From the Mountains of Kentucky to the Battlefields of Europe With the 474th Infantry

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World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson.

These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.

Kim Monson
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. The show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings in World War II. Returned stateside realizing we need to know the stories of our military and our veterans I’m very pleased to have on the line with me James Scott and I had met his grandson and granddaughter and they were talking about James and he’s a World War II veteran and a

pretty amazing person. And I thought, oh my gosh, let’s see if we can get an interview with him. So here we do. We have this and this is just really great.

I’m excited about it. So James Scott is 97 years young. And James Scott, welcome to the show.

James Scott
Thank you so much for having me on.

Kim Monson
Well, tell us, James, first of all, where did it all begin? Where did you grow up?

James Scott
I was born in Harlan County, that’s southeastern Kentucky, a place called Brownish Creek. And you never know when you’re at Brownish Creek because there’s nothing there but a creek. It was very rural in 1927, of course. And there was a large family of us, I think a family of 12, but some of the older ones grew up while the younger ones and I was down on the line somewhat, but My remembrance is somewhere maybe like I was five or six years old, and I

date of six because I had, there were twins born, a boy and a girl into my family, and I remember that. So it was a mountain farm we lived on. Originally was a 258 acre, I learned in recent years, a land grant to a particular person, Taylor, but to it was added quite a bit of land because the land, a lot of the land at Eastern Kentucky was brought up by, bought up by a conglomerate I understand out of Pittsburgh in the late 1800s early 1900s for like 25 cents an acre which included all the resources the timber and the extensive coalfields and our farm was it was a lease job for a pittance a year mostly to care for the environment trees and so forth

and so on but and out of that we dug a living through my younger years it was of course depression my father worked in the coal industry when it worked but in the depression there was not a lot of work so we did farming work I had a brother a couple years older than I and he and I ended up the only boys at home as other girls but we tended to inherit the job of doing farm things that much older people would normally do, like learning to plow early and chop weeds and plant corn and potatoes and all the stuff that goes with it because our livelihood mostly depended on that. Feeding of the animals, pork for instance, because we had no way to preserve beef, so hence we didn’t have any beef.

So I grew up with that until I was a teenager, went to school, had an elementary school, uh… seven months because the winters were so bad the children could not get to the one room schoolhouse because the roads were uh… just muddy paths that was uh… hardly uh…

negotiable for anything other than a horse or a mule walking on it so we walked to school and the winter weathers were so bad that School was out by the Christmas time, usually the end of it. Other than that, there was no school in the area until the CCC’s came along in the latter 30’s and built a high school. Unfortunately, it was not convenient for us to cross a couple of mountains from us and we had no way of getting there, paying the board, so I ended up with an 8th grade education and the early part of World War II, I was still a younger person and there was older boys that I knew, cousins and relatives and so forth, early on was drafted.

and I was acquainted with what was going on in other places so I left down there. I knew it was a very difficult place. I’ve often thought the Lord called me out. I don’t know what He had in mind doing but I left down there when I was 16 and we had some cousins who lived here in Cincinnati area and I stayed with him and worked I think maybe about a year and a half.

You could get a job washing dishes in a restaurant, bussing dishes and so forth. So that’s what we worked at. So my brother was two years older. He was drafted and gone and my cousins that I was used to hanging out with also.

So I was 17 and I just wanted to get my put in the door so I asked my father and he he didn’t want me to he would have had to sign okay for me but he didn’t want to do that so I got the idea just go down to the draft board of my 17th birthday and register as 18 and I did that and bingo I got drafted so that took care of that situation I

Kim Monson
What year was that,

James Scott
James? 1944. 1944. That got me out of the mountains.

A lot of people love the mountains. I have no hate for it. I just don’t want to be there. I saw so many things at the time and even today.

large families without any medical treatment, and I could elaborate on this, I think. There was a large family of us and we lost four siblings before they were two years old. Later, one nine. And I’ve had friends talk about how wonderful it was.

I said, It’s okay, but go up there and look at the Scott Cemetery and look at all the baby’s graves. So that didn’t sour me on it, but it just, I didn’t have any desire to live there at all. So that’s one of the reasons I left the mountains. It was drafted then according to my registration in 1944.

And of course, the war was really wrapped up by this time. and I took basic training in Camp Blanding, Florida. It was an infantry replacement training center. So I had my 17 weeks of training, basically combat training, and I was left, I think I left down there the 16th of December.

What we did, we had traveling orders to report to Fort Reed, Maryland at a certain time, and that time in between you could go home, usually eight or ten days, something like that. So I did that, spent, went back to Harlan County, Kentucky, and spent for ten days. I think it was the year after Christmas. Some of this has become a little shady.

I had to report to Fort Meade, Maryland. So I left the following day and to Fort Meade and me and I discovered thousands and thousands of other troops because I was still not aware of what was going on in Belgium at the time. I’d heard it, but it didn’t have a lot of meaning. So from Fort Bede, they sent me up to…

It was a port of embarkation, I think, around Boston. I don’t remember. I remember they told us, don’t unpack your bags, you’re leaving. So they sent us on a…

It’s an old French luxury liner that’s aisled in France. You were going to ask a question?

Kim Monson
Well, I think I’ll ask it here in just a minute. We’re just about done with this segment. This is pretty fascinating. I can’t believe, James, that you can remember the detail that you have here because sometimes I can’t remember what I had for breakfast.

James Scott
Yeah. Well, it’s all very real and I do remember.

Kim Monson
Well and what was the name of the boat again?

James Scott
Okay.

Kim Monson
And so we’ll talk about that when we come back. I’m talking with James Scott. He’s 97 years young and he was born in Kentucky. and that was a tough childhood.

That’s really hard work that you’ve described. I grew up in western Kansas and of course farming had new developments by the time I was growing up. My whole family’s farmers as well, but I know these stories and I know how much work this is and people just trying to make sure that they had enough to eat during the depression. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

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Speaker 2
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Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. I’m talking with James Scott.

He’s 97 years young and grew up in the mountains of Kentucky and decided that he wanted to That’s the way it went and a couple of times I kind of regretted it during basic training

James Scott
I had been used to seeing all the newsreels and army marching, you know, and neat uniforms and everything. Well, those first 17 weeks was not like that at all. But I’ve withstood it okay. I did my share of marching and The weapons training and etc. Etc.

Which my weapons training was consisted of rifle heavy machine gun and heavy mortar which was an 81 millimeter and We had all the regular dry training and then then we had Live fire on all of them occasionally along with hand-to-hand combat we had a whole bunch of that which I guess they didn’t know what we would need but that went along with it so anyway it got me to the POE and I along with 12,000 other replacement infantrymen was on that big ship and we docked I think in Scotland and Rode some kind of a train down to one of the ports in England, got an LSTs, crossed the channel in terrible weather in early January. And we still, you know nothing.

You don’t know where you’re going or who you’re going to be with. You just, these fellows, you’ve not seen any of them. So they put us on the train and over a night and a half a day, we got into where the stowage stuff was. and the train took us into a tunnel and we unloaded with all our equipment and we were in Belgium and remember this was very cold and I the 16th of December I had left

Speaker 10
Florida

James Scott
we had didn’t have any additional clothes the two wool blankets and a big heavy overcoat and zero weather so It put us along with so many replacements, everything. They were just poor replacements in there because of the big push the Germans had thrown everything they had at us. Of course, at this time, they’d already pushed back out of Bastogne, but they were still moving up infantry. So I spent about a week there.

You never knew where you were or anything, just you’re wandering around. When I was called out, most of the time, every morning, they would come down and get replacements for the wounded and dead and so forth. So, they took out about 500 of us and put us on a train and we went the other way. So, what happened, I went down to Cherbourg, France, or close by, and they put me in an outfit that I had not heard much about, Special Forces, the Rangers, and what was left over of the Rangers and Special Forces from Italy were encamped there and all the replacements

that had their 17 weeks of infantry training, including the hand fighting, they rehabbed us, replaced all those. and made one large regiment, which was the 474th Infantry Regiment. We trained for that, for the landing in Norway, for about, I don’t know, maybe until early March, maybe mid-March, which it became obvious that we were not going to have to land in Norway, so we Moved out with all our equipment. We had some new tanks and M8s and a lot of new stuff.

Went up, crossed the Rhine. I crossed the Rhine at Cologne. The engineers had thrown up a pontoon bridge. I think that’s a bridge that’s floating on tanks or something.

Steel tanks underneath, but it holds up trucks and all the heavy equipment. and from there we went on up into central Germany and our job was we didn’t go back on the foreign, the foxhole line is what I’m trying to say I guess but we would, when they would move out we would move into small towns or big towns for that matter and seal it off and inspect it for whatever we could find hiding prisoners, hiding servicemen Weapons, ammo, you’d be surprised how much ammo and weapons we found in these little towns that was, I guess, just abandoned. But that was our job, to collect all the stuff that was going along, that had been left behind, or make sure that there wasn’t any resistance pockets, and so forth around.

A couple of times we got close enough that we got some artillery on us, so I guess we got too active or too close to our pocket mud and they wanted to let us know that this was not a picnic. Anyway, when the war ended, of course then in May, since we had trained to land in Norway, took our regiment we went to Norway for the screening and of all the prisoners and so forth and that which turned out to be a very good thing because the Norwegian people really welcomed us and we’d been used to five months of rubble and broken houses so when we landed in Oslo there are things in one piece you know and so that we processed all the the German service people in Norway and many of the old people had so much points they’d been in combat.

Some of our rangers that were still there had been in North Africa on something and of course Southern Italy and the special forces men were too. I was kind of intrigued, you don’t know, you never know where you’re going in, so we moved into this tent with some guys and I looked around, he was sitting on his cot, he had this little jump badge on and I said, you guys been jumping out of airplanes? Yeah, haven’t you?

And I said, not me, I’ve never jumped. So, it was never a requirement because we were underground and I don’t think they did any drops after that. Anyway, that was a little wrinkle just kind of get broken in. What am I into here, you know?

Kim Monson
Yeah.

James Scott
Anyway, we the trip to Norway was great. I came back. I didn’t have enough points to come home. So I had to go back to Germany.

All the old combat men that had the extra points and stuff was the regiment was taken out and they they were all sent home. Several of us I went back to Germany for occupation duty, which was quite a good deal. I got the quartermaster outfit and became a mess sergeant, which turned out really nice. So I spent that time until the following June and they wanted all personnel that had been in combat service to go home, so myself along with two or three other guys there in the company, horrified, but I came back home, was discharged, and from there a whole new

life began after I came home, so I don’t know if you want me to pick up anything after this or not, can you?

Kim Monson
Well, I did want to ask you about some of the men that you came in contact with that had been in North Africa and Italy. That was very difficult fighting. Did they share any stories about that at all with you?

James Scott
Not a whole lot. The Rangers We had a few of the Rangers. One of our platoon sergeants was a Ranger of the 2nd Battalion that landed, climbed the rocks at Normandy. And the Spatial Forces was three battalions of Americans and one of Canadians.

And I had never heard of them, and I don’t know if anybody else ever did. But they had trained what Spatial Forces do nowadays. Hand-to-hand fighting and anything that went along with it. They had been in Italy also, so yeah, they they didn’t elaborate a whole lot but a couple of the Ranger guys This one sergeant he’d go he’d go wacko once in a while.

We got he’d have nightmares and he always carried a Tommy gun instead of a rifle and I know when we got sleeping in barracks after the war ended in huts, he’d have nightmares and one of the other squad sergeants got up and got his tommy gun off his, he’d hang it on the bed and he said always get that out because he was afraid he’d get up and go Cuckoo, you know, and grab his gun because he would really have nightmares. But another fellow I felt sorry for, I was young, you know, he was real quiet. He was one of the ones in my squad.

We was sitting there one night and he always kind of looked like it was a dream. He turned to me and he said, Scotty, what’s it like back in the States? I didn’t think much about it, Tim, but I told him, you know, what was going on, the war was going, people were really cooperating or something. He said, I’ve been here two years and most of that’s been in combat time.

I’ve thought about that since. And I remember the guy’s name was Reinhardt. He was from Iowa. I doubt if he’s still living.

He was two or three years old. They didn’t share a lot. It was… World War II veterans are pretty silent.

For whatever reason, H1 probably has their own reason. As any combat veteran would have, they’d have their own reason for staying silent or speaking out, so that took care of that deal. The only time they would share, they did pack up a truckload of us We were in our tents on the weekend while we were there in training and took us down to Anzio and let us see the beach down there and it was staggering because along the hills underneath were still huge racks of German ammo, 20, 40 millimeter ammo and all that stuff still stacked up that they hadn’t done away with.

I didn’t see the combat, but I saw where the guys had to be, and it was awesome to stand up there and look at a man having to try to get up from the water up to the hedgerow and somebody shoot at him. It’s kind of staggering, you know. So that’s the only thing that we really ever had. They were nice.

Very nice. The cadre, the non-coms, really looked after us younger men all the time. We learned very quick to depend on them, too, and be there for them when the need was. It was no more, do it because I said, just tell me what to do and I’ll be there.

So it’s a different life in the military to serve with those combat men.

Kim Monson
Yeah, and that’s one of the things I’ve learned, James, is that I don’t think that we can understand combat, unless we’ve gone through it. It’s just an experience that combat veterans have a real bond with each other. And And it’s a difficult thing, but I am so grateful for all those that have been willing to give their lives and have given their lives for our liberty. And out here in Colorado, we have the USMC Memorial right here in Golden, Colorado, and one of the nonprofits that I really support is the USMC Memorial Foundation.

And as we’re coming into Christmas Hanukkah season, a great gift would be to buy a brick to be on one of their pathways of service to honor your loved one’s military service and you can get more information about that by going to usmcmemorialfoundation.org that is usmcmemorialfoundation.org. We’ll be right back with James Scott.

Speaker 5
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Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. I’m talking with James Scott.

He’s 97 years young. He grew up in the mountains in Kentucky to a big family and he decided that he wanted to serve and even though he was 17 and his father would not What stories do you remember about the occupation component of your service?

James Scott
The occupation was pretty simple. The trip to Norway, I was going to tell you about that. I had occasion to meet up with an SS trooper. They were dedicated to give their life rather than lose it.

And during the course in Norway, we took the prisoners. They all moved them into one large compound. They were interrogated and examined thoroughly, treated medically if they needed it, and at the end of that they would be shipped back to Germany and to, I guess, their home places. I was a guard with one of the officers that was interviewing one day and we come in and He told me this is an SS trooper.

Okay, I’d heard a lot about him. So we were in the room and of course I was armed and interrogation was going along and all of a sudden I detected something was going wrong and this prisoner seemed to think that he was a prisoner and not worthy of being interviewed or something could go home and Words were passed backwards and forth between them in German, of course, I didn’t understand. So the lieutenant got up and told me that this fellow thinks he’s still king of the roost, you know.

So I’ve got to go over to the office and get some papers. And I’m going to leave you here with him. If he moves, kill him.

Kim Monson
Oh, my gosh.

James Scott
And I don’t know. You know, I was trained, so I just Clicked my safety on my M1 and, you know, so to make a long story short, I don’t know what he told that guy, but he told me afterward that I told him, we’re going to send you home. You can go on your feet or we’ll put you there in a box. OK, so he was very, What’s the word for it?

He was very docile after that. Only answered when he was spoken to and never give anybody any more lip. So I’ve remembered that and I’ve often thought, this lieutenant was a Norwegian lieutenant who’d just come out of four years of occupation. And I’ve often felt, did he want me to kill that guy?

And of course he didn’t do anything. I was trained to do that. And at this time I was 18 and for a year I hadn’t had any other training. That was part of the job.

And to me he was a prisoner and so forth. So anyway, in October, I shipped back to Germany for occupation duty, which was, we fed, in the quartermaster depot I was with, we served a year in a row. Actually, I become acting Sergeant of the Mess. We only had eight men and a captain who commanded the depot.

Had a whole, I think, maybe 200 civilian employees. And we baked bread in our bakery. We had two master German bakers. We baked bread for 100,000 people a day.

Some of those were American military, I think about 40,000, and the other 60 were in the UNR relief program. They had their drivers and big convoys of trucks that load up once or twice a week with the rations. That was the last experience I had there. I was shipped home and discharged actually on the 4th of July 1946.

So that concluded my military.

Kim Monson
did you have other siblings that served in World War II as well?

James Scott
Yes, my brother that I told you about, he was overseas. I never knew where he was until the war ended. And I don’t know, through a correspondent at home, I ended up Castle, Germany. And he was about 30 miles from me.

So I talked to my first sergeant one Saturday told him what it was. And he said, Well, you go and see if you can find him says all I ask is could be back here on Monday morning. And it worked out I hitched a ride I walked over about half a mile or so to the Audubon. and jeep picked me up and dropped me off in Castle in downtown, it was a mob downtown.

I hitchhiked a truck, didn’t notice the bumper stickers and got it and told him where I was going. He said, that’s my outfit, we’re going right up there. So he took me off, dropped me right off in front of my brother’s barracks and I was sitting on his bed when he came in from lunch or something. So we had a good time and Christmas together and I think they had a New Year’s party together or something.

But he came home then two or three months before I did. That was the contact we had while we were

Kim Monson
overseas.

James Scott
Not in World War II. I had another younger brother that served in the Navy in Korea, so it was the three of us.

Kim Monson
Yes, he

James Scott
was a Navy man and he was instrumental on the landing in Incheon or something, the evacuation of civilians. He was on an LST and he told me a lot about the terrible conditions as people was in. They had to put them in those LSTs or made for trucks and tanks. So to fill them up, it was like a humongous canister and just put them in there like animals.

You know, you had to do something to get as many as possible off at a time rather than just a few. But he said it was the sanitary conditions were terrible and uh, That was his experience. But he came over with K2, no problem.

Kim Monson
Well, and what I found, James, that it’s been difficult for me to find Korean War veterans that will talk about it. It’s considered the Forgotten War. And, you know, it happened not that long after World War Two. But it was very, very difficult.

James Scott
Yes. Absolutely. I had a younger sister buried, a fellow, he was a military man. He volunteered in World War II to come home and he didn’t like civilian life so he backed up again while he had the advantage.

So he was a tank man and of course he ended up back in Korea again and he suffered some He was a tank man, he got his feet frozen and he lost some of his foot and he was a heavy smoker so he had burgers disease. I’m not familiar with all this. He ended up losing both legs right below the knees and of course he had to turn him out, check him out at that time. He spent the rest, and he’d lost eight of his ten fingers also.

He had to take those, so. They lived down in New Bonneville, Texas, and he and my sister both are gone now. He was a very heavy smoker, and I understand that contributes a great deal to Burger’s Disease. You just in

Kim Monson
Well, with the Korean War, and yes, the temperatures were so, so cold and frostbite and frozen extremities was certainly, that did occur. And I, again, I think, James, we take for granted this wonderful liberty that we have here in America and I think we need to stop and reflect at just what has been given in the case of your brother-in-law so that we can live in liberty and I really appreciate our military service. And so thank you for that.

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Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. I’m very excited to be talking with James Scott.

He’s 97 years young, World War II veteran. We have learned about his childhood growing up in the mountains of Kentucky, of Eastern Kentucky, and then his service during World War II. So, James Scott, after the war, you said you came home in July of 1946. What happens next to James Scott?

James Scott
Well, you know, I’m a little tempered. Not a whole lot for a while. It took a while to get myself recalibrated, but I’ve hung around somewhat and spent my mustering out pay. I had worked briefly in the coal mines right about my age before I went in service.

I was back in the coal company again down in the mountains and they were paying pretty good wages so I got me a job in the mines and worked about another month or so in low coal. That’s 42 inches of coal, two and a half miles underground. dating a girl that had marriage on her mind and I certainly didn’t have any thoughts along that line and I don’t, this is coal mining business for the birds. So I left again and came back to Cincinnati and fiddle around.

Actually I met my wife through a friend, a cousin that lived here. I’m looking for some phone numbers and He gave me two or three and I called her and Make a long story short. She was a beautician I picked her up that night at the beauty shop, and I guess we went and had supper somewhere together I don’t remember but we dated off and on in 1949 we got married and Right away. She got pregnant.

We had a bouncing little baby boy in the 50s and That kind of took care of that deal. And I, of course, went to work in factories. I was doing whatever they had to do. And the Ford Motor Company had just opened a plant here in Cincinnati, and I got a job with them.

I was working in various machine type work, but I was never happy with it. I wanted something a little better. So I had a chance. to leave that company to go with a small company as a trainee to the dye maker, which is a four year process for an apprenticeship, you know, and we’ll kind of bridge this somewhat.

But I realized I needed some more education. So I talked with a director of engineering who was also connected with the College of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. And I ended up with a correspondence company, which today would be an online, but it was a correspondence course. And he and I laid out a plan for a study for the four-year high school with engineering background.

So I went for that, and fortunately, I had enough Stay with it, I guess you would call it. I finally finished it. It took me about five or six years, but it was quite heavy in math and I had to have all the other stuff that goes with it. So I didn’t know when I finished the four years of the trainee program, a plant manager come down and asked me if he wanted to interview me up in the office.

And I thought, well, maybe he’s going to kick me out. But they had an opening in the engineering department for model building and technician and they would like me to do it. We talked about it a little bit and talked about the money and I ended up going to the engineering department. I spent the next 30 years and I completed, when I finally completed the high school, I signed up for night training at the University of Cincinnati for I was getting older, time was going on and I was settled down very well so I didn’t take any additional classes

but I spent the time there and ended up actually basically the technical part of the engineering department, but I was the person to go through. So I built some models of electro-mechanical circuit breakers, what I was in, but some other technical stuff, and spent several years remodeling and rehabbing and building a new line of circuit breakers. The company was small, so it sold out to a company in California. They closed down and the president of the company asked if I’d stay and help clean out the engineering department, so I did, which took quite a bit of cleaning out.

We had blueprints going back to 1918, so I worked with the company representative from California and getting all the products out, the patents and so forth. So then when we got that pretty well out, the people from California asked if I would go out and help them set it all back together again. I made a deal with my wife, go with it. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

So, um, She was okay with that, so we went out there and…

Kim Monson
Where at in California, James?

James Scott
Please?

Kim Monson
Where at?

James Scott
Anaheim.

Kim Monson
Oh, Anaheim,

James Scott
okay. They had a place for me. They told me we got you a nice place, which was Newport Beach. I didn’t realize that was a Blue Blood.

division. I made the mistake of telling the lady it was a keyed block community, big apartment complex with everything, swimming pools, walking trails. And I made the mistake of referring to a big shopping area up at the hill as the shopping center. And she said, That’s not a shopping center, that’s Fashion Fair.

I said, okay. Anyway, I helped them work with their plant manager and separated all their active products out and had it set back up. It was running in about a month and a half. They had ladies doing the small work assemblies.

Mexican ladies who were very intelligent and very cooperative, you know. I come home, they offered me a job but at this time I was about 63 and a half and I thought, man I would have to, well they told me, they said you’ll have to move out here, find you a place and I thought that’s not a thing at this age to try to relocate and sell a place back in Kentucky or leave it empty so I came home and retired and that has been the 33 years ago, I guess now. But what I wanted to tell you, after I got married, my family is all from the old Baptist family.

I had never made a profession of faith, but I had talked to a couple of friends. One evening, it’s kind of weird, and I went to bed that night, and I thought, well, you know, I don’t know. I would like to do something. I didn’t have any great prayers, I didn’t have any fire aches, visions or thunders from the mountains and I just, I told the Lord, I’ll just give it to you, whatever I need to do, you help me do it.

Because I do, I had this little chunky boy that I had to raise and I can’t explain what type of feeling I had. But there was something come over me that’s still there. And the action of God’s Holy Spirit, I think, took my word. And that’s for a bit.

I’ve been active in Christian circles ever since, ordained deacon since 1954, and worked with youth and other people. I just wanted to get that in as a witness to what can be done. And the Lord has blessed every move I’ve made. I had low income most of my life but actually after I retired I got into some investing and I’ve done very well with that and I just think the Lord has blessed me in that realm too.

So that kind of puts my life up to right now in a shell and it gives you about everything I’ve gone through more or less.

Kim Monson
Well, James, thank you for sharing your story about your faith, because I think that there is a revival of people seeking relationship with Christ. I think people look at what’s happening in our society, and we realize that we need to reclaim our faith in Christ. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. How long were you married?

Other children that you had as well?

James Scott
I only had one son. My wife could not have children. We were married 64 and a half years when she died. My wife was 8 years older than me, and I think the marriage was rather skeptical amongst both families, but it lasted longer than anyone else’s

Kim Monson
did.

James Scott
We had a good life. She was a Christian going into the thing, and I think the Lord led me that way too. I live by myself. I have.

It’s been a little past ten years and I’ve been able to live by myself and get by. I’ve had some wonderful friends around, neighbors in the neighborhood and friends at church that kind of watch after me. I’ve had an interesting life and just a word about our country. I know it’s got problems, but there is so much, there’s no country in the world that have what we have, and we can’t afford to lose it.

And oddly, there are people that don’t care, some of our own citizens. They don’t know or just simply don’t care, unless they have their own way and their own say. and that’s unfortunate. We’re Americans.

Had we been otherwise in World War II, we’d all be speaking German today. It’s not. I got to go on the trip to Washington. My son went with me.

The honor flight and put cream on the whole thing. I was one of four of us that they picked out to, during the ceremony at the tomb, to lay the wreath on the tomb. That has meant more to me because to me it represented every veteran that is dead. I was their representative there for a minute with that wreath and that’s still, I feel that way.

It’s something anybody could do, but to be chosen, it was just icing on the cake,

Kim Monson
I think. Oh, my gosh. Well, James Scott, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And my friends, as we hear these stories, we realize that, indeed, we do stand on the shoulders of giants.

So God bless you, James Scott. God bless you, my listeners. And God bless America.

Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

Speaker 1
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.