No Little Thing Bill Powell Oral History

No Little Thing: Bill Powell in his own words

An oral history taken by Ingrid Koehler

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Introduction

This book is the edited transcript of recordings I tookwith my maternal grandfather William Carson Powell,known as Bill, in 1998 or 1999, during a vacation toTennessee.At the time, I made the recordings I was living inCoventry, England and working at the Local GovernmentOmbudsman. The Ombudsman there was Jerry White,the former Chief Executive of the London Borough of Hackney and an historian of London. At the time, he wasworking on the

History of London in the 20

th

Century

, buthe had already completed a book about the East End of London that was based on a series of interviews with EastEnd residents, in other words, oral history. I asked himabout how to take an oral history and his answer wasmore or less – just ask open ended questions.

I was beginning to have an interest our own familyhistory around this time. My grandparents, Mirjam StohlKoehler and Bill and Tut Powell (born Pauline RuthBottoms) had done a fair bit of work on compiling familyhistories that provided an excellent basis for my budding,but now dormant, curiosity. Perhaps the combination of this interest and working with Jerry prompted me toattempt to take an oral history of Bill.

A note on the recording and transcription

I used an inexpensive tape recorder and a stack of cheap cassette tapes to take the history. The tapesthemselves are noisy and difficult to hear. I probablyrecorded close to twenty hours of tape, with the majorityhaving usable content.I transcribed the tapes myself over 2000 and 2001.That itself was a lesson in listening. I was amazed by theclarity and fluidity of his story telling. He rarely digressed,and where he did, it was always interesting and relevant.Through the process I gained a new appreciation for hisability as a storyteller and an awareness of my own failureto listen fully. I was chilled to the bone transcribing hiswar stories and his description of the constant and presentdanger. But I do not remember feeling that way during theoriginal telling.Although I was as careful as I could be, I’m not atranscriber and I’m merely an adequate typist. This text isno doubt full of transcription errors and misheard words.Where I was unsure of names or whole words, I’ve usuallyindicated with a question mark or some other notation. Ihave done my best to identify the correct spelling of individuals’ names or place names.

War stories

Like many men of his generation, Bill never talkedabout his experiences as a soldier during WWII. As achild, I did ask him and I’m sure his daughters, my cousinsand brother asked him as well. He told a very few stories

about the war. In the end, he said he decided that hewould tell some of his story partly because he had beggedand begged his great-grandmother (Mammy) to tell himher experience of the Civil War as she had lived in Unionoccupied Wilson County, Tennessee but she would never tell him. Though in the end she told him it wasn’t as badas he thought. He said he imagined it probably muchworse than what it was, and he didn’t want us to imaginehis war experiences as much worse than what they were.I think it likely that Mammy’s war experiences wereactually pretty horrible. During some of my genealogyresearch I discovered that one of my relatives, a youngman, had been shot and killed for failing to return homebefore curfew. And Bill’s story as recounted here soundspretty awful – even if his time in the front was relativelybrief. No doubt, many people had it much worse andsome never returned. But I expect that he saw manymore horrible things than even he described in thisaccount.

Regrets

I lost a single tape of recordings which contained hisrecollections of family history that had been told to him byhis older relatives. That tape was never transcribed andnow, I suppose, those second and third hand stories areentirely lost to history.I very much regret that I never thought to take oralhistories of any of my other grandparents. I can’t blamemyself too much for not taking Tut’s history as she diedwhen I was thirteen or for my paternal grandfather Wallace Conrad Koehler as he died when I was 15. Butmy other grandmother had a wealth of stories that I wouldhave liked to have collected. My own parents probablyhave stories, too that I would like to see preserved, butperhaps it’s in the nature of the relationship that I feelunable to do this. Their memories may be mine as well,and I suppose I’d feel duty bound to my own version of thetruth.