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This project tracks the paths of Champaign County Veterans during World War II, as recorded in oral histories taken in honor of the 50th Anniversary of D-Day in 1994.

In addition to a biography, each veteran's path is represented by a Google map of their travels from home to war and back again. The placemark for each location is numbered chronologically. Within that map, each point they visited is paired with a sound clip which can be selected and listened to.

For a compilation of all of the map points for every veteran, please go to the compiled Google Map.

This is just a sample of the fascinating and unique information contained in the oral history of every veteran.

Thurman Barham

Thurman Barham saw many countries in the war, and stayed in some interesting places.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was sent to guard a munitions plant in Hope, Arkansas. From there, he was sent to occupied Fiji, where they payed Fijians to install bamboo floors in their tents. He was then sent to train in New Hebrides. While there, the soldiers bunked on a coconut plantation and picked coconuts in their spare time. Later, he fought in Bougainville, one day mistaking an earthquake for more Japanese bombing. When President Roosevelt died, he was one of many honorary pallbearers. He placed the flag on Roosevelt's coffin in Warm Springs, GA, and was one of the men who carried FDR's coffin to the hearse that would take him to lie in state in Washington, D.C.



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Richard Britt

Richard Britt entered the service after graduating from the University of Illinois, where was a member of the ROTC, but, due to his height(5'4"), he didn't have to do the military training. He arrived at Pearl Harbor more than half a year after the attack, but the place was still a mess. He worked loading and unloading cargo on military ships, a job that before the bombing had been done by the Japanese. He also worked in the Marshall Islands as a water-point, filtering sea water into fresh water. His mother died while he was stationed in the Marshall's and he was unable to make it home for her funeral. After he was discharged, he came home on the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Roi, which was so full of men that "the chow line never stopped."


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Willard Berger

Willard Berger was 15 years old and in high school in Lincoln, Illinois when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He graduated early and went straight into the Army at 18. He was sent to training in Miami Beach, Florida, where his squad lived in a hotel and ran drills on golf courses and beaches. He was sent to bomb China, traveling East over Africa. The convoy he he was on didn't have the bearings for many of the spots it had to stop at along the way. Once, when they needed to stop in Cairo, they followed the tracks of Patton's Army through the dessert up to the Mediterranean's, and later had to turn around. His battalion's mission in China was to bomb out anything that the Japanese might use, but the Americans were as afraid of getting shot down by Chinese Communists as they were of getting shot down by the Japanese. The war ended while Berger was on a ship headed for furlough in Hawaii. The ship changed course and headed straight for San Diego. After the war Willard Berger drove a taxi, attended school at Illinois State University, and worked a variety of jobs.



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Max Albin

A farm boy from Camargo, IL, Max Albin was one of 4 boys from his family who enlisted, but was the only one to see extensive action. He did the majority of his training in Hawaii, as a member of the 11th Amphibian Tractor Batallion. After training in Hawaii, Albin fought in Iwo Jima, delivering supplies to soldiers in his AmTrac. He was witness to the first, less famous, raising of the American flag. After the battle of Iwo Jima, he was part of the American occupation of Nagasaki where, he recalled, the occupied Japanese took food wherever they could find it, including eating from the American forces garbage truck.




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Mark Arie

Mark Arie shipped off from Chanute Air Force base to train at Pearl Harbor. The barracks at Pearl Harbor were much more modern and comfortable, but being comfortable didn't last long. Arie was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, and in his oral history, he describes the events of December 7, 1941.
From Pearl Harbor he went to Mariana Islands, where he saw the Enola Gay plane without knowing what it was. He returned to the states after the war ended, and was kept on base in St. Louis because his discharge orders had been misplaced. When he was discharged, he looked around for work and realized he could make more money by re-enlisted, and became a career Air Force man.




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