Philip Schneider and Dana Schneider

Recorded April 2, 2008 Archived April 2, 2008 44:01 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: GCT004875

Description

Dana Schneider interviews her father Philip Schneider about his experiences in the military in WWII, and why he had her at such a late age.

Subject Log / Time Code

Phil talks about bad things he saw in war, how the citizens of the countries he was in were inured to them.
Phil talks about his nickname in the neighborhood: “The King.” A shoeshine man gave it to him because the other kids behaved like Phil’s subjects.
The boys used to tease their mother about not being in the military because all three of them, plus their father were in the service.
Phil talks about his realization that his bachelorhood was over and he wanted to settle down, when he turned down a date with a beautiful woman to go out with a buddy.

Participants

  • Philip Schneider
  • Dana Schneider

Transcript

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00:04 Okay, Dana Jan Schneider 33 years of age. It's April 2nd 2008 at Grand Central Terminal and I am interviewing my father.

00:23 Philip Schneider age 85 April 2nd 2008 Grand Central Terminal and I am the father of my partner.

00:40 So just for the record.

00:44 Say when you went to war and in what war and where you were for how long?

00:51 Hi and listed in the United States Army Air Force on December 4th. 1942.

01:00 I was discharged from the United States Army Air Force on December 12th, 1945 giving me 3 years and eight days of service.

01:13 And knows and that. Of time I was in the United States North Africa, India and China serving about two years in China with the 14th Air Force Flying Tigers.

01:32 And what was it like?

01:36 Well

01:38 I initially arrived in North Africa.

01:42 And never having been out of the country before this. I thought that was

01:49 A pretty bad place

01:52 I stayed in the 10th at an infantry Camp did guard Duty with the World War 1 rifle at night.

02:05 Rose very early in the morning and stood with the Italian prisoners of War while a heated water for the American soldiers coffee because it was so cold at night.

02:18 And we were sleeping on wooden floors in a tent.

02:25 From there, which was Casablanca in North Africa.

02:32 I don't remember how many days I was there, but subsequently my outfit.

02:39 Went on to the freight cars of a railroad.

02:46 They were called 40 1/8 presumably 40 men or eight horses.

02:54 And we traveled across North Africa and those with stops at Tunis or ran and Algiers.

03:06 And of course that was awful because we lived on K rations.

03:13 And without sanitary facilities whenever that freight car stopped you jumped off your freight car.

03:23 And performed whatever function you have to go phone and jump back on.

03:28 In any of the time. I mean, I know that you were there and then in China for a long time, can you enter into your first? Okay. So India in between well yes from Algiers and North Africa, I boarded a an old British pub flying the British flag and 34 Days Later landed in Bombay India where I was bedded with a British royal Air Force at that time. India was a commonwealth of Britain.

04:09 Subsequently I travelled across India.

04:14 Atton to eventually upper Assam.

04:19 Where I flew over the emmalea mountains which in those days was called the hump.

04:26 And to Kunming China

04:29 And at that point I served until after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when my outfit back over the Himalaya Mountains to hump into Calcutta.

04:47 Where will way to transport back to the United States? Can you remember any times that you were afraid afraid? Well considering the fact that I enlisted when I was 19.

05:05 I have to say that youth doesn't have the fear.

05:11 That may be older people have there were times when I was afraid but they will not too numerous because somehow

05:22 Youth believes that they were invincible

05:27 I presume that's why the Army wants young people.

05:34 I was a volunteer.

05:36 On a special Mission into the occupied territories where I spent four months.

05:44 With this Mission and it might have been a couple of times that I was in fear. But if you ask an older person would you have volunteered although I was asked if I would volunteer

06:00 I know the person might say oh no, no way. No way. But use I guess they believe in everlasting life. It's going to be not meal gets killed somebody else.

06:14 Well, I know you've told me so many specific stories over the years of you know, not having enough food and of you know, terrible conditions and the things that you saw I think probably not everything you saw Have you shared but many stories about those those experiences and also some of the people that you were with who didn't make it back and I know that you know having her I really have appreciated hearing all that information and getting a vivid snapshot of your experiences over the years and I wonder how do you think it changed you?

06:49 To have been there.

06:51 What lessons what impact do you want to go back from that gave me an insight into the horror of what war is and how the value of life becomes devalued.

07:08 As time goes by in a war initially when I came over from the United States. I was appalled by death and destruction.

07:20 After there's some exposure for a. Of time maybe not initially but over a. Of time. There's a you become a little bit in your word to it.

07:35 For instance I've seen.

07:40 Dead bodies

07:42 Chinese mostly

07:48 Ravaged by maybe wild animals that we just left.

07:52 And we buried him.

07:55 Because life was much cheaper there.

08:00 In addition having been in the interior of trying on that mission of which I spoke. I saw conditions where apparently the people in those areas are inured to what an American might say is my God. Look at that.

08:22 So

08:24 Having served on the conditions, which will not.

08:30 What's a of Maximum maximum good-taste, you become a little horrified by what war really is. Those people who have never had a gun fired at them or a bomb dropped on them and young hippie.

08:52 Have a lot to learn just as I remember when I was a young man, and they made war movies for Heroes were always great guys who mowed down again about you.

09:05 Well, it doesn't work that way.

09:09 Are there other?

09:11 Other among your strongest memories of that time that you would want to share now in other words people or

09:20 Anecdotes. Also you have to remember that in a war of that magnitude was a draft.

09:30 United States Army was composed of people from every part of the country every kind of Education.

09:39 And

09:41 Let's say every nature and personality so that in the course of years you run across of all kinds of people in the American Service.

09:55 Some of whom you might have very little regard for and some of whom you might even perceive.

10:04 To have the characteristics that you were tribute to the enemy.

10:12 I'm pausing cuz I that's interesting to me. What do you mean by that last part?

10:20 Some people have compassion.

10:24 Empathy sympathy what you will they were others. I've observed in the American Service who it seems to me like those attributes.

10:37 Now I may be wrong.

10:39 I may be wrong. And of course that was a few Generations ago.

10:45 So I'm just saying some of the Impressions I've had for my years of service.

10:53 I know that you know there were people you were there with who didn't come back and also people that you knew from the neighborhood here, you know, you've told me before that you kind of came back to the corner candy store and some people returned and some didn't after the war so we can certainly go back to talking about stories from that time of being overseas as well. But I wanted to ask you what it was like to come back to Brooklyn afterwards. I came from a neighborhood.

11:27 Where the corner candy store was a social Center?

11:33 See where it was just before you continue. So we're on the corner of Sterling Place and Rochester Avenue in Crown Heights.

11:44 And that that corner

11:47 What's a social Center for guys and girls who came not only from the neighborhood?

11:55 But because of where it was located and the people that gather there they came from other parts of Brooklyn as well and I believe it was known to many parts of Brooklyn.

12:15 It was a social Center.

12:19 And

12:20 The guys from that corner who served in the service served in

12:26 Every branch of the service

12:30 From Gunners on bombers to the Corps of Engineers to the Infantry

12:39 Some came back

12:41 Some didn't the corner candy store had pictures of the guys who was serving in the service in the window. And one of the guys who was a 4-f.

12:56 Went around to all the parents collected funds.

13:01 And published a small.

13:04 Neighborhood newspaper neighborhood meaning our area and our guys and it's hard to imagine.

13:14 I got that little paper in China has good most of the other guys whether they were in England or Pacific island or in Europe itself in The Invasion. So, I believe I believe I still may have one or two of those little papers that was organized by the 4f guys and I believe I may still have some at home.

13:44 And when you came back tell me about a little bit about your closest friends. I know you had you know, your gang that was from the neighborhood. We've always talked about how unusual it is to have had friends since childhood like that till 2 today. And I know at that time they were part of the gang that was regathering on the corner. We had some Navy guy just well and a very close-knit Bond evolved with a group of us and those who are still alive.

14:22 From those days still meet on occasion here in Manhattan.

14:30 I meet with two of them.

14:34 About a year or two ago. There were five or six with meeting Queens.

14:40 One of them apparently has died since then another is in an old age home. Another has moved to Florida permanently, but a close Bond had been established.

14:54 Where to this day to this day the guy who Moved permanently to Florida organizes occasional lunches

15:06 Where

15:09 People who lived in our neighborhood and I retired down there.

15:15 Still meet from parts of Florida for these lunches and meet and greet each other. It's my intention hopefully to go down there soon to see some of them who I haven't seen for 50 years or so.

15:35 Tell me about about getting your nickname tell us what it is. Say what it is and tell me the story of that.

15:45 Well in this neighborhood with a guys in those days almost everybody had a nickname.

15:55 We had babe. We had Jack Armstrong. We had your choice we had moong. We had all kinds of names then and my nickname was the king.

16:10 And there were a couple of reasons for it. But one of the reasons was that immediately well a short. After everybody came back. The survivors came back from the war. We would gather around the corner, but there was also

16:28 Hey Shoemaker across the street.

16:32 And I was one of the leaders of the group.

16:36 That guy's hand since I lived.

16:40 Just across the street from the candy store on a couple of houses down. I would be there very frequently and the Shoemaker took a liking to me would always call me in as he worked and he had this shoe shine chair high up on the podium where you put your feet and they stand and shine and I would sit up there while he worked and in those days they used to keep Nails in their teeth as they handed them into shoes and as the guys drifted into say hello and everything. They were looked upon as my subjects.

17:19 I'm So eventually they would say what we're going in to see the king. We're going in to see the king it became so prevalent that to this day the list that the people who are still around call me the king knows I say that was one of the reasons they were others involved and everything else. But but that was one of the reasons and cuz I say the name is still with me through this day.

17:52 I know it's amazing.

17:56 Tell me.

17:58 Tell me a little bit about your family at that time. I mean, it's a whole other topic to go into growing up in the family, but just kind of a snapshot from the world was an immigrant.

18:13 From Russia who served in the American Army in World War II

18:20 My older brother

18:23 Was drafted into World War II but because he was limited service because he wore glasses as eyes were not that good was drafted into the quartermaster Corps and served in Germany in a warehouse with a quartermaster Corps and

18:46 He was he was a guy with a sense of humor because he once sent a care package to me in China because he was in a warehouse in Germany, which had woke kinds of supplies while in China. It was difficult to get a decent thing to eat. So

19:09 And then my younger brother.

19:12 After the war was drafted into I believe was the 18 months draft after World War II and show that the only one that didn't serve in the armed forces. My family was my mother and I used to tease her I used to say to her you are the only one in this family that hasn't served in the United States armed forces and she with her slightly Jewish accent would say, so what should I be a cook and I would say to her. Yeah for the other side then would win the war and she recognizes no just be fun. But but that was my family. It was a very close family.

19:58 We left a lot. My father was a very very hard worker.

20:03 Who as an immigrant?

20:07 Couldn't read or write English because the Jews in Russia weren't allowed to go to school in those towns and he built a business by himself.

20:18 For my two brothers

20:22 Who ended up in the business with him high maybe because I was lazy or maybe because I was a ball player and maybe because I wasn't interested in getting up 5 in the morning to load a truck and drive around in that ice cold weather, but I was a college graduate who went to law school Under the GI Bill of Rights.

20:46 And immediately passed the bar and got my first floor job for twenty bucks a week.

20:54 And that was

20:56 In 1950

21:00 I know that I've heard so much about your parents. I mean, I knew your mother but I've heard so much about your father growing up. What do you think are the the strongest things that you learned from them that you carried forward and and that you would share with me.

21:16 I think the strongest thing I learned from them.

21:19 Was conscience

21:23 Empathy

21:27 Hard work

21:29 And a soft heart

21:33 My mother

21:35 In my eyes was a salt of the earth.

21:40 My father was the hardest working.

21:46 Least lazy man, I have ever known in my life and his hard-working as he was.

21:54 He would give money to charity.

21:56 Give Merchants I've off his truck to orphans home in Brooklyn to go up to the Masons in the Bronx to visit old people and give them gifts and who worked six and a half days a week.

22:11 What was probably one of the most generous men I've ever met.

22:17 When a guy remembers a child if I ask him for a nickel e gave me a dime sometimes to the Chagrin of my mother will try to rein him what it was. It was a great family and I wish all families like mine.

22:38 Unfortunately, they're not all like me.

22:45 What are some other favorite stories?

22:48 Either from overseas from here back in Brooklyn with your friends with family. I know that's a wide-ranging question, but you told so many over the years.

23:03 Well, most of the time the stories like cold are for humor.

23:10 I don't tell generally the sad stories.

23:15 Or things that make people morose.

23:21 If I talk about the armed forces and the War I tell the funny stories that happened. There are always funny things that happened.

23:30 Coming back with the guys on the corner always funny things happened subsequently in my years as a lawyer funny things happened.

23:42 And I talked about those things, but I went to now.

23:55 Could you talk to Dan about your brothers and the different personalities you guys all had? Oh, yeah.

24:01 Yes, it's an odd thing.

24:05 My older brother or in my older brother. I detected some of the characteristics of my father.

24:14 As for myself

24:16 I detected the characteristics of my mother.

24:21 And in my younger brother I saw a mixture of both.

24:27 Now my older brother resembled my father physically.

24:32 I resembled my mother physically my younger brother tended tended to resemble my mother to however when I shave today at this age and I look in the mirror. I see my father or though all my life. I look like my mother.

24:53 What?

24:55 The character of them my older brother was a hard-working conservative.

25:06 Goodnight. Goodbye.

25:09 My younger brother who is my older brother is now deceased.

25:13 My younger brother still lives in Florida now and he was the I would guess the opposite of my older brother. He was also a hard worker who got up on the trucks through 5 in the morning etcetera, but he would go to Atlantic City to bet he bet on football games baseball games. He had an Open Door in his house when neighbors would walk in and out.

25:42 I just did my daughter and I when we went there and the personalities with such that I always said look at these two opposites now.

25:56 I love them both but for different reasons.

26:04 I know that you they worked in the business and you you know went to law school instead and kind of followed a different path.

26:13 So tell me about what that was like and that next stage of your life in terms of law school and then moving out of Brooklyn and that progression.

26:23 When I went to law school

26:26 I did this for years and two and a half years.

26:30 I took the bar and passed it immediately.

26:34 I didn't have an ambition to become a lawyer.

26:41 I went to law school because

26:43 After about a year after the war

26:48 My dear buddy.

26:50 Who had been an Ensign in the Navy and it was gone for Brooklyn College with me? I am listed when I have finished three years of college.

26:58 When I was 19, I went to college when I was 16, but he and I

27:08 In conference said look we have a GI Bill. Why don't we go to school with the GI Bill? We both had gotten a Bachelor of Arts degree.

27:18 And he said well

27:21 He has been a meth make sure I have been political science major.

27:27 Although we took a lot of different subjects. He said well.

27:32 What do you want to be? And this is the way it went in those days because we didn't have distinct Ambitions. He said you want to be an engineer first of all in those days as hard as it may believe they didn't hire Jewish guys in the engineering firms. He said you want to be an accountant. We said no.

27:57 Know where ball players we played good money softball. We play Touch tackle against other teams. We will go play we're not going to sit with numbers all day.

28:11 But what do you think? Well, let's go to law school.

28:15 Because not that will be lawyers, but when you graduate and you get admitted to the bar and you can do anything you would send it managed to you for any other occupation.

28:28 So we said, okay.

28:30 We'll go to law school.

28:34 We both went to law school. We both did it in the two-and-a-half years because we went in the summer time and played Big Money softball games.

28:46 After we come after school or school.

28:49 But we both took the bar.

28:52 I might dear friend Monroe who is passed away.

28:57 My dear friend was a funny man.

29:00 Because in those days 40% average pass the bar 60% failed when we took the bar exam we were lined up across a lecture hall. Where a row

29:17 All across from one end to the other had five people.

29:21 Now he was sitting seats away from me. I will roll had five people to the wall and he looked at me and he said, you know Phil I feel sorry for these other three guys, assuming that two of us, which is 40% with fast. Well, it turned out that we met on Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue for the New York Times when they publish the results eventually they publish the results eventually and we both passed the bar. Of course. I don't know what to do then cuz I didn't have the driving ambition to be a lawyer.

30:02 He had some friends of the family that gave me a Clark's job cheap enough. I hunted around I said well, we'll have a look at it. We'll have a look at it.

30:13 So with my Bachelor of Arts my bachelor of laws and having passed the bar.

30:18 I found a job for $20 a week.

30:22 At 70 Pine Street in Manhattan running around with every miniature that their designated for me, but I got my feet wet.

30:35 About a year-and-a-half later.

30:38 What?

30:40 I left them and I was on my own when my dear friend Monroe called me and said my boss have passed away.

30:50 And

30:52 With an arrangement with his widow paying her per case, the people know him and they would have signed the cases to us. And that's how I became a partner with a dear old friend.

31:06 And we ended up on Court Street in Brooklyn as partners, but eventually

31:12 He was married got married and had two children, and I was having a great time as a bachelor and by then I moved into Greenwich Village, West Village.

31:22 And I have my bachelor pad in the West Village and I would run to the Berkshire Country Club every weekend which was a great singles place. And after that expired I had a house in Fire Island every summer. Ocean Bay Park, which was another great Escapade for years and eventually when I decided it was time to move out of this menu Hood.

31:53 I happened to walk by.

31:56 MCU civil service exam

32:00 Hand so I pay the fee and took it.

32:03 And I'll make a long story short by saying I ended up as an attorney for the New York City Transit Authority.

32:12 From which I eventually retired and now in retirement I Advanced while I was there with all of the promotion exams and put in the time required for a pension.

32:29 Reach the age of Social Security and here I am now this many years later.

32:37 How to give you a capsule? Yeah, but after you went to law school you you lived in Brooklyn for a while and then you moved in you said you moved into the West Village to the Bachelor Pad. So tell me about the m and of course, I know Fire Island and the Berkshire Country Club and stuff tell me about those days and then also about meeting my mother used to look forward to Friday coming because it was the Berkshire Country Club me and my guys would meet we had a beautiful little house on the right at the first a little Golf Course up there and it was a wonderful singles place. So you look forward to the weekend dating so you could Race To The Berkshire Country Club

33:23 Eventually, that place was sold.

33:28 2 + walking ization and

33:34 I ended up then going to Fire Island in a coed house.

33:40 During those days.

33:43 A young girl came up to the office on Court Street in which I have space.

33:50 And she walked in with a little slip looking for a job as a typist because she had just graduated from high school and the slip that she had acknowledged that she was an expert typist an expert shorthand.

34:10 Delivery in Gregg and Pitman

34:16 She was looking for the man who sweet it wasn't from whom I least Myspace.

34:23 She ended up getting a part-time job there because she had entered City College.

34:29 Now this young girl would show up several times a week or for part-time work typing and everything else and all through social ecology is that's what she did and so I saw her constantly.

34:50 He was a cute little thing but to me much younger much younger than me.

34:56 The one that hit my Fire Island days. I happen to be in the social Center which was a bar in Ocean Bay Park.

35:06 And two hands came over my eyes in the back and when I turned around with her.

35:13 And she had come out for the weekend with a friend because they heard about it. I showed her around Fire Island that night and that started something that ended up in marriage.

35:28 Do you guys have like 5 minutes? Are we still have five?

35:39 Like does Impressions must have changed when you met her on Fire Island? What was supposed cure. Was he was a young kid when she walked in and I regarded her as this cute little young kid that walked in graduating from high school looking for a dollar-an-hour typist job. That's what he was tonight. But as the years went by and she went to college it took on a different aspect because she matured into a young woman and

36:10 When she showed up at Fire Island, eventually, I guess you was 21 or 22 or something. I'm guessing but the but she was no longer this little kids, but I've walked in with a piping job and I had encouraged her when she went to City College to give up that please to guy. She was not working full-time for these two guys and courage do and become a teacher.

36:40 Where summers are off?

36:44 Medical coverage pension plan at cetera and what you did then was she took the teachers exam got the city license or stay license and ended up teaching in Canarsie High School. And when we married she was a teacher in Canarsie High School when she passed away.

37:07 She was an adjunct teacher in the College of the city of New York on it was called back. I guess it's not a New York City College of Technology on

37:26 The corner of Adams Street in Brooklyn Adams and tillary Street and

37:34 Jay Street, that's cool is still there. And that's where she taught up until the time she passed away of cancer.

37:44 But one never knows you see.

37:48 What the future brings?

37:52 When a little kid walked in at the age of 16

37:56 Never entered my mind that one day. She would be my wife.

38:04 A kid

38:07 How should I pass that? You see opposite me here.

38:16 What the best?

38:19 Oh, wow. That's another thing I had I had five nephews.

38:26 No nieces, my mother had three sons my two brothers had five Sons between them.

38:36 When my daughter was born

38:40 And I went to the phone I was delighted and the reason I was delighted that just shows you never know what happens. I was delighted because I was so much older than my wife. I figured a girl my wife will have a companion When I'm Gone.

38:57 Didn't work out that way, but when I told my brother on the phone.

39:03 You are now an uncle. I have a daughter. The first thing my older brother said to me was what a girl.

39:12 What did you do wrong in our family? But hey.

39:20 I really didn't have the paternal Instinct in my great Baxley is because I had five nephews.

39:29 When my daughter was born everything changed. My only concern was my wife and child my wife and child and care about her.

39:40 And to this day

39:43 My main concern is my daughter.

39:51 The only other question I was going to ask is going back to getting married and having a family you told me once went the moment that you decided to get married after so many years of not doing that and I thought that that was an interesting story. Well, I lived in the West Villages of time and occasionally I would want you to that was very busy but at night but occasionally I walk with a very close friend who lives in Chelsea and he called me this particular night and he said what do you say we walk up I'll meet you at 8th Street and 6th Avenue will walk up 8th Street will go to 2nd Avenue will go into that grocery store on 2nd Avenue will get this that and the other thing on the way back we can stop and have coffee and chock-full. It was a chock full of nuts and no space on 6th Avenue near 8th Street.

40:45 And we'll have some coffee and so forth.

40:49 Well

40:51 I had received the call not within the hour prior from a young lady. I have met up in.

41:00 Massachusetts

41:03 Are you off the field concerts?

41:06 And she's invited me to her apartment.

41:10 And I had accepted because she was a worthy opponent. So this week now when he called.

41:19 I said, you know.

41:22 I think I'd rather go with him tonight.

41:26 And so I called the black and I said, I'm sorry. I have to leave I have to call this off. I got a call to make a willow for somebody.

41:35 And I'll I'll call you soon. I went to meet him. We went and did what he suggested. We went to Second Avenue. We bought out stuff. We stopped in shock, but we had coffee which we used to do sometimes.

41:50 And I said to myself wait a minute. You know what I just did.

41:57 I forsake her for shock as the case may be that meeting to do this with my old friend Dave.

42:07 I said I think it's time and I was in my forties then.

42:11 I think it's time to see the other side of life.

42:16 And so

42:19 I believe to this day much of relationships with people is a question of timing.

42:26 It was time I said.

42:30 It's time to see the other side of life hand with a mother.

42:36 She seemed even though she was much younger than me. She was very bright. Very perky very attractive and I said

42:46 I think this is it and it was at

42:55 Is there anything else you want to I think we covered a lot and it was amazing. Is there anything else you want to leave me with you microchipped? And I said

43:11 It's a whole other. I think it's a whole other interview to talk about the next chapter and my childhood and of course we could go before we started to your childhood. But I guess is there anything we touched on that? There's more more to say right now. I had a very good childhood.

43:37 I had a very good pre-war.

43:42 Life in the neighborhood we lived in I had a very good post-war life and enjoy of enjoyable bachelorhood and after the marriage that's a separate story. I don't believe we have time to go into that.