Charles White was born in 1924 in Coraopolis [Annotator’s Note: Coraopolis, Pennsylvania]. He served from 1941 to 1945. He enlisted in the Army. He had an argument with his high school football coach, and then he decided to go into the Army. His parents were separated. His father signed the papers. He was 15 years old. He was in the South Pacific. The Red Cross was in the South Pacific to take him home. When Pearl Harbor was bombed [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], he was going through the Panama Canal [Annotator's Note: a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in between North and South America] and heard about it on the ship radio. They stopped in Australia. When they got to New Caledonia [Annotator’s Note: New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific] no one could understand the natives. White was with the aviation engineers of the 811th [Annotator’s Note: 811th Aviation Engineer Battalion]. He was injured in New Caledonia. He was being shipped back home, and he got hit in the head and a bayonet went across his chest. He was attacked by an escaped Japanese. His friends put him on a ship. The doctor on the ship closed the cut with some big clamps. After he got back to the United States, he went to Louisiana to train troops. He never experienced segregation until he joined the Army. The Italians were treated worse than he was when he was a kid.

Charles White was in the United States training troops. The last outfit he was training was sent over to England. After they got to England, they trained some more. He was there a year before the 761st Tank Battalion came over. He was in Louisiana at Camp Claiborne before he was sent overseas. Blacks could not be out after 10 o’clock at night. They were waiting for a bus to take them back to the camp. The local officials arrested them. Colonel Bates [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling, no first name given] came down to the railroad station and told the officials to release the men or he would be back with his tanks. White went AWOL [Annotator's Note: absent without leave] when he heard he was going to England. It was like being in a labor outfit. He was caught by the MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] and put back on the ship. He did not want to go back overseas. In England, they were always having fights with the Rangers. White was in the 1013 General Service Engineer unit. White got in trouble with a second lieutenant for letting the men have a jeep. He ended up going to jail for a couple of weeks. He was in charge of a machine gun crew in the Pacific, and the 761st [Annotator’s Note: 761st Tank Battalion] took him because they were in need of men. He was made assistant driver of a tank. He learned how to drive, operate the gun, and everything else he needed to know. With the 761st, he went through the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945].

Charles White went through Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Wherever Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] was, that is where they were. Patton told them he would not have asked for them if they were not good. [Annotator’s Note: White and the interviewer quote Patton.] Patton would ride around in a jeep. Soldiers had a lot of respect for him. White was an assistant driver in a tank. They had to be able to do each position in the tank. A lot of guys broke their arms loading the guns. Guys used to take the sights out of the German tanks and put them in their tanks. After they would knock them out, they would not bother with them anymore. One time in the woods they could not see where the enemy fire was coming from. Their tank was rocking. They were firing in the direction they thought the enemy was. When getting out of the tank, they had to exit from the top. The enemy knew that. They had to get out as quickly as they could because machine gun fire would be on top of them. One time they all had to get out and take cover in the woods. Their driver did not make it out. They saw the tank back up and thought he was alright. But once they checked on him, they discovered he had been hit.

Charles White remembers traveling at night was bad. They could only proceed based on the exhaust from the tank in front of them. At night they were running as fast as the tanks could go. If they put lights on, the airplanes could get them. When they entered towns in Germany, they were always going downhill. They had to watch the windows because that is where the bazookas [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher weapon] came from. They would knock out the first and last tanks. If they pulled off to the side, they were dead. They got champagne bottles from Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France]. He was there on leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and met some WACs [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps; women's branch of the United States Army, 1942 to 1978]. There was a dance for the WACs. They wanted the soldiers to stay in the hotel. He did not experience segregation until he was stationed in the South. When White came home from the South Pacific, he had not been paid for a month. He went to the Red Cross and asked for help to go home. The Red Cross would not do it. The Salvation Army helped him immediately.

Charles White was in Nuremberg, Germany when he heard the war was over. He went from France to Germany in a tank. They took a tank back to France to get it repaired. When White was in the service, they had flat hats. [Annotator’s Note: White discusses what they could do with their helmets.] His tank was not heated. They were so cold sometimes that they could not touch the steel. He remembers at the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], the Germans had horses pulling their guns. He wishes he had the gumption to go look for the guys he was close to during the war. [Annotator’s Note: White discusses how he tried to find some of the guys after the war.] White got out on high points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. He was able to go home right after the war ended. He worked in a mill when he came home. He took the examination to be a policeman. He got the job and was a police officer for 25 years.