Fred Turner was one of a family of twelve children born in Oconee County. His family moved to the Arial Community of Easley when he was about nine years old.

Before his life in the service he worked as a sweeper at Arial mill. He cleaned bobbins and hung roping.

He wanted to volunteer for military serivce, but his father would not allow him to join. When Fred was nineteen years old, he was drafted into the Army. The hardest part, he says, was missing home. He coped with the homesickness by busying himself.

Radar was the new “secret weapon” of the war. Mr. Turner was at basic training in Ft Eustice, VA and was then sent to Hawaii to train in radar. Fred and his unit were not allowed to speak about their knowledge of this new technology. When they sent letters home they were to make no mention of what they were doing, nor was there to be any mention of “radar”.

Once, Fred’s commanding officer asked him to scout out an island in the Carolina chain in the Pacific. They told him he was to crawl across the island to gather intelligence. At frst, they loaded him down with ammo. He told his commanding offier, “Sir, I can’t go with all this weight on me”. Eventually, the officer changed his mind, and Fred didn’t have to crawl across the island after all.

One of Fred’s jobs was to man a 90mm searchlight in tandem with a 50 calibre machine gun.

The islands where Fred was stationed were tropical, complete with sugar cane fields, pineapples, and banana trees. Mr. Turner recalls seeing his first “prescibed burn” as the locals were trying to burn fodder off the cane fileds. He said it was a scary sight and his thoughts were racing.

He was relieved to find out it was part of the island’s agrticulture.

Fred was once granted a pass to Honolulu. It wasn’t nearly as crowded then as it is now.

Folks were not allowed to use lights at night. There was strictly a “lights out” policy! Mr. Turner went through some jungle training during his stay in the pacific.

After three years, two months and 14 days, Mr Turner came back to Easley on Nov 22, 1945.

When he rolled back into the Easley depot, it was late, in the wee hours of the morning. He took a taxi home and thought to go over to the mill to see friend s there because of the lateness of the hour, not wanting to disturb his sleeping family………… but eventually decided to quietly slip in the back door. His mother heard him come in and met Fred at the door…………” It’s about time you got home!” she said.