Another hero from the greatest generation. Thanks for sharing.
Speaking of the greatest generation. I was in a local chain hair cut place this week. While waiting for my cut, an elderly man slowly shuffled by me after his cut. Apparently he was waiting for his ride home.
He had a Veteran of WWII cap on.
I said, “nice cap sir”
He sat down beside me, took off the cap and explained what some of the writing meant, and he told some tales of all the death that he saw in Europe, in pretty detailed fashion.
I told him my dad was wounded on Okinawa and my father in law was in the Battle of the Bulge.
He said after victory in Europe he was shipped home for two weeks, then to California then was on a ship headed to Japan for the ground invasion.
He said “The A bomb saved my life.”
Then his ride showed up. As he left I shook his hand and thanked him for his service to the USA.
I was very humbled listening to him and very honored that he briefly shared his story with me.
Thanks for sharing that Dale...
When I first moved here to Oregon, I stopped at a local small tire shop to get my tires balanced and rotated. Knew the owner and while waiting he asked me to 'entertain' an older guy, who was waiting for a re do on his alignment. Introduced me to the old guy, and told him I was a veteran of the Army like he was.. right at the end of the Vietnam era... and told me the other guy was a WW2 vet.
a brief description of the 30 minutes I spent with him... He was an 18 year old kid, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. His home town was Dallas Oregon ( I have a friend who lives there). Dallas is the county seat of the county just west of Salem Oregon. IN 1941 it had 2000 people living in it..
He and about 200 other guys, spent the night on the court house lawn, to sign up with the Army Recruiter who had an office in the basement of the court house... He was one of a 180 guys who signed up with the Army... the others wanted to sign up with the Navy so they were ran into Salem about 10 miles away on the local bus.
A military training base for armor had just been built in the previous year, right down Hwy 99W, south of town and just north of Corvallis Oregon, home of Oregon State University. These 180 guys went thru Basic and AIT there, and were then shipped to Texas... they were suppose to be sent to Alaska, but instead were high jacked and then were equipped with Shermans and sent to North Africa. Their first bit of combat was the Kasserine Pass....it wasn't pretty.... 175 of the 180, didn't make it out of that action... Five survivors...
The unit kept their number etc, and the unit was rebuilt and assigned new Shermans, and all new staff... NO officers had survived Kasserine Pass.
Two more were later killed in Italy.... He and two others came home in 1945. Three survivors out of 180 kids, of a small town of 2000 people.
I asked him what was his most scary moment during the war...
He told me in an advance pushing on the enemy line in Italy in 1943, they were posted at a cross roads, to guard it from any enemy incursions, or at least report it via radio and then get the hell out of there the best they could. There was a barn just past the intersection, in the middle of open country. The tank commander decided to use the barn as a position to observe the cross roads from 100 yds away. He also decided to station their tank, on the outside of the barn, next to its wall, instead of positioning the tank within the barn, incase an enemy tank, got concerned and just fired on the barn with HE. one of the roads there, ran right in front of the barn by a few feet... the roads were just dirt roads. They camo'ed the tank as best as possible to blend in... and sat and waited until relieved.
A Tiger tank approached the intersection eventually and positioned itself at the crossroads and stopped an kept guard of it. They knew if they moved, the Tiger's 88 mm gun would make mincemeat out of their Sherman, so every thing was shut down, and they waited and just observed from their position. Eventually the Tiger tank, started up and moved up the road toward the barn, so they started the Sherman's engine, but did not move.
The Tiger was loud enough with its engine, they knew the enemy would not hear them until it was right upon the barn. The Tiger was passing slowly up the road, but didn't seem to have any concern about the barn, not expecting a waiting enemy tank.
as the Tiger passed the barn, the German Commander finally noticed the American tank sitting right beside the barn. He ordered the Tiger to halt, and as it did, the turret on the Tiger was swinging to its right, to shoot the Sherman at point blank range. The driver of the Sherman was the guy who I was speaking with, telling this story. Without being told to do so, he jammed the Sherman into gear and rammed the side of the stopped Tiger tank, and kept his gas pedal floored. That stopped the barrel of the of the German tank from being able to fire and hit the Sherman at point blank range. IN the meantime, the commanders of both tanks pulled out their pistols and fired at each other, while shouting orders to their crews...
IN the dual, the American commander won, killing the German commander with his 45...
He jerked out a Thompson, with and leaped out of his turret, and moved toward the open hatch on the Tiger, stuffed the barrel down the hatch and emptied it into the Tiger's crew compartment. He then yelled for 'grenades', and one of the crewmen, was at the Sherman's hatch and tossed a grenade twice to the Tank commander. The American commander, pulled the pin each time and dropped it down the hatch of the Tiger, killing the enemy crew. he scrambled back to his hatch and the driver knew to back up the Sherman once the commander was off the Tiger...
They backed up the Sherman, as they closed their hatches and then stopped when they had just enough distance back, to fire their short barreled 75 mm gun. First at the tracks on the Tiger, and then at the junction of the Turret on the Tiger with its chassis. They then slammed the Sherman to the left thru the barns wooden wall, until they were behind it.. and then fired a round into the engine compartment on the Tiger, which was its weakest point, at Point blank range once again. Then got on the radio, and reported what had just happened. They were ordered to hold the position and reinforcements were on the way.
All was quiet and the men finally got out of the Sherman, after moving away, so that as the ammunition on the Tiger blew up, they wouldn't be part of the explosion.. he explained that they got out of the tank after shutting the engine down to conserve fuel. Standing in a circle, they each pulled out a cigarette, to calm their shaking nerves. As they stood and sucked on their cigarettes, one of the crewmen started to laugh. The Tank commander, who was older than the rest of the crew asked "WTF is so damn funny??" The laughing trooper's response was " Look at everybody's crotch."
He said we each looked at each other's crotch and finally noticed it. Each one of us were soaking wet from our belt buckles to our knees. Each of us had been so scared to death, even tho we were seasoned combat vets, we finally realized each of us had pissed all over ourselves. Then we all started laughing....and finally started to calm down.
Image going thru that at 20 years old. Its a story hard to forget.. at least for me... he told it vividly enough, it put you right there....
He told me that was the closest call he experienced, after Kasserine Pass, where most of his friends... 175 young guys like him died, out of 180 of them from the same town, who had all knew each other in High School, and growing up.. Imagine the loss for the parents of those young men, in a small town of 2000 people.
Truly our nations greatest . Can't even imagine the youth of today being up to the task if the call came to serve our nation in time of war.
Just young men who wanted to have a life, and get married, have jobs, raise a family and grow old. They never got the chance. Three out of 180 of those young men who signed up on Dec 8th 1941, came home to Dallas Oregon, while a 175 of them met their end in their first major engagement in North Africa.
Every time I think back on that story the old man told me ( and he is no longer with us, I am sure), I have to sit and close my eyes and say a prayer for those 175 men who died that day in North Africa, and for the mothers and fathers and girlfriends they left behind, and the lives they never got to live. Proves freedom (that liberals abuse every day) is NEVER free. to borrow from the Australians, a phrase " Less we ever forget"... I pray we don't.
