Interview with Pius Gibble

The following are excerpts from an interview with Pius Gibble:

"So why did you decide to become a CO?

I was marching up and down every day in officer's training corp. They gave me this rifle and all of a sudden they announced target practice next week and who was going to shoot. I realized that I cannot kill anybody. I cannot. I won't."

"Was the train crowded when you came?

Yes. There had been many years when the railroads weren't doing much business. But now all of a sudden they were busy because of gas rationing. But there was this contingent of COs and armed services on the same train. It got a little tense sometimes with insults.

Did you have a place to sit on the train?

Oh, yes. We slept on the train and ate in the train in the dining car. Of course, the difficulty came when we walked from our car through to other cars to get to the dining car. That's where they threw insults at us in general, not to me particularly."

--Taken from Siuslaw National Forest and Portland State University History Department. "Camp 56: An Oral History Project." Pp 81-4.

For more of the interview see <http://www.ccrh.org/oral/co.pdf>