depression. if you look at crime rates there is a spike that has taken place. they have ascribed that to the fact that you have banking failures and business failures and farm closures to the point that you could almost blame the great depression for this ear ra of the american gangster when in fact that is probably the reason people followed their stories and associated nostalgia with it in the same way we would the outlaws of the west. you see the early 1930s. all weekend long american history tv is featuring

shreveport, louisiana. learn more and find out where the local content vehicles are going next online. you are watching american history tv. all weekend every weekend on c-span3. coming up next, two world war ii veterans discuss what it means to be a member of the greatest generation. this discussion features major norman hatch. this is about an hour.

>> our third panelist took sick we wish him the best.

he was a career military officer before that and now has the job of coordinating the oral history projects at the library of congress. so we go back and forth a lot with the histories that we are recording. please welcome colonel bob patrick. good morning. we have with us two members of the greatest generation. one fought in the european theater and one in the pacific

theater. next to ed is major norm hatch. and individual who helped a ground breaking position during world war ii. he was the first combat cameraman sent in by the marine corp. that is what we are going to be talking about this morning.

>> i'm a member of the band of brothers. if you read it, you know we won the war almost single handed. to go back before pearl harbor, and i was in the navy engineering school in virginia.

and a few of us knew that we were going to get into this thing before it started in europe, and we were a little antsy about what we were going to do and we knew that we were going to have to go sooner or later. we all decided to join the rcaf, royal canadian air force. go up to canada hamilton ontario. and we made a pact with ourselves that all four of us would get in. that we all would come back. we would all come back to virginia prior to pearl harbor and some time in des des or later part of november 1941. we got in the car and went up to canada. one of the guys had a heart

monitor. so we decided that we would honor our pact and we came back together and as we were coming back it was des tdes the 7th, w knew then what we were going to do. we were going to have to join somewhere in our particular armed services. and we waited around and i waited around and this thing came out of fort monroe, virginia. a bunch of civilians came up with the idea that the public needed something to stir up the morale of the people pearl harbor had happened where they lost 3500 people, 2500 dead and thousands of them seriously wounded.

wake island 1637 people surrendered to the japs there and then came about brigador with 60,000 of our troops captured. 60,000. 10,000 of ours. and the american public was in a funk. a deep funk. so something had to be done. and the people at fort monroe, that was the general had quarters of the united states army. there was no pentagon, it was being built of finished but not occu occupied. the civilians came up with the idea of the super regimen finally came into being and made

up of civilians out of life not army people, put into the army after we brought them back from the civilian life and had to be physically perfect and in the mental capacity of 110 iq which meant that they had to have enough iq to go to officer's candidate school if they fell out. the army was brought this information and they said you are creat crazy. this has never been down. well, they said you can probably get 2,000 people to sign up for such a unit. they came up with these

beautiful brobrochures, gals on each arm and they looked pretty good. and suckers like me and a few others bit on the thing and we joined. 7,000 people qualified originally. 7,000 for a unit that had 2500. the army still says this is crazy. what are you going to do with them? fort bragg said we don't want them and fort benning said we don't want them and camp tooms at that time. named after the centsenator who preached.

so we had a place to stay. no one had heard of it. it was noted as the coffin capital of the world. we were trained to go down to camp tacor and we had to skim the cream to get enough people to satisfy the army. and that is where we started and the training was rough. you had the mountain and we had to run up and down the mountain three or four times a week if you fell out or walked you were out. so they weeded them down finally to the point where they had to go to fort benning for jump

training. at that time the first group took the train to benning for their jump training. the second battalion had too many men so they devised a way to get more by making a march to atlanta in three days get rid of more people men and officers and he was successful in getting down to tone and the third came along and said we have too many men. we were going to ride to atlanta and get off at fort mcpherson and walk to fort benning 149 miles and do it at the same time. we walked from atlanta to

benning. three days, three and a half days so that got us down to tone and then we started out jump training which was very rigorous, as a matter of fact, the school tried everything in the world to break our spirits and they couldn't do about 97% qualified for our wings and that is the way we started sir. >> okay, thankyo, self? how did you start? >> i don't know whether i can compete with that. >> yes? >> my life was simpler. i graduated from high school in 1938 in the middle of the great depression. my father and i decided i would

join the navy. if you served on a capital ship you would learn plumbing, carpenter work anything that you could think of would be award the ship. so that sounded reasonable and i went to the recruiting office and they did the usual things. i took a physical and they sent a senior chief out to the house to see how i was living. they want to be sure that they had a nice boy come in. they told me it was relatively slow and stay in touch with them and they would take me. so, this was right after i graduated from high school. in 1938 and so, every month, i called in. and they said well, they reduced the rate a little bit. and boston was the recruiting

area for the whole all of new england. i didn't realize, why i was being so slow, but it was basically because so many joins day and send money home that nobody was coming out, everyone has staying in. a year had gone by and i along with another fellow had bought a dump truck and it was nuts. not something i wanted to do more the rest of my life. i went down to the office in the end of june of 1939. and i said when are you going to take me? they said we don't know. they have cut us back again. they are only taking six or

seven men a month. so anyway, had to walk by the vader, or walk to the elevator and walk by the recruiting office and on a whim i walked in and said sarge if i decided to join how soon would you take me? he said would you leave on friday? on the 7th of july, i raised my hand and became a marine forever. the high school i went to in gloucester, massachusetts was the only one in the country having junior rotc and you had to take it for three years from sophomore to senior. so when i went to boot camp it was like going on a parade for me. except for a couple of army

positions, he would caution me that those were army and not do them again. and so, i was destined to go to sea school. i was 6'1" and that was sort of the dream think of that time. having been raised in gloucester, i had been aboard ships and learned how they operated and a couple of my very best friends were in the coast guard and i went in the ice patrol and the skipper was the father of one of my high school buddies and he would throw us down in the lower decks and say you do whatever that chief tells us to do and i don't even know

you. so i knew what navy life was like. they always told you read what is on the board because it will tell you what your unit is doing and what the marine corp is doing. a message is coming on the last two weeks those of us who shot expert or sharp shooter in the range did not have to go in the mess hall. but we had odd job to do, mine was to keep water in the officer's wing and because i was from new england, i had to keep a fire in the boiler going and the surgeoutherners didn't know to keep one overnight. i had a bunch of change going through it and it would go off and it raised the great so that

the fire would start at 3:00 in the morning and i didn't have to get up. so by the time everybody was ready to take a shower, the bulletin board said that they were looking for an english instructor and i wrote a letter and forgot about it. and one day, something happened. the di came rushing out and said what in the heck have you been doing? i said i don't know. he said i have orders to ship you to washington. what the heck kind of lesson is that? so i went up there and came here to washington became part of the unit that served and funerals

and also an english instruct or and it is still going today. and i had an opportunity to join the staff of edleatherneck magazine. i was able to grasp a trade and they figured i would be able to read and write and that was a pretty small office in those days but i learned establishing but i thought that was a very, very good thing to do. but another guy that slept next to me in the barracks works in the office of public relations. and that was built during world war i. but it was still there.

so, it taught me a lot. the whole business of public affairs and during this time of being at the barracks here, and moving along the line, something came up on the board that said, there was a new school that started called the march of dimes school of pictorial journalism. that sounded great to me. i had never shot movies to me. the maurch of time was the leading film company that told stories by film to keep the public informed about what was happening in europe or south america. didn't make any difference. if the story was good they covered it.

they actually covered hitler and you have to remember the public loved it. cars for the engineering and production and a great deal and they knew little about what was happening in this country and out of this country. it was a film that people would go to. i was intrigued but i applied for it. for those of you who are in the military it said on the board, no experience required. i was turn down when i worked twice when i was with amci, and

when i was with leatherneck and now with the navy department and i don't know what i will do if i get turned down for the third time. but the president has called in a reserve officer. one took over the news reel section. and he was a director at the march of times. i told them what my problem was and in those days pfcs and lieutenants didn't go to lunch together. let's see what happens. four days later, the executive officer came in the office and said you have been turnedown for the third time. i saw helen brown and i said what do i do?

he said i have to send the film over to the march of times so that the film that he is asking for i'll tell him your story and you can meet him. he was training cameramen and i talked to him and everything was fine. i came back and i doubt that anything is going to happen. two days later that same familiar phrase he says what in the heck have you been doing? he says i don't know what have i been doing? >> he said i have orders to transfer you immediately. two others have been sent up from a new training unit. now, this is a very porn

important thing. in 1941, the marine corp had not had any capebility set up. but a captain on the west coast and any aircraft organization had a motion picture camera attached to his ear. where his shooting was taking place for him to hit the targets and he got to thinking that would be handy for making train ing films. we were told to put our hands

over our faces. he sat down and wrote a letter and outlined a group of things that he thought should be done. he thought there might be a war. he also thought there should be training for cameramenace well. he said you are transferred from california to washington together. never a volunteer. he learned how they processed film and learned what they did and helped them. when he came back, he told them, he said i can't do anything h e here. i have to take them to do it. i was trying to get in, the people that they were sending up to the march of times were coming out of the in fancy set

up and so when i joined it and went up to new york to seek training, we were only about 20 people in the business. by the war's end, we had 600 and in three and a half years you can imagine the expansion but that is how i got into it. and a little layover, i came to kwan ti co and we were making training films. andhen i was sent to the second did i vision a division. and that is another story. >> thank you. so that is how it all began for both of them. let's jump forward. ed, i want you to talk about

d-day. where were you on d-day? >> on d-day. i was in england on june the 5th, 1944. i was briefing the battalion by companies, by platoons by squads on the sand table. i was the operation sergeant of the battalion and i had fabricated the sand table to indicate the positions where we were to jump and our objectives and our drop zones. i had 18 people to help me fabri kate the sand table.

there was only one problem. nobody landed anywhere near the sand table on d-day. that was the plane that i was going to be on. that was where my commander was killed, his feet never touched the ground. on the drop zone where it was independe indicated.