Letter from Pfc. Grant D. Everly, C-36:

Subject:  My Brief Tour as 1st Lt.
Date:      Wed, 26 Mar 1999
From:     Grant D. Everly

On March 15 1943, two months after after my 18th birthday, I found myself drafted and on my way to meet my destiny. I was a young man from a small town in West Virginia. At the time, I did not know I was about to take part in one of the greatest events in the 20th Century for America and its Allies--World War II.

My adventure started at North Camp Polk in Louisiana. I was assigned to the 36th Tank Battalion, 8th Armored Division. After basic training I received advanced training including D series and regular maneuvers. Then I was off to continue my adventure overseas in Europe. I was apprehensive, to be going, because that's where the war was.

Now we move two years forward----to March 7, 1945, just after the bloody battle of Rheinberg. We, the 2nd platoon of Company "C" along with units of the 35th Div. were in the vicinity of Ossenberg just outside of Rheinberg.

We had artillery coming at us constantly from across the Rhein river, where most of the German forces had retreated. As the loader on the crew, I was busy with getting rid of the spent shells by throwing them through the pistol port on the side of the turret.

Before I knew it, a piece of shrapnel came though the pistol port and got me on the left side of the head. The shrapnel was a jagged piece about a quarter inch or so long. ( I retrieved it later from the floor of the tank, but later lost it). It cut my scalp and knocked me out briefly. Since our tank was disabled having a track knocked off by by an HE round, I had to get out through the bottom escape hatch.

After I was out of the tank I looked for some shelter, which happened to be in the cellar of one of the houses there. In the cellar a 35th Medic applied a bandage from my pistol beltpacket. And told me to go out and look for the medic halftrack which would take me to the Aid Station.

When I went back out, I noticed a helmet on the ground and picked it up and put it on, since I had left my helmet in the tank. Finally a medic halftrack stopped for me and the guy said, "Hey, Pfc when did you get promoted to Lieutenant?" I was startled at first, he was pointing at my head. I took off the helmet and it had a 1st Lt. bar on it.

So then I was a 1st Lt. on the ride to the Aid Station, where they bandaged my head properly and gave me a good slug of American whiskey and took me back to my company in Rheinberg. I never did know whose helmet it was or what happened to the owner.

When the war ended in Europe on May 8th 1945 we were in a little village of Wollbrandshausen, south of Northeim. One morning a few days later our Company Commander, Capt. Stanley Bodin lined a few of us up outside the CP and presented us with some Purple Heart medals. He told us he was glad we didn't get hurt any worse than we did.

Incidentally, I never made it to 1st Lt. again. But I did retire as SP6-E6, after 22 years.

Pfc. Grant D. Everly, 35750977
Company "C" 36th Tank Bn
3/26/99

|  Stories   | |  Home   |

Email from Sgt. John R. Call, B-36:

Subject:  The Battle of Rheinberg
Date:      Friday, Nov 7, 2002
From:     Sgt. John R. Call

We had traveled from the Pont-a-Mosson area in eastern France, through Luxemburg, Belgium to Holland, and were west of the front about 5 miles. We finally found our company in a little town of Roermond, Holland, where we stayed for about 2 weeks. This where we got the front end of our tank repaired. The main reason we were there so long is because the Germans were blowing up the dams on the Roer River to keep the water high making it impossible to put a bridge across the river and go on our spearhead into Germany. After about 2 weeks the Germans ran out of dams to blow up and the water subsided enough so that the Engineers could install a floating bridge so we could start into Germany.

It is interesting to note that just prior to leaving the little town in Holland we lined up our tanks and were given a lot of extra ammunition, this was high explosive shells. We fired our guns as artillery and shot across the river, being directed by someone who could observe where they were hitting. It was kind of a practice but I think it was to soften the resistance when we got across the Roer River into Germany.

We crossed the Roer River and went through some cities that were completely bombed out. The houses and buildings in the towns were gutted completely. I'm a little vague as to what cities these were. My memory said they were Dusseldorf and Cologne, but those two cities are south on the Rhein River. I do remember going through these cities, so it must have been after we left Rheinberg.

As we went on toward the east we stopped in various places and finally arrived at the front where the battle was going on, west of Rheinberg. The spearhead was with the Reconnaissance/Cavalry up front, with the tanks following. When they ran into German resistance, they call us to go up and clean out the area. There was no infantry anywhere around us. The Infantry are usually around us, or riding on the back of the tanks, but there was no Infantry that day. Obviously, they should have been with us for the Battle of Rheinberg.

As we approached the city of Rheinberg the column was stopped and we were called up to go ahead, so we passed up the Cavalry. At first there was open country and we fanned out in a pyramid formation on the left side of the road, but as we approached Rheinberg the forest closed in, so we pulled back upon the road in a column formation. As we entered the populated area the homes had white sheets hanging from the windows as if to say "we surrender". Then all HELL broke loose. There was German 88 MM anti-tank guns that surrounded the city at about 100 feet apart. Each German soldier carried 2 Panzer Faust's. These were somewhat like bazookas, but much larger. They had a large cone shaped warhead that was about 6 inches diameter for about 2" in the center and tapered off each end. The front had a blunt nose about 3 inches in diameter and the back end was a rocket about 2 inches in diameter. The rocket fit inside of a tube or barrel. After firing, the barrel was thrown away. When the warhead hit a tank it blew a 3 inch hole and spewed molten metal around the inside of the tank killing all those inside. The one disadvantage of Panzer Faust's was the range, which was only 80 yards. The 88 MM guns were better than anything we had. They had so much velocity that the projectiles could go through our tanks and out the other side or at an angle would go in an ricochet around the tank usually killing all inside the tanks. That actually happened to one of the tanks and one of the guys that were in it told us about it later. He said it was like fire all around him. Boy, was he lucky.

There were tanks burning up and down the road in front of us. We were the 12^th tank in the column and had stopped. Our buddies were dropping all around us. I was the gunner and I had a very close call. Looking out of the telescope sight I saw a movement in the right edge of the scope and quickly swung the turret to the right. There was a German soldier in the doorway of the house just ahead of us on the right and he was aiming a Panzer Faust at our tank. I had to act very fast, so I hit him with the big gun, a 76 MM, and blew out the side of the house, including him.

As we sat there, we could hear a big gun go off ever few minutes, so my tank commander, Sgt. Burns, said "Put one in that hay stack up there on the left of the roadway, maybe there is a gun covered with hay. So I aimed the big gun in there and let go with a high explosive shell. The shell was set for delayed action, which means that when it hits something it goes about 25 yards and then explodes. Therefore when it hit the gun it traveled behind the stack and exploded. At that a lot of German soldiers went running out of there, headed back to the rear of the area toward some houses. There was a big gun in there, 88 MM. and we stopped that one.

Things calmed down then and we decided to go back to the rear and re-group with the tanks that were left. We got back to an area that was away from the firing and there were 6 tanks left out of the 18 that went into the battle. I had a lot of ammunition left over from our firing back in the Holland area and it was stashed on the back of the tank. This was all high explosive ammunition and we split that up with the other tanks, which were low on ammunition. While there, we found some SS Troops in a house right next to where we regrouped. Some of our guys were very upset with losing so many of our buddies and they wiped some civilians a well as the SS. When we were ready to go we went back into the battle. One of the 6 tanks left had a 105 MM. howitzer that was used as artillery. He led the way and we were all shooting high explosives into the homes along the road and took them down so we wouldn't have a problem with the German troops that were hidden in these homes. This way we got inside the city, it was a small town, and we secured our area. We stayed there about 2 weeks to get our replacement tanks and the soldiers coming in to replace those that were gone.

I was able to get a furlough or a pass for leave to go to Brussels, Belgium for a few days to get away from the front and get feeling better. I enjoyed that and had a picture taken and did some things to see the city. Upon returning to Rheinburg I was made a Sergeant and a tank commander and given my own tank and a crew. My former loader, Pete Duran, became my gunner and a loader from another tank, John Jordon, became my driver. Two young men from an Infantry Company were assigned to my crew, Emil Platske, bow gunner and Dan Pialt, loader. These fellows were pretty green and hadn't seen a tank before. We were in Rheinberg for about 1 more week, getting our tanks and crews ready to go. My tank was one that had been made from two that were knocked out. One had a good front end where the drive train is and the other had the basic part of the tank and they put those parts together and this made up the tank I got.

There is some confusion as to where we were when we got our replacements of men and tanks. One report said that we pulled back to Holland to rest and get the replacements. This may have been when I was in Brussels and I have forgotten, but my memory says I came back to Rheinberg from Brussels.

It took awhile to get everything ready because we had only 6 tanks and had to have 12 replacements. When we finally got things together we started back into battle. As we went on through Rheinberg we got about the middle of town on the main street and here was a tank of my buddy, Donald Ezrig, a gunner. They had pulled the tank over by the side of the road upon the sidewalk by the fence. The houses there had wooden fences in front of them. The escape hatch had been dropped out of the bottom of the tank and they had gotten out that way. This is a hole about 2 feet square with a locked hatch that you could unlock from the inside of the tank, It would drop down and there was enough room to crawl out underneath the tank and get away. We heard later that all 5 of the crew had been taken prisoner and they were prisoners of war.

As we went on to the east end of town, I think the main street went east and west; there was one of our tanks. The road divided, and we went to the right and the tank was setting in the space between the roads, in the "Y". It had been hit right in the barrel. It looked like the barrel of that 75 MM gun had been hit square on with an 88 MM. projectile and it gone on into the turret. The barrel was split. There were 2 of the crew of that tank lying on the ground, they were of course dead and their boots were gone from their feet. Apparently, the German soldiers wanted some boots and so they took those after our guys got hit.

We went a little farther and stopped on the road in an open area where there were no more houses. We weren't sure what was up ahead and the whole company stopped and waited. I don't know who was leading, but I guess things didn't look right. While we were waiting, along came 5 tanks from the rear, and the crew was black soldiers. They went by us and headed out into this open area and all of sudden one of the tanks hit a landmine that blew the track off. Apparently, they thought they were in territory that had been conquered, because over the radio we heard one guy calling his Commander on the radio rear saying "Boss, we's in a place where nobody ain't never been before". I guess they were really surprised and upset. We waited there for a while and finally proceeded slowly towards the Rhine River.

It is a little foggy in my mind where we crossed the Rhein River. The history of the 8^th Armored Division showed that we crossed it at Wessel. For some reason I had the idea that we crossed it a little further to the south because I can remember going through Cologne, which was a completely bombed out city and this is south of that area. Also, Dusseldorf that was east of the Rhein River. Anyway, we got across the Rhine and headed for the Hartz Mountains. I don't remember the exact route we took, but I do remember some of the instances that happened.

One time we were going down kind of a small road, it was not a main highway and stopped for some reason and were sitting there on the road in a tank and I was standing with my head out of the turret, your head would stick up so that your neck was about even with the rim of the turret. I heard some small arms shots, but I didn't know where they were coming from. The tank engine was making a lot of noise and it was hard to get an idea where the firing was coming from. I looked at the house that was next to us on the left side of the road and I said to Pete, the gunner, "Put one right into that house". He turned around and put a high explosive shell into that house and that took care of that. We had a 50 caliber ammunition can tied to the back of the turret, right next to my hatch. This was a metal box about 10" long and 6" wide and 8" high with a lid that swung open on top. We put our cleaning rags in that can so that we would have them handy. These rags were oily so we didn't want them inside the tank. That night as we were cleaning the guns we took those rags out and there was a hole from a rifle shot and it went right through that can. It was only a few inches from my head when I was standing there, so you can see that someone was watching over me at that time.

As we went on that day we got to a point where there was a lull, the Infantry had been walking along side of our tanks when we were taking this country. While we were waiting without moving forward the Infantry disappeared. I noticed that none of them were around. So, as I looked around I noticed smoke coming out of a chimney of a house not far from us. I got down out of the tank and went over to the house. Here were the Infantrymen in this house cooking ham and eggs and whatever they wanted and were eating.

One time when we were spearheading on a country road and the company stopped. There was a little town up ahead with a church sticking up above the trees. The Cavalry probably had run into a little resistance there because we could hear some machine guns, so I said to Pete, " Put one in that steeple". So he fired one and it was a delayed action round that hit the target and traveled about 25 yards before it exploded. It went through the steeple and exploded on the other side. In a few minutes a message came over the radio from someone up there and said, "We fired 1 shot and a whole company of Krauts gave up". Pretty soon the whole column began moving and as we went through that town there was a company of Krauts on the lawn by the church with their hands on their heads and they had surrendered. You need to know that our tank was number 14 in the column, plus the Cavalry who were spearheading. That put us quite a way out of town. That one round had got them to surrender. Apparently none of the other tank commanders thought about helping the people up front. In any event my shot was the thing that did the trick. That was kind of the way I operated. I didn't ask any questions. If it was the enemy I shot first and then ask questions.

Sgt. John R. Call,
Company "B", 36th Tank Bn
11/7/02

|  Stories   | |  Home   |

Story from T/5 Paul L. Lehman, A-36:

Subject:  Thanks Buddy, Whoever You Are!
Date:      2003
From:     Paul L. Lehman

On April 6, 1945, Company A, 36th Tank Battalion, Eighth Armored Division was given the task of making an 'end run' around an area near Berlingson, Germany, in an attempt to encircle a large number of German troops. My platoon of five tanks, with Lieutenant Irwin Brigham leading was moving along rapidly at the head of the column. Along the way my Sherman M4 tank blew the rubber tire off one of its bogey wheels and I requested and received permission from Lt. Brigham to pull off the side of the road to replace the blown bogey wheel. While my tank crew and I were at work, most of the following support vehicles by-passed us and we fell far behind. It required only a short time to replace the wheel and we then pulled back into the column. We immediately began to pass the smaller trailing support vehicles, attempting to regain our original position near the head of the column.

Within a mile of travel we came up behind four Sherman tanks from our Company, presumably positioned there as a rear guard. These tanks occupied too much of the narrow road and prevented our further advance, forcing us to fall in line behind them.

After a short time of travel behind the four tanks, a half-track.ahead was set aflame by a hit from enemy gunfire.

Within seconds of the half-track hit, Captain Robert Shaw, our Company Commander, ordered the four tanks ahead of us to destroy whatever was firing on our supporting units. Capt. Shaw did not know that our tank was operational again and accompanying the preceding four tanks.

Since the firing came from the right side of the road, the four tanks pulled off the road in that direction and we followed a few yards behind them to assist, even though we were not ordered to do so. The right side of the road was a wooded area and the four tanks crashed through the trees until they came to a clearing overlooking a shallow valley where the German fire had come from.

Immediately a radio message from one of the lead tanks announced the presence of a German Tiger tank ahead, and with that the four lead tanks went into reverse seeking cover in the woods. At this point my tank caught up with the preceding four and we decided to go to the woods edge to see the Tiger ourselves. When we arrived at the woods edge, sure enough, there was a Tiger tank with its gun pointed at ninety degrees from us, the tank commander obviously not having seen us. Perhaps because the Tiger was located in a depression, we badly overestimated the distance to the tiger as being one thousand yards. Normally we were rather good at range estimation because gunner Walter Boyd, Detroit; driver O'Neil Miles, Fairfax, Missouri; Ml; bow gunner Marvin Smith, Atlanta, Georgia; and I would each make an estimate and I as the tank commander with the best view would decide the range, usually by averaging the four estimates. The fifth man of the crew, the loader, a new replacement, had joined us the previous day. His name has been forgotten, but his memory has remained with me. He said he received training in armored school stateside and after we instructed him as to the storage location of the various shells, he replied that he understood his instructions and I assumed he knew his duties. How wrong I was.

The German tank commander had yet to discover us and it seemed to me an excellent opportunity to hit the sixty-two ton monster with a sucker punch, so we decided to fire.

What followed was a series of errors. First, we overestimated the range and the first shot went way over the target, but the shot was a white phosphorus shell and I had ordered an armor piercing shell to be loaded. If I remember correctly, the W.P. projectile had a flatter trajectory than an A. P. projectile and that, combined with an overestimate of the range, resulted in a large white plume way beyond the Tiger. Our luck was holding and the German tank commander apparently had not yet seen us. At this point I was screaming over the intercom: Armor piercing! Armor piercing! Quickly I heard the cannon's breechblock closing as I gave the gunner a range correction. Within seconds the cannon fired a second time and to my dismay another W.P. shell burst just beyond the Tiger. This time the German knew the direction the shell had come from, as the shell must have nearly hit his exposed head as it passed by. The German lost no time in traversing the gun turret toward us and through my binoculars, I could see that menacing muzzle-brake moving in our direction.

Once again I shouted into the intercom mike at the top of my voice so that the intercom was hardly necessary: Armor piercing! Armor piercing! Once again the breechblock was heard closing, and now with the correct range finally determined, we scored a solid hit on the side of the tiger's turret, but once again the wrong shell was loaded - this time a high explosive shell. Fortunately the H.P. shell somehow jammed the Tiger's turret and its gun was nearly useless.

During the engagement I inadvertently moved the intercom switch to radio broadcast and all my shouting went out over the airwaves and everyone must have heard me jubilantly shout: We got HIM!

At this time the four other tanks previously mentioned, lined up beside us and helped us finish off the Tiger. A column of flame soon erupted from the Tiger tank commander's hatch resembling the flame from a blowtorch. I truly hope the Germans abandoned the Tiger in time to escape the flames.

At this point someone reported the presence of two more smaller tanks further behind the Tiger land all five of our Sherman tanks participated in destroying these two also.

We had used our .30 caliber coaxial machine gun at some time during this engagement and had an empty 250 round ammunition belt and ammo box to dispose of. The new loader attempted to hand me the ammo box for disposal, but made the mistake of pushing it up between the cannon safety guard and the recently reloaded cannon, with predictable results: a broken arm when the gunner fired and the cannon recoiled. I now called the medics on the radio and reported an injured man. The medics arrived and took my new loader away, never to be seen by us again.

In retrospect, I feel we owed the new loader our gratitude, for despite his mistakes, he may have saved us from injury or death, because after inspecting another Tiger later, I believe that armor piercing projectiles fired from our 75 millimeter cannon would have had difficulty penetrating the thick armor of the Tiger.

After this engagement I called Capt. Shaw asking permission to rejoin my platoon at the head of the column. Capt. Shaw's answer to my request was: 'Stay back there, you are doing all right where you are.'

Over the years since 1945, I often wondered about our short time loader as to where he is living and what his name is, but not knowing, I can only say 'Thanks buddy, whoever you are'.

T/5 Paul L. Lehman, A-36,
Company "A", 36th Tank Bn,
2003