Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
2:50 | A bad case of pneumonia put Freeman Barber out of commission during basic training and while he was recuperating, his armored unit shipped out. He joined another unit and they prepared to follow them to Europe. Years later, he discovered the grim truth of what happened to that first group of men.
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Freeman Barber grew up tramping through the snowy woods of upstate New York. This would serve him well in the war but first, he had to survive student tank drivers and KP at Fort Knox. Then there was the time he almost burned down the general's office.
After a rough Atlantic crossing, Freeman Barber's armored unit waited in England for deployment to the front. While there, he managed to visit a friend's home for Christmas and drive a tank past Stonehenge. Once underway in France, the record-breaking cold proved was a challenge.
He was a cannoneer on a Sherman tank crew, in charge of the ammunition and because he was an obstinate survivor, Freeman Barber was also the unofficial forager. Before his unit deployed, he had filled the tank with canned goods from the kitchen. This caused some commotion later.
The first night in France, the rest of the men were lucky to have Freeman Barber along because the Yankee Boy Scout made a lean-to with a tarp that kept them off the snow. The armored unit was shuffled around in support of different outfits, including the British under Montgomery. As they pushed into Germany, they learned to not ignore the haystacks.
The armored unit had to hold up for a while so Freeman Barber's crew dug a pit for protection from artillery and frigid temperatures. After nearly doing themselves in with candles, they crossed the Rhine on a pontoon bridge, which can be an adventure in a thirty ton Sherman tank.
The German 88mm gun was very effective against tanks. Freeman Barber recalls when his unit lost over thirty tanks like a row of ducks on the road. Also deadly were the shoulder fired Panzerfaust rockets fired from concealed spider holes. In one town, as he stood up in the hatch, he stared down a German 88 just as he heard the whoosh of a shell fired straight at him.
Some of the last combatants that Freeman Barber had to deal with were Hitler Youth who had scavenged Panzerfaust rockets and were firing them at American tanks. Young fanatics were far from the worst thing he saw in Germany. He struggles to describe the horror he encountered at Buchenwald.
As the German war effort waned, Freeman Barber's armored unit was sent to Czechoslovakia as a check on the Russians. There, he had a lovely respite from the combat and chaos he had just experienced, complete with girls and picnics and motorcycles.
