World War I veteran tells of hauling supplies

The following interview of Tom Judy was conducted on Sept. 13, 1984, in Beaver by Joe L. Todd for the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Todd: Sir, where were you born?

Judy: I was born in Beaver County on September 21, 1896.

T: Who was your father?

J: Thomas J. Judy.

T: And your mother?

J: Adelaide Judy.

T: What was her maiden name?

J: Wood. My mother was from Virginia and my father was from Kentucky. My grandfather Wood was in the Confederate Army and Grandfather Judy was in the Union Army and he had a brother in the Confederate Army. During the Civil War both families lost everything so they moved to Missouri and that is where my parents met. After they were married they moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, and came to Beaver County in 1886. They settled on Kiowa Creek and started farming. They did not make a success of farming and started collecting buffalo bones and taking them to a fertilizer plant in Dodge City, Kan. He was paid $5 for a wagon load of bones. He began working for a man east of Beaver County and began buying cattle and that is how he got in the cattle business.

T: What chores did you do on the ranch?

J: Anything that had to be done. We rounded up the cattle and drove them to market once a year.

T: How do you organize a cattle drive?

J: You have the boss and he decides on the destination and you get the chuck wagon and the remuda. You don’t have one horse and one man takes care of the remuda and you ride a different horse every day. You have one or two men out front looking for water and grass to stop for the night, then you have men on the side and men bringing up the rear to keep the herd together. You have to watch the cattle day and night or they will return home. The cook is probably the most important man on the cattle drive. He had a canvas that made a lean-to on the side of the wagon where he cooked the food. He also had a canvas slung under the wagon and he would pick up wood and put on that canvas to cook the food. The wood was kept under the wagon to keep it dry. I remember we only had one stampede when I was on the drives and you just circle the herd and that stops them. Most stampedes were caused by lightning or coyotes howling. At night when you are bedded down, the night crew would sing to the cattle to cover the noise of the coyotes and any other noise that might bother the herd. A herd will not stampede while they are grazing. The night crew relaxed in the day and the day crew unsettled their horses at night. When they brought the railroad in that stopped the cattle drives and the last cattle drive in this area was in 1910.

T: Where did you start school?

J: I started at Riverside School, a one-room school.

T: How many students in the school?

J: There were 11 students and our first teacher was George Cassidy and he was from Kansas.

T: What year did you graduate from high school?

J: I graduated in 1914 and went to Kansas State University for one year.

T: What did you study in college?

J: Electrical Engineering.

T: How bad were the dust storms around Beaver?

J: They were bad.


J: You didn’t, but my mother put wet sheets over the door and wet towels over the windows and the dust still came in. Black Sunday was the worst dust storm in the Dust Bowl. It was on a Sunday and I was on a horse looking for a new calf and I saw the dust cloud coming. I knew I couldn’t make it home so I got off the horse and turned him loose and he went back to the barn. I got on the ground and put a handkerchief over my face and laid there for a while. I finally got up and slowly walked in the direction of the house but I couldn’t see a thing it was so dark. I came to a fence and followed it and saw a dim light and it was a lamp my mother had put in the window and that is how I made it back to the house.

T: Where were you when the US entered World War I?

J: I was on the farm and my father said he could get me exempted because of raising cattle but he didn’t want to do that. He told me that the men that avoided the Army during the Civil War were looked down on after the war. I went to Wichita to join the Signal Corps but they turned me down. I then went to Enid and joined the Army. I was sent to Oklahoma City then to Denver and to Jacksonville, Fla.

T: Where did you take your Basic Training?

J: I didn’t have Basic Training. I was in the cadet corps at Kansas State and they said I didn’t need Basic.

T: What unit were you assigned to?

J: I was assigned to a Motor Transport Unit and was sent to Newport News, Va. We left Virginia in a 15 ship convoy taking troops to France and the trip took 17 days. There were several destroyers escorting us and they patrolled for German submarines. We zigzagged across the Atlantic and went south of Ireland. The first thing I saw was the wreckage of ships that had been sunk off the Irish coast.

T: Where did the ship land?

J: We landed at Brest, France, and it rained every day. I was told I would be a truck driver and wanted to get in the truck and out of the rain and mud. We boarded a French train on those cars that would carry 8 horses or 40 men. The train stopped several times and we got off and did exercises. We went to Paris and we were attached to a truck unit but I don’t remember which one. A lot of years have passes since the war and I have forgotten so much. I do remember the sirens would go off and the German Air Force would come over and drop a few bombs and we couldn’t tell the difference between the bombs and the anti-aircraft fire.

T: What did you do in the unit?

J: I was a driver and a mechanic. There was a whole string of trucks broken down in Paris and all they needed was a good valve job. Several of us worked on them and got those trucks running. We headed toward the front and didn’t have a garage or tent to work on trucks and we worked out in the open in good weather or bad weather. We were behind the trenches and never spent any time in them.

T: You were a truck driver the whole time in France?

J: Yes, except when I was working on them. I drove a truck in the Battle of Chateau Thierry, San Mihiel and the last was the Meuse-Argonne. We were taking supplies to the front but did not get close to any of the fighting.

T: What do you remember most about driving a truck and hauling supplies?

J: We had to make sure the trucks were in good repair and know where we were going and how to get back.

T: Was the Meuse-Argonne the last battle?

J: I think so. After that I started hauling coffins. They were made of boards that fit together and we took them to the temporary cemeteries. The bodies were dug up and we put a coffin together and they had a team and their job to make sure each body was identified from the dog tags. Then we transported the bodies in the coffins to the permanent cemetery. The graves were dug in long trenches and a marker was put over each grave with the name or “unknown.”

T: Where were you on Armistice Day?

J: I was in Paris working on an ambulance and the whole city went wild. Those people were crazy. I had to get an ambulance that had broken down and we had to drive through a crowd that was celebrating and it was like driving through water. The people would open in front and close in behind you and that is how we drove through Paris on Armistice Day to get that ambulance.

T: How long did you stay in France?

J: We were kept over there taking troops to Brest to go home and we left in August of 1919.

T: Tell me about the trip home?

J: We came home on a ship and landed in New York City and I got my discharge and rode the train back to Beaver. I walked three miles from the depot to the farm and saw my father and started working.

T: What do you tell people today about what you did in the war?

J: People aren’t interested today.

T: This is a good interview. I want to thank you.


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