Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 17

We were still in hedgerow country and began to have snipers firing at us as we crossed country.  This problem was short lived – as soon as we located the sniper, we would aim our 90-millimeter and with one shot, no sniper – no tree top!  This seemed to be a cruel way to treat people, but we had learned the hard way: “kill or be killed.”

It was about this time we were entering what we called Normandy country. We would later learn that we were advancing through five major campaigns of the war but all we knew at this time was battle after battle.  We (the men of the 1st Army, 3rd Armored Division, 32nd Regiment, Company I) fought night and day.  Our motto was “Victory or Death.”  We slept when there was a let up in the fighting on the front lines.

Most all of our battles were very, very hard ones to win.  We would be pushed back and have to fight our way up again.  After we began to liberate the French people, they were very friendly and were a lot of help locating the enemy troops.  The French were having a rough time getting food and supplies.  The Germans used horses to pull their antiaircraft and artillery guns and just as soon as a horse got shot and killed, the French would butcher it for meat to feed their families.

There can be no words to express our love for our medics.  They were on the front lines taking care of the wounded and less fortunate ones.  They were not allowed to carry any kind of weapons, but Germans would take the advantage, and break the rules of war.

There seemed to be no particular front near Falaise Gap but the fighting became much more fierce.  We would gain ground, only to be pushed back and have to retake it.  It was about this time, we were getting ready to attack and my First Sergeant called me out of my tank to come into the office.  He told me that my Dad had passed away, and that I could not go out with this attack.  That night my tank was hit and demolished and most of the crew were killed.  In a way, my life was saved by the death of my father.

Again, I was out of a tank – the fourth one lost.  Sometimes we would get a good replacement, but not very often.  The thing that was so bad was that I had lost all my crew out of my command tank except for my driver, Prasek, who was one of the finest soldiers I ever met.  He made sure that the tanks were serviced each time we had a break.  He made my job as platoon commander much easier.