Join us as we sit down with the remarkable Fred Allison, a West Texas native and Marine Corps veteran. From his formative years on a cotton farm to his adventures as a radar intercept officer, Fred's tale intertwines the threads of academia, military service, and personal discovery.
This episode is a treasure trove as we explore Fred's unwavering passion for history, his work as a historian for the Marine Corps and his commitment to honoring the valiant stories of those who served. We talk about his latest work, My Darling Boys: A Family at War, 1941-1947 (UNT Press, 2023), where he explores his family's wartime experiences during World War II.
Get a copy of Fred's book, My Darling Boys at Amazon https://a.co/d/67Bw4JY
Join us as we sit down with the remarkable Fred Allison, a West Texas native and Marine Corps veteran. From his formative years on a cotton farm to his adventures as a radar intercept officer, Fred's tale intertwines the threads of academia, military service, and personal discovery.
This episode is a treasure trove as we explore Fred's unwavering passion for history, his work as a historian for the Marine Corps and his commitment to honoring the valiant stories of those who served. We talk about his latest work, My Darling Boys: A Family at War, 1941-1947 (UNT Press, 2023), where he explores his family's wartime experiences during World War II.
Get a copy of Fred's book, My Darling Boys at Amazon https://a.co/d/67Bw4JY
This podcast is not sponsored by. It does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Parois.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Sozby, gene. Today we have somebody that we probably don't want to know how to say how long we've known him for. That might date us is correct, right? Somebody we went to graduate school with and we've known him for a long time. He's had quite the very career We've got Fred Allison with us today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this poor guy was my office mate.
Speaker 1:That is terrible for him to have to go through that I know, and he still talks to me.
Speaker 2:So, Fred welcome to Talking Texas History.
Speaker 3:Well, glad to be here and I really appreciate the opportunity to be part of your show.
Speaker 2:Well, we're really glad you agreed to join us, and I'll tell you and I hate to say this, you know, with old friends, but sometimes you don't talk to them as often, and the one thing that you came out with that we want to talk about today is you've got a new book out. But before we get there, let's tell the listeners, who may just be here in the name Fred Allison for the first time, a little bit about you and where you're from. You're from up in West Texas, right at the top of Texas, right that's right, right at the top of Texas, up in the Pantanal.
Speaker 3:There I was raised on a West Texas cotton farm outside of Mule Shoe, texas. Actually it's on Highway 70 between Mule Shoe and Earth. So that's quite distinguished upbringing there. And, yeah, my dad and my uncle who are main characters in the book my dad, harold Allison, was in a farming partnership with his brother, oscar Allison, and they farmed about close to 2000 acres there outside of Mule Shoe and also a farm in Tulia, texas, and so that's where I grew up. I've done a lot of hard work there, raising cotton and irrigating, okay. And then I graduated from high school in New York In 1968 and decided to attend North Texas State University and play the major in journalism. But I was having way too good of time at the time when I began college to really accomplish much, and so I actually was on probation and even expelled on academic.
Speaker 3:No way, yeah, two times.
Speaker 1:Your early college career sounds a whole lot like mine.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So anyway, I remember getting a letter from the dean that went to my parents too, said we'll give you one more chance. I'll never forget one more chance. So that's when I knew the time had come, that I had to do it. And so I did, and pretty much after that I was on the dean's list.
Speaker 3:But I changed my major to secondary education because I was avoiding foreign languages. And a friend of mine said if you majored in secondary education you could still get all the history classes you wanted and not have to take foreign languages. Well, that's why I got certified as a teacher, secondary level teacher and after I graduated I was wondering what to do with my life, and my dad and my uncles had all been aviators in the military. So that was something I'd always aspire to myself, and I joined the Marine Corps in order to do that, because the Marine Corps offered me an aviation contract and sort of a guarantee to go to flight training. It didn't guarantee that you're going to finish flight training, At least you would get a shot at it. But so that's what I did and entered the Marine Corps, and that was one of the best things that ever happened in my life, because the Marine Corps has really been good to me and a lot better to me than I was for them.
Speaker 3:But went through officers training, OCS and the basic school, Then went down to Pensacola for flight training and ended up being a naval flight officer in the F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft sort of a Vietnam air fighter. That all the services flow is very common. It's just a great airplane. My official title guys in the back were called radar intercept officers and what you did was your main job was basically a weapon system type operator and radar. Do the radar work in order to do intercepts? In order to do intercepts, you operate the radar to find an enemy aircraft and then you set up a, An intercept, a direction that you can know. You can fly your plane to intercept the enemy aircraft.
Speaker 2:So you were the one who actually pulled the trigger.
Speaker 3:No, we didn't have any. They didn't trust us with a trigger in the back, but besides that, we also backed up the pilot on everything else. In fact, if you get in a dog fight you, the Rio radar intercept officer, has a very important function, mainly to help the pilot keep sight and To direct the pilot in which way to turn or do this or do that. When the pilot often can't see the enemy aircraft he's fighting because it might be behind him or or someplace in a Good Rio never loses sight. So if you never lose sight of the enemy aircraft, you're gonna be a great. You're gonna be a great, be a great real. And the pilots love you, you know. So that's what we did, and there was a lot to it. So did that?
Speaker 2:and how long were you in the service?
Speaker 3:I was on active duty for about six and a half years and Then got off of active active duty and went into the reserves. So I flew the F war out of Navy Dallas after I got off active duty and we had lived and we were living in Greenville, texas at that time and, yes, I had got married to my, to my bride, martha McCall in Yuma, and we're still married now after 45. Better get this right 44.
Speaker 1:You don't mess this up, fred.
Speaker 3:And yeah, cuz she's sitting right here but and four kids later, but anyway, in Greenville, after got out I wanted to teach school. That was in my mind all along. So I did teach in the middle school in Greenville and, and Marty was teaching too. So we were doing good. But the problem arose when she she got pregnant, we got pregnant and Having the kids are pretty consistently there. So I had to find a better paying job and I was still with the reserves, which helps some.
Speaker 3:But I got a job with a company called roadway express, which is a trucking company and I was a Basically a manager Kind of did everything at a small City terminal in Greenville and it paid really good. So I did that for about nine years and After, after Martha, my wife, marty, was able to go back to teaching when our youngest child or four child Started school. Okay, so that's when I started working my master's degree over at East Texas State University, or as it's known now, texas A&M Commerce, and I just had some great, great instructors there and as I moved along to my master's, had to get a thesis project and Dr James Conrad I don't know if you don't know he was the oral historian there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, jim, really well yeah super guy and he kind of took me under his wing and and said why don't you do a thesis on major field in Greenville, texas, which was a airbase in World War two it was dropped into Greenville and do sort of a Social history on the impact that a a big base would have on a little Texas Southern town? And so that's what I did and that's when I got into oral history too, because I started doing a lot of interviews with locals that had been there and will work too. And that was just fascinating and Thank God I finished that up and I Think Dr Conrad said why don't you see if the Newspaper in Greenville would be interested in publishing that? Because you know it's all about local history and World War two and stuff. And sure enough they did. They published the whole thing.
Speaker 3:It was like an 11 series of 11 issues and and that just sort of hitting that is. That's the first time I really thought I could write something that people. It's just an amazing feeling to think that somebody was going to read something that I wrote, you know that's much of it.
Speaker 1:I'm still amazed he may read anything I write, so I understand.
Speaker 2:That was actually. You were kind of leveraging that early interest in journalism and writing and interviewing as well right and kind of marrying those to your. But you said you sound like you had a passion for history even as an undergraduate.
Speaker 3:Well, even as a young boy I remember reading books on history a lot and one of my dad's friends, a very impressive gentleman, just out of the clear blue one day gave me a little book. I must have been like eight or nine years old. He gave me a book on World War II and that's sort of I mean that I was sort of a parent, I guess the people that I really liked history, especially military history. So anyway, you know, I've had an abiding interest in that, I guess all my life really.
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't realize. I mean, I guess I did, but I guess I knew this but reminded the fact that you had studied under Conrad. And you know, I gotta say Jim Conrad was one of the nicest people I'd ever met and when I was doing my dissertation under at Tech, there under bar, I went and Conrad helped me out a lot too because I was doing getting on a topic on a politician up there from from Paris.
Speaker 1:So yeah, jim, when I took over here, these text talks. Of course Jim is a prominent member and he was really good to me in that. Well, fred, you went on after you finished graduate school and you went to work, went back to the Marine Corps as you served as a historian for the Marine Corps. A lot of people may not know what that. You know that the all the military branches employ these historians. So tell everybody kind of what you did as a historian for the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, I had continued to serve in the reserve so I still had an attachment with the Marine Corps and my as I got on later in my career I was promoted to major and but anyway my airplane went away and it was replaced by an airplane that did not have a guy in the back. So really I didn't have a job in the Marine Corps. But as a reservist you can kind of shop around and see if there's other billets that you might get could serve in. And so a guy told me. He said you know, the Marine Corps has a history division and I'd started working on my PhD at that time, so people were aware of that. And they said the Marine Corps has a history division that uses reserve officers to do field history work. He said I want you to see if you can get into that organization.
Speaker 3:Well, it was in DC and I was in Lubbock at this time. I'd started my PhD program at Texas Tech. But anyway, I checked with them and sure enough, I was able to get into that organization and because I lived so far away, they allowed me to just come in and do all of my drills, that's the weekend drills that you're supposed to accomplish. They allowed me to sort of stack them and come in and do like a third of the years like do four drills, four weekend drills at one time, and so they were very helpful there. And anyway I did that as field historian in uniform with the Marine Corps for two years and retired. That's when I retired.
Speaker 3:Okay, so then back to Lubbock and finished up my PhD program, the coursework and whatnot, and then after about four years they had a position come over and for an oral historian as a civilian at the Marine Corps history division and up in DC. I was in DC at that time and I applied for that and I got that job because I had been a. It really helped that I was a field historian and so I had become associated with that organization. So anyway, that required a move from Lubbock to Virginia and we ended up living in Frederick burg, virginia, but just a real blessing and I served there like 20 years, almost 20 years, so actually they gave me like 43 years in the Marine Corps. I never, I had never intended that.
Speaker 1:That's a long time. That's it. That's putting your service in for absolute.
Speaker 3:Well, it was just like I said. The Marine Corps has been very, very good to me and I just got some, had some great, was able to serve with great people and there's still friends with a lot of them. And you know, you hear a lot of people talk about the Marine Corps. It's always about you know how sort of rough and tough it is, but it's that. But it's also they take care of their people. You know, once you're part of it and you sort of prove and you can do a credible job, they take care of you. They really do so.
Speaker 3:But again, a lot of that time was as a reservist, so it's not like full time for 43 years, but so but yeah, the services all do. They have history organizations and most of them will all over much bigger than the Marine Corps. When I was there in the history division they only have like five or six historians or as other services like the Air Force or Army or Navy they'll have, they'll just have bevies of them and they're all scattered out all over the United States. You know, of course they're all bigger services too, but still. But it was, and my job was, as I said, oral historian, and so what I got to do was do a lot of interviews. I think I did about 1,100 interviews in that 20 years.
Speaker 1:What was your probably most memorable interview you did with somebody?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I wouldn't have to say that my most, my most memorable interview would be, of course, the one I did this book on that was published by North Texas Press to the World War Two veteran who was actually from Mule Chateau and he lived up in Fredericksburg. But he was just an amazing man and he had been in some of the most ferocious battles, or two like Guadalcanal, terawa, saipan, leading a 37 millimeter gun platoon, and anyway, I interviewed him about 30 hours.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they. My organization, the history division, was very gracious and allowing me to spend that much time on one man or you know, there's so many other people you could interview that have done great things, but they allow me to do that and it turned into a book. I edited the interviews and published and actually got an award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for best biography career 2018.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:Was that the one with Roy Elrod? Yeah, the.
Speaker 3:Roy Elrod book.
Speaker 2:Right, we were going to die. We were going to win or die there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a water canal, yeah this exact quote said that the Marines were not, they were not going to surrender, they they would die there before they would you know, before they would surrender.
Speaker 1:Well, you've got a new one coming out, right, you got a new book coming out just about to come out, yeah, from UNT Press, my Darling Boys, a family awards, a very personal book. Won't you tell us about, tell our audience about, how you came up with that book? And then did you learn something about your family? And tell us about the books about, and did you learn something about your family? You didn't know, maybe, why you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was really illuminating because, going out of course, my heroes were my, my dad, who had been a B-25 co-pilot, and his partner and farming, oscar, who had been a B-24 turret gunner flight engineer but had been a POW in Germany, and Lord too. And then there was this mysterious uncle who was their younger brother, who had been killed. He was a fighter pilot and had been killed, and they they really nobody really seemed to know how he had been killed. So it was just a. It was a great, great investigation finding out exactly how he had been killed, and it was in dogfight against German fighters. But, yeah, so much brother stuff to I, because, though, the book is about the home front too, not just the brothers that went to war, but also the family to stay behind, and so I was able to do research on World War two, farming and New Mexico. They were, and their farm was outside of Roswell, new Mexico, and a little town called Hagerman, and my mother's family.
Speaker 3:They were neighbors, so yeah just learning about those, those families, and how, how their lives changed in World War two and some of the activities that they they participated there on the home front. These are sacrifices they made. That was all new to me and that was tough to find that information out because and it really not, you know, like most family records they don't really record what their day-to-day activities are. But I was very fortunate that there was a large stock of letters amongst the family members. I think I used 71 letters in the book and there was many more that I didn't use. Well, not many, but maybe 20 years, seven, 20 or 30, right, or they're talking their writing letters to each other, from the people at home, from the family at home, to the, to the boys at war, and they're can't imagine.
Speaker 1:That and I try to think about that time. You know, so many, so many of them, of the men were often so much uncertainty about where they were going to come back and then so many Sacrifices and they were having to make on the front, home front, and I can't help always think I mean, you know, I don't know that we would do that as a nation today. I don't know if we have the what would be the word intestinal fortitude to go through something like that now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, well, I think they actually Scott, I think they actually they all. They worried about the same thing at that time, to whether Americans really had the the intestinal fortitude to to make those sacrifices. But they did.
Speaker 1:They Dank your day, that's without a doubt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we worked out so the title of there the title of the book Fred.
Speaker 3:That comes from something your grandmother wrote correct, right, yeah, the boys mother Ali Rizal. She'd actually been Ali Allison before, but the older boys father had died, his name of the Allison first and she remarried to why they grizzled. So that's sort of confusing. But yeah, in many of her letters she will refer to her boys with great affection, like my darlin, this or that, or even she even calls so calls them her baby boy, calls them her baby boy.
Speaker 3:I said they had a tremendous amount of affection for her she was. She was such a hard-working mother and I just know that she would Just did everything possible to Raves a good family. Did you know her? Yeah, yeah, sure did grandma. Yeah, she was a. She was a very Sort of austere woman, very thin, petite, of course very nice. But you know the death of her younger son, wiley, grizzled junior. He was killed in the war and Really I think it really Traumatized her, a type of PTSD even right now she just bore that with her and so she was just not not a really Not a really happy, joyful. She was always Just a little bit reticent, I'm just. She was just suffering from that part of the.
Speaker 3:Imagine shit. For so long she did not know all she knew that he was missing in action and so for years Well, like years, many months, it was over a year she did not know. Can you just imagine living with that?
Speaker 1:I can't, man, that's got to be um, but that's just got to be heartbreaking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then and then, when they did report that he was killed in action, they weren't able to prove it. There was no body, there was. No one saw him crash, they didn't really know what, and she was not convinced that he was dead for the longest time. So that's a yeah, that's. But she was a great woman, just you know, full of love, and it was, um, there's a great, a great role model for her.
Speaker 1:Had this book, fred, kind of been in the back of your mind for a long time to do, and it was just when you got the time, or just the inclination to do it.
Speaker 3:No, after I retired, I started looking into it. My uncle, oscar, had written a memoir in 1973. And I had a copy of that and I'd sort of I'd looked at it and I'd read it. But when I pulled it out again in 2020, I mean 2020, after I retired, and I started real really reading it and focusing on it and I said, hey, this is a pretty pretty good story. He's a he was a good writer, the very smart man, but he was able to tell a great story. You know, which is the key to being a good writer? Actually, he's telling a story.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so he was able to do that. He had sort of a sarcastic, uh jaundice view of life and his experiences. He was, he, never purported to be any kind of a hero. The only thing that he was proud of was that he kept what he said in his memoirs. He kept his family together, which were the other crewmen on his B24 that had all been made POWs, all the enlisted men anyway, and he kind of kept them together that sort of a self-protective, protective organization against the conditions they were in in the German prisoner war camps. But uh, yeah, he's uh kind of nonchalant about a lot of stuff. And then, if you do, your did some research on the events that he was talking about, the conditions in the prisoner war camps. They were really bad, but he never really focused on how miserable they were. He would, he was sort of, uh, you know, skim over it and um, just uh, I think, because he didn't want to do anything.
Speaker 1:I think that's a lot. You know, I found that I had great uncles who were in World War II and I you couldn't get them to talk about it and it was like pulling teeth to get them to talk about their experiences. And I think I always said about. I think it was because it was not something they wanted to relive in the large degree.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah, it would stir up those other emotions and, uh, they, they were afraid of him. And he even has a disclaimer. He put a disclaimer in his memoir saying that, uh, he would try to tell the tell about the events as he remembered them, not over glamorize them, but there were a lot of, a lot of things that he was not going to say and he'd been trying to forget those things since 1944. Wow, yeah, so that's the, uh, that's the part that I wish I had.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely passing. I think everybody's, everybody's listening to this. Now, all of you, uh, make sure you get out there and buy that book.
Speaker 2:Fred, I'm going to say this is that I think you did your family proud.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to honor you know that because I know my uncle, oscar, by writing his memoir, was trying to honor his fellow serviceman, his fellow crewman and uh, and produce something that would last thing and be appropriate for their service. But there was like he said there were so much that was really ugly about that, but he was not, he was not going to, he was not going to bring that out.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a good book and I hope that people will will pick it up, order it. It's put out by University of North Texas Press and, uh, it is. It is a moving, moving story. I mean it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:No, thank you, Gene. I take that as a great compliment coming from you, knowing what you have done in the historical field, so I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Well, you're very kind, you're very kind.
Speaker 1:Well, Fred was growing to the end of our time and they always goes way too fast for us. And, of course, when we're ending up, we always ask everyone of our uh uh people we have on there the last question, and this is your chance to give pearls of wisdom to everybody out there as much as you chance. So, Fred Allison, what do you know?
Speaker 3:Okay, what I know is that God is faithful. I, uh, I became a Christian a long time ago and uh, I've, uh, I've trusted, uh, I've trusted God with so many big decisions and sometimes we don't understand. You know why things are going the way they are, but if you keep your faith, even when you're not faithful, god will be faithful to you and uh, but eventually, if you keep your faith, things are going to work out.
Speaker 1:That's, uh, that's my pearl of wisdom and that may be that may be the best one we've ever had. Well, fred, thanks for coming. This has been great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Thank you very much again. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about uh, talk about this book.
Speaker 1:Once again, folks, it's my darling boy. It's a family of war. Uh, university of North Texas Press. Uh, hot off the presses very soon. So make uh you can. You can go on the website right now. Uh, in order.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Great book. Great book, Fred. Thank you so much. Uh, it was a real honor to be your office mate and to still keep in touch with you. We need to get together soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we're all close. Hey, every October we have East Texas Historical Association meeting. Uh, fred, you need to come up.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, again, gene, and, uh, scott, in the office next door. It was a pleasure being there with you, it really was.
Speaker 1:And, uh, we had. We talked about it often. It was a fun time.
Speaker 3:And we survived. And uh, here we are, Okay.
Speaker 1:Thanks for it.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah.