“After twenty-two months in the South Pacific, I was sent back to the United States and given twenty days leave so I could visit with my wife and my first-born son, Herman Eugene Talmadge, Jr., whom I had not seen. When that leave was up I was…

“I do not know where this country would have been after December 7, 1941, if it had not had the ships and the know how to build more ships fast, for which one Vinson bill after another was responsible.” Editor's Note: On December 7th, 1941, Japan…

"There were so many screw-ups that you can’t count them. I mean, we crashed into piers. One time we were on the Dart River, being as efficient as we were, our propellers got hooked up with some of these buoys and bent them badly. And there was…

Editor's Note: On September 8, 1946, Eugene and his brother, Carl, sailed back to the United States on a Liberty Ship. They stayed briefly with their Aunt Mimi and then enlisted in the U.S. Army, hoping to return to Germany to be close to their…

Editor's Note: In September 1939, Eugene's family went on a trip to Germany to visit Eugene's grandmother Johanna. The family was required to return to Germany periodically to maintain Johanna's property in Hannover. On the same day that their ocean…

"After the second atomic bomb was dropped, we were almost sure we were going back to the United States, and we didn't. And we ended up anchored at Enewetak group on Yap Island group on a little island called Maug Maug, which was a…

"We just bust this outfit up, and I ended up with a unit -- a different unit called a 1333rd Engineer Regimen going to the Panama Canal on the way to the Pacific. About half the men in my unit ended up coming back to the states. Well, I got on a…

"And getting off the boat at Liverpool at night – I can remember being greeted by some of my fellow American soldiers on shore, and they were saying, 'Oh, Black Joe,' as we were coming down the gangplank."Editor's Note:British citizens largely…

"Actually, when I first got to Europe, I got there by way of Liverpool on a ship that carried 14,000 troops. This was the USS America, and I think it was called the West Point at that time. It was our largest ocean liner. And we took five days to…

"He was called up in June of 1942. He, you know, it was late in the war really. But of course he was an older man. He was 40, or 39 and six months, when he was called up. So you know, they called up the young men at the beginning of the war.…