My paternal grandfather was born of a halfbreed woman on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1920. After she died when he was about 3 years old His white father left him with an uncle whom my grandfather (Pocka) described as a mean bastard. Said he'd feed his kids beans for dinner then go cut down a side of pork out of the smokehouse and give it to his hound dogs. They were sharecroppers during the depression and Pocka remembered how when they moved to a new farm it was good hunting with lots of squirrels and rabbits living in the rock fences close to the house, after living there for awhile the game got further and further away. They didn't have a gun but used the dogs to help catch food. Said when it was raining too hard to work the fields his uncle would say "Buck, get your pencil and go to school." Pocka said he'd go hide in the brush down by the creek till about time for school to be out.
He was drafted in WWII in what he described as "a rich mans war" where he learned to drive a car. Landed at Normandy D+1 and said a lot of the guys from the day before we're still laying on the beach. He was in a reconnaissance unit and didn't think much of Patton. Didn't think much of the Army Air Corps either, said they killed a lot of our own men. Said he bent his spoon on a can of frozen meat for Christmas dinner during the Battle of the Bulge. He ended up the highest ranking guy (seargent) in his group by the end of the war after the leadership had been killed or taken prisoner. Said Germans were lobbing artillery rounds that weren't detonating into town at night and said you could hear them skipping down the cobblestone streets. One hit the brick wall of the church they were sleeping in and my grandfather was saved by the piano he was sleeping under. His Leutenant was buried under the bricks but alive and ended up ordering the men to leave him as the Germans were right on them. He was taken prisoner but survived the war. Said they were pretty hard on SS troops when they took them prisoner.
Said a Colonel offered him an officers commission after the war but he wanted out. Told me when he was an old man "I sure hope I didn't hurt any of them fellers over there but I sure shot at a lot of them!"
After the war he came out to California and became a timber faller which he did for 33 years. Back then the strength of your back determined how well your family lived. Shot a lot of big bucks over the years and had a severe dislike for government or authority till the day he died.
