AUSTIN, Texas— Today, Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, we highlight the service of Sergeant (Sgt.) Ben Carter who served in the U.S. Army during WWII at Saipan and Iwo Jima.
Born and raised in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, Carter said he joined the Army when he was 18 years old at Fort Bragg and did his infantry training in Louisiana. When asked if he was drafted or entered the service on his own, Carter said he knew he wanted to go into the service, even with a kidney condition. He admitted, "I could have stayed out with my condition, but my doctors told me if I wanted to stay out of the service, go eat a bunch candy and drink a lot of cokes, which would make my side hurt [...] but we were in the war," and Carter needed to be a part of it.
When he arrived at Camp Livingston in Louisiana, Carter referred to it as "combat-like conditions" from the start and remembered "crawling on your belly, and if you raised your head up, you got shot." Following his infantry training, Carter said he was given a "six day delay enroute, which means they gave me six days to report to my next place, which was Fort Meade, Maryland." But as things happen, that's not where he ended up.
"I knew that if I was going to Fort Meade, Maryland, which is on the east coast, I was headed to Europe," Carter explained, adding they were fighting both the Japanese and the Germans. "Instead [...] they put us on a troop train and we went all the way from Fort Meade to Fort Lawton near Seattle and that's where we got on the ship, the USS Monitor bound for Pearl Harbor."
Carter said that when he boarded the ship to Pearl Harbor, he didn't know where he would be heading but found himself on the Island of Saipan. "It was so overgrown with all sorts of banana trees with no bananas," Carter said with a laugh about his first impression of the island. "There were so many green bananas -- you never did see a ripe one."
Carter said that when he landed on Saipan, the island "was full of Japanese in the caves" who had been living on snails. He also recalled searching for the enemy in these caves and that they always knew where the Japanese had been because the discarded shells of the snails "would be stacked like pyramids" throughout the caves. While they didn’t manage to find active hideouts, Carter said the men saw plenty of “great big cockroaches” helping dispose of the dead Japanese they did find.
"I was on Saipan when they dropped the Atomic Bomb," Carter said. "Then they told us the war was over, but it wasn't over really because they had to drop a second one. From Saipan, they sent us to Iwo Jima and that was to occupy the Japanese island."
Carter said Iwo Jima was important because of the landing strips on the island as it was impossible to fly bombers from Guam to Tokyo "because they didn't have enough fuel, so they needed a landing strip to refuel."
To listen to Sgt. Ben Carter tell his story, click the button below:
Veterans can email VoicesofVeterans@glo.texas.gov to tell their stories. Please note that the Veteran must be a resident of Texas at the time of their interview.
Voices of Veterans is a state agency's first Veteran oral history program. It records the stories of Texas Veterans through their time in service and after returning home from combat.
The VLB records interviews with Veterans over the phone or in person. Their interviews are then permanently archived in the Office of Veterans Records at the GLO, where they join the historical documents of other Texas heroes such as Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis.
Veterans' interviews are also available to researchers, historians, genealogists, and the public. These precious records inspire future generations and remind us of our Veterans' sacrifices.
To listen to the over 500 archived stories of Veterans documented through the GLO's Voices of Veterans oral history program, click the button below:
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Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, M.D., brings a lifetime of experience to the Texas General Land Office (GLO). In 2016, she became the first Republican elected to the Texas State Senate from Travis County and the first woman to represent Texas Senate District 24. She made history again in 2022, winning a statewide election to become our state’s first female Land Commissioner.