Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:08 | It wasn't easy at the Siegfried Line, says Jack Myers. There were tough pillboxes and bunkers, but he was a gunner on a tank destroyer and he could put a three inch shell right through the gun portals. The Germans had much better tanks, but the American armor was endless, a massive force that could not be stopped. Especially once they got the new 90 mm gun. Mr. Meyers also describes a Christmas Eve incident that shows the human side of war.
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He almost enlisted after Pearl Harbor, but he waited for the draft to make sure no one stole his girlfriend. After taking care of that, he became a gunner in a tank destroyer battalion. He trained on three inch guns that were both towed and self-propelled and he was a little annoyed with the discipline, but it paid off later.
It was a huge convoy to England and almost everyone on the troop ship was seasick. Jack Myers did not get sick but he had gone up on deck as the ship sailed from New York harbor in the middle of the night and that made him a little apprehensive. His first big battle was at Antwerp, where he had to intervene when his squad leader went a little crazy.
They were pinned down by German artillery when the platoon leader told Jack Myers to put a shell into a church steeple where he thought a spotter might be. It worked and they moved on. It was the kind of thing he did all the time but it had resonance after the war.
It was a pre-dawn mission and Jack Myers was a little nervous about going out ahead of the lines in the big tank destroyer, but that went OK. It was when they got back that things got scary. Soon after that, they were redeployed by rail through Southern France and into Southern Germany where they picked up a little fresh pork.
The war in Europe was over and Jack Myers returned to England, where he had an amazing chance encounter. After his voyage home, he used the GI Bill to great effect, learning a trade which supported him for over fifty years. He has some words for those who criticize Harry Truman for using the atomic bomb.
