologize once at a 
Thanksgiving dinner we’re all eating a lot and drinking a lot and I was 
sort of talking to the kids and I said, “You know, I got to apologize for 
years of my life between 18 and 22.”  They said, “Oh dad, you gave us 
attention when you needed us.”  You know they poo pooed that idea.  

But I still felt that, how can you compare.  You know I graduated college 
I was a history major, and it’s like a post-graduate course.  I’m sent to 
England, the war is going on.  I’m part of the invasion; I’m part of the 
race to Paris.   The surrender of Germany, I mean for a history major I’m 
front and center.  And the drama of our day and I’m a participant not an 
observer…I’m a participant and an observer.  But I don’t want to compare 
myself…it’s like Thucydides.  He wrote The Peloponnesian War but he was 
in the war.

Interviewer: Now when you arrived back, did you take advantage of the GI 
Bill?

Franco: Oh yeah, they called it the 52-20.  You had twenty dollars a week 
for 52 weeks.   You didn’t have a job, because I didn’t have a job because 
I was going on my own but that was before the paying jobs.  But since I 
graduated Queens [College] already, I had a degree but I did enroll at 
Columbia for a Master’s degree in History and I went mostly at night 
because I was working.  And frankly after the first semester I got bored.  

These professors were Ivory Tower; they were talking about things that 
other veterans were looking at each other.  These guys, what were they 
talking about…theory.  We were there; we saw things…political things they 
can’t even imagine.  So I lost my interest in going further, never 
finished my Master’s.  I’d be angry with them.  The GI Bill paid for it, 
but I never went back after the first semester.  Maybe it was … [?]  So 
I didn’t use the full GI Bill, the 52-20 which I don’t know if you heard 
about.  Which was a lot of money in those days and if you were living at 
home that was your spending money…your petty cash money.   

Now I was very fortunate in the business for two years, picked up some 
clients and I made a lot of money….like fifty thousand.  But before I 
got married I already was able to save something like twelve thousand 
dollars which in those days was a fortune.  A guy was lucky to earn two 
thousand dollars a year…five hundred was a decent salary.

Interviewer:  Now what area of insurance were you in?

Franco: I worked in all areas, but in the beginning I made my first 
break in marine insurance…maritime insurance.  And that’s where I made 
a lot of money because I could speak German.  Somehow, someone 
recommended me to a bunch of guys who were shipping used clothing all 
over the world and they were on the East Side.  Lot of them were Jews 
who spoke Yiddish.  I didn’t speak Yiddish, but I spoke German and 
within a few weeks of talking to these guys I started talking 
Yiddish…very easy.  They liked that.  I could understand what they were 
saying anyway.  

And I was a young guy from the army and one guy recommended me to 
another.  In those days that was a very lucrative business because 
nobody had manufacturing.  The German and Japanese industries were 
destroyed.  Even here, clothing was behind.  People needed special 
authorizations to buy suits.  You needed to be a GI to buy a new suit, 
couldn’t get suits.  So the used clothing business all over the 
world…what were called rags to us was clothing to other people.  A huge 
amount of shipments and I was insuring them.  It was quite interesting, 
it was maritime.  Insure the shipment; they were going all over the 
world to Africa…all other countries.  And I caught to something that 
was very active and made a lot of money.

Interviewer: So a lot of the experiences of the war ended up being a 
help?

Franco: The knowledge of places in marine insurance.  If you know 
about places and if you know about a port…you know what the conditions 
is.  What railroads run from…you know, you’ve been there in Europe.  
Even for Africa even though I’ve never been there, I was…  I didn’t 
mention this too, as a boy I was very interested in geography.  I was 
a stamp collector, very avidly.  Stamps, you learn about places, 
ports, railroads.  You know, stamps commemorating a railroad.  You 
don’t realize you learned that, you know where capitals are, you know 
where port cities are, you know?  So it was a huge help to me in the 
war.  

I was picked as a code breaker not because I had mathematical ability.  
I was born to it, my intuition was… By the way, I didn’t mention this.  
One of the measures I remember breaking myself and it was important 
because it goes back to the war.  Just before the Allies were invading 
Southern France, maybe August 13.  We had intercepted a message from 
a German reconnaissance plane that was flying out of Northern Italy 
and our direction finders told us it was flying west right along 
between France and Syguinea across the into the valley.  And he sends 
a message and the previous shift working had figured out that there 
was one letter that was a J.

So when I got on duty and I looked at J and I looked at the background 
message of the day, saw that the German reconnaissance squadron…plane 
flying west from Italy today.  You know, you sort of let it mull around 
in your mind and then it hit me J.  The capital of Corsica was Ajaccio; 
you know A-J-A-C-C-I-O and let me try to put that in.  Load the 
message…what the message was that the German reconnaissance plane had 
sighted an accumulation of Allied landing craft in the port harbor of 
Ajaccio.  It was an accumulation of landing craft to land in Southern 
France which if you know your history was August 15.  It was only a 
day’s trip by boat…not even a day.  Now that message was sent up, made 
a big stir in Ninth Air Force.  They wanted to know what more did we 
know about it.  Of course the tip off that the Germans knew what we 
were doing, so we were asked if we have any other messages.  I mean I 
never got…I mean the officers did, but I never got credit for that.  
I got personal credit because I knew that message created a big stir.  
I don’t know why it created a big stir.  Except that they’re now 
aware…the Germans were tipped off that something’s going on.  Whether 
they used that to draw the right conclusion.  When you have landing 
craft in Ajaccio, the nearest place they can go is Southern France 
but it seems obvious.  I remember that message as one that I broke 
myself. 

Interviewer: That was your…

Franco: I think I broke another message, I don’t remember it.  I’ve got a 
good memory but it’s not that stuck in there.  Because of the reaction as 
well.

Interviewer: So do you have any overall thoughts of the war experience in 
general terms?  If you could sum up.

Franco: Well, I had you can call it a good war experience… I had a good 
war.  My exposure to danger was limited; it was more of a spice.  It got us 
through the boring periods of the army, midnight duty…not much to do.  And 
war is always times of boredom and doing nothing and then intense activity.  
It’s always like that.  But I was lucky, I could have been sent to Tunisia.  
I knew that even when I was in training.  Can’t last too long, just by pure 
luck.  And the same with the pilots, the ones who flew twenty-five…thirty 
missions.  I mean the guys who survived that?  It was luck.  I learned a 
lot from there.  I was an only child; I left home for the first time.  I 
certainly developed into a different person.  I became much mature; with 
all my immaturity I was still much more mature.

Interviewer: Do you think the country itself changed? The generation that 
went to war and when they came back they bring something different that 
wasn’t here already?

Franco:  You know when I gave this talk in France to French high school 
students I asked a question.  Did anybody know how many soldiers we had in 
the American-Iraqi army?  They said well, 100,000.  You’re close there were 
160,000.  I asked a rhetorical question do you know how many soldiers and 
sailors there were in service World War II?  16 million.  Now, even World 
War I, 800,000 men was a large group.  World War II was a huge, huge war.  
Everybody was involved, I mean everybody.  The Private Ryans, they had four 
sons in there.  That was an exaggeration, but 16 million people and it took 
three and a half years of intensive fighting.  This one seemed to drag on.  
Things were going on all the time.  That’s why there’s nothing like it.  
Before or since.  We call it the Great War…or Good War or whatever hell it….  
I don’t care about the appellation, 16 million people and we were fighting 
all over the world.  

The significance was huge; I mean I remember reading about guys who landed 
in New Guinea where there were Stone Age tribes which were still doing 
cannibalism or whatever the hell it was.  When we landed there with our 
jeeps and equipments, within one generation they were jeep drivers and jeep 
repairmen.  They skipped from the Stone Age right to modern times with no 
in-between.  It was incredible and of course, the side effects of the war 
were also very big.  People realized that only recently and given credit 
the effect of the GI Bill was enormous.  Guys who would have never went to 
college went to college.  Guys who never would have gone to whatever it 
was went to it.  It created a class of literate people which we don’t have 
any more aside from the geniuses and the guys with computers that certain 
level of people I’m afraid to say we have an ignorant population.

Interviewer:  So you think the generation that returned in the 1950s was 
something unique?

Franco: Well it was unique because the number of guys was huge and the 
program had never been envisioned before.  You have to understand other 
wars…Civil War there were veteran benefit programs there.  And by the way 
as I read in my history, some of them were quite expensive.  But this was 
in an area which we never did before…extended education.  Give you 
educational benefits which would then permit you to advance on your own in 
the world.  I never read about it…certainly not to that extent…huge.  And 
it lasted…it was like an impetus and had a forty year curve.  

Now it it’s…of course they’re doing it with veterans now.  You want to talk 
about 100,000 veterans…200,000 veterans.  It’s helpful.  And then also, 
let’s face it World War II, Korean War and the Vietnam War were draft wars.  
Now you got a volunteer army which has its plusses and minuses.  But 
certain the last three or four five years there were not the cream of the 
crop.  They were guys who didn’t finish high school…guys with police records.  
They were getting the bottom of the barrel, let’s face it.  And so, you’re 
not getting a GI base you want to build from.  You’re not getting the base 
you had in World War II where everybody…and if you have any merit or brains 
you could profit by it.

Interviewer: Any concluding thoughts you would like to add?

Franco: Not really.  I was a lucky guy and this was worth it.  I got to 
travel… I would say this, because I was a history major and I came to 
realize that I was a witness.  I mean everybody who lives a long life is 
a witness.  But somehow I feel that I was chosen because after the war my 
office was in the World Trade Center…second tower.  Told you about the 
guy next door…blew up the building next door.  The luck I had…I’ve been 
saved…even helped by them…bypass surgery..prostate surgery.  Those are 
rites of passage; you have to get those things done so you can get through 
the next five years of life.  I don’t even count them.  But besides that 
I’ve been very lucky.  You know that it’s it.

Interviewer:  Thank you very much for taking the time to you know…

[END OF RECORDING]

End of Tape 02 of 02

Jump To: Tape 01