Veterans war experiences live on through UCF oral-history project

Central Florida veterans record their stories for future generations
November 10, 2011|By Jon Busdeker, Orlando Sentinel

After the land mine exploded, Richard Barber's right foot was gone.

Moments earlier, Barber and two other soldiers had been riding in a jeep toward enemy lines on a bitterly cold day of the Korean War. The explosion killed the other men, but Barber was thrown out of the jeep and into a ravine. He might have bled to death had it not been for the cold.

The blood coagulated, said Barber, who's now 86 and lives in Chuluota. He was rescued after the explosion and spent the next three years in a hospital. Today he walks with a prosthesis.

April 8, 1951, is a day Barber will never forget. And now, because of the University of Central Florida's Community Veterans History Project, future generations who want to understand war through the experiences of those who lived it can hear him tell his own story in his own words.

For more than a year, UCF students and faculty members have been recording the oral histories of Central Florida veterans. Using digital recorders and video cameras, the researchers have collected the stories of 90 veterans so far, from soldiers who served in World War II to those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We need to capture their stories before they're gone, said UCF assistant history professor Barbara Gannon, one of the project's coordinators.

In the interviews, which are up to an hour long, veterans who volunteer to share their stories talk about childhood, boot camp, deployment, fighting, downtime and, Gannon said, the unpleasant parts of war. Their accounts are archived at the UCF library, and a few will be sent to the Library of Congress.

Gannon said a common thread runs through the interviews with veterans, no matter when they served: They acknowledge that terrible things happened in war, but they also take great pride in their service. One soldier described his military experience as the best worst thing that ever happened to me.

Frank Boffi, 89, has been interviewed three times for the project. He enlisted in the Navy in 1942, served during World War II and the Korean War and received the Purple Heart.

But for a long time, Boffi, of Orlando, didn't talk about his service because of what happened aboard the USS Hadley. On the morning of May 11, 1945, Japanese fighter planes attacked Boffi's ship while it was stationed off the coast of Okinawa. bomb exploded near the engine room where Boffi was working.

Boffi recalled a tremendous jolt and a booming noise. The explosion punctured the hull and destroyed a steam pipe.

Let's get the hell out of here, Boffi shouted to two other men nearby.

Boffi, along with one of the other sailors, escaped from the ship, though he was badly burned. The third sailor, a 17-year-old on his first assignment, died.

Boffi said he enjoys talking about his time in the Navy, and the students seem to like listening.

Rosalind Beiler, a UCF associate professor of history, said the project has given students a chance to get out of classroom and into the community. Last week, for example, students Travis Irby and Shannon Leavey sat across from Barber at his kitchen table and listened to him talk for an hour about his military life.

Barber is a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War who received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. A native of New York, he enlisted in the Army at age 17. He later joined the First Special Service Force — an elite unit of American and Canadian forces famously called the Devil's Brigade.

He described battles as if they had taken place the day before, not more than 65 years earlier.

Barber also recounted his role in liberating the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. He talked about the smells, sounds and sights of the death camp, sparing few details. He recalled the scene of bodies stacked in tiers like a lumberyard.

It was horrific, he said. The stench of urine and death made most of us sick to our stomach.

At the end of the interview, Irby described the experience as eye-opening.

It's the kind of interaction students can't find in a book or in the classroom, Gannon said. History isn't a distant place. It's real people who did real things.