 |
| An Oral History "Mini Book" |
Ever since I published my first book, "Tanks for the Memories," I've been experimenting with the presentation of oral history. I've got 600 hours of interviews on audiotape, and probably a few thousand pages of transcripts -- my interview with Dale Albee alone filled 104 pages, single-spaced.
As I've experimented with audio and print books, the publishing landscape has changed. Whereas publishing a print book once required a press run of at least 1,000 copies to make it cost-effective, print-on-demand has lowered that requirement to a press run of one copy, although batches of five or ten copies save on the postage.
"Big Andy" is the first in a series of Oral History "Mini Books" in which I present the transcript of an interview. In some cases an audio CD will be available to accompany the booklet, although I have not yet edited the audio for Bob Anderson.
Big Andy was a tank driver in the 712th Tank Battalion. He earned three Bronze Stars. I interviewed him in 1993 at his home in Prophetstown, Illinois.
"Don't put the whole interview up on the Internet," a friend said the other day. "Nobody will buy the book."
I don't believe that, so I'm posting about half the interview and will post the rest in my next entry while I work on similar "Mini Books," as well as a longer collection of interviews.
Actually, I do believe that a little. I'm sure when I posted the full text of my first four books on my web site at tankbooks.com I might have sold more copies if I only posted a chapter or two. But then people like George Bussell's niece, googling her uncle's name, might never have found his story. Bussell had an older sister, who became estranged from her stepmother after her mother died and their father remarried. His niece never met George and he had since passed away. After reading his interview, she thanked me for "introducing" her to her late uncle.
Bussell, like Big Andy, and Tony D'Arpino, who's featured in my book "A Mile in Their Shoes," was a tank driver. As you'll see from this interview, tank drivers were a special breed of warrior.
Bob Anderson
Prophetstown, Illinois
Oct. 24, 1993
Aaron Elson: You go
back to the cavalry?
We got a rating in those days of what we called first-third. That was one stripe down and four turned up. And we were getting paid more than what a buck sergeant was. Of course, we went in at $18 a month, but after we got our rating, we were getting $38 a month, where a sergeant was only getting $36 a month. Then when I came home for my granddad’s funeral in October of ’41, “Man, look at what a rating he has.” Hell, I’m nothing but a Pfc.
I was in the 11th Horse Cavalry. Then the 11th Horse Cavalry and the Third Horse Battalion formed the 10th Armored Division.
Aaron Elson: Clear
me up on this, because Forrest Dixon just told me. He said the 11th Cavalry was
supposed to go to Australia or to the Philippines. Were you supposed to go to
Australia?
Bob Anderson: That’s
when – see, we were at Campo, California, on the Mexican border, and I didn’t
know it until later, but when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor they blew boots and
saddles and we went down on the Mexican border and sat.
Aaron Elson: Explain
to me what it means to blow boots and saddles.
Bob Anderson: Well,
that’s just a different way of, they didn’t yell, they had a bugler, and in the
morning he’d blow reveille. And then they’d blow mess call. And there were
different calls on the bugle that went out on the air. When they blew boots and
saddles, that meant for everybody to run and get ready and go down and saddle
your horses, and get ready to ride away.
Aaron Elson: That
was immediately? Did you know about Pearl Harbor then, or you just heard boots
and saddles?
Bob Anderson: Oh,
no. We didn’t know. In fact, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, there was a boy named
Bud Perkins and myself, and a boy from Wisconsin, Greeley, we had our clothes
in the car all ready to come home on a furlough. And before we even got out of
camp they blew boots and saddles, and we were confined to camp.
Aaron Elson: Do you
remember what kind of car it was?
Bob Anderson: It was
a 1939 Ford. I have some pictures of it somewhere. We were going to come home
on furlough, but we didn’t even get out of camp. Then all the men, and the
first horse shoer, they all went down and they had to sleep out and bivouac.
Lucky for me, I was the second horse shoer. “You stay back in camp and take
care of the stable and feed the horses and take care of them,” so I didn’t have
to go down there and sleep on the ground and all that.
Aaron Elson: Because
you lost that coin toss?
Bob Anderson: Well,
it’s just because I was a very lucky man that I got to stay back in camp. There
were about four or five guys got to stay back, and we took care of the horses
that were left there. You had 150 men in the troop, and there would be about
180 horses, so there were 30 horses left back there. And then of course at that
time we had some sick horses. So I was one of the fortunate ones that didn’t
have to go down there. But later I did learn, after this, that there was a boat
sitting out in the harbor at San Diego that the 11th Cavalry was supposed to go
on with their horses and everything and get on this boat, and be in the war,
and I wonder how far we’d have gotten fighting the war with the horses in those
days. But as luck would have it, in May of ’42, well, I’d have to get my book,
there was a black unit came in and took over our horses and the white boys were
sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, and the 3rd Horse Cavalry, which was stationed
up around Washington, D.C., came to Fort Benning and we all formed the 10th
Armored Division.
Aaron Elson: Going
back to the cavalry, Forrest Dixon said there was something about a yellow
fever vaccination, where a lot of men came down with jaundice.
Bob Anderson: I came
down with spinal meningitis. I had yellow jaundice before, when I was in high
school. The only thing I remember about it was when I had this spinal
meningitis, they quarantined the camp for a few days. But anyway, I was sent up
to a naval base.
Aaron Elson: One
other question about the cavalry. Was there a horse named Old Buck? Does that
ring a bell?
Bob Anderson: There
were several horses. We had different names for different things. We had
Johnson Bar. Yes, I suppose there was.
Aaron Elson: Ed
Stuever said there was a horse there that rode in the campaign against Pancho
Villa, and it was out to pasture and given special treatment.
Bob Anderson: It
could have been. I can’t tell you anything like that. There were special horses
the lieutenants had, or I wouldn’t say the lieutenants, the officers had their
horses and we had to treat them like, well, let’s say gold or silver, a little
bit better, and they rode with saddles, where we had the old McCulloch saddle
they got to ride with the English saddle. And then they had their dogrobbers
who took care of their stuff, where we had to take care of our own. But I
really enjoyed the cavalry. One thing I will say about the outfit I was in, we
grew up as a group of men that stayed together. I can list several of us that
stayed together and went through the 10th Armored, and went to the 712th Tank
Battalion, we fought together and we came home together. And there’s a lot of
boys that did that. Earl Apgar lives up here in Rockford. Jule Braatz lives up
here in Beaver Dam. And there were several boys out of Chicago I can name, and
we all stayed together after we got out. We became brothers, like you said this
Quentin Bynum, shucks, him and I we fought and had one heck of a good time.
This Percy Bowers from Chetack, Wisconsin, who was killed overseas, we were the
best of buddies. I will say I went all the way through the service, I got three
Bronze Stars, had tanks knocked out. With my luck I never got a Purple Heart. That
kind of, it just gets you, now.
After we left the horse cavalry
we formed the 10th Armored Division. From the 10th Armored Division we went
onto the Tennessee maneuvers. Then we came back to Fort Benning and we were
busted away from the 10th Armored Division to the 712th Tank Battalion. From
there we went to Camp Gordon, Georgia.
Bob Anderson: You
want a good story there. When I was a horse shoer back in the cavalry, we had a
stable sergeant whose name was Seeney. We were way down here, probably a half a
mile from the barracks, and the only way you could get a pass to go into town
was to be in uniform. Well, the stable gang, they got to eat breakfast at 5 in
the morning, 11 o’clock at noon, and 5 o’clock in the evening. And then an hour
later the company came. Well, this was one Saturday noon, we came up and ate
dinner. And I went into the orderly room to get a pass to go to town, this
Percy Bowers and I wanted to come to town and buy a car. Well, Sergeant Chin
was in charge of quarters, and him and I was razzin’, going at each other. Chin
says, “You know you’ve got to be in uniform.”
I says, “Sergeant Chin, how can I
get down there and get in uniform and come back up and get a pass before the
rest of the company comes in and gets their passes?”We were just having a lot of fun. Well, in walked – when we first went in Sergeant Gaines was our first sergeant, he was a heck of a good man. After Pearl Harbor he left and went to OCS school and became a captain in the MPs. A Sergeant Moseley took over who had been back at Fort Riley, Kansas, an officers’ school, and got to be first sergeant. Well, Moseley walked in the orderly room while Chin and I was at it, and he just says, “You know the orders around here.” You know, being he was the top soldier. And I hauled off and hit him one. So the next day it was Pfc. Third Class Specialist Robert E. Anderson was busted to a grade of Pfc. returned to duty. In other words, I was kicked out of the stable and sent back there.
Aaron Elson: You hit
him?
Bob Anderson: Yeah,
I hit him. I was mad. So about a week later he was shipped out and Sergeant Seeney, who was the stable sergeant,
was next in rank, he got to be first sergeant, so I got to go back down to the
stable. We were known as Seeney’s boys. Seeney went with us to the 10th Armored
Division, and everybody who was down in the stable gang, they got to be tank
drivers. So that’s how we did. Bowers, Bynum, [Lano] O’Conner, [Dess] Tibbetts,
all of us got to be tank drivers. Of course, a tank driver, they didn’t have to
stand guard duty or do KP, they had to take care of the tanks. So we were known
as Seeney’s boys.
Aaron Elson: Your
rank as a tank driver was a corporal?
Bob Anderson: No, my
rank, see, I drove what they call the three, I was in the third platoon and
drove the third tank. So the one that was in each platoon that drove the No. 1
tank, they drove the lieutenant. I drove the staff sergeant’s tank, so I was in
the third platoon driving the third tank. So each driver there got what they
call a T-4 rating. The other drivers were a T-5 or a corporal rating. There
were two sergeant drivers and two corporal drivers.
Aaron Elson: The
platoon leader was a lieutenant. The platoon sergeant...
Bob Anderson: Was a
staff sergeant.
Aaron Elson: Okay,
was in the fourth tank?
Bob Anderson: Yes.
They were supposed to, if you go into combat – when we went into combat you
threw the book away. Three tanks were supposed to go up, and then these two
tanks were supposed to advance, and then ... but when we went into action we
threw the book away. I’ll get to that story a little later. But anyway, after
we went to Camp Gordon, we got sent up to Myles Standish, that’s where we
shipped out for England. Then when we were in England, we did a lot of
training, and there was a boy by the name [L.E.] Stahl, he was a sergeant tank
driver like I was. We were welding on the tanks one night and got the dickens
for doing that because we were lighting the sky, you know how a welder will
light it up. We were working on our tanks one night. The Germans weren’t flying
over but if they had been flying over they’d have seen us. Well, we got there,
and then we stayed there for quite a while, and then we went down to the port
of Southampton and went across to Omaha Beach. And I had this sergeant by the
name Charles Fowler from California, and he was a soldier in the States. A
well-built man and that. But when he got into action, he was scared. And he
admitted it. Finally, he’d tell me not to start the tank. Gunner don’t load
your gun. This and that. Finally, I went to the company commander and told him
what was going on. Fowler was busted to a grade of a private or a Pfc, I don’t
know which, and shipped back to the States. But he admitted he was scared, which
was a good thing, you know, he was more dangerous to his men being scared.
Aaron Elson: Ruby
Goldstein told me there was something where Fowler said there were branches in
the turret.
Bob Anderson: Well,
you didn’t know what. Reuben Goldstein was in the same platoon, and he was in
the tank back of us. In fact, his driver was Ringwalski from Minnesota. He was
in the tank behind us, and him and this Charlie Bahrke got the first award
issued in our outfit. Charlie Bahrke was the gunner and Goldstein was the tank
commander and they each got a Silver Star. The way they did it is, I don’t
know, did they tell you about a hedgerow?
Aaron Elson: He
described a hedgerow, but he never said he got the Silver Star for that.
Bob Anderson: Oh
yeah, he got, anyway, when you come up over these here hedgerows – we didn’t know it, we did after the first one –
but anyway, we was coming through this field and we come up over a hedgerow
like that and we just dropped. Probably about, oh, I’d say six, eight feet
deep. And here he was sitting right in here. And then I had to maneuver and all
of us drivers had to maneuver our tanks, jockey them around to get headed down
the road.
Aaron Elson:
Goldstein’s tank had fallen over the hedgerow?
Bob Anderson: Yes.
But Goldstein got jockeyed around, and they went down the road a short
distance, and they was hit with an anti-tank gun. The crew evacuated the tank,
and then Goldstein and Bahrk crawled back with the protection of the tank, and
we’ve got a hatch in the bottom of the tank, they crawled back up in there, and
got the anti-tank gun that was down at the end of the road. And that’s how they
got the Silver Star.
"Big Andy" is also available at amazon.com in both print and Kindle editions
No comments:
Post a Comment