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I was born in what I would call a religious Christian home [Church of Brethren in North Carolina]. My daddy was a CO in WWI. He was treated a little rougher than I was. I wasn’t persecuted too much. They would take them out in the First World War like they were going to shoot them. I don’t think I ever got too scared. I never thought they would [shoot us].

I registered. Some of the COs didn’t register. They went to prison. But I registered and I had to see a judge in Greensboro. I was living in Sparta, North Carolina, then, so the pastor of the church went with me down there and he pleaded my case.

They sent me to Waldport, Oregon. It was a church camp. We did fire fighting during fire season. It was on the Oregon coast and it rained six months out of the year—horizontally. Then they moved me to Bedford, Virginia, between Lynchburg and Roanoke. I was working for the park. When the war was over they closed it down and sent me to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That was a government operated camp, and I worked in the Great Smoky Mountains.

I really enjoyed Camp Angell. We had all kinds of people. Some were doctors, some lawyers, some nurses or preachers. Some weren’t religious at all. Some were. There were more Jehovah’s Witnesses in CPS than anybody. That’s not a peace church. Most of the Jehovah’s Witnesses went to prison because they didn’t register.

I played guitar since I was a kid. We really had some good musicians. One in Oregon was a violin player, a staff musician for a radio station in New York. They had a side camp, toward Florence, Oregon. There was a black fellow, he was from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was really into the boogie-woogie back then on the piano. He told them he’d be a cook up there, if he could take his piano. He’d practice five hours a day. He would play piano and I would play the guitar.

I was a grunt, the one fellow to go out by himself and climb the trees. In the rainy season we would plant trees where it had been burned off. Sometimes we went down to California to fight forest fires. They had some big trees. Some stumps were big enough you could have a little dance hall on top of it.

There is a stigma to being a CO. You were looked down [on] by some people, and some people you were respected [by]. I reckon you should follow your conscience, what you believe. Most of the young men of my church went into the service.

I believe that sometimes you have to have a war. But I followed my conscience, being brought up that way. I know a lot of people are criticizing Bush, but I think he thinks he’s doing the right thing. I don’t know what would have happened after 9/11 if we hadn’t done something.