I went down to Bedford, Virginia for the dedication of the War Memorial.  There are a lot of things about WWII that I haven't thought about for a while.  This year has brought a lot of things back.
I was born at Dawson, West Virginia.  We moved from here to there to yonder until we landed in  Rupert about 1930 and that is where I spent the most of my life until we moved here.
I didn't think too much about going to war when we heard about Pearl Harbor.  I didn't think much about it but three months later down the road I was drafted.  I was 20 years old at the time they drafted me.  I went to the Army when they drafted me.  I really wanted to go because that was the big thing to do back them.
You didn't want to back out.  We were more patriotic back then.  We thought it was something great going off to war.  In 1942 I went in and took basic in Kansas and then to Needles, California in the desert.
Some thought the war was over in when Tunisia took over France.  That was about the time of D Day and they told us we were getting ready to ship out.  We missed D Day and after I read about it I was glad we did because that was not a picnic.

So, we landed shortly after D Day in July, that was when it started.  We went through France and Luxemburg and backed the Germans back to their border.  Then we didn't know whether or not  we were going to make an offensive attack.  They were trying to build up for winter.  No one thought we would need an offensive attack.  Everybody thought the war would be over by Christmas but it didn't happen that way.  The Germans had something else planned for us.  They broke through the lines and they put on a big offensive battle.  They came from Belgium and they ran over us.  If the first group got blocked, Hitler had another group come right up behind them.  That went on for about two weeks.  It was really tough because it started snowing.  It was real cold and they couldn't get supplies to us.  We didn't know whether we were going to get out alive or not.

Then the 82nd Battalion opened up a road behind us and we escaped.  We lost one or two tanks but we got out and went back and rebuilt again.  That is where we lost our first men in battle.  In the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.  That is where we lost our "dozer tank".  That is when they put a blade on my tank.  It was like a big bull dozer.  It had a big blade on it.  The reason for the blade on the tank was a lot of times the Germans would put rocks or explosives or logs for a road block.  The American would Strife (German vehicles) and the roads would be blocked.  That is what the "dozer tanks" were used for to clear the roads.  It was a real hindrance for cross country fighting because you couldn't go across ditches and it became a great hindrance.  That was what we thought when came to the Rhine River. 

We went into the Rhine land and at the Rhine River, that is where the blade came in handy again because the Germans had blown a 30' crater in the approach to the bridge on the ramp of the Bridge at Remagen.  It was a railroad bridge and they had a ramp to go up and over and that is where they blew a big hole up.  So we had to start operating on that.

In the meantime, we crossed mine fields in the road going up to the approach of the bridge but we didn't explode any of them.  The engineers came up behind us and start digging up landmines.

We went to work filling up the big hole on the bridge at Remagen using the "tank dozer".  The rest of the afternoon we spent covering the foot troops going across the bridge because we couldn't take the tanks across until the bridge was repaired.  I sat in that tank with planes flying over us dropping bombs.  They even had a barge up the river with a machine gun and gunner on it.

When we took the bridge for the first few hours it was the  A Co., 27th Armored Inf. Battalion, 9th Armored Division  and one company of tanks, A Co.  14th Tank Battalion 9th Armored Division..   We had 4 big tanks and 9 medium tanks left there and that was all we had.  When we crossed the bridge, 9 medium tanks crossed and the big tanks had to wait for a pontoon ferry to cross the bridge a couple of days later.

We didn't lose too many men there.  I don't think we lost any on that particular day but we lost some going to the bridge the day we moved up through Remagen.  We crossed at midnight with the tanks and not many men were on the other side.  I guess the Germans did not have enough to counter attack and push us back.  Once we got the tanks across and by the next morning we were helping the infantry and by daylight Americans started pushing across by hundreds (foot troops) and other vehicles.

Only 9 tanks were left and when we crossed, 5 turned to the left and 4 turned to the right and we tried to hold until morning and then when the reinforcements came, lots of them, we went to a little town Erpel..  A little town across the river from Remagen.  We held there from March 7 through March 18, 1945.  After we got a lot of reinforcements we held back and waited because the terrain was not too good for tanks. In ten days the bridge fell and we moved out to the east.

I was the gunner in the "tank dozer".

I was in an iron box.  I saw Germany through a periscope or through my gun sights; a telescopic sight.  Five of us in the tank, driver, assistant driver; down front, tank commander on top, gunner (me) and radio man who also loaded the gun.

We were in there all day long, every day, all night long, every night.  We lived there.  A lot of heavy firing going on around us.  We had one boy, he always got real nervous in battle when he had to fire the gun.  He eventually had a nervous breakdown, battle shock.  I guess when you are young you don't think about getting killed but when you see one of your buddies' tanks blown to bits, you only hope it doesn't happen to you.  That is where I think my wife and my mother's prayers came in had the man up above looking out for me.

We wanted to get a hold of Hitler but on the other hand a lot of German people wanted to get a hold of him to.   We couldn't trust them but they tried to help us sometimes, the average German.  I felt sorry for them.  The tough guys were the SS Troops the "Storm Troopers".  They were the tough guys, the "Storm Troopers".

We continued fighting after we turned east.  We met the Russians before we got to the Elbe River so we thought we didn't have to fight any more.  We thought our part was over because the Russians had already gone through Berlin but it didn't happen that way. 

We pulled back one night, went south and Patton was in the 3rd Army Corp.  He was headed toward Czechoslovakia south.  We were in the 9th Armored Division.  We started spearheading for Patton and we ended up in Czechoslovakia.  Then, we came back to Birkenhead, Germany.  We thought they would send the whole division back .

I was one of the first ones of the first group that left out in my outfit to come back to the states.  They sent me to Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri, the 8th Infantry outfit.  Only to find out they were going to send us to Japan.  Truman dropped the big bomb (2 of them) and the war  was over.  They sent the gunners out first.

We didn't really know that the crossing the bridge was going to end the war early.  We thought the bridge was going to be blown up.  The engineers put a big pontoon above and below the bridge and the troops were rolling across from everywhere.  After the Americans took the bridge we heard some rumors that Hitler had some of his officers shot.  A lot of stuff came up in the Nuremberg trials. We didn't know we were making history by crossing that bridge because we had done other things we felt at the time was more important.

I went back to Remagen in 1995, 50 years later.  It was wonderful. It was so interesting.  We all met there, the people that were there before.  When I went back to the States after being discharged from service, we had tried to locate my Platoon Sgt. but couldn't find him.  When I was in Remagen in a motel, the tour guide came and told me someone was looking for me.  My son was the only person I could think of that would be looking for me.  It was Sgt. Weaver, my Platoon Sgt. his wife and family.  We had looked for him everywhere and he turns up here.  I found out he had stayed in the Army for 23 more years.  We thought he was in Ohio but he was in the western end of North Carolina.  We had looked and searched for him for years.

We didn't know the effect of crossing the Bridge at Remagen at the time.  The Battle of the Bulge was the hardest fighting I was ever in.

I have gone to a reunion every year since 1991.  I went to one Battalion reunion but mostly a company reunion is what I attend. 

I was the gunner in the "tank dozer" and after they put the blade on and we had a road block, they would say, "Go up front and that was for two years".  There may be landmine or anything.  We got up to eighteen or twenty meeting for the reunion, Weaver past away.

The aftermath of the war; I think I put it behind me when I came home. I am still jumpy but I put it in my past and forgot.  I came home in 1945 and got a job on a strip mine.  In the late 80's we started contacting each other and by 90-91 we started getting together.  I had three or four guys I was in the service with who lived right around here and I worked with some of them but they are gone now.  I don't think patriotism is as high as it used to be.  Young people are just not interested in things like that.  I guess I was the same way when I was young.

Ken Hechler invited me to Huntington for the premier of the movie, "Crossing the Bridge at Remagen".  It is pretty good.  Some of the things were not actual but the movie made you realize what it was all about.

I didn't know Ken at the bridge.  I didn't know anything about him.  He was a war correspondent.  He would go out and get the information and write stories.  I met him in the 60's when he invited me to Huntington to the premier of the movie.  I got his little book and his big book.  Ken is a pretty good guy even if he is in politics.

Most of my buddies were from Kentucky and West Virginia. (Clemon brought out for me to see a Nazi flag and around the swastika, all the men in the company had signed their names).  I caught them in chow line.  We didn't all eat the same time.  When the kitchen truck came by, we ate.  The flag was on a house. Nazi flags were everywhere.  The infantry boys had a better chance of picking up things to bring back home.  We couldn't jump out of our tanks, we had to wait for them to stop.  If you got wounded, you didn't bring  anything home.  Just like Shorty Rider he lost his leg, he didn't get to bring anything home.

I don't know why the US got into the war.  I guess we had to.  Before I went to the service I didn't think too much about it why we were fighting.  Probably if we hadn't Hitler would have taken over and Japan.  After we helped Russia, they turned on us.  They turned around and blocked everything off.  We had a fifty year war with them.  There is a lot of things I don't understand about war and our leaders.

Most of the units that was in the war got a Presidential citation.  I got a Silver Star.  Roosevelt was President.  When we first went to war but he died in May and Truman took over.  I thought Truman was too aggressive sometimes, like dropping two bombs (atomic bombs) it wiped out two cities in Japan and killed all of those people and the ones it didn't kill, they are still suffering from diseases.

I think I was with the best group of boys anybody could have been with.  We were together for three years.  We got some replacements, lost some in the Battle of the Bulge, but the same company, the same men.  I trusted them.  We watched out for each other.  I think we had the best tank commander, Sgt. Lawrence Swain.  He was from Pennsylvania.  On the last day of the war, a 14 year old boy, a sniper, shot him.  Killed him on the last day of the war.  They had given us orders not to fire, unless fired upon.  So we saw a bunch of boys, just thought they were boys standing around a house but one was upstairs with a riffle and he shot Swain.  So Swain didn't get to come back home, some things hurt.  War is terrible I don't care how you go.  I felt so sorry for the women and the children and the animals.

I don't understand some of our leaders, like Eisenhower during the Battle of the Bulge, he was in Paris getting ready for a wedding. When someone told him the Germans were breaking through, overrunning us, he just said, "It was a little counterattack from Hitler", but Hitler had put everything in  it.  But the big brass was getting ready for a wedding.

Bradley was a big commander.  In his memos when writing about the Battle of the Bulge, the 4th Infantry was on the front line, the tank division and the 9th Armored Division was all we had on the front line, everyone else had been pulled back for a rest.  Hitler had some plans  of his own.  In Bradley's memos, he didn't even mention the 9th Armored Division and he was over it.  He wrote his memos I read some of them, he didn't even remember the 9th Armored Division, like we didn't even exist.  They called us the "Phantom" Division.  They had us split up three different ways.  We kept popping up everywhere.  That is what I am saying about the big commanders and they push young people into service.  It is not right.

I think Roosevelt had a good idea about what was going on and Eisenhower was supposed to be a good General, some think he was.  In the movie on D Day Eisenhower meets with all the troops in England but he didn't go, he went on a big ship later.  The big brass was on a big ship watching everyone. The poor troops didn't have anyplace to go. They were just jumping into the water.  A lot of them drown with 80 pound pack backs strapped to them.  They were just trying not to get shot.  West Virginia had the most men serve, per capita in WWII.

Bradley should a have known the men under him. 

When we first came upon the the Bridge at Remagen my tank went underneath the bridge to the right and that is where all the German anti-craft were meeting, five were there; three were manned tanks; my tank commander, gave me the range and  I started picking them off, the anti-craft, I picked off five on the first round and the rest of them scattered.   That is where I got my Silver Star.  That was when I was with Corp. Fred Lovely, he was my loader, my gun loader.  His tank had been knocked out the day before, so he was with me.  Shortly after that was when we went upon the ramp of the Bridge at Remagen and started filling in the crater with dirt from the ramp and the foot troops went across and later that night the tanks went across.

When we went back to Remagen in 1995, the civilian were nice to us  Actually the German people were glad we stopped the war.  A lot of the people had turned against Hitler but they were afraid of the big SS Troops, the "Storm Troopers" would just pick them off.    Some of the Germans wanted to help us while we were fighting.  They didn't try to hide from us they would open their door if the gunners were not there.  We couldn't talk to them very much because we couldn't speak German but we made a lot of sign language.  We couldn't trust them though because we were in their territory.

When I was drafted I didn't think I would pass because I had lost my voice when I was thirteen.  I couldn't talk above a whisper but I passed with flying colors.  I was worried the doctor would think I was trying to keep out of the Army, so I was glad when they passed me.  After my basic training they sent me for treatments with a Dr. Koon and then a Dr. Wolf in Topeka, Kansas for three months  After my treatments I started talking.  In the meantime my company had moved to California. When my treatments were finished they sent me to California to reunite with my company.  We had desert training in tanks.  We would go out and see how many miles we could cover.  We made a 500 mile trip in tanks in the desert out in the middle of nowhere, just sand and  it would get cold at night, real cold, you needed a blanket but it was very hot in the day.

I only got hit once with big guns they clipped two spare Bogie wheels off.  I left "tank dozer" in Burgkunstadt, Germany in July, 1945.

He took me downstairs to see his collection from the war.  I gave them all hugs and after well wishes, I left for home.

    end of interview