Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WW II Notes - from my Dad

My Dad gave me this document ~ 17 years ago. I only had a hard copy and he has since passed. When I remodeled my house several years ago, I lost track of it in the shuffle of moving everything from one room to another, and then back.

This brief 3-page excerpt was part of a bigger project of a young man writing a book to document the activities of his Father or Uncle, who was part of an infantry unit attached to my Dad's tank division.

The story is woven in a matter-of-fact style, as that was my Pop's nature. For whatever reason, he does not go into his experiences at the Battle of the Bulge. I don't know if that was for personal reasons or for the sake of brevity. He's gone now, so I can't ask him.

The pictures below are from Oehringen, Germany, where his tank was destroyed and he was wounded for the last time. The white stripe on the cobblestone street indicates last progress of the tank. The blue-gray building on the left is the current Bridal Shop.

I'm sharing this here to again pay tribute to my father and his Greatest Generation.




WW II NOTES - ELMER X. XXXXX


After I registered for the draft in 1943, I began my "services" at home. I joined my Civil Defense Board and became a research team worker in my local hometown of Marion, Williamson County, IL. Also, at the same time I started working in my high school carpenter shop,building model airplanes, both enemy and ours. This proved to be helpful in my days on the front line. I recognized the two 109 ME Fighters when our column came under attack in Crailsheim and was responsible for bringing one down. I was guarding the tank while the rest of the crew were in a meeting.

When I finished my training at Ft. Knox, I got a pass to go home. It was called a delay. Then route to Marion. Then on to Ft. Meade,MD for Armored Ground Force Test. We were the first group to take this test. The testing took two weeks, then I was on a ship to England, overnight to Liverpool and then back on a small ship to Le Havre. This is where I was assigned to the 1Oth AD. It was also the time when many of the 10th were being wounded or killed. I was sent to Metz, where I spent two weeks with the 21st Tank BT CoC men preparing to move out in March. The first week we took the City of Trier, Germany with only one Division.

While crossing the bridge leaving Trier, we were running out of fuel and when the service company came in with the gas, the Half Track was blown up on a bridge by a Teller mine and tracks were blown off so the Infantry carried the gas by hand to a cemetery where we had stopped. We poured gas into the tanks 10 or 12 feet off the ground while the infantry men guarded us from behind tombstones.

When we broke out again we were on the way to a river crossing of the Rhine. At the bridge there were rafts that bad been tied together by the 55th Engineers. Once we were across we ran into columns of the enemy on the East side of the Rhine. I recall the Germans were using horse-drawn equipment. We destroyed many of them and the Air Force came in and assisted. The Germans were retreating from the Battle of the Bulge.

We came into the river valley in the Landow section. The road was a series of hair­pin turns getting lower and lower to the banks of the Rhine River. On the way down, the left steering clutch failed and almost caused us to be dropped off the mountain side. We were very thankful for a great driver that day!

We were on our way to Frankfurt. At that time the front line was just East of the Rhine River. When I pulled my time at guard duty that night, I could see the oil dump on fire down by the river. There was a lot of artillery fire over us and oil storage tanks were on fire.

-1-

We continued to work our way toward Frankfurt, where a German family gave us refuge and a hot meal. It was a great improvement over the K-rations. They had a little girl about ten years old that raised our spirits considerably. We enjoyed playing with her as she enjoyed the attention. I don't remember the name of the family or how they came to be in our path. In a day or two, we lined up and pushed on.

Before we left that morning, we received sealed orders to rush ahead of the line some fifty miles to open up a prison camp (OFLAG #13) at Hammelburg. When we went through Aschaffenburg we had explosions going off all around us. Some were from the engineers that were destroying pill boxes and a lot of rocket fire from the enemy. We returned very little fire in that city. Shortly after leaving the city, we came under fire from 155mm guns with a spotter directing the rounds. They didn't get any of our tanks but shook us up a lot. I had never traveled so fast on the point before. Those poor old tanks sure took a beating on that trip.

Our tank commander was Lt. Herman Marcus from Louisville, KY. He was a very caring man who put himself in harms way many a time to take prisoners. The second day after leaving Frankfurt, we were nearing the prison. Our ranks were getting smaller each hour. On the outskirts of Hammelburg there was a big church and just in front of the church we lost a tank to an 88 assault gun. Most of our tank crew jumped out to look for a sniper and spotter that were in the bell tower. I spotted the assault gun that got the point tank on a fence row. I sighted the gun and when the gunner came back from the church we knocked it out. There was still a gun just like it on the left side of the road just around a little curve and behind a hill. The Armored Infantry Squad got it, but not without losing the squad leader to a German soldier that refused to surrender like the other 5 or 6 men had. I had seen this squad leader many times around the tank. He stood out, in my mind, because he always wore a tie. He was an excellent Sergeant and soldier. His Squad Members showed their respect for him when he was KIA by that soldier at the gun emplacement.

It was only a small distance to the prison camp from there. When we pulled up to the gates, we found the Germans had just run down the road and left the gates open.
There were about 4500 allied prisoners, including 12 or 13 American officers. The officers were loaded on to two of our tanks. We were under heavy machine gun and small arms fire so the officers elected to get off the tanks and wait for the front line to catch up. Also, some of the other POWs jumped on our tanks and wanted our personal weapons to go after the Germans, which we could not allow them to do.

OFLAG #l3 was about like all the other POW camps - men starving to death or so sick they died. It was a bad time for the officers on the tanks. We should have had an ambulance with us to take them back in. As it was, they were under heavy fire from all kinds of machine gun and rifle fire. As they jumped off the tanks and struck out for the friendly side of the line, many were recaptured by the Germans and taken down to other camps in the southern part of Germany. The 45th Infantry released them later.

-2-

We returned to the 10th Armored Division after a small bout with the enemy near Heilbronn.
NOTE: In reading the book, THE COLDEST WINTER, I learned that we had been part of a 301 man force,lead by LTC Al Baum. It was reported only 15 of us survived.

Lt. Marcus was shot and killed by a sniper in Heilbronn. Sgt.Bob Darnell took over as our tank commander. He was from Detroit,MI and had a little daughter he had not seen. She was two years old at that time. Orders were that we pull out of Heilbronn and bypass the city. They sent in the 100th and 45th Infantry Divisions to take it. After leaving Heilbronn, there was a ridge where the Germans were leaving the city. This was in plain view, so we helped them on their way with 75 artillery.

We then left for Crailsheim,this battle became known as "Little Bastogne". The enemy showed a determination to stop us there. We were cut off for three days and running short of food and supplies. At Crailsheim there was an airfield and the Germans had a lot of planes. After partly securing the airfield, a C47 landed and unloaded medical supplies and ammunition. They also took out the wounded. They were under fire the whole time.

After getting supplies, we headed back to Oehringen. When we approached the city, there was a place we used as a staging area. The streets were very narrow. The translated name for the road we took was Deerpath. It was so narrow you could not turn the tank around or the gun turret for that matter. As our tank started down the street, we could see a woman in the doorway of a house. She was sweeping the steps. As we approached, she "ducked" back inside and alerted a German soldier with a bazooka. The bazooka knocked out our tank, killing Sgt. Darnell and wounding Cpl Apoka and me.
Cpl. Apoka was our gunner. He died three days later in the hospital. I was sent to the 23rd General Hospital near Paris, France.

This basically ended the fight in Oehringen for me. After spending three weeks in the hospital, I was sent back to my unit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen where we were the occupation force until we were sent back to the USA. Today, I am 70% disabled as a result of the injuries received at Oehringen.

In March, 2003, I had the opportunity to return to Germany and visit the very spot where our tank was hit. As my son-in-Law, (Ret.) LTC XXXXX and I walked the area, it was very clear how the Germans had set the trap for us. The building where the woman was sweeping the steps is now a store front for a Bridal Shop.

I also had the privilege of being able to pay my respects to our fallen heroes buried in HAMM CEMETERY at Luxembourg.

I trust this will be of interest and perhaps a small contribution to your book.

-3- ( End)

Outstanding. I enjoyed the read very much. Thanks to your Dad for his service. May he Rest In Peace.

Seconded

Very Cool, Thanks for sharing that piece of history.

God Bless the Great Warrior.

Thanks for sharing this, Greg. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the photographs too.

That truly was the greatest generation. Thanks for sharing your Dad's story.

You're welcome, fellas. Even though he is now gone for several years, this helps me stay attached.

You come from good stock.

Greg,
We’re lucky to have had fathers of this generation that went away to war in Europe and the Pacific - then, if lucky, came home and started families and began Making America Great at home.

Admiration, respect and gratitude to your dad....😎

Thanks!

I wish more of those guy had written down their stories.
My wife's and my grandfather served in WWII. All we have are
A few passed down stories, nothing first hand.
Pap told me a few, but being only 9 when I lost him, and him only
telling them if he was well lubed, they aren't clear.


You veterans have served your country, and well.

I challenge you all to serve your families future generations.
Right this stuff down.
Some stories may be very hard, you may not want to discuss them.
Put them on paper, store them for a later time...

Your kids, grandkids....will forever appreciate it.

People want to know about your service, whatever conflict.
Or, no conflict.

I was stationed in Germany for three years and visited many of the places he mentioned, Garmisch is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

I enjoyed that read very much!! Thank you for sharing!!

To a large degree, I was inspired to make this post by Digital Dan's post "I shake my head".

I doubt many of our young folks could even find Germany on the map, or have even heard or read of such places as Dachau, Treblinka, or Bergen-Belsen. Any notion of the price that has been paid for freedom over and over again by heroes has either been drilled out of our written history by communists and socialists, or is eschewed by representatives of such in public education and academia.

It is up to us to continue to tell these stories.

You will find many of us who appreciate the service of our elders. My grandmother's brother toured France and Germany with the 100th ID. Participated in the battles for Bitche and Heilbronn. I was able to retrace much of his route while stationed with the 3rd ID in the '80's. Amazing stuff these guys did. Amazing.

Wow...thank you for this. Give the krauts credit...they fought it out to the end and didn’t go out with a whimper...and our boys God Bless em stopped the soviets from taking the rest of Europe and did it with distinction. I’ve never been ashamed to say I’m an American...A big reason is because I’m proud of our conduct And that if our men in uniform

Thanks for sharing this. It is a wonderful piece of history.

Thanks for posting. For a couple years a now passed elderly neighbor loaned several WW I and II books containing personal compositions. One gets a much more vivid image of their doings and their hardships as opposed to historic accounts that simply render the big picture. There were far more heroes than anyone can imagine.

+1
My Uncle Max served in WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. How I wish I had asked him to tell his stories for me to write down.
The Greatest Generation for sure.