Evan Henry Draeger
Albion, NE
1938, 4720, Madison, NE, SCS-5,
1938, 4723, Lacreek, BF-3,
The following transcript of a recording from CCC man Evan Draeger was provided by his son, Gene Draeger.
I'd heard about an opening for the CCCs so I went to Albion and signed up for it and shortly after that why they had a call for guys to come in and I was on the alternate list. I think there was about 10 or 12 of us recruited the day to go in. I was on an alternate list and somebody didn't show up so I got in. I don't remember if they put us in a bus or cars or what and hauled our farm boy butts off to Madison, South Dakota, no, Madison, Nebraska to an older CCC camp there (SCS-5, Camp 1mi NW of Madison, opened 1/15/1936). That was the induction center. We went in there and was there I think maybe a day or a little more. We got some clothes and they filled our bellies full of food. I'll never forget that first supper. Mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and weenies, all you could eat, and boy did I ever. I still like them yet today.
When we left there why they put us on a train and the next thing we knew we were in Merriman, Nebraska which was south of the CCC camp we were going to. The camp was on the wildlife refuge, I can't think of the name of it right now, I guess it doesn't matter what the name of it was really. It was a small stream flowing through there. Sandhills, not a tree to be seen for miles every direction.
I was there about 18 months I guess. I think I was there 2 winters actually. So I don't remember just how much time I was there. But the first day at the fort there, after we got properly inoculated, and shots and everything, why then they took us out to the fields to work and handed us shovels. I think there was probably 6 or 7 of us under the guidance of a leader, which would have been the equivalent of a corporal now in the army. We didn't know it at that time but we were pretty damn close to the army. We'd get army clothes and the commander of the post was a captain. Captain Leland Burbank1, I'll never forget the guy. He was an engineer captain, one of the castles of the Corps of Engineers.
But anyway we went out in the field and they put us to digging holes about I suppose 18" in diameter and about that deep in clusters so that when spring came why they would plant bushes in there so they would form habitat for wildlife. The area was designated to become a wildlife sanctuary and there was a real nice spring-fed stream flowing through it which they dammed up and diked up and made a string of small lakes. Nice, clean, clear cold water. The stream was lousy with the best yellow bullheads you ever saw. Once in a while we'd catch a mess of them and take them to the mess hall and have the cooks cook them up for us, not often but it did happen. We worked at building those dikes and dams although that was a bogo (?) that was done with heavy machinery, trucks, but a bunch of us was assigned to go around there in the spring then and was killing off the snapping turtles. The damn things would grab the little ducks and yank them underwater and kill them.
We was also trapping the muskrats. That was mainly in the wintertime, you know, when the water was open so we could get on it cuz we had a little boat or kayak. We'd go out there and set regular old steel traps and catch muskrats. They was drowning traps so they would drown. We'd bring them in and the guy that was in charge of the refuge was oh, pretty much a naturalist and he taught us how to skin the damn things and put them on stretchers and so on. I suppose there were 3 or 4 of us that worked at that. We had a pretty nice pile of muskrat hides dried and cured and ready to sell by spring. He took them and sold them. I don't know what he did with the money, I suppose he pocketed that. It don't make any difference. We were making $25 a month. $20 a month went home to the folks and $5 a month we got for our expenses for Dukes or Bull Durham tobacco and a candy bar once in a while, and not much else.
I spent one winter there at that old CCC camp on night guard, night fireman. Anyway I think there was at least 2 of us on duty at night, every night. We would go around and stoke the fires. They had a big pile of soft stinky coal and we would fire those old pot-bellied stoves in the officers' quarters and so on like that and in the barracks to keep them warm and after a while of that I got a job operating the light plants. They had I think 2 or 3 little gas engines on DC generators feeding a system around the barracks. I operated them that winter, and the water pump. It was so cold I had heck of a time trying to start those machines and I had to shut them down at night and start them us in the mornings to provide power for the cooks to see to cook the scrambled eggs or the pancakes or whatever the heck they were gonna have. That was our headquarters, was the kitchen. They'd keep keep those fires going and fire them up real good by about 5 in the morning so they were good and hot for the cooks to fix breakfast.
I'll never forget the first time, it was a Sunday I think it was starting to get towards spring that first year. A couple of us started to go out and walk across the prairie and somehow or another I'd rolled a cactus with my heel and the damned thing flipped up and stuck in the back of my leg. It about paralyzed me, I thought for sure I'd been bit by a rattlesnake, cuz there were plenty of them in the area there. Rattlesnakes and a lot of bull snakes.
At one time I was out on detail, that was in the spring, we were walking the prairie and we were looking for duck nests and we'd find them and set a lathe up to mark them so we could go back later and see what the result was of the hatch. We'd survey it to see how many eggs was in it at different times through the season. Altogether it was a fairly interesting experience. We didn't know it at the time but we were learning skills we would use in just a few years in the army. At the induction center in Fort Leavenworth Kansas I ran into one of the guys that was in that old CCC company and I don't remember his name exactly but I think it was Lou Myer Havel2. I never saw him again after that but I run into him there at the induction center at Fort Leavenworth3.
After I been at that old wildlife refuge, I don't know, I spose we were there for a year, year and a half, then one day they decided to load us up and haul us over to the Black Hills. So we got into the old 6 by truck and into Merriman and got on the train and the next thing I knew I was in Rapid City. We was loaded in trucks again and took us up over the hills to Camp Lodge, which is now Black Hills Playhouse. I was there for 6 months or more. We was working on the old spillway and outflow channel from what was then known as Stockade Lake. The lake is still there but I don't know if it's still called Stockade, it was close to the old Gordon Stockade there at Custer. That job there at Stockade, that was an interesting time for us. We were blasting rocks. I wasn't on the dynamite crew, but I did sit on boxes of dynamite in the back end of the truck going back and forth to camp. But we didn't have the caps, the caps were in another truck so that cut down on the hazard a little bit. One time agoing home, back to camp, we met a tourist on a narrow road and he forced us off the road. The truck went off and rolled on its side and threw us all out and I think I got hurt the worst of any of them. I had my legs coiled back under the plank that was laying across the box. I scraped the hide off out of the back of my knee, boy, was that sore for a long time, that exposed meat there. I don't remember whether, I ever saw a doctor on that or not. It was a doctor in Custer I think that would come out if you got bad enough, but I wasn't bleeding bad enough I guess. I don't remember seeing a doctor there.
2 I think Dad means Lumir John HAVEL, who was from Exeter, NE. There was also a Leonard HAVEL from Madison, NE who was at the same camp as Dad during the same time period. Lumir = Lou Myer makes more sense to me than Leonard, especially when it is about 60 years later.
3 Dad's enlistment date was January 4, 1943, so this meeting undoubtably took place early in 1943.
Evan Henry Draeger, 91, Mitchell, died Wednesday, July 22, 2009, at Firesteel Healthcare Center, Mitchell.
Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Will Funeral Chapel, Mitchell. Burial will be in Evergreen Cemetery, St. Edward, Neb., at a later time. Visitation will be one hour prior to the service Thursday at the funeral chapel.
He was born March 5, 1918, at Box Elder, Mont., to Otto and Lena (Staashelm) Draeger.
He and his family later moved to Nebraska. As a young man, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and later served three years with the Army Air Corps in England and Italy during World War II.
He married Ruth Willard on June 17, 1947, in St. Edwards, Neb.
He was employed by Loup River Power and later as a power plant operator for the Army Corps of Engineers until his retirement in 1978, when the couple moved to Mitchell.
He was a lifetime member of the American Legion and a former member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
He is survived by his wife; a son, Gene, and his wife, Monica, Green Valley, Ariz.; a daughter, Carol Strand, and her husband, Jerry, Casselton, N.D.; two grandchildren; one great-grandson; a sister, Eleanor Cruise, and her husband, Fay, St. Edward, Neb.; a brother, Lee Draeger, and his wife, Gayle, Osceola, Neb.; and numerous nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents; a sister, Ferneen Furby; and a brother, Harold.
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