Oral history as related by Armand Franke to Danielle Davis on October 21, 1996
I was born June 29, 1931 in Ethan South Dakota. There were three kids in my family and I was the oldest. We lived in Ethan for a couple years and then we moved to a little town called Lake Andes, where my dad did some farming. He raised hogs and some cattle, but that was during the Depression. Eventually we lost everything. We had to sell the hogs and the cattle to the state for a total of one dollar. We were really poor so the family decided to move to Belle Fourche where my dad could work in the sugar campaign.
When I was about 16, I decided I wanted to go to work and make my own money, so I started working for my uncle who ran Bob`s Lunch. I started out washing ceilings. While I was doing that, the dish washer quit, so I got his job. Then the cook quit, so I went to work cooking. I worked there for about four years until I turned 19, and thats when the Korean War started. I had received my draft notice saying I was an A1, which meant I would be drafted soon. I decided I didn`t want to wait to be drafted, so I decided to join the National Guards.
We left September of 1950 and went to Colorado Springs where I took my basic training. All this time, I had been a cook. I was now cooking for about 245 men. I was given a menu for the whole month. I had always cooked at Bob`s Lunch and that was fry cooking. In the Army you had to cook home style. I made so many mistakes, I am sure those guys wanted to kill me some of the times, but at least they had something to eat. I was stationed at a trainees camp. That`s where you would train the troops who were getting ready to go to Korea. After awhile the camp started to play out. All of the sudden we were getting shipped out and we didn`t know where.
They put us on a troop train that would take us from Colorado Springs to Fort Lewis, Washington. The sergeant told me that I was in charge of the mess cart, so I cooked for all the men while we were on the troop train, and I swear that cart had a flat wheel. I practically had to hold my pots and pans on the stove! We finally arrived at Fort Lewis and we had to stay in these old barricks that were used during Word War II. When we got their they asked if I would still be the cook. Now I was cooking for about 335 men on two coal stoves, so we just had to get up early in the morning. One day the sergeant came and told me we had 24 hours before we would leave Fort Lewis and he wanted all the food out of the mess cart. We fed the guys apples and oranges until they were sick and we also threw a lot of the apples and oranges out the door. By the time we got there, there was not one thing in the mess cart. We only stayed in Washington for about two or three weeks and then we were supposed to be shipped out to Korea.
We boarded a long narrow ship that carried vehicles. When I got there, I told this old captain that I was sure that I would get sick. He said, `` No, you won`t. Just go down in the kitchen and keep yourself full.`` I would go down there and help the cook bake cakes. They never did take us to Korea; they ended up taking us to a place called Hanes, Alaska. We had to stay in these old, long, coal bins. While we were there, we got 5 in 1 sea rations. That meant we would get three meals a day for five people in one box. We stayed in Hanes for about two weeks and then other troops moved in. So the army decided we were going to go on a big maneuver to Anchorage, and we were going to walk.
It took 875 miles and 28 days to get to Anchorage. I was still the cook, so they would pick me up a hour before the rest of them would stop and drive me to the front. The men and I would start cooking for all of them, that wasn`t too bad. One of the bad things was that you would get so dirty from walking. We had portable showers, but there would be about three thousand men waiting in line for a shower. Whenever we bivouac we would make sure to be next to water and usually that would be these glacier streams that would have big chunks of ice floating down them. You were so dirty that you would just jump in them really fast and try to get as clean as you could. One day we all jumped in with our wash rags to wash up real fast. There was about five or six hundred men in this river and everybody was a hoopen and a hollern. We turned around and there on the highway was cars lined up watching us. We all were in our birthday suits, it was kind of embarrassing.
We had a lot of fun on our walk, I panned for gold and I was chased by a bear. The weather up there wasn`t too bad, but it could get very cold. One thing about Alaska was that in the summer it would be daylight for 24 hours a day. I remember playing baseball at three o`clock in the morning. But in the winter it would be dark 24 hours a day. When we finally arrived in Anchorage it wasn`t too bad. We could go into town once in a while, but you could never date a Eskimo girl. It was just against the rules.
They shipped us back, but this time they shipped us back to Fort Lot which was a WWI camp. It was really old, but at least I didn`t have to cook because I was getting ready to be released. They put us in Quonset huts in front of the loud speaker that announced the names of the soldiers. It was so loud that we couldn`t hear the names called. We had to go down a couple huts and ask the guys down there if they had heard our names. They finally came and told us and we were released.
We had to go buy a car so we could get back to Belle Fourche. Me and a buddy of mine bought an old `41 Chevy for about $425, but we had to give the guy our watches to hold it until we got our mustering out pay. We got in the car and headed back to Belle Fourche, which was a long way for that little car. It made it barely, and when we pulled up to the house and shut it off, it never started up again.
I hadn`t been home for one day and a guy called and asked me if I would go to work for him in the bee factory. I didn`t want to, but he promised after the bee season he would put me to work for the sugar factory. I decided to work for him the second day I was back. I worked there for a while, then I went back to cooking for a couple years. I married my wife on June 5, 1955. I worked for Culligan for 38 years and we owned the Hut Ladies Apparel for 18 years. We have been married for 41 years and have had 3 children, so I have done pretty well.