MEET OUR VETERANS:
Liston Barber : Martins Mill, Texas
U.S. Navy ( WW2 )
Liston Barber was born on January 31st 1926 in Martins Mill, Texas. He had two brothers and three sisters. The brothers were named Brown and Quentin Barber. There was six years difference between Liston and his next brother. The sisters, Quana, Marjorie and Mildred were twins, both younger than Liston. Quentin and Quana served in the military.
Quentin was in the Army (1942) and Quana (1941) served as a LCDR in the U.S. Navy. “She was the first woman to enlist in the Navy from Van Zandt County,” said Liston. “She went to Smith College in Massachusetts for training and got her commission there. Her overseas duty was in Naples, Italy as a Communications Officer. She was my big sister and we corresponded thru the years while I was in service. I found all those letters when she passed. She had saved all those letters in a folder,” said Liston.
Quana served over twenty-five-years in the military. Quana also helped to write the book on the history of Martin’s Mill.
“The Martin’s Mill store wall was started in 2004,” said Jerry Daniel. They were all early families from Martin’s Mill community who volunteered pictures for the wall and are residents from Martin’s Mill from 1950 or sooner. There are 300+ pictures that take up an entire section of the store. It is called “Memory Wall.” Along with Jerry Daniel, research for the wall was by Quana Barber and Maefayr Hooten in 2004.
“Quentin, my brother, did a tour in Burma during the war. He came back from the military and went to Dental School and became a dentist.”
Liston’s parents’ names were Ervin and mother, Ellen. “My dad owned the General Merchandise store in Martins Mill for about thirty-years. He had three boys at home. The boys did some farming on 50-60 acres my dad bought. We grew mostly cotton and corn. My dad moved to Martins Mill when he was about 21-years old from Alabama. He had family in the area and had change in his pocket and decided to move to this area. He said his first job he got was cutting hair in Ben Wheeler,” laughed Liston.
“As a young boy I could only pick about 200-pounds of cotton a day. That may sound like a lot but there were others that could pick 400-pounds a day. That was back-breaking work and tough on the hands. There were Gins in Martins Mill at the time and we took the cotton there for ginning. There was a guy in town with a truck and he took it down to Athens for sale,” said Liston.
“I started plowing when I was about ten-years-old, behind a mule. There was a walking cultivator that had two mules to it. My older brothers had grown up and moved on and left me there to plow alone and do the chores. Eventually, my dad bought a tractor and soon after that the war came on. That changed everything.”
December 7, 1941
Liston was 15 years old when he heard about the bombing at Pearl Harbor. “I knew it was a big even at the time, but didn’t understand the significance of it. It was the talk of the school and all the conversation from then on. Our teachers would brief us about what was going on. Quentin was drafted into the Army around 1942 and Quana volunteered for the Navy around that same year.
I knew at the time what my future was going to be, because every able-bodied male was drafted very shortly after their 18th birthday. I volunteered for the military after graduating from High School, in 1944. Before I turned eighteen, a cousin, Don Bass and I joined the U.S. Navy. He and I were three months apart in age. We both decided to join the Navy instead of joining the infantry,” laughed Liston. “I ended up serving two and a half years in the military.
Boot Camp:
“There were four of us leaving Tyler together. We went by bus to Mineola, then boarded a train to San Diego, California for boot camp. I had never been on a train before and had never been out of the state of Texas. I was about as green and country and unsophisticated as you could be. I was very homesick when I had time to think about it but they didn’t give me much time to think. I ended up in the same Company as the guys that went out there with me. It was different and an eye opener for a country boy. Boot camp lasted for about six weeks. As it turned out the military told me what I was going to do in the Navy. After boot camp we were looking to attend an advanced training school. What school you got into was determined by a test you took. My test indicated I could be qualified for sonar or a radio technician school. Why, I don’t know. A guy came by us and asked me where I was from and I soon found out he was recruiting for the “seaman guard,” which was no more than kids standing guard at the gates of the training station. Normally, if you worked some time as a seaman guard you could get into a school afterwards. That is what I hoped to do. I wanted to go to radio tech school. They were looking for boys that were tall, so I was 6’1” and became a seaman guard. I served in that for about 2-3 months. It was simply drilling and standing guard at the gate.
My next assignment was at Twenty-Nine Palms, California. It was located in the desert. The Air Force had abandoned a base out there and the Navy was going to take it and use it for pilot training. They sent a bunch of us out there to clean it up and get it ready to be occupied by the Navy. The pilots were using the facility to practicing bombing runs. I mostly worked in communications, ran errands and was basically the flunky for the communications office. Never went to school for that either. I was out there for about a year.
My next assignment was Camp Elliott, in California. ( Liston pulled out a little black notebook that he had written down exact dates of where he was stationed in the military. The notes and dates were a tremendous help in recalling crucial dates in events that occurred over 75 years ago.
He had written the dates down but doesn’t recall, but believes it was after his time in the Navy. I only stayed at Camp Elliott for a few days. The Navy was congregating sailors from all over the country. The camp was a processing center to get you ready for the Transport ships to send you overseas. This was in July of 1945.
The War in Europe was winding down and troops were being sent back to America with a mindset they may be shipped over to the Pacific. Okinawa was intrenched in a furious battle for two airstrips with the Marines and Army. The U.S. needed those bases to have closer access to Japan. Liston was part of a large contingent of sailors boarding LST ( Landing Ships ) heading to the Pacific. There were 1,600 men on board heading to Japan to fight in the Pacific War against the Japanese. There were one or two other Transport ships within our group along with several Battleships steaming towards the Pacific. It was one month before the dropping of two atomic bombs on August 6th and August 9th on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I left San Diego on July 27th 1945 and got to Eniwetok on August 9th. We were shooting for the early part of November to invade Japan. That was only about three months away. This was the first time Liston had ever been on a large ship. “Boy, did I get seasick on that voyage over, man o man,” Liston said shaking his head. “I was about as miserable as a man can be. We had about five bunks on top of each other, mine was about in the middle. Once you get seasick you always have people advising you what to do. You got to eat, go to chow and get something to eat. So, I went to get something to eat. The chow line was long, and it was hot. I was sick and about to throw up again. I was so sick that I wouldn’t have resisted if someone came along and kicked me over the side. That is miserable sickness,” recalled Liston.
I didn’t remember that the bombs were dropped that early in my voyage. I had never heard of an atomic bomb or even suppose I had ever heard of an atom. They had a little mimeograph they distributed on the ship occasionally. They could have announced it over the PA system, but I don’t remember. I am sure there was relief and some cheers when it was announced.
To this day many historians discuss the impact of the two atomic bombs and would it have saved thousands if not millions of American lives. The ideological mindset of the Japanese was to commit suicide rather than surrender. The jumping off the cliffs in Okinawa and the Kamikaze pilots was a prime example of this fanatical mindset of the times.
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM local time, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, American President Harry S. Truman called again for Japan’s surrender, warning them to “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Late in the evening of August 8, 1945, in accordance with the Yalta agreements, but in violation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and soon after midnight on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union invaded the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Hours later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Following these events, Emperor Hirohito intervened and ordered the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War to accept the terms the Allies had set down in the Potsdam Declaration for ending the war. After several more days of behind-the-scenes negotiations and a failed coup d’état, Emperor Hirohito gave a recorded radio address across the Empire on August 15. In the radio address, called the Jewel Voice Broadcast (玉音放送, Gyokuon-hōsō), he announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies.
Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri as General Richard K. Sutherland watches, September 2, 1945
According to my notes, I arrived on the Philippines on the 17th of August, 1945. Both bombs had already been dropped on Japan. We had all realized we had dodged a tremendous bullet.
On arrival in the Philippines I was assigned to another ship, the USS LSM-433. It was a landing ship. I was the only addition to their crew. They sent us all over there to fight a war and now that we are there they needed to do something with us so they assigned us to other ships. I don’t have any idea why the Navy assigned me to that ship. I had no school training or school specialty.
On the 9th of September we left to Philippines and arrived on Okinawa on the 13th of September. Three days later, on the 16th, we were sent out to sea for 32 hours because of an incoming typhoon. (Pacific Hurricane). It is still considered as one of the worst typhoons to ever hit this area of the world. We were anchored in Buckner Bay. It was full of ships. The winds got so high the anchors were not holding, including ours.
They ordered us out to sea. It was a terrible storm. When we got back the bay was full of ships pushed up on shore. There was a “Conning Tower” on the ship. The Captain, Yeoman and others from the ship had to get up there. I had a watch scheduled during this typhoon and I was headed for my watch. The Captain yelled at me from the Conning Tower, to get back, forget the watch, and get below. I did and can’t describe how miserable of a time it was riding out that typhoon. I don’t know how the ship even survived. LSM’s are designed to go up on the beach. It doesn’t sit very deep in the water, they have a flat bottom. We were like a cork in the ocean. Everyone below just tried to hang on. Cooks couldn’t cook. A lot of people got seasick. I don’t know how the helmsman could control the ship at all. I would think half the time the propellers and rudder were out of the water. We had about seventy-five sailors on board.
In wartime the LSMs had a well deck which was a recession the full length of the ship. We hauled tanks, jeeps, large trucks, people and other supplies. The front of the ship had doors that would open and a large ramp would come down to drive vehicles off onto the beach.
On September 26th we left Okinawa headed to China with about fifty Marines. We arrived in Tientsin, China on October the 1st. That is located in North China, close to Peking. We tied up to a pier downtown and unloaded the Marines and headed down the River. We left on the 29th of October and arrived in Chinwangtao, China. This was further north into China and if I recall we were hauling salt. We stayed there one day and left on the 30th of October and went back up to Tientsin, about thirty-miles up the river. We were hauling supplies up and down the river after we dropped the Marines off. The first load we dropped off was 90% was Miller’s Highlife Beer,” laughed Liston. “No kidding. Now, that was a lot of beer. Most of what we hauled were in crates, so most of the time we didn’t know what we were hauling. China was our ally at the time, so I am not sure what or why we were hauling these supplies to them. We could have had some diplomatic presence there or the Marines could have been sent there for security forces.”
On the 25th of November we left Tientsin and arrived in Jensin, Korea on the 27th. We stayed there until January 1st 1946 and arrived in Taku, China on the 10th of January. We stayed there about three months and left on the 13th of April and went to Shanghai on the 16th. I left the LSM-433 on the 22nd of April 1946 and arrived at Orvetta (another Transport Ship).
We left on the 25th of April and boarded the USS CAELUM AK-106 heading to Guam arriving on the 3rd of May. We arrived in Seattle, Washington on the 23rd of May. We stayed there until the 31st of May and arrived in Norman, Oklahoma on the 4th of June and arrived back to Martin’s Mill on June 7th 1946.
The Military Experience:
“I adjusted to the military part of the Navy pretty well. I didn’t like to stand duty, especially at night on the late-night guard duties. I had an easy time in the military. The food wasn’t “Mammas cooking.” I got acquainted with avocadoes for the first time. I had never seen or heard of an avocado. I wasn’t too finicky of an eater and ended up weighing the most of my life while in the military. The best part was some of the fellas you met and got acquainted with.
I became lifelong friends with a boy from Nathalie, Virginia. He was one of the cooks on the ship. He was a Virginian farm boy and we had a lot in common.
In the military I learned the importance of doing things together. The role that other people play in your life. You need other people. Sometimes you are not in the best circumstances but have someone to lean on and share it with you, and makes the situation easier to handle. I like a well-disciplined environment and a structure of things. I wonder today what or how the citizens would respond to an event like Pearl Harbor.
Controversy about Dropping the BOMBS:
“There has been some controversary about dropping those bombs. Overall it saved lives. It is terrible that so many civilians had to die from those bombs. If we had to invade Japan, a lot of people would have been killed on both sides. That would have been a bloodbath. We would have to face an enemy that believed we will die to the last man. Overall, the decision probably saved lives.
June 7th 1946, I come home to Martins Mill:
“That was a happy day for me,” beamed a smiling Liston at his home in Martins Mill. “Some people said I was kind of a momma’s boy anyway, being the youngest of the brothers. She sure looked good to be coming home. My cousin, Don Bass, was back home also and we both decided to go to Tyler Junior College. They sent a bus thru Martins Mill, circled around thru Ben Wheeler and Chandler and we took the bus to college. I went to college on the GI Bill. I went two years there and then went over to Texas A&M and Don went over to SMU. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at A&M but I majored and graduated in AG Education.
The night before I was to graduate my father passed away from a heart attack. I came home immediately and ended up missing my graduation ceremony. I looked around for teaching jobs and the only opening came up over in West Texas. I place I had never heard of and didn’t want to go out there anyway. I stayed home a couple of years and helped my mother and around the farm.
GETTING MARRIED:
In 1952 I got married to Alice Pugh and we were together 68-years. She was from Athens. I was once working down there at a grocery wholesale company and that is where I met her. It was love at first sight for me. She was six years younger than I am. We have three kids, seven grandkids and two great-grandkids on the way. I was very blessed to have such a lifelong soulmate in my life,” smiled Liston.
“A friend of mine called who was on the school board at Canton High School and wanted to know if I was interested in being a teacher at Canton. It was as a science, reading and spelling teacher at their Junior High, so I took it. I started around 1959. In my second year, the High School Principal, had a heart attack and passed away before school started. They asked me if I would serve temporarily and I told them I would. I never went back to the classroom. I was High School Principal for five years and one year as a teacher. I left there in spring of 66. It was a challenge and the biggest part was learning what I was supposed to do. I enjoyed having the contact with a bunch of kids. In the early 60s I was involved with the integration at Canton High School. The transition went very smoothly for us. We have a real good football team. We went undefeated and unscored on. Dean Hess was the coach at the time.
I went, during the summertime, to East Texas at Commerce and eventually got my Master’s in school administration.
Around 1966 I went to Van School District as Director of Business Services. We supervised the accounting. We were trying to implement a more effective accounting system and became Superintendent in 1968. I retired from there in 1981. While at Van my wife worked as the Elementary Principal secretary at the Van school for several years.
I had an idea of doing something in the Petroleum land work. It was booming at the time. I went and got my Real Estate license and then the bust hit. I was a 50 something-year-old man looking for a job in a field they were laying off people left and right. I was out of work for about a year.
A friend of mine was the District Judge and he asked me if I would consider being the county auditor in Van Zandt County. I ended up doing that for about four years. I was approached about coming to work at the First State Bank of Van. I stayed there for about 8-10 years. I think they finally gave me the title of Vice President. I was mostly the loan officer working with personal loans. Occasionally, there would be an agricultural loan, but not a lot. When I left the bank, that was the end of my working career.
IN 2006 I built a new house on the old homestead. I have about 225-acres and lease it for cattle. I have always enjoyed working with cattle. I like to fish and did for many years with a friend of mine. I started fishing with some friends when I was at Canton High School. We went on trips to Tawakoni Lake. When I got over to Van I took several fishing trips with my friends over to Lake Fork and fished for crappie under the bridges. I like crappie because they are the best tasting fish.
SECRET TO LONG LIFE:
“The secret may be in my Genes. My mother lived to 100. Of all of us kids I am the only one still living. One lived to 97, the other two to 93 and 94. I never drank alcohol or smoked. I always drank a lot of milk, and still fond of milk. I think about how fortunate I was with my kids. One of my boys was an Ear, Nose and Throat Doctor. He recently retired. My second boy was a Dentist and he retired a few years ago. My daughter, the baby, received her Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. She retired from Lockheed Martin and doing some contract work on her own now.
One of the things I have always wanted to do in my life was to play the piano. I would like to be able to read and understand music. I have always been able to carry a tune singing. I can also whistle a tune. But, I can’t plan an instrument at all. I would just like to play popular music. We always had a piano in the family. My sister took piano lessons but that she didn’t have the natural talent for it. I admire people and can’t understand how some people can just naturally play an instrument. I sang at our pastor’s Calvin Morgan’s wedding. It was called “Whither thou goest, I will go.” I can carry a tune, at least I used to be able to,” he laughed.
Liston Barber, thank you for your service to our country while serving in the United States Navy. Your courage and bravery will not be forgotten.
NOTE: Meet other Veterans from Van Zandt County by going to the top of www.vzcm webpage and click on MEET OUR VETERANS and click one of the (5) branches of services and the veterans last name first and click to read.
“Every Veteran has a story to tell.” Phil Smith
GOD BLESS OUR VETERANS AND GOD BLESS AMERICA
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Bob Borth was born on January 17, 1941 in Childress, Texas. “I had one brother in the Air Force and he served four years,” said Bob in our interview in Canton.
“When I went into the Air Force in El Paso they had appreciated the fact that I was in the R.O.T.C., but it really didn’t do anything for me. It gave me an idea of what to expect from the military. They also expected more out of me since I had some military background. I was on the rifle and drill squad on my High School team. I was company commander. I graduated in May and was in the Air Force about three weeks later in 1959. I told my parents when I went into the Air Force, I am going in to retire from the military. At the time I had no clue what I was going to be doing in the Air Force. I had taken all the tests and made good scores, but I still did not know what my job was going to be,” Bob said recalling his early days.
“I went to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, in June, July and August. Three of the hottest months in Texas. The regimen was a lot stricter. Up at 0430, chow at 0600 and the drill field at 0700, military classes and yes sir and no sir. I was used to most of this from being in the R.O.T.C. I kind of looked forward to Boot Camp.
INFO: the USAF Security Service was composed primarily of airmen culled from the cream of the Air Force’s enlisted recruits (the top ½ of 1 percent). The USAFSS was a secretive and tight-knit branch of Air Force cold warriors tasked with monitoring, collecting and interpreting military voice and electronic signals of countries of interest (which often were Soviet and their satellite Eastern bloc countries). USAFSS intelligence was often analyzed in the field, and the results transmitted to the National Security Agency for further analysis and distribution to other intelligence recipients. USAFSS was tasked to carry out a cryptologic mission and to provide communications security for the newly-established Air Force. (SOURCE: USAFSS motto adopted July 27, 1963 entitled “Freedom Through Vigilance”)
INFO: The 11 aircraft in the Navy’s inventory are based on the Orion P-3 airframe and provide fleet and theater commanders worldwide with near real-time tactical SIGINT. With sensitive receivers and high-gain dish antennas, the EP-3E exploits a wide range of electronic emissions from deep within targeted territory.
INFO: RC-135 This aircraft gathers electronic and signal intelligence worldwide. It can operate at a theatre, or country level. This reconnaissance plane has near real-time on scene intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination capabilities.
INFO: The Cuban Missile Crisis started in October 1962. President John F. Kennedy was given top secret information that the Soviet Union was deploying nuclear missiles in Communist Cuba. He demanded the missiles be removed and ordered U.S. ships to blockade Cuba. B-52 bombers were in holding patterns loaded with nuclear weapons near Soviet airspace. The Soviets agreed to remove the missiles and a major war was averted.
INFO: On August 13, 1961 military units from Communist East Germany began building the Berlin Wall. Razor ribbon was used and then a permanent wall replaced the sharp wire. The winding BERLIN WALL was ten to thirteen feet high. The wall stretched for nearly 100 miles. The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic, the Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin, until East German officials ordered it opened in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. (SOURCE: WIKILEAKS and author)
INFO: The paternoster consists of two elevator shafts side-by-side, with no doors. Within them, a chain of compartments—also without doors—moves continuously on an endless belt, like a weirdly efficient Ferris wheel. In one open shaft the compartments go up, and in the other they come back down. If a person stays in their small cabinet after the last floor of a building. The box they’re standing in just keeps going up or down and around again plunging them briefly into darkness until they again reach an open floor.
“Our next stop was on the island of Crete, Greece out in the Mediterranean Sea. When we left Greece in 1975 we had been overseas for nine consecutive years less the R&R stops back in the states. Crete was like a vacation island. It was four miles wide and twelve miles long. We learned about the Greek cuisine, goats, Mediterranean food, olives and homemade wine. We lived on the base and in the summer the island was packed. The French and Italians liked to come there for vacation. Once again, I was on the bowling team… this time on the European team. Went on TDY for nine days to Spain to bowl in a tournament. We finished our team bowling, singles and doubles all in the first two days. We had another seven days for some nice R&R. Spain was nice, good people and good food. I have to give a lot of credit to families. We would go to work each day and come home and can’t talk about what we did. It helped us to get involved in other activities with the family. We loved our tour in Greece. One of the things I will never forget about our stay there was we once stood in line to get a head of iceberg lettuce. All our supplies came in from Athens. Lettuce was like a gold mine. It was worth waiting in line, to get Iceberg lettuce. First thing we wanted when we got back to the states, was a salad,” laughed Bob.
“I went into the Navy when I was 20 years old and stayed there for four years. I was stationed in China and did most of my foreign service in that country. I remember when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor I was on the USS Texas.”
“I joined the Navy to keep from being drafted. When they swore us in you could join the service you wanted to be in, and I chose the Navy. You know why I joined the Navy? Because if I joined the Army I knew I would have to walk. Guess what I did in China, I walked all over the place. I walked for two years out of the four years I was in the Navy” Todd recalled with a big belly laughter.
Todd was Petty Officer 1stclass when he got out of the Navy. “When my father was discharged from the service he left Washington, D.C. and headed back to East Texas. On the bus with him was an African-American, who was also a veteran. It was a very trying time for a black person. My father stayed with him the entire time,” said John.
“I became an Ag Agent in Canton in 1953. I remember working the rest of my time there and I loved it. I met so many people. I made friends and I made a good living. People were so nice to me. And they still are. Some were young. They are old now.”
They have a building named after you Todd. The Todd Berry building. “That is right,” You are famous. He laughs. “They still use the Todd Berry Building. I always feel good about that. It is their way of saying thank you. They have been good to me. They have been really good to me. I have many friends in this county.”
“When I was a young boy I went with them when they set up monuments with my dad, my uncle and my grandpa. Out of the three boys I was the only one who took any interest in the business. My daddy died when he was 53 years old. When he passed away he left the business to my uncle. I did a little bit of wheat farming up in Oklahoma, and some concrete work for about two years. My uncle asked me to come down and help him in the monument business and I did,” said Roy.
“In 1999 I bought the Fulps Cemetery Business and owned it until 2004 when I had to file for bankruptcy and sold the company. After that I had a 30-foot gooseneck I pulled behind my dooly truck and worked for a company called Finch Deliveries. I hauled plumbing supplies and just about anything that would fill my 30-foot gooseneck. I went all over the state of Texas. I hauled the big fiber optic reels, pvc pipe and other full loads. I hauled under 26,000 pounds and was not required to have a CDL license. I did that for 10 years,” according to Roy.
“I would love to get back into the monument business. That would be top of my bucket list. I drive by my old cemetery business every day. It is in my blood. Thirty days after my Aunt got the business she lost it. I had no control over the situation. I sold my home, the business and wanted to just take care of my wife. I have five kids and they help us when they can,” as Roy paused.