Addie Tarrant and her grandfather, Wes Allbritton discuss his early life and military experience

00:01 Hey, so I'm Addie Tarrant and I'm 17 years old. We are in Birmingham, Alabama, and I am speaking with my grandfather, Wes Albreton, about his life. So, granddaddy, so can you tell me just like a little bit about your childhood? You know.

00:23 Okay. I grew up in the western section of Birmingham. We lived about, oh, two blocks, three blocks from Rick Wood Field, the home of the Barron's, Birmingham Barron's. They played there for many, many years. We lived next door to my mother's father and mother on the corner of 14th street and 2nd Court West. I lived two blocks down from my daddy's parents, Pappy and Granny Albritton. And we live next door to Mamaw and Granddaddy Pate, Charlie Wesley and Ida Vera Pate, Jesse Edward Albritton Senior and Nell Albritton or Nellie. But we lived in the western section. And it was a very sort of. We were raised as free range children. We were pretty much out and about, out at daybreak, running, going, playing. Had all kinds of kids in the area. We rode our bikes. We played games at nighttime. Very often there'd be kids from all over the neighborhood and we'd be playing games like kick the can or hide and go seek or just chase, stuff like that. But it was very. We were very free to roam and play. So we didn't have a whole lot of restrictions. It was a very different time. We lived right on the edge of the black section back then. It was still pretty integrated. White community was separate from the black community. But the alley behind our house was sort of the dividing line between the white community and the black community. But for us kids back then, we didn't. We didn't care. We all played together. We played with the black kids, we played sports with them. Just like schoolyard stuff, not organized sports and. But we just. It was a pretty carefree free roam and sort of childhood.

02:52 So can you tell me a little bit more about. Did anything change as you grew up as far as.

02:59 Absolutely, yeah. Like I said, we were. We lived close to the. To the black section. And we were just. I mean, there was not a big thing then about the white and the black community as far as we were concerned. We had plenty of black friends. Many of the black ladies and men that lived down there. We were friends with, friendly with, always spoke. We were very polite to them, they were polite to us. There was none of the sort of the problems that over the last decade or so have been so prevalent between the white and black community. If I was in The. In the black section, and I was doing something I wasn't supposed to do. One of the black ladies would jerk me up just like they would one of theirs and make sure I was on the right path. But we just had many. Well, many black friends. It was very different back then from what I think a lot of people have been led to believe that the relationship between the black and white community was.

04:08 So as far as school goes. So did you like school?

04:11 I loved school.

04:12 Yeah.

04:12 I went to Woodrow Wilson Grammar School, which was probably, oh, six, seven, eight blocks away. We walked most of the time to school. As long as the weather was decent. There was usually, you know, two or three or four. And as we went, we'd gather up more kids. I mean, they would just all be walking to school. And so we went to Woodrow Wilson. Had a principal that none of us cared much for. He was pretty open with his discipline. He did not hesitate to pull out a paddle or pull out a rubber hose and warm you up if you got out of line. And that was, as I said, another. A different time. Parents expected you to be disciplined at school, expected you to behave at school. And we knew if we got in trouble at school, that that was just the first of several discipline periods, because we would also be disciplined by our parents when they found out. So most of the kids stayed. Stayed in line. We had. Most of our teachers were very good. Most of them. The teachers I had. I have only wonderful memories. I mean, we even did things like we would leave school and walk to a teacher's house as a group, and we would have lessons in their backyard or if we were studying, like, some form of nature. I had one teacher that had a big frog pond in her backyard, and we would go up there, and she would. We would be teaching about the different phases that a frog went through, from a tadpole on up to when one of the legs would drop. You know, their tail would drop off, and they'd add a leg or two. And we went through all the stages, and that was. And that was Mrs. Garrett, and she. That was part of her progression of us through the school year. We started off as a tadpole, and as the school year went along, she had milestones set. We did multiplication tables and some things like that. And as we met all these milestones during the year, we would get a leg, and we'd get another leg, and then eventually we'd have four legs and the tail would drop off, and then we left the pond and went to the land. So that was one of the Things that we did with her and. But it was, I mean, it was a great time. We had good teachers, I feel like, and I think most of the time we pretty much stayed out of trouble.

06:55 So I want you to tell me a little bit about your parents.

06:59 Okay. My parents, Jesse Edward Albritton Jr. And Francis Laureen Pate. All Britain. My daddy was a city. Well, he started off as a policeman for Birmingham Police Department. He had in his younger life had actually owned a Service Station on 3rd Avenue west and 14th Street. And when the war came along, he was drafted. Turned out that they wouldn't. He couldn't actually be kept in the military because he was allergic to some of the elements in gunpowder. So that doesn't work too well when you're, when you're a soldier. So he, even though he was drafted, he sold his business, sold his company and then later he, they released him from the military, so he no longer had his business. So that was when he decided to take the civil service test and became a policeman. He was a patrolman. That's a lot of, lot of funny stories about that too, but not for this thing, but. And then after a period of time he decided he would set for the detectives test and he ended up being a detective and he worked for 20 something years as a detective for the city of Birmingham. Our mother was pretty much a stay at home mother in our younger years. And then as we got a little bit older, she started working and doing accounting work and secretarial work for one of our neighbors who owned a car lot up on 3rd Avenue West. It was Jack's Motors and she did all the work in their office, had their financing plans and got their cars financed and stuff like that. Mother was a lot of fun. She loved to get out and play with us as kids. And when we'd be playing our games, Kit the Kin or Hide and Go Seek or whatever, she'd be out there playing with us most of the time. But they were both, I guess, sort of lenient with us. They allowed us to do a good bit of things. But we were also expected to be very respectful of, of our parents and our grandparents.

09:28 Right. So high school you were, you played a lot of sports?

09:36 Yes.

09:38 And then. So did you go to college first or did you get drafted? Did you draft or did you just.

09:44 No, I was drafted, but in high school we went to West End High School. I was very, I guess fortunate. I was introduced to sports when I was fairly young, 9 or 10 years old. And I was blessed that I was pretty Good at sports, played baseball. Growing up in the community leagues. I started off pitching and playing first base, played third base, some played in the outfield. But my true love for baseball developed when one day our catcher got hurt and our coach asked if anybody else could catch. And I said, oh, yeah, I can catch. I'd never caught before in my life, but I could catch. And so I started catching and that really became my love of the sport. Developed from being a catcher, and I enjoyed catching. I was also fortunate that I hit the ball real well. I was a good batter, good catcher, and I absolutely loved it. In high school, I was still playing baseball in community league, so I didn't play baseball in high school for the high school team, but I did play football. Started playing football at the high school when I was still in eighth grade. Two of us went out, were asked to come out, and so we were playing with the high school football teams when we were in eighth grade. And that's where I met your nanny, Billy Albert. Really, from the very first days of high school, we noticed each other. And the. The very first day in the orientation and stuff like that, where all the kids were in the. In the auditorium, and that's where we first met each other. And over a year or so we were aware of each other, but we were not boyfriend, girlfriend, any of that kind of stuff. And then later on, we did start dating regularly. Your nanny actually asked me to go to one of their sororities functions, I think was probably our first real date. And it developed through that. We dated all the way through high school and then continued dating in college. And I think it close to the end of our first. Well, I guess it was the winner of. Maybe it was our second year, I can't even remember now of college was I asked her to marry me and she accepted. That's another whole story. You need to ask about that one sometime. But we got married when we were ready for this. I was 19 and your nanny had just turned 20. We got married one day or two days after she turned 20, and we planted that way because I didn't want her mother to ever say it was a teenage marriage if things didn't work out. But. So we got married. So anyway, that's a. I think I sort of broadened out on that question.

13:12 No problem with that. So y'all got married?

13:15 Yep.

13:16 And then you got drafted?

13:19 Yeah.

13:19 How. So how old were you when you got drafted?

13:21 Okay, I had. I was. Goodness, let's see, we'd been married not quite a year, so I was probably still 20 when I was drafted. That's another whole story I cannot hear out of my left ear. I wore glasses and I had worn a brace on my back for a year and a half. I got hurt playing football, had a brace on my back. So my local draft board decided that they could send me down to the AFE station in Montgomery with all the proper paperwork, and they would just declare me not fit for military service and I wouldn't have to constantly be putting up with them and they wouldn't have to constantly be keeping track of me. So we filled out all the paperwork, had all the doctors stuff, everything. And the day I went down to Montgomery for my induction physical and all the headlines in the newspaper was that the North Koreans had attacked and captured an American spy ship, probably in the. I don't know where it was. It was off the coast of Korea somewhere. And so that day they ran 850 people through there and accepted everybody. So I ended up in the military, even though I was going to school, working full time, going to school at night, was married and had a number of physical deferments. Yeah, but there's a. There's another long story about that, but not for this, I don't guess.

14:55 So tell me a little bit about. So you were. You were in Vietnam, right?

15:01 Yes. Went to. Went to Fort Lee. Excuse me. I went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for my basic training. Spent a couple of months down there, did basic training and advanced training. Then they sent us to Fort Lee, Virginia, went through more advanced training related to setting up a warehouse. And I. They called it mos. That was your military service something. I don't know what all it stood for. But anyway, it was basically the area that you were going to work in. And I was a stock control specialist and an automotive repair parts specialist. So we had to learn all the parts and everything that went in all the jeeps and the trucks and all the stuff that, you know, were we built or they had to have in the military. And also warehousing, which was stock control and how to handle all that stuff. So that was what we did in Virginia. And then they sent us to Atlanta Army Depot, and we actually worked in a warehouse there. And I learned to drive a forklift there. And I was a whiz bang on a forklift. I could drive a forklift. Ended up training other soldiers how to drive the forklift and how to handle it. But we left there and then we did. We shipped over to Vietnam as a unit, a company. And when we got over there, we had officers, NCOs, and then enlisted guys, which all of us were, and we went to. First we went into south of Saigon at Ben Wa Air Base, and that was where we came together as a unit. And we waited there to be find out where we're actually going to be stationed. While we were there, the first day we landed, they put us on buses and were sending us out to what they called a replacement station. That's where they would hold you until they decided where they were going to send you in the country. On the way from the Air Force Air Base to the replacement center, our bus was attacked. It was ambushed. And as I always tell the story that I was the first guy on the floor and I had five bodies on top of me, so alive, nobody got hurt, but I was well protected because I was always the first guy on the ground. Then we got out there and we were. Every day you would fall out as a company and they would, would salute the flag at daybreak and then they would start calling off assignments and where the different people were going to go. So we always fell out and we had officers and NCOs and everybody there. So we all fell out as a company, assembled as a company. One morning we were standing out there and they called off one of our officers names and sent him off to so and so Infantry Division. They called off somebody else, sent them off to an artillery group, called off somebody else, sent them in a different direction. So we realized, guess what? They're breaking up our company. So they were not sending us to our mos. It was shortly after the Tet Offensive of 1968 when we just about got our rear and kicked out of the country. The, the North Vietnamese regulars and the rebels attacked us, Vietnamese attacked us and just about ran us out of the country. It was a surprise and it happened all over the country. So they needed a lot of replacement soldiers for different units. So they sent you everywhere. They sent me to 24th Corps Artillery, which was up in the northern part of the country, not too far from the Demilitarized Zone, the dmz. And so we were processing through. And as I was processing out of country, a guy that was handling my paperwork said, hey, you've got some accounting in your background. And I said, yeah, I had two years of accounting at Sanford University in Birmingham before I was drafted. Oh, and by the way, they ended up, they did draft me. So even though I had gone through all that process of getting my paperwork and all done to be deferred, in the meantime, they went ahead and Drafted me. So I joined so I could get an MOS that I thought would not be totally dependent on me being able to see and fire a weapon and stuff. But as it turned out, I ended up going to Vietnam as a supply specialist. But anyway, they sent me up north. I was going up north and one of the guys that was processing us, realizing I had the accounting background, and he said, would you like a job? And I said, what do you mean, a job? He said, we need a guy, an accountant in the Northern I Corps, 24th Corps, up where I was being sent to take over for a guy that's rotating out of country, and he's the accountant for the club system. So I said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. He said, oh, and by the way, they'll pay you an extra dollar an hour on top of your military pay for your specialty. So I said, sure. And I went and I. I was sent to Fubai Northern I Corps, which was relatively close to the DMZ. But I became the accountant for the Fubai NCO EM and officers clubs. And we had like 20 something clubs. And we were responsible for ordering all their beer and their sodas and their snacks and getting entertainment groups in there that would entertain at all the clubs. So I spent a year in Vietnam doing the accounting for the club system. There's a lot of stories about that too, but maybe for a different town.

21:57 So how long in total were you in Vietnam or just in, like, drafted?

22:04 When I drafted, I was drafted for three years.

22:07 Yes.

22:08 But I was in Vietnam for one week short of a year. And the reason I was there for one week short of a year. A year was the normal, a deployment term that you were deployed. When we were leaving the United States, I had to report to the Oakland Army Depot, and that's where they processed us to go to Vietnam. And while I was at the Oakland Army Depot, they gave us our papers and told us to go to the airport, which. Well, it was right there as part of the Oakland Army Depot that we were to fall out and go out there at a certain time. And when we got out there, they put us on an airplane, they marched us up the tail, had one of these with the tail, drop down, ladder, stairway dropped down to tell. And they put us on. They were also loading from the side. And when we got on the plane, they told us, we've overloaded the plane, y'all are going to have to back off. And so they backed off. About 19 or 20 of us, we got off the plane, they sent us back to a barracks where we were to wait until they told us to redeploy. That plane did not make it to Vietnam. It went down somewhere close to the Philippines. And so it didn't make it. And so we were sent back and we were taken out to the airport one more time to get on a plane and they backed us off again. So I ended up staying in Oakland for a week. But I've still got a little satchel upstairs that's got papers in it from my military stuff they gave me. When they sent us out to the airport the first time, they gave us a set of orders that said our. I think they called it our D roasts. It was the date that we left country. And on that it had your. Also the date that you would leave Vietnam, coming home. I kept all that stuff. So when I got my orders to leave country, getting ready to leave Vietnam, it was a week later. And so I still had my old papers that showed my derose date, my demarcation date for leaving the States and my derose date for leaving Vietnam. And I handed it to our country company clerk and he said, well, they made a mistake. So he changed my papers to leave a week early. So I left Vietnam a week short of one year. And that's why I did that. Talking about the plane that left Oakland and didn't make it when we left, fortunately Lee, I mean Fort Polk, Louisiana, they put us on planes. There were two plane loads of us leaving to go to Virginia to Fort Lee. We were on the second plane we left. When we got to Fort Lee, they landed and they told us to get off the plane and go over there and wait and you'll be transported out to the. To the training area. So we were waiting and we waited and we waited. And the plane that left before us did not get there. It hit a mountainside in West Virginia. So that was two times that. Planes that I was closely associated with didn't make it where they were going. So anyway, that was. That's another story. But so we spent our time at Fort Lee, Virginia, training, went to school at night. We had to get up every morning at 6:00 and fall out and salute the building. And then we were turned loose to do whatever company duties we had until late in the afternoon. And then we would go to school at night. And so we spent. They had so many soldiers being processed through that we were going on the second shift, which was the evening stuff. But anyway, I was in Vietnam, like I said, a week short of a year. And that's Another whole set of stories.

26:31 Okay, well, so you got home.

26:34 Got home. And then I had another year to go. I had another year in service while I came home. When I came home, we ended up in Fort Hood, Texas. So I had a year left on my three years when I went to Fort Hood, Texas. Lived out in the middle of nowhere, Texas.

26:56 So eventually, y'all got back to Birmingham.

26:58 Got back to Birmingham.

26:59 And nanny was. What was she doing? Was she. Did she start teaching? So she was teaching?

27:06 No, when we first came back, she ended up. Well, I take that back. Well, when we were in Texas. The year we were in Texas, she taught and preschool at our church. And so she was a teacher there. And then when we came. No, anyway, I obviously got that wrong. So, anyway, we. That's right. That was in. That was in Telephone company when we got down here. Yeah.

27:41 It's okay.

27:42 Yeah. Another story.

27:43 She was a secretary at the preschool.

27:44 Yeah, well, yeah, she worked at our church when we were down there. She was the secretary at the church. I forgot about that. She was the pastor's secretary.

27:55 Oh, yeah.

27:56 Homer Pumphrey. But anyway, we spent that year out there, and then we came home. Is that what you were asking about?

28:03 Yeah. So y'all came home.

28:04 Yep.

28:05 And then you were still accounting.

28:09 Okay, that's another whole story, because I came back and I was. I was. I was working, but I was going to school, trying to get my accounting degree, and so I went to Samford, ended up getting my accounting degree at Samford, and then worked for a company called Lampson Sessions for a while as an accountant. It was a manufacturer of nuts and bolts. I left them and ended up with the telephone company. Worked as an accountant there for 40 years. Different jobs. As an accountant.

28:43 Dang. That's a long time.

28:44 Yep.

28:46 So just wind everything up. So, overall, looking back, what's the best decision you think you've ever made? I know that's a big question, but.

28:56 No. Well, being a Christian, the best decision I ever made was accepting Christ right up there. Nudging up close to. That was when. When I asked Billy to marry. Aw. I mean, because obviously, you know, we may be different, we may not. There's probably a lot of people like this, but we've always been very close. We've always done everything together. Most of our decisions are made together. Very unusual that we make a major decision that we both don't, you know, talk about. So that was probably the two best decisions I ever made.

29:38 Well, thank you so much for sharing with me and sharing so many stories.

29:43 That's only the tip of the iceberg.

29:45 Oh, I know.

29:45 There are plenty of stories we could tell.

29:47 Oh, and you're writing your book?

29:50 I'm trying to put down stories that sort of represent my life. And if I don't ever, if I ever finish, I'll get it published. A company that publishes them, and we'll get several copies for family members that want them, and we'll go from there.

30:09 Very excited to read that. So this was just a little bit. This was just.

30:13 This is just touching. Nice. Those stories are about childhood things, childhood friends, things we did. It's just crazy.

30:22 Well, I'm very excited to read it.

30:24 Yeah. It'll be fun, I think.

30:26 Okay. Well, thank you again.

30:28 You're welcome. Very welcome.