Jeremy Arndt and Kathleen "Katie" Rice

[00:02] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Hello. My name is Jeremy Michael Arndt I'm 34 years old. It is March 21, 2019, here in Chicago, and I just met the lovely. I forgot your name.

[00:19] KATIE RICE: That's okay. My name is Katie Rice

[00:22] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Katie. Yes. Sorry.

[00:23] KATIE RICE: That's okay. My name is Katie Rice I'm 22. Today's date is Thursday, March 21, 2019. I'm in Chicago, Illinois, and I'm here with my new friend. So I understand that you wanted to come in today and give us an overview of your grandfather's life and that you wanted to read something about his life to give us a brief summary.

[00:42] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes. I wrote this after his funeral. I put this on Facebook. Here. Let me see. All right. On Saturday, we lay to rest the farmer and World War II veteran, my grandfather, Arthur Arndt My cousin, Pastor Adam Phillips, officiated the service. Frank Taylor and I shared a few words as well. We carried him out to the tune of Daddy was Never the Cadillac kind. Hardest working man I've ever known. He did his bid for King and Country and spent the rest of his life living in peace and trying to forget the horrible things he saw. He was born in Big rapids, Michigan, on February 13, 1922, to Alford and Lulu Arndt Raised during the Depression, he had to leave school at the age of 14 to take over the family farm when his father became very ill. The mantle of manhood was placed on his shoulders at an early age, and then the world erupted into war. There's nothing glorious about war, he told me on more than one occasion. He was drafted into service in 1942 with the option of taking a deferment and sending his brother Oren in his place. He didn't, and he went instead because he said, if something would have happened to Oren, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. No greater love hath a man than to lay his life down for a friend or in this case, a brother. That's the kind of man he was. So he went and fought for four years in the army in the worst theater of the war, the Pacific against the Japanese. A mortar man first, a sniper second. His tour took him from Papua New guinea to the Philippines and to Korea for a couple months after the Japanese surrender. My grandfather suffered from PTSD from his time in the service and had nightmares for years. Yet he eventually married my grandma, Verla Michael, and had my dad and Aunt Karen. He worked as a farmer for most of his life, and when he retired at age 62, he worked for other farmers in the area, driving potato trucks and caring for beef cattle that the other farmers paid him to do until he was the age of 84. He wasn't a particularly religious man, but he did have a deep faith in God and knew who his savior was. Not a perfect man, but he did teach his children and grandchildren by example on how to be honest and hardworking. He would say quite often, just make sure you do the right thing, regardless of what anyone else does. I consider myself blessed that he shared much of his experience in World War II with me because he didn't share a lot of it with anyone else. He's one of the many reasons why I'm proud to be an art he passed on to glory. March 2, 2018, at the age of 96. I know he's reunited with my grandma again, who passed away in 2006. It was an honor knowing you, and I will not forget and I will tell about you to my children and grandchildren. Well done, sir. Well done.

[03:45] KATIE RICE: I can tell that he meant a lot to you.

[03:47] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: He did.

[03:48] KATIE RICE: Yeah. And you told me earlier that you were really the only relative that he shared a lot of his experiences with, right?

[03:54] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[03:55] KATIE RICE: Why is that, do you think?

[03:57] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: The war was really hard on him. He fought against the Japanese, which was one of the worst theaters of the war, and it just. It took a toll on him, like for years. After he came back home in 1946, he didn't get married for a long time. He got married when he was 34. He. He had nightmares a lot, and they continued for years. Sometimes he wouldn't be able to sleep because he had that stuff going on. So my dad told me that sometimes when he was growing up, my grandpa would go out to the barn and just on a lot of stuff. And at the funeral, I didn't. Frank, the one I mentioned before, he was a family friend of ours. He mentioned that one time he talked to my grandpa, and my grandpa told him the reason why he worked so hard was to tire himself out so he could sleep.

[05:01] KATIE RICE: So you think your grandpa sharing his experiences with you allowed him a form of catharsis or therapy, being able to talk about it with someone who understood?

[05:10] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: I think so. I think it. Because it took years for him to share these stories with me. Just a little bit more, A little bit more. And I think it was because someone cared. Someone wanted to really know what happened, and it kind of let his guard down and he began to share. And towards the last few years of his life, he started sharing details a little bit with some other family and Friends. And I remember my dad saying, I grew up with grandpa all those years and I didn't even learn a tenth of what you learned growing up, so.

[05:57] KATIE RICE: Right. So did your grandpa share much about his life before entering the service with you?

[06:03] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah, yeah. He was born in 1920. 21, 22. Yeah. He basically was raised during the Depression right there in rural Morley or rural Michigan. Morley. Morley's a town.

[06:18] KATIE RICE: So did he have siblings?

[06:20] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes, he had two brothers.

[06:21] KATIE RICE: Did he talk about how hard that was for his family to care for three children during the Depression?

[06:28] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah, during the Depression. He also. They had this like three bedroom house, but they also had his grandfather and uncle and a few other older family members all living together during the Depression there. And yeah, there was a lot of.

[06:43] KATIE RICE: People in that house, I'd say so. And you said it was a farming family?

[06:48] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[06:49] KATIE RICE: What specifically did they farm?

[06:52] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Just local farmers, small farmers. My great grandfather, Alford, aren't he. He owned like 200 some odd acres, which is nothing compared to modern farmers, but, you know, just cattle. I think it was more or less a dairy farm.

[07:11] KATIE RICE: Okay.

[07:11] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah.

[07:12] KATIE RICE: And that was a generational family business, like it had been passed down?

[07:16] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: More or less, yes.

[07:17] KATIE RICE: Okay. And then how old was your grandfather when you said that he was drafted, asked to serve?

[07:23] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: 20. 20 years old, 1942.

[07:25] KATIE RICE: And you said that he was allowed the option to defer and pass the service on to his brother?

[07:32] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[07:32] KATIE RICE: Did he ever talk about why he did that?

[07:35] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, yes, he said if anything would have ever happened to his brother, he wouldn't have been able to live with it. I mean, sending his brother in his place. And if something happened to Orin. An interesting story about that. Orin was actually pretty resentful to my grandpa because of that for a lot of years. It kind of damaged their relationship. You got to remember, it was a totally different time back then. You know, people might be my grandfather, he was drafted. He didn't. He didn't volunteer, but to serve their country. Back then there were guys that were rejected from the service and they ended up committing suicide. I mean, it was just a totally different mindset than we have today.

[08:26] KATIE RICE: And how old. You said Oren was his name.

[08:27] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[08:28] KATIE RICE: How do you spell that? That's unique.

[08:29] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: O, R, I, N, O. Oren.

[08:31] KATIE RICE: Okay, okay. How old was he at the time that your grandfather was drafted?

[08:36] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: 17, 18. I would have met old enough to go into the service. I'm not exactly sure about the age, but.

[08:44] KATIE RICE: Right. I wasn't sure if the drafting ages differed in World War II than Vietnam?

[08:48] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, you could go in at 17 with your parents permission, but you could sign up at 18. So by yourself.

[08:58] KATIE RICE: Now, I'm unfamiliar. As unfamiliar with military history or less so than you are, presumably. But was that a common practice to be able to defer your drafting to a sibling or to a relative?

[09:12] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: I think so. My. On my mom's side. Well, I don't know. That's kind of weird how that worked out, because Orin never got drafted into the service, but on my mom's side of the family, her brother volunteered for the service and then caught. He basically did that. I know I'm going on a tangent, but he basically did that so his brother Carl wouldn't have to be drafted, but they ended up drafting Carl anyway, so. And there was only two sons in that family, and there were three sons in my grandpa's family, so I'm not exactly sure how that one worked.

[09:52] KATIE RICE: Right. There was Also World War II when you said the uncle. Okay. Now, prior to being drafted in World War II, had any of your ancestors served in the military at all?

[10:04] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes, on. Well, on both sides of my family. Funny you should bring that up. On my mom's side of the family, I'm descended from a Civil War veteran. His name was Henry Strope Jr. He served for a Michigan regiment during the Civil War.

[10:24] KATIE RICE: That would be the Union, right?

[10:26] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes. And, yeah, he marched with Sherman to the sea. Another side thing I find kind of sad, like, he lived to be, like, 98 years old. He died in 1937. Wow. Yeah. And in 1925, the local paper, which was called the Lakeview Enterprise, like, you know, like back in history, X amount of years ago today, we got a little clipping that says Henry Are or Henry Strope shared story. And they made an article about it. But when I went to try to find that article, which was from 1925, at the local library, well, a lot of the articles between 1918 and 1932 were lost in a fire.

[11:13] KATIE RICE: Oh, no.

[11:14] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah. So that history is gone.

[11:19] KATIE RICE: Wow. Yeah. Thank goodness for modern archival technology.

[11:23] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah.

[11:25] KATIE RICE: Wow. So do you think your grandpa was conscious of that military family history? Do you think that impacted his decision to serve or not or to defer the service?

[11:37] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: On the arms side, he had two uncles that were. That served in World War II. They were twins. And then that was World War I. And then, like, there was a. There was a few Civil War veterans even on his side of the family. And then going all the way back to 1731 when the ars came over here to America. The whole family fought in the American Revolution.

[12:02] KATIE RICE: Oh, wow. All.

[12:03] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: All eight sons, all with the last name of AR Two of them my direct ancestors, father and son. But yeah, it's funny, there. There's even a church out in Easton, Pennsylvania, called AR Lutheran. My. My family, my ancestors built and founded that church and still there today.

[12:22] KATIE RICE: That's really cool. Yeah, it's great to have that, like, marker of family history. Did your grandpa ever talk to you about how he felt when he got that call to service?

[12:33] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, he did his bid for king and country.

[12:38] KATIE RICE: Is it something that he would say to you or is that you interpreting what he would say to him?

[12:41] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: That's more or less me interpreting. Okay, that's my spin on it. Yes. My grandfather was a patriotic guy, but having spent two years in total combat from, well, 43. 40. No, more like three. Three years in actual combat from the front lines and Papua New guinea, in the Philippines and then beyond. I don't know, he decided to. I. He was patriotic and I think he was kind of a little proud of his service. But then again, he. He was in war. He was in the nastiest theater of that war. They. It was inhumane. I mean, he. I don't. If he had to press a rewind button and not do it, I don't think he would have. I mean, you know, right. You're. He was in jungle warfare. The Japanese fought very dirty. And I'm not saying the Americans, you know, they had to get dirty too. But I mean, if he had a choice, I don't think he would repeat it. He would have repeated it.

[13:58] KATIE RICE: Where was his duty station overseas?

[14:00] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, he was. When he was drafted in 1942, they originally were. He was in the 6th infantry. The army infantry is called the sightseeing six. There's the emblem for the six infantry right there.

[14:18] KATIE RICE: A six pointed red star.

[14:19] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[14:19] KATIE RICE: Okay.

[14:20] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: The sightseeing and six.

[14:21] KATIE RICE: Yeah, the six points are for the. For the six then. Okay, cool.

[14:25] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah, that was his unit. And, you know, he was, Let me see, 6 Infantry, Army 1st Regiment, Company.

[14:34] KATIE RICE: M. And where were they specifically? I know you said Pacific and Japan.

[14:39] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes, they were originally in Nevada in the beginning because they were going to send that unit to Africa to fight in the desert warfare there. So they were originally training for desert warfare, but then when the British drove the Germans out of Africa, then everything changed. So then they redesignated the six for the Pacific theater, which was largely fought by the Marines, but the army was there too, obviously.

[15:08] KATIE RICE: That must have been quite a shift in training from going from desert, like that kind of a mindset, to tropical, potentially jungle kind of climate. Right.

[15:18] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: He. He was stationed in Hawaii there. They did some training there for. For a while there. And one of my favorite stories my grandpa told, he was on guard duty one night and there was this sergeant that just did not like my grandfather. He just kept giving my grandfather really crappy duties like kitchen duty or latrine duty. He just did not like my grandfather. And my grandpa was a quiet guy. He just. He would take the duty and he would just do it. He wouldn't complain. And the sergeant just kept doing that to him over and over again. And then one time, he was on guard duty one night and he was holding the rifle, and the sergeant kind of walked up, had a cocky look on his face, and my grandfather was supposed to challenge him. So he yelled out, he's like, hey. And he yelled out the challenge. I forget exactly what the challenge was, but the sergeant just kind of sneered at him, kept walking. And then my grandfather was like, well, I was either going to get a court martial for letting him pass without challenging him, or I was going to get a court martial for shooting him. So he lifted up the rifle, racked around, pointed it at his head, and he said, sergeant, I told you to halt. And the sergeant halted.

[16:42] KATIE RICE: Oh, no. Did he ever get court martialed for any of that?

[16:45] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: No, no, actually, it was a couple days later. He went from private first class to. Or no, he went from private. Is it private to private first class or is it the other way around? But anyway, he got. He got a promotion. Yes, a few days later. And the sergeant was a little nicer to him after that.

[17:04] KATIE RICE: Yeah, you gotta earn in that kind of a situation.

[17:07] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Right, exactly.

[17:08] KATIE RICE: What are some other stories that stick out to you from that time in your grandpa's life?

[17:13] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: He. He said he participated in three separate beach invasions. I know two of them were in Papua New guinea and another one was in the Philippines, I think. He told me about his first night of combat. It was in Papua New guinea. And they were on the shore, there was a lot of coral, so they really couldn't dig in. And my grandfather said the first night of combat, he thought he was going to die because they were shooting at him. He couldn't dig down because it was coral and they were. And you know, he was like, yeah, I was convinced I was gonna die that night. And a lot of, a lot of the people he trained with did die that night. It was. It was pretty bad.

[18:06] KATIE RICE: Did he ever talk about what it was like for him to see all these relatively exotic places as a small farm boy from Michigan.

[18:13] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah. Yeah. He said that in Papua New guinea, the people down by the coast, they. In his words, he said they were very. They were very dishonest. They stole, and they would. They stole from the army all the time. And then the Australian troops, they weren't all. He didn't particularly like them either. I mean, but he said the people in the mountains, the. The aboriginals in the mountains in Papua New guinea, he said they were the nicest, most honest people he had ever met. I mean, they. They. It's a totally different culture. You know, they were isolated tribes up in the mountains or whatever, and they didn't have a lot of experience with the outside world. So he did. He did remark on that.

[19:03] KATIE RICE: So did you have any other stories from that point in his life that you wanted to share?

[19:09] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: When he was in Papua New guinea, he contracted. He contracted both malaria and hepatitis A. That's a combination pretty much at the same time. Yeah, he was sick. It knocked him out for a couple months. And he was at the hospital. And he told me that when he was at the hospital, the front line was, like, six or seven miles away, so you could see the smoke, and he could hear the fighting and everything going on. And he did remark that there was this nurse that seemed to take a liking to him. All the other guys were all kind of coarse and, you know, just being guys, but my grandfather was always a really modest guy, so the nurse noticed that he wasn't trying to hit on her like all the other guys were, and. And she would come over and just rub his back and whatnot. And. And he said, yeah, I never really pursued that because I. Again, he was convinced he was gonna die at some point. So he's like, I didn't. I didn't really do anything about it because, yeah, I didn't want to start something and then die on her, more or less, what he told me. So.

[20:23] KATIE RICE: So I know you said. You mentioned before that he had ptsd, and it seems that at least in your retelling of what he told you, one of the dominating emotions was fear. During that period of his service, what other emotions did he recount to you as having experienced?

[20:41] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Like, I remember when he said he was in combat, he would talk about replacements coming in, and he told me that, you know, it must have been really hard to be a replacement because you were coming in with a bunch of guys, because he trained with the core group of his guys since 1942, up till 1943, 1944. So they've been together through training and their first experience with combat. But when you had all these recruit, you know, replacements coming in, he's like, you didn't want to get to know them because they'd come in and three days later they'd leave out in a body bag. And he was like, you know, they didn't get the experience of training with all these guys, and they're trying to. To fit in with these core guys that were together and. Yeah, just completely green and inexperienced. And it got him killed a lot of them. And you could tell it bothered him when he. When he talked with me about that. He also said that the guys that he was with, from the beginning, he was really close to them. I mean, in combat, the camaraderie kind of brings them together. He basically said they were his brothers, and I think he meant that in every sense of the word.

[22:21] KATIE RICE: Do you know if he kept in touch with them post war?

[22:23] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes. I don't know their names, but I do know that my dad said he actually went and when they were still alive, he went with my grandma and he visited them back in the 80s and 90s. I mean, we're talking like 40, 50, 60 years after the fact, and they still wrote each other and kept in contact.

[22:50] KATIE RICE: Have you seen any of that correspondence that they.

[22:52] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: I have not. I don't even know. I'd have to ask my Aunt Karen about that if those letters are around or not. I do not know that, unfortunately, which I guess I gotta go check now.

[23:04] KATIE RICE: Yeah, that would be really interesting to follow up on, maybe see if they're still alive. I don't know if they've passed or not. Or at least try to look at that correspondence. That would be some really good material for maybe writing a biography of your grandpa. That seems like something that you obviously have a lot of resources here and a lot of his knowledge. Sharing his life in that way might be a good way to go.

[23:24] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: My grandfather would never have done one of these interviews. Never would have done one of these interviews. He wouldn't even let me videotape them or record them. So I had to commit all of this to memory.

[23:38] KATIE RICE: Right. But you do have some pictures?

[23:40] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes, I do.

[23:40] KATIE RICE: Did you have anything that you wanted to show or share from that time?

[23:44] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, let me see. I've got. I mean, these are his patches, and here, this is dog tag.

[23:55] KATIE RICE: Oh, wow.

[23:58] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: And my grandfather, he was a mortar man, but he was also the sniper, too. He was a very good shot. Growing up in rural Michigan. Sometimes they had to go hunting. And he became a very good shot growing up through the Depression, through hunting and whatnot. An interesting thing. After the war, he never went hunting ever again because obviously, you know, like, it. Even years later when hunting season did, you know, like every November 15th, it's like a holiday up there in rural Michigan. But even hearing the guns go off on opening day, he said it sounded like World War II all over again.

[24:47] KATIE RICE: You think that might have triggered some of those PTSD feelings that he had?

[24:51] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah, I think so.

[24:52] KATIE RICE: And what does it mean to you to have this stuff now that your grandpa carried with him through a gruesome, very impactful war for him?

[25:01] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, I mean, it's when you have something tangible, when you have something that you can see and hold and, you know, just. It connects you to history on a whole nother level, especially when it's something of someone that you loved and admired, you know, These are the shell casings. You know, like during a military funeral, they do the 21 gun salute. These were a couple of the casings right there. From that.

[25:42] KATIE RICE: From a funeral? Yes, from his funeral.

[25:45] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: His funeral.

[25:45] KATIE RICE: Okay.

[25:45] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes. And. Well, let me see. Try not to.

[25:53] KATIE RICE: Yeah. Don't want to lose anything or.

[25:55] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: No, no. I would be crushed. Yeah. Here's this portrait that I brought right there. Oops.

[26:07] KATIE RICE: I can definitely see the resemblance.

[26:09] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Can you?

[26:10] KATIE RICE: I can, yeah.

[26:12] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: And. And here's one of my pictures. Favorite pictures. I think that was taken back in the 19. I want to say about 1946, because I remember him telling me when that picture was taken, it was in a field that's now overgrown. It's not too far from where I grew up. He. Him and his dad were doing stuff out there, and he actually ended up losing two of his fingers in a farm accident.

[26:38] KATIE RICE: Oh, no.

[26:39] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah. And I think that was the. That picture was taken the day he lost his fingers.

[26:44] KATIE RICE: So this is the last picture of your grandpa with ten fingers?

[26:47] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yes.

[26:48] KATIE RICE: Okay.

[26:50] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: He wasn't able to wear a wedding band either, because it was on his left hand. So he had a wedding band, but obviously he couldn't wear it, so.

[26:59] KATIE RICE: Different hand. Wow. So this was after. This would have been after he returned shortly afterwards, 1946. Did he recount to you what that process was like, leaving war and then coming back to live this normal life?

[27:16] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah, he told me when he was. Got his honorable discharge, he was. Let me see. I think he was in Korea towards the last. After they dropped the bomb, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He went as a peacekeeping force in what would now be South Korea, because the Soviets occupied the northern part, and then the Americans occupied the southern part right after the war. And he went through an honorable. He went through a. Not a court martial. Well, maybe it's a court martial, I don't know. But anyway, he went there. He got his corporal stripes, and then he said that he went home, first to Hawaii, then to California, and then he took a train from California to Grand Rapids, Michigan. And he said that he had a. He met a guy along the way, him, and they were both from Michigan. And. Man, I wish I could recount this better.

[28:30] KATIE RICE: No, I'm getting a picture of what.

[28:32] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: You'Re trying to say, but they, you know, like, they got to Grand Rapids, and I think from Grand Rapids, there was still a rail line going up to Morley, where he's from, and him and this guy spent the night at the station because apparently there were no more trains going north at that point. And then when he actually, the next morning, he parted ways with this guy. I don't know if he kept contact with him or not, but he. He said, yeah, he. He went home to the. To Morley and got off the train and he walked the two miles to his. To his parents place, his parents farm. And he said it was. The first three years was really hard for him, coming back. Like, back then, they didn't really understand PTSD like we do now. And, you know, he just went back to farming, went back to what he knew, what he. What he grew up with. So. Yeah.

[29:42] KATIE RICE: Did he describe some of his experiences with PTSD during those first tough three years to you?

[29:49] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: He had a lot of nightmares, A lot of them, and they still happened later on in his life. They got less and less frequent as years went by. But he told me that's specifically one of the reasons why he chose not to pursue anyone for marriage for quite a few years. Because of that, I guess these nightmares were pretty violent. He'd wake up, and sometimes he wouldn't know where he was. And he didn't get into great specifics exactly what was going on. But I. You know, laying next to someone at night or whatever, and if he's flailing around or if he's reliving a memory where he had to, you know, or because it was war. He killed people, obviously, and they were trying to kill him. And I can't even imagine what that does to a man. I've never had to endure that. I've never had to. I've never had to experience that, and I'm thankful I didn't ever have to.

[31:04] KATIE RICE: It'd be interesting to maybe try and get ahold of that correspondence between your grandpa and his band of brothers that he had there to see if they talked about those experiences at all. Because I'm sure that people had these experiences. They just didn't talk about them and share them. Because, like you said, the culture wasn't as welcoming or understanding it as it is today. Was your grandpa formally diagnosed with PTSD later in life?

[31:28] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Not that. Not that I'm aware of. When I say ptsd, I know that I'm not a doctor. I can't really make that prognosis, but from what I understand of ptsd, I would highly think he most likely suffered from it, so.

[31:45] KATIE RICE: Right. Yeah. And what year did you say he and your grandma got married?

[31:52] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: 1950. 1955, I think. And what was your grandma's name? Or 56. Verla. Or Verla. Michael was her. What's her maiden name?

[32:08] KATIE RICE: And how many children did they have?

[32:10] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: 2. My aunt Karen and my dad.

[32:12] KATIE RICE: What years were they born?

[32:14] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: My dad was born in 58, and I think Karen was born in 60, I think. Oh, he told me this story many times, actually. He got to the point where the nightmares kind of subsided, and he was like in his 30s by that point. And he got to thinking, well, I don't really want to spend life. I really don't want to spend life alone. I'd like to find someone. So he lived up in Morley, and he figured, well, I'm gonna find me a factory job down in Grand Rapids, because it was probably a pretty gal or something working maybe down there or whatever. So he started working at this one factory, and it was all dudes, and he's like, well, there kind of goes that idea. But then he became friends with a guy that ended up becoming his brother in law. He kept going on and on about his maiden or old maid sister in law. And my grandfather was like, bill, tell me more about this maid, this maid, old maid, sister in law that you have. And. And then he eventually got them to set him up. And my grandpa came over to their house. And my grandma was a really quiet, really shy woman, very intelligent woman, but she. She was shy. And she was at the piano playing, and my grandpa came in and he's like, she was kind of over there and kind of looked at me and then went back to playing. And. And then she. He's like, yeah, she must have liked what she saw because she agreed to go on the date with him. And they went on the date and they were going to go into a restaurant, and he's like, well, do you want me. Do you want to go in the restaurant, get something? She's like, no, I just kind of want to stay in the car. And he's like, I'll go in the restaurant and get food and we'll bring it out. We'll just eat in the car. And, you know, they talked and everything. And at the end of the date, he's like, well, she must have really liked me because she wanted to go on another one and. And then, like, I think they only dated for four months before they got married.

[34:41] KATIE RICE: Wow, that's really sweet.

[34:43] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah.

[34:44] KATIE RICE: Is your grandma still around?

[34:45] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: No, no, she passed away in 2006. But they were. Yeah, they were a few months shy of their 50th wedding anniversary when she passed away.

[34:58] KATIE RICE: Did he ever talk to you about his relationship with her beyond how they met?

[35:03] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, they. She was always really quiet, and I remember one time he was talking, he was like, man, being such a quiet woman and everything. Like, one time she really surprised me because she made an announcement up at church, and she went up there and was like. Presented herself in a very professional manner. She also went to college, too. She never finished college because she ran out of money. But he was really impressed that she was surprised she was able to handle public speaking so well. And, you know, he. He loved her, obviously. Spent. Spent like, almost 50 years of marriage together and. Yeah.

[36:00] KATIE RICE: Do you think he told her some of the things that he told you about his service and his experiences?

[36:05] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: From what I know, he told her some stuff. I still think I'm. I still think I'm the person he's told the most to. My grandma never really commented on what he told her. What she didn't. Or, you know, she never really commented on that.

[36:25] KATIE RICE: And what was your grandpa like as you knew him?

[36:28] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: As I knew him well. A very hardworking man. Not a perfect man. He was. He was kind of a perfectionist. He liked everything perfect. And if you didn't, like, in the summertime, we would bale hay and whatnot, and we had to have the. In the barn. We had to have it perfect. It couldn't be like a pyramid where it was stepped back. It all had to be perfectly tied together. And if it wasn't perfectly tied together, he let you know.

[37:01] KATIE RICE: Okay. And let's see. Did you have anything else you wanted to say about him or his life or another story that you wanted to tell?

[37:13] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Yeah. During. When he was in the Philippines. He saw like, have you ever heard of the Bataan Death March?

[37:20] KATIE RICE: Yes.

[37:23] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Like when they invaded the Philippines, they actually rescued some from a concentration camp in the Philippines. Some of the soldiers that were there since like 1941, when the original, when the Japanese originally invaded the Philippines, they captured 10,000American troops. And he said they brought him through the line and he, he said they were walking skeletons. They, they've been malnourished, they've been beaten. And, and they brought him through the lines and he said he just remembered looking at them and they were just as I said, skeletons. And, and you know, he said one time when he was in the Philippines, he was put in command of, of a platoon of Philippine soldiers. And he was only. Well, he was technically a, he was technically just a private, but he was an acting staff sergeant. They froze the ratings after the War of Europe was, was concluded. They froze the ratings in the Pacific, so he was an acting staff sergeant. But like the thing with the Japanese, they couldn't, they. Very early on in the war they took off the insignias that denoted rank because the Japanese would purposely pick off all the officers and the NCOs or non commissioned officers. So very early on they got rid of the ranks and everything. And he. And when he was in charge of this platoon of the Philippines, he was, he wasn't sure if they were gonna kill him or not. I don't know why, I don't know. Like, he said he was very good to them. So they're. So later on they ended up carrying a lot of his gear because he was going from point A to point B. It was three Americans in charge of like, I think a platoon is roughly a thousand men somewhere around there. But I'm not exactly sure where I was going with that story. Sorry.

[39:46] KATIE RICE: That's okay. What's one thing that you would either like to tell your grandfather or maybe ask him if he were still around?

[39:57] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, I would like to. I kind of wish I could know even more than what he told me because I know he still spared me a lot of details. There was obviously there was things he saw that he probably tried very hard to forget. And I wish I would have. I only asked a couple times if I could record his story and he just kept brush. He brushed it off, so I just left it alone. But I'm kind of wishing I would have actually, well, not pressed him, but would have been a little more adamant about, you know, I still don't know if he would have agreed to it or not, but I feel like I. Because all this information I'm giving you is secondhand. It's from my perspective, my experience. So it would have been better to have it from the source, if that makes sense.

[41:08] KATIE RICE: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you said that you're very interested in American history and potentially military history as well. Did that come about as a result of talking to your grandfather about his experiences?

[41:20] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: That, and on my mom's side of the family, my grandma Muriel, with Richard, the other World War II vet that was in the Airborne. He died over there. I think that both these things kind of started my interest in history very early on and gave me that drive to learn more about it.

[41:42] KATIE RICE: Okay. And is there anything else you want to say as a closing remark about your grandfather, about your experience with him?

[41:50] JEREMY MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, he taught me the value of hard work. He taught me that no one's going to hand you anything. You have to go out there and just earn it. And there's nothing wrong with manual labor. There's nothing wrong with just working with your hands. That's all my grandfather wanted to do was farm. It was not. It wasn't easy. It wasn't. It wasn't super profitable. They weren't very rich, you know, but he showed me the value of just given everything you have and pursuing your goals.

[42:32] KATIE RICE: Okay.