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Call Me SPEARHEAD The Official Publication of the Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans October 15, 2000 Volume 00, Issue 4 On Friday, September 15, 2000, the colors of the 1st Battalion, 32d Armored Regiment were furled and cased in a ceremony at Fort Lewis Washington. This act symbolized the inactivation of the last remaining battalion from the 32d Armored Regiment. For those of us who served in the different units of the 32d, it was a sad day that the Army would choose to inactivate a unit with such a great history of serving our country. The various units of the 32d Armored Regiment helped protect our country in WWII, The Cold War, and the Gulf War. Many brave men gave their lives to serve our country holding to the standard of “Victory or Death”. Colonel Truman E. Boudinot, Colonel Leander L. Doan, Lt. Colonel Elwyn W. Blanchard, Lt. Colonel John K. Boles Jr, Lt. Colonel Matthew W. Kane, Lt. Colonel Clifford L. Miller, Lt. Colonel Nathaniel O. Whitlaw, Lt. Colonel Sydney T. Telford, Lt. Colonel Walter B. Richardson, and many other fine officers led the 32d and its battalions through WWII. And let us not forget Lafayette Pool, who is known as the Audy Murphy of Armor. He and his crew of the tank “In the Mood” set the example for all future tankers to follow in bravery and leadership. This action was part of the Army’s review of how it is going to respond to the roles it would be asked to fulfill in the future. During Desert Storm, the only thing that stood between Iraqi and Saudi Arabia for several tense weeks was the 82d Airborne Division. If the Iraqi’s had decided to attack with the troops they had available, the 82d would have probably been quickly overwhelmed by the Iraqi Armor. The Army’s view is that it just takes too long to move a 100-ton Abrams tank and all of the support it needs into position. During the fighting in Kosovo last year, Army planners discovered that it would have taken combat engineers 4 months with 4 combat engineer battalions to move tanks from Albania to Kosovo. According to Newsweek Magazine, the Army plans to convert 8 of its 32 combat brigades into medium weight units. The goal of these medium weight units, according to Newsweek, is to be able to deploy anywhere in the world within 96 hours. The Abrams tank will be replaced with a new IAV. The IAV is projected to weigh less than 20 tons and be able to fit on a C-130 cargo plane. The IAV will have one major weakness. In order to lower the weight of the vehicle, most of the armor protection will have to be sacrificed. The Army feels that through the use of superior intelligence gathering, they will be able to hit the enemy from a distance and not place the crews in danger. Many current members of the Armor community are very uneasy about putting their trust in weapons and delivery systems that have not even been invented yet. Others support it as the logical way that we need to turn to fight the future battles. There have been many doctrinal changes over the years that have reshaped how the Army will perform its mission. Some have worked well; some have not. Time will be the judge of this new theory on Armored Warfare. |
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Twenty years later the regiment was reborn when a cadre of soldiers from the 41st Infantry Regiment departed Fort Benning, Georgia for Camp Beauregard, Louisiana under the command of Colonel Walton H. Walker. Organized as an armored infantry regiment, the 36th provided the necessary infantry support to the 3d Armored Division. The regiment trained with the division at various locations, including Camp Polk, the Desert Training Center, Camp Picket, Indiantown Gap, as well as in England prior to the invasion.
The regiment landed in Normandy under the command of Colonel Graeme G. Parks and first saw combat at Villers Fossard. During the first 3 months of combat, command of the regiment would change 5 times. The last officer to assume command was Colonel Robert L. Howze Jr. who commanded from 23 September 1944 until the end of the war. The officers and men of the 36th Infantry played a prominent role in every battle that the 3d Armored fought and suffered the highest number of casualties within the division. More than forty percent of the 36th Infantry (982 men) gave their lives freeing Europe. The 36th Infantry suffered more casualties than in 11 of the 16 American Armored Divisions. The 36th was inactivated along with the rest of SPEARHEAD Division in November of 1945.
The 36th was brought back to life in July of 1947 when it was reactivated as three separate infantry battalions within 3d Armored Division. The 36th, 37th and 13th Infantry Battalions carried forward the traditions and history of the 1st, 2d, and 3d Battalions of the 36th respectively. Ten years later the regiment would be reorganized under the combat arms regimental system. Initially the 1st Battalion was assigned to the 1st Armored Division at Fort Polk, while 2d Battalion served with 3d Armored in Germany. By 1963 all three battalions served in Germany with the 3d Armored and there they remained until the late 1980s when the U.S. Army Regimental System (USARS) was adopted.
For whatever reason the 36th Infantry was not selected as a parent regiment under the new system. The three line battalions assigned to 3AD were inactivated and the Regimental colors were transferred to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). When the USARS was revamped following the Gulf War, the colors were released from TRADOC and the 1st Battalion was activated in Germany as part of 1st Armored Division. LTC Michael Cloy (Member #82) currently commands the “Spartan” battalion. In December of 1999 1SG (Ret) Malcolm L. “Shorty” Marsh Jr. (Member #36 of our Association) who served in Company A, 36th Armored Infantry during World War II was installed as the Honorary Sergeant Major of the 36th Infantry Regiment in a ceremony at Ray Barracks, Friedburg, Germany where 1-36th is stationed. The “Spartans” are currently serving a short tour in Kosovo and should return to their home station in early 2001.
Written by Robert T. Gravlin
We got word we were going across the channel and into combat. We boarded a British train and moved south toward Southampton where ships were waiting to take us across the English Channel into France. While traveling on the train looking out the window, I noticed a pasture with small hills and cows grazing. Suddenly some German aircraft appeared. One of the little hills opened up and anti-aircraft batteries appeared. The hills were camouflage for the anti-aircraft guns and the cows and other animals were not real either. Fortunately, bombs dropped by the planes missed our train. As our train moved south, we saw tanks, artillery, halftracks, and all kinds of military equipment lined up all along the country roads with camouflage protection over them. England was like a giant military supply depot waiting to be shipped to France.
In late June 1944, we boarded an LST manned by British sailors for our trip across the English Channel. We left port at dusk. The seas were extremely rough and nearly everyone on board was sick. Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. The only food they served was some greasy pork sausages which would make you sick without the rough seas. The British were not known for keeping a clean ship and this ship was no exception. About dawn, we reached the shores of France and Omaha Beach. We went down rope ladders onto landing craft and waded ashore holding our rifles and equipment above our heads. There were sunken American ships and damaged military equipment all over in addition to knocked out German pillboxes, guns, ect. This was the remnant of the “D” Day invasion a couple weeks previous. As we filed up the hill from the beach, German planes came over strafing and bombing. All of our ships had large barrage balloons attached to them held down with cables to keep the German aircraft up at a pretty high altitude so our ships could use their anti-aircraft guns on them. There was a large prisoner of war compound on top of the hill surrounded by barbed wire. It was loaded with German soldiers taken during the “D” day battle. Further down the road, trench diggers were digging long trenches and grave restoration services were dropping in G.I.’s wrapped in mattress covers in the rows of trenches. A bulldozer came behind covering the trenches and behind that came a truck carrying white corpses which were being stuck in long rows. We could hear the heavy artillery at the front a few miles ahead. Using our shelter halves, (two G.I.’s would pitch a pup tent together, each G.I. having half a tent.) we pitched our tents in a replacement depot. We were strafed and bombed almost every night. After a couple days, we were issued more cartridges for our rifles and were given hand grenades. We were then piled in trucks for movement to the front.
I was assigned to the 3rd Armored Division, 23rd Combat Engineer Battalion, Company B, 2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad near the town of St. Lo. The first night with the 3rd, it was pouring down raining so we just laid in a muddy field in our bedrolls and tried to get some rest. The sky was lit up with burning buildings, tanks, trucks, ect. Before dawn, we got in our halftrack and pushed off toward the Germans. Periodically, we would pull off a road and our self propelled artillery, 105MM guns mounted on tanks treads, would zero in on German positions and fire volleys based upon grid maps of the terrain. After each bombardment, we would push off again, our halftrack following right behind one of our “Sherman” tanks. We would either attack down a road or through a field in an attempt to come from behind. We were constantly under small arms fire and the all-purpose German long barrel 88 MM artillery guns. The “88” was among the most devastating and frightening weapons the Germans used. The shell had a shrill whining sound as it came in, but if you heard it, you were alright. If you didn’t hear it, it was too late because the sound arrived after the shell. It had a muzzle velocity of 3900 feet per second and could pierce our tanks and armor without any trouble.
Our Sherman tanks had a short barrel 75 MM gun with a muzzle velocity of 3200 feet per second. Unless you hit the German tanks in the side or rear, you couldn’t knock them out with our “75”. Our tank destroyers had a long barrel 76 MM gun with souped up ammo, which did a better job. We used a lot of white phosphorus shells, which would set the tanks and vehicles on fire if you got a good hit on them.
As we moved forward, we would encircle the Germans, cut them off and let the troops coming behind us capture them and send them back to prisoner of war camps.
One day, we had pulled into an apple orchard in Normandy while our artillery was being set up to fire at the retreating Germans. I leaned my rifle against a tree and started urinating in a bush. A German came crawling out of the bush with my water all over him. He put his hands in the air in surrender. I quickly reached for my rifle and took him captive. He had a picture of his wife and children in his hand and kept saying, “meinefrau and meinekindern”- I guess he thought I would be more merciful. I sent him back to the rear with the rest of the prisoners. Every time we liberated a French village, the G.I.’s would look for cider. Normandy was full of apple orchards and the French made a kind of cider that was effervescent. It tasted like champagne. One of the fellows in our squad, Lucian Workman, from West Virginia, loved this cider. He would get too much of it and start hooting like an owl. We nicknamed him “hooter” and sometimes we had to help him back into the halftrack after he had found a barrel of the cider.
As we attacked the retreating Germans, they would pull of the parallel roads, trying to hide under the cover of trees, bushes, etc. We, or our close support fighter planes above could not see them. They wouldn’t fire unless fired upon. They were hoping to hide until dark and move on under the cover of darkness. In addition to their tanks, halftracks and mobile artillery, they had some horse drawn equipment, such as field artillery pieces. After each battle there were burning tanks, gas trucks, halftracks, troop-carrying trucks and dead horses lying around. When the firing stopped, the French civilians would come out of hiding and gather around the battle site. They picked up everything they could. They took clothes and shoes off the dead Germans and sliced meat off the dead horses.
It was really hot and dry in Normandy at this time and if the battlefront became stalemated for a few days, the stench became almost unbearable from the dead soldiers (in some instances, German snipers and field artillery observers were shot in their positions in trees, church steeples, ect.). Also dead horses and farm animals like cows and sheep would become bloated after a few days in the sun and blow up like a balloon.
Some Frenchmen were trying to bury a large bloated cow shortly after the shelling died down. One of the Frenchmen accidentally punctured the cow with his pitchfork – the spray shot out like a fire hose and soaked the Frenchman as everyone scattered, the stench was terrible.
At every little creek or stream, we had to put logs or something to get our tanks and equipment across because the Germans blew up the bridges as they retreated. On the larger streams, we had to use our steel Bailey bridges, or treadways, which were carried on the bridge by trucks coming behind us. On the wide rivers, we used pontoons to build a pontoon bridge. The bad feature of bridging was that under almost all cases, the “jerrys” would have them zeroed in with artillery and small arms fire, so we had a lot of casualties while building bridges. They would throw a barrage of rockets at us; these were “screaming meemies” as we called them. They made a noise sounding like women screaming as you could hear them coming in. It sent chills up your back. They were high explosive type shells with a lot of concussion and fine pieces of shrapnel. We lost quite a few men from those rockets.
We were on the southern tip of a pincers movement, with the British on the north. We moved through Marigny, Carantilly, and Mayenne. We fought as infantry north of Ranes. We finally joined up with the British at a railway station at Putanges and sealed the “Falaise Gap”, thereby surrounding thousands of Germans who were later captured by the infantry troops coming behind us.
The previous story was a small portion of Robert
Gravlin’s personal story. This story was given to me at the WWII reunion and
Mr. Gravlin gave permission for the Association to use his story. I have enjoyed
reading this and I plan to eventually put his entire story on the website for
all to enjoy. We want to encourage
veterans of all eras of the 3d Armored Division to submit their stories so that
they may be preserved for all to remember. You may e-mail them to me at couline@ptd.net
or mail them to PO Box 1499, Wake Forest, NC
27588. Steve
Depuy – Editor
Our First Reunion
We have tentative plans to hold our first reunion next August in Peoria Illinois. More details of this event will be forthcoming. We hope to see many of you there.
Membership Renewals
For many members, the end of your first year of membership is rapidly coming to end. In the coming weeks, we will be mailing out your membership renewal notices. We hope that all of our annual members will continue to support the association by renewing their membership. We would also like to encourage all veterans to find other 3AD veterans and bring them into the Association.
WWII Association Reunion
Three members of the board of directors traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana from August 30th to September 2nd to attend the 53d Annual Reunion of the 3d Armored Division Association. We had a great time meeting the WWII veterans of the famous “Spearhead” division and were overwhelmed by the hospitality and acceptance we were given. We wish to thank them for making us feel like family.
The following new members have joined since our last newsletter.
YEARS YEARS
NAME IN 3AD NAME IN 3AD
Hugh Sennett 1955-58 Kevin Colson 1985-89
Paul Huwiler 1955-57 Michael Spasyk 1989-92
Douglas Good 1958-60 Robert Powell 1962-64
Bradley Gericke 1989-92 Dale Johnson 1955-57
William Beasley 1955-59 Russell Rodgers 1977-79
Wolfgang Scherp 1955-60 Phil Perkins 1963-65
Myrlen Britt 1958-60 Donald Zarzana 1962-64
Richard Allen 1963-66 Richard Carlson 1967-69
George Kufahl 1941-45 John Ellis 1957-58
Clifford Strawser 1961-64 Alfred Peters 1941-45
Frank Moesle 1942-45 John Barclay 1941-45
Ralph Behrendt 1941-45 Laurence Rourke 1941-45
Robert T. Gravlin 1943-45 Joseph Ruddy 1941-45
Eunice Prince Associate Manual Baker 1941-45
Anthony Longo 1941-45 Malvin Gelof 1944-45
Thomas Billie 1941-42 George Edmondson 1943-45
Maurice Reaka 1941-45 Marcus Schumacher 1941-45
Matthew Hickey 1941-45 Albert Jenest 1944
Alfred Killelea 1945 Lyle Pfeifer 1941-45
Albert Camurati 1942-45 Hobart Luckritz 1941-45
Charles Jacobs 1941-45 Clarence Smoyer 1943-45
Donald Feeser 1943-45 Russell Patterson 1941-45
Ernest Gamble 1942-45 Fred Headrick 1941-45
Andrew Kistner 1941-45 Elmer Ekman 1941-45
Oda Miller 1944-45 Alfred Bell 1941-45
Salvatore Pasquale 1941-45 Benjamin Liff 1941-45
Russell Steele 1941-45 Travis Brown 1941-45
Rayfield Meyer 1941-45 Lawrence Maffia 1941-45
Carmen Miceli 1941-45 William Palmer 1941-45
Ken Armstrong 1941-45 Gerald Grace 1941-45
Lawrence Rickey 1941-45 Jack Brewer 1941-45
Harvey Smith 1942-45 Donald Willis 1941-45
Aurio Pierro 1942-45 Charles Roemer 1944-45
Joseph Femia 1941-45 Daryl Gordon 1967-70
Maynard Dilthey 1941-45 Fred Hyatt 1944-45
Jerome Brounstein 1960-62 Erwin Sadow 1941-45
Leroy Shepardson 1941-45 Harry Sanders 1942-44
Gilles Blais 1962-65 Thomas Brett 1942-45
Robert Rose 1960-61 Robert Thompson Associate
Robert Dixon 1990-92 Joseph T. Salwan 1943-45
Joseph H. Layton WWII James W. Vance 1944-45
Harold Fletcher WWII Paul R. Lewis 1941-1944
Bernard W. Stone 1944-45 Elmer L. Hovland 1943
James B. Carter 1941-45 Louis P. Decola 1942-45
Howard A. Tribble 1941-45 Dominick R. Arato 1944-45
Barnette W. Clow 1941-45 Walter J. Lautner 1942-45
Look for the next edition of “Call Me Spearhead” to be published in January. Anyone wishing to submit material for the newsletter may do so by emailing Steve Depuy at couline@ptd.net or sending by regular mail to PO BOX 1499, Wake Forest NC 27588. Anyone who would be interested in working on a staff to create and publish the newsletter should please contact Steve Depuy as well. All material published here is the intellectual property of the Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans or the individual author as noted.
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