Interview with World War II Soldier David Chorney

Sandra Nogg Author

03/11/2025 Added

2 Plays

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Sandra Nogg interviews World War II soldier David Chorney.

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[00:00:02.470]January 12, 2002, we are interviewing David Chorney.
[00:00:07.390]2006.
[00:00:08.670]I said 2002, didn't I?
[00:00:11.050]Oh, Lord.
[00:00:13.090]January 12, 2006, we are interviewing David Chorney
[00:00:17.550]at the Jewish Community Center, Omaha, Nebraska.
[00:00:20.910]Interviewer is Sandy Nogg.
[00:00:29.060]What did you do before you joined the service?
[00:00:30.249]I was a student at Central High School.
[00:00:37.180]So you were drafted straight out of high school?
[00:00:39.640]Straight out of high school.
[00:00:42.510]So you were living in Omaha at the time, with your family, I suppose.
[00:00:48.270]And you were drafted? Yes.
[00:00:50.290]Were there a lot of you drafted from your class?
[00:00:54.170]No, I had a little different situation.
[00:00:56.410]I had been ill when I was young, and I was running a little bit behind.
[00:01:04.250]People of that age would probably have been out of high school,
[00:01:07.350]but I was just finishing up.
[00:01:09.030]I was just in my senior year.
[00:01:11.830]And what was your age at that time? 18.
[00:01:14.450]Okay, so you were just draftable age?
[00:01:17.530]Just draftable age.
[00:01:19.190]And so I didn't get the chance to graduate at that time.
[00:01:24.530]But when I came back from the Army, I took the equivalent examination
[00:01:30.930]and I passed and I went on to UNO after that, so yeah, I was able to make that up.
[00:01:36.460]But that's the reason I was a little bit, I was 18 and still in high school,
[00:01:43.040]because of the health history that I had.
[00:01:46.140]I had asthma very bad when I was young.
[00:01:50.880]And so I missed a lot of school at that time, but I made up for it.
[00:01:58.450]So you didn't actually choose the Army?
[00:02:00.390]The Army chose you?
[00:02:01.410]No, I had my choice.
[00:02:02.630]You had your choice?
[00:02:03.730]I was drafted.
[00:02:05.670]I went to Fort Crook, which is now Offutt.
[00:02:09.930]And that was the center that we went to.
[00:02:13.390]And I had my choice of any of the services.
[00:02:17.390]And I chose the Army.
[00:02:19.290]I didn't choose the Navy because I couldn't swim.
[00:02:21.510]I figured, well, I didn't want to go to the Navy.
[00:02:24.810]And the Air Force, my eyesight, I thought would keep me out.
[00:02:29.390]So I chose the Army.
[00:02:30.710]And what were your first days in the service like?
[00:02:35.250]Well, the first day that I went to Fort in Lawrence, Kansas,
[00:02:46.590]the first day I was there, the first night I was there,
[00:02:49.810]I was selected for KP.
[00:02:52.730]So the next morning, they woke up at about 3 o'clock.
[00:02:58.170]And I went over to the mess hall, and I was there all day long
[00:03:00.850]until the following night, about 6 o'clock.
[00:03:05.090]That was my introduction to the Army.
[00:03:08.350]And then from there, I was sent to Camp Walters, Texas,
[00:03:15.710]which was like a camp, a replacement camp.
[00:03:23.080]And because I had played the bugle, not the bugle,
[00:03:27.060]the trumpet when I was, you know, as a kid, I played the trumpet.
[00:03:32.820]When the person that was interviewing when you came into the camp saw that,
[00:03:40.240]he says, would you like to be a bugler?
[00:03:42.140]And I thought, yeah.
[00:03:44.620]So he put me into the bugle corps, not knowing anything about it.
[00:03:50.080]And so I went to the bugle school, and we were in the same barracks
[00:03:55.500]as the cooks and bakers.
[00:03:58.100]And as it turned out, we took some infantry training,
[00:04:03.740]but most of it was not, then after I finished at Camp Walters, Texas,
[00:04:14.580]I was sent back home for a delay in route.
[00:04:22.720]I had 10 days at home, and then I left Omaha
[00:04:25.040]and went to Camp Shanks, New York, from where I was put aboard a transport
[00:04:32.820]and went over to Belfast, England.
[00:04:37.870]From Belfast, I went over to Bangor, North Ireland,
[00:04:40.850]and that's where I found out that I was going to become a radio operator.
[00:04:46.200]So, we took our, I spent, I forget how long I was there, probably a month or so,
[00:04:57.680]and we were taking radio training,
[00:05:00.660]and at which time they decided that they were now going to ship us over to England.
[00:05:05.660]They were getting ready for the invasion.
[00:05:08.280]So we went over to England and went to camp there,
[00:05:16.280]and at that point, I just took a little training, you know,
[00:05:23.560]for shooting the .45 and what have you, but never had any,
[00:05:27.960]we had some infantry training, but not, I figured, that's what I was going to be,
[00:05:31.740]was in the rear echelon.
[00:05:33.640]Well, as it turned out, from there I went to Portsmouth, England.
[00:05:42.930]Portsmouth, England was the jump-off spot for going up to Normandy.
[00:05:48.410]Well, I went, we went from there, I went the whole bit, climbed the side of the ship,
[00:05:56.010]came down, went into Normandy, we were there D plus six.
[00:06:00.150]So I was in Omaha Beach on six days after the invasion,
[00:06:05.690]joined up with the 2nd Infantry Division there,
[00:06:09.370]and was with them all the way to Normandy,
[00:06:12.770]at which time I was wounded in Brest, France.
[00:06:17.630]We had bypassed Brest, France,
[00:06:19.610]and the army was moving towards Paris with Patton,
[00:06:26.450]and they took our division and the First Division
[00:06:29.410]and sent us back to Brest, France to capture that,
[00:06:33.570]and that's where I was wounded at.
[00:06:39.370]How badly were you wounded?
[00:06:41.110]I was wounded in my right leg,
[00:06:43.350]and they sent me, I went to the general hospitals
[00:06:49.390]and had surgery on the front line.
[00:06:53.270]Then they sent me back to General Hospital back in Paris,
[00:06:57.570]and then they sent me back to the front line just before the breakthrough,
[00:07:03.790]the other one, the Germans counterattacked.
[00:07:08.630]I was there probably about a month before that happened,
[00:07:11.450]at which time the regimental surgeon examined us,
[00:07:14.950]and we were not ready for combat and sent us back.
[00:07:18.470]At that time, I went back to the 8th convalescent hospital,
[00:07:22.310]to recuperate,
[00:07:24.070]and about that time is when the breakthrough came through
[00:07:28.110]the Germany or, yeah I think it was Germany, or Belgium,
[00:07:35.100]and they took all of us that were there,
[00:07:39.400]that were ambulatory, could move around all that,
[00:07:42.500]and assigned us to jobs with the 8th convalescent hospital
[00:07:48.280]because the people that were available there,
[00:07:51.540]they took them and sent them to the lines because they were short men,
[00:07:54.600]and that's how I got out of the infantry and into the 8th convalescent hospital.
[00:08:00.140]I stayed with them until the war was over,
[00:08:04.660]and at which time I was assigned to the 165th General Hospital
[00:08:08.100]because I didn't have enough points to come home,
[00:08:11.260]and that was rough duty, that was up in Nice, France, in the Riviera,
[00:08:15.660]so I spent a little time up there after the war,
[00:08:19.980]until I got enough points to come home.
[00:08:24.360]What was your most memorable experience?
[00:08:27.220]Was it getting shot or was it something else?
[00:08:29.600]No, my most memorable experience,
[00:08:33.280]you mean as far as there's nothing memorable about being in combat,
[00:08:38.280]because there's too many things that happen that you don't know,
[00:08:44.140]but there's one funny thing that happened,
[00:08:46.260]I had my 19th birthday on the front line, I was on Hill 165, don't forget it,
[00:08:51.280]it's just before we jumped off to go to St. Lo,
[00:08:54.620]it's when the invasion, when the Army was moving into St. Lo,
[00:08:59.960]which was near Cherbourg, I don't know if you know any of these places,
[00:09:03.660]but St. Lo was a very important city,
[00:09:06.960]and the Germans were heavily fortified there,
[00:09:10.040]and our job as far as the 2nd Infantry Division was concerned in our outfit
[00:09:14.400]was to capture the highway that went from Paris to St. Lo,
[00:09:19.660]so the Germans couldn't send reinforcement out.
[00:09:24.300]So I was on that 165, Hill 165, before we jumped off and we had mail call.
[00:09:31.660]It was just before my birthday, it was my birthday, it was really in July,
[00:09:35.760]so I get this letter from home,
[00:09:37.760]and I open it up, and it's from my mother, and she's sending me a birthday card with $20 in it,
[00:09:45.290]and she's wishing me a happy birthday,
[00:09:49.250]and she says, go out and have a good time.
[00:09:52.670]So I carried that $20 with me until the end of the war,
[00:09:56.890]at which time I did go out and have a good time.
[00:10:01.810]Were there many casualties in your unit?
[00:10:04.290]Yeah, there was. You couldn't, you know, you never know.
[00:10:13.370]I remember those times when we were in one area,
[00:10:17.490]and there was a bunch of replacements came up,
[00:10:19.590]and some of them were from Camp Waters, Texas, where I had taken my training,
[00:10:24.590]and we sat down that night, and we were talking to them,
[00:10:29.770]and the next morning we jumped off for an attack,
[00:10:32.170]and there was a mortar attack, the Germans shot mortars there,
[00:10:36.430]so I was fortunate to not get hit,
[00:10:39.690]but some of the people I just spoke to that night were killed.
[00:10:45.590]So if you believe in things happening, I don't know how to put it,
[00:10:54.070]your number's not up.
[00:10:57.110]And I went all the way through there, and I had close calls,
[00:11:01.450]and I remember one time we went into a field,
[00:11:04.670]and I was, at that time, I was a runner for the lieutenant from my platoon.
[00:11:10.290]I went into this field, and I don't know if you remember the hedgerows,
[00:11:15.730]that was back in Normandy, they had hedgerows.
[00:11:18.730]And so we went into this one field,
[00:11:20.490]and the machine gun squad was setting up there,
[00:11:25.030]and my lieutenant was over on the other side,
[00:11:27.330]and he told me he wanted me over there, and I was thinking,
[00:11:30.070]I don't want to go over there, because that's what they're certainly going to shoot,
[00:11:35.210]because they're bombarded with those shells.
[00:11:38.090]Well, he insisted.
[00:11:39.290]So I went over the hedgerow, and I got right down to the side of it,
[00:11:42.330]and I no sooner got there,
[00:11:44.210]and the Germans opened up with the 88 artillery on that field I just left,
[00:11:49.990]and wiped out that whole machine gun platoon.
[00:11:55.750]And it was just a matter of just seconds, like it would have been there,
[00:12:00.010]but I went over there and got on the other side.
[00:12:03.450]So you never know.
[00:12:05.770]And then another time, I was sitting on this hill,
[00:12:08.270]with another, we were sitting there waiting to move,
[00:12:11.550]and the Germans started to throw more shells at us,
[00:12:16.950]and I remember we went down, and they bent down,
[00:12:19.270]and I no sooner bent down, and all of a sudden I heard a pffft.
[00:12:22.670]A piece of shrapnel had just gone behind my head.
[00:12:25.310]If I had been up here, it would have hit me,
[00:12:29.110]but I bent down to do something, and it went right behind me.
[00:12:32.630]So if things are meant to happen, I guess they're going to happen.
[00:12:37.310]So I believe in that.
[00:12:39.930]This might seem an odd question.
[00:12:42.010]Were you ever fearful?
[00:12:44.730]Didn't have time.
[00:12:47.450]I had several men tell me that.
[00:12:50.790]Didn't have time to think about it.
[00:12:54.150]Once you tasted the first part of combat,
[00:12:58.290]I got another thing that goes back to when I first,
[00:13:01.310]before I joined the 2nd Infantry Division.
[00:13:04.410]Being I was a radio man, they gave me a .45 gun.
[00:13:11.230]Well, I was going to the front line, and I had no use for the .45.
[00:13:15.550]I needed a rifle, so I went through this,
[00:13:17.990]I was going through this tank division that was waiting in reserve,
[00:13:23.770]and I saw one fella, he had a rifle,
[00:13:26.790]and I said, are you with the tank division?
[00:13:28.890]And he says, yeah.
[00:13:30.270]I says, well, I should have a .45.
[00:13:33.570]He says, I've got a .45, I need your rifle.
[00:13:36.450]So we went to the Lieutenant, and he authorized us to switch.
[00:13:40.810]So I took his rifle, he took my .45.
[00:13:44.510]I went to the front line, and I finally get up there,
[00:13:47.950]and the Lieutenant and the Sergeant who was assigning me to a foxhole
[00:13:52.210]said, where did you get that?
[00:13:54.130]I had a World War I rifle, an 03, a bolt action.
[00:13:59.450]He said, where did you get that?
[00:14:00.710]I said, I traded it with the fella down at the tank division.
[00:14:06.570]He says,
[00:14:07.170]no, we don't use those anymore.
[00:14:08.810]He took it away, and he gave me an M1.
[00:14:10.750]So that's a little levity.
[00:14:14.170]Tell me about your food and provisions.
[00:14:18.630]Well, in the front line, most of it was K rations.
[00:14:22.150]And once in a great while, they would send up
[00:14:24.450]some hot coffee or a hot meal, but not very often.
[00:14:28.190]Most of the time, we had our K rations three times a day.
[00:14:33.490]When we went back to reserve, which was once in a while,
[00:14:38.850]they would replace us, and we would go back just behind the lines
[00:14:42.670]for showers and downtime.
[00:14:46.570]Then we'd get what we called C rations, which was a larger kit
[00:14:50.250]but with more provisions.
[00:14:53.990]And that's what we had.
[00:14:54.930]We very seldom had a lot of hot meals in the front line.
[00:14:58.270]Most of it was K rations.
[00:15:00.690]Today, we used to have a coffee.
[00:15:03.070]It was a Nescafe.
[00:15:03.970]I don't know if you remember Nescafe.
[00:15:06.530]Nescafe was a standard.
[00:15:10.530]Lemonade was a standard.
[00:15:12.230]All of us got four cigarettes.
[00:15:15.370]And other such things that you needed.
[00:15:20.670]Your mother obviously got your birthday card to you.
[00:15:23.670]Yeah.
[00:15:24.390]Did you stay in touch with people at home?
[00:15:27.250]Oh, yeah.
[00:15:27.530]Did you write letters?
[00:15:29.410]E-mails.
[00:15:30.330]E-mails?
[00:15:30.510]Not e-mails.
[00:15:35.790]Those little victory letters, whatever they ever brought.
[00:15:43.060]And they were censored, you know.
[00:15:48.530]And then, you know, in the front lines,
[00:15:52.190]you didn't have a lot of time.
[00:15:54.310]You didn't get your mail every day.
[00:15:57.210]You had to wait for them to bring it up.
[00:16:00.290]Did you have time for recreation at all?
[00:16:02.850]No.
[00:16:03.710]I mean, on your downtime, what did you do?
[00:16:07.790]Which was?
[00:16:08.850]Mean when we were behind the line?
[00:16:10.090]When you were behind the line.
[00:16:11.430]We would just take showers and write letters. And that's about it.
[00:16:19.320]Did you ever get the chance to celebrate holidays?
[00:16:22.660]Not the front lines.
[00:16:26.580]What skills or lessons did you learn?
[00:16:32.080]Skills or lessons did I learn?
[00:16:39.950]Well, I don't know if I really learned anything.
[00:16:43.390]That I could use in the civilian world because that's not what we were there for,
[00:16:51.750]to learn.
[00:16:53.750]I met a lot of people.
[00:16:56.190]I found out one thing about people.
[00:17:00.350]I was of the Jewish faith.
[00:17:03.390]And you find out that when you're in close contact with people
[00:17:08.590]and you're under the same threat, those things mean nothing.
[00:17:16.390]I mean, you're a human being, and you make friends very quick,
[00:17:23.090]and you watch out for each other.
[00:17:25.830]And everything else goes out the window.
[00:17:27.350]It doesn't make any difference where you're at, where you're from,
[00:17:30.290]who you are.
[00:17:32.930]I learned maybe that's one of the lessons I did learn,
[00:17:35.750]was that people are people no matter where you go.
[00:17:41.120]So did you experience anti-Semitism at all?
[00:17:44.440]Only once.
[00:17:47.480]That was when I was waiting to be sent back to the front line.
[00:17:53.020]I volunteered.
[00:17:54.240]I had heard, which was stupid, but I had heard.
[00:17:56.860]And if you volunteer that, sometimes you can get delayed from being sent back.
[00:18:01.900]Well, I didn't want to necessarily run back there the other way.
[00:18:04.860]So, I volunteered for guard duty.
[00:18:08.640]And one night we were walking, me and another fellow were walking,
[00:18:11.960]we were walking guard.
[00:18:14.060]He started, he didn't know that I was Jewish,
[00:18:17.560]but he started to comment about Jew stores,
[00:18:21.160]and Jews in general back home when he was there,
[00:18:24.900]when he was in the army, when he went to leave the furloughs.
[00:18:30.540]And I stopped right there, and I says, well, you may not know it,
[00:18:35.680]but I says, I'm Jewish.
[00:18:38.340]I says, if you have a problem with that you better let me know right now. The standard thing,
[00:18:44.780]oh, I don't mean you, you're different.
[00:18:47.160]I said, I'm no different.
[00:18:48.520]I says, you're talking about my faith.
[00:18:51.380]I don't know what faith you are, but in anybody's faith,
[00:18:54.720]there's all kinds of people.
[00:18:55.920]There's good people, there's bad people.
[00:18:58.640]There's so-so people.
[00:19:00.640]I says, what you're doing is you're taking a whole religion,
[00:19:04.780]and you're comparing it to maybe one thing that happened to you,
[00:19:08.360]and you're figuring everybody's like that.
[00:19:11.540]And I says, if you have a problem with it, I says, I want to know right now.
[00:19:15.540]I says, I'm not going to go around with you.
[00:19:18.360]He says, no, no, no.
[00:19:19.460]He says, I'm sorry.
[00:19:20.480]He says, you're different.
[00:19:22.340]I don't mean you.
[00:19:23.580]So we let it go with that.
[00:19:25.880]But that's the only time.
[00:19:28.940]Did you practice Judaism at all during your service?
[00:19:31.140]Yeah, I'll tell you.
[00:19:31.980]When I was in after the war, when I was still in Nice, France,
[00:19:37.280]the holidays came, and we went to, they took one of the hotels down on downtown,
[00:19:46.880]had Rosh Hashanah services, Yom Kippur services.
[00:19:52.000]And I went, and I observed it there.
[00:19:57.780]It's the first time I had ever met anyone Jewish that was African.
[00:20:04.500]I never had seen that before, and there were a lot of them.
[00:20:09.620]They were probably from New York.
[00:20:13.120]But yeah, I observed it when I could, because we had a chaplain that come up,
[00:20:21.980]but we didn't have time to, you know, like, some religions,
[00:20:27.520]they had their services like on Sundays, and the chaplain would come,
[00:20:31.260]and these folks would go.
[00:20:32.360]We didn't have too much of that.
[00:20:34.860]Did the war or your service change your Jewish life later, do you think?
[00:20:42.520]Well, I don't know what you mean
[00:20:44.260]by changing it, my folks were observant, they weren't Orthodox.
[00:20:50.500]I mean, they were Orthodox, and they kept kosher, and they kept all that.
[00:20:54.800]But my dad was always very working all the time,
[00:20:59.660]and didn't really, wasn't able to participate in a lot of religious things.
[00:21:03.760]And so I guess from that, I wasn't that religious,
[00:21:08.760]although I never, I knew where I came from and I knew what my roots were,
[00:21:13.120]and I was always proud of that, and I never hid that from anyone.
[00:21:18.610]So when I came back home, yeah, I guess it did.
[00:21:21.530]I joined up at the synagogue here and participated in all the Jewish activities,
[00:21:30.050]you know, with the J and all that.
[00:21:35.140]Did you or do you have a siddur from the armed forces?
[00:21:40.160]I do have.
[00:21:41.380]You do?
[00:21:41.940]I have it at home.
[00:21:43.500]It's the one I carried with me all through the war.
[00:21:48.120]I carried it in my pocket, and I used to read from it.
[00:21:52.120]Yeah.
[00:21:52.920]Now that you mention it, I forgot.
[00:21:55.400]Did you know what was going on during the war?
[00:21:59.080]I know you were on the front line.
[00:22:01.600]Did you know what was going on anywhere else?
[00:22:04.480]No, we used to get the Stars and Stripes,
[00:22:07.340]and that used to keep us informed as to what was going on in the war.
[00:22:11.600]But outside of that, there was nothing else.
[00:22:15.620]There was no radio or anything of that sort.
[00:22:18.570]So I got my information through the Army newspaper.
[00:22:24.950]So we knew some of the things.
[00:22:28.290]Was kosher food available to you at all? No, never asked for it.
[00:22:35.240]Were you asked to do anything against your Jewish beliefs?
[00:22:38.180]No.
[00:22:44.150]Did you take any ceremonial objects with you?
[00:22:48.490]I carried my mezuzah.
[00:22:50.430]I wore my mezuzah with me.
[00:22:52.770]That was about the only thing I did.
[00:22:56.820]I was hoping I never got captured, what would I do?
[00:23:00.260]Although on the dog tags, they did say H for Hebrew.
[00:23:05.900]If you were Protestant, it was P. If you were Catholic, it was C.
[00:23:09.260]So they did identify you that way.
[00:23:10.980]That was because if you were killed,
[00:23:14.040]they would know what kind of service to give you.
[00:23:17.400]Did you ever doubt your religion?
[00:23:20.440]No.
[00:23:23.690]And did you meet other Jewish service members?
[00:23:26.570]Yes, I did.
[00:23:28.890]Not in my outfit, but outside of the outfit.
[00:23:32.910]In fact, after the war, when I was in Germany at that time, we were in
[00:23:38.570]Bad Salzungen which was a city that was declared an open city.
[00:23:50.640]The war did not go in there.
[00:23:54.560]Everybody went around it.
[00:23:56.440]And it was a resort.
[00:23:57.780]There was a lot of hospitals up here. And they had this mineral water. A lot of people used to go there and have treatment.
[00:24:04.590]And in that city, we were in the hotel,
[00:24:07.790]and the Germans had a hospital down there.
[00:24:10.370]And we would walk down the street,
[00:24:13.510]and the Germans also would walk down the street,
[00:24:15.710]but they would get off the street, off the sidewalk, where we walked,
[00:24:21.220]which was okay with me.
[00:24:23.740]But I did go to a, they had a service,
[00:24:29.780]a Friday night service,
[00:24:32.200]and the army provided us with a truck.
[00:24:35.620]And everyone who was Jewish went with that
[00:24:38.420]and went down to this.
[00:24:39.980]And we met a lot of the refugees that were from Hungary
[00:24:43.400]that were just making their way back.
[00:24:46.840]And so that was interesting.
[00:24:48.600]I met a lot of them there at that time.
[00:24:51.780]So, no, I was probably, I was Jewish,
[00:24:54.280]and I didn't hide it, and I didn't care who it knew it.
[00:24:59.060]Do you recall the day you left the service?
[00:25:03.100]You mean from overseas?
[00:25:04.680]Mm-hmm.
[00:25:05.120]From overseas,
[00:25:05.800]and then once you were out?
[00:25:08.320]I don't remember exactly.
[00:25:10.140]I remember getting on board a ship.
[00:25:16.120]And I can't remember exactly where that was.
[00:25:18.500]And we were aboard.
[00:25:19.780]We came across the North Atlantic in March,
[00:25:24.300]during wintertime.
[00:25:27.120]And we had a very tough trip coming back.
[00:25:32.480]We were going on the North Atlantic in the wintertime.
[00:25:35.480]And I landed at...
[00:25:37.340]It wasn't New York.
[00:25:44.010]It might have been Baltimore, Maryland. It might have been Baltimore.
[00:25:45.730]On the East Coast.
[00:25:51.810]Then I was processed and put on a train back to Omaha.
[00:25:59.080]What did you do after the war ended?
[00:26:02.280]You came back to Omaha, and then what did you do?
[00:26:04.560]I came back to Omaha, and I went to UNO.
[00:26:09.400]And I signed up for the G.I. Bill of Rights.
[00:26:14.660]And I went to UNO.
[00:26:17.620]And I then met my wife.
[00:26:26.680]I was still in early,
[00:26:28.240]I'd been in there about two years, and I met my wife.
[00:26:32.340]And got married. Ruth Albertson was my first wife.
[00:26:35.860]Did you maintain any close relationships
[00:26:38.920]from your service time at all?
[00:26:42.080]Do you know anybody?
[00:26:43.060]No.
[00:26:43.080]Did you keep in touch with anybody?
[00:26:44.880]No, because after I left the outfit,
[00:26:47.420]back in Brest, France, I never did return to it,
[00:26:52.280]so I don't know what happened to it.
[00:26:56.510]And after the war, what was your career?
[00:26:58.830]What did you do?
[00:27:01.890]Well, after the war, I went to work for my father.
[00:27:07.410]And then I went into the...
[00:27:12.070]I don't know if you remember H&G Brokerage,
[00:27:14.910]which was a retail store for paint, wallpaper,
[00:27:19.570]salvage, and things of that sort.
[00:27:24.980]And I was there in that for 15 years.
[00:27:28.900]And then things were changing in the area,
[00:27:31.360]and that's when they had the riots on 24th Street, and then we went on 16th and Webster,
[00:27:37.470]which is entirely different now.
[00:27:41.000]So we got out, we closed the store.
[00:27:42.980]And I went into real estate, and that was 1970.
[00:27:48.400]And I sold real estate for 10 years, 10, 15 years.
[00:27:54.580]And then I went to appraising, which I am now in,
[00:27:57.340]and I've been in that for about the past 20 years.
[00:28:01.860]So probably real estate's where I got into - retail and real estate.
[00:28:07.550]Your experiences in the service,
[00:28:09.690]how did that contribute to the way you think the military
[00:28:13.290]and service today, military service?
[00:28:17.410]Well, I respect them.
[00:28:19.990]I know the job that they do is not easy.
[00:28:25.720]Politics get involved,
[00:28:27.280]and they can't really do what they are meant to do.
[00:28:31.300]In fact, Vietnam was a very good example of that.
[00:28:34.640]I respect the people that served there,
[00:28:37.800]and I think they were handicapped
[00:28:39.820]and not allowed to win the war.
[00:28:43.820]And it's all politics.
[00:28:45.860]So I think even today we have that in Iraq.
[00:28:49.760]We have the Army trying to do their job
[00:28:52.080]and what they're supposed to do with politics
[00:28:53.860]and letting them do it.
[00:28:56.840]So I respect the Army and I respect the military.
[00:29:02.040]I resent the politics that get involved with it.
[00:29:06.350]Do you have anything else you'd like to say to wrap this up?
[00:29:11.570]No, I'd just like to thank you for your taking your time
[00:29:15.430]to do the interview.
[00:29:17.130]I think it's very nice of you to do that,
[00:29:19.290]to talk to us fellows that were in the service back then.
[00:29:24.830]And I just hope the world will find its way
[00:29:29.430]and peace prevails.
[00:29:33.130]Thank you so much, Mr. Chorney.

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Interview with World War II Soldier David Chorney

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