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Veteran Interview: Following is an article written by James Cullen, a veteran of the 3rd Armored Division who served in the ETO during WWII. Mr. Cullen attended the club's 2003 Normandy event at Ft. Stevens with the NWHA's 3rd Armored. |
TRAVELS WITH ELEANOR
By: S/Sgt James K. Cullen
E Company, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment,
3rd Armored Division
I got to thinking about Eleanor the other night and about the many miles we traveled together - from Normandy, in France, to Germany. I left her in Belgium, but she went on all the way to the end of the war.So that you can tell other people about Eleanor and her history if they happen to ask, I've put down some of the things that I remember about our travels.I joined E Company in Normandy after going through the replacement system from Fort McClellan, Alabama, and came ashore at Omaha Beach. I was assigned to the 2nd Squad in the 1st Platoon, and met the squad in a small field near St. Lo, France. That was around July 27th or 28th, 1944 - I'm not sure exactly. It was a hot, dusty day, and my driver, Charlie Vories, told me that there was a jerry can of apple cider on the small rack on the rear of the half-track. Being very thirsty, I tilted the jerry can and half-filled my canteen cup with the cider, and threw some down my throat. Then I thought I'd been shot! It wasn't cider at all; it was Calvados - made from apples all right, but the hard way. It had to be 100+ proof!We didn't stay long with Eleanor that day because we were alerted to move out on foot. Our Combat Command B was attached to the 30th Division, and we went into the attack through fields and hedgerows. We didn't know i at the time, but we were in the Battle of Mortain. When we got out of that mess, our casualty list was high. Task Force Lovelady and the 36th lost a lot of good soldiers. However, to celebrate our own survival when we got back to the field where the company was assembled, we hit the Calvados. There was a lot of joking, and foolishness, and laughter. We were all damn happy to be alive and outof the line.
NWHA 3rd Armored
Putting up the camouflage net on E-12, I caught the net on the radio antenna spring. It whipped at my wrist and cracked the crystal on my watch, but it kept on running and I didn't even exchange it for any German watches we liberated.After Mortain, we rode Eleanor in the division column on the way to closing the Falaise Gap. She ran mile after mile with no trouble, but occasionally we'd leave her to ride on the back of the tanks when any German delaying-actions developed up ahead.After Falaise, the run across France was wild. We took town after town with only sporadic resistance. A major complaint was the heat, and dust, and exhaust fumes. Our eyes burned, but only the tankers were issued goggles. However, we picked up German goggles in the enemy tanks and half-tracks we shot up. They were folded up in little packets and even had shaded lenses.During that long run across France, Eleanor became decorated. In the towns and villages, the people would throw bunches of flowers which we hung on the.30 caliber machine-gun mounts. They also ran out when the column stopped and wrote the names of their towns on the sides of the track with chalk - names like Couptrain, Soissons, Mons, Liege, and Namur. We also added German prisoners at times, and they would sit on the front fenders where we could see them. Of course, we only did that when we couldn't send them to the rear - sometimes there was no "rear." We also decorated her with German helmets on the headlamps and fastened to the hood. Finally, we had to drape the orange identification panel at the back of the track to keep our own Air Corps from hitting us. Of course, we all thought they were color blind (or just didn't like the ground army). You might think of fixing Eleanor like that for your next parade.In one very small Belgian village we tried to make a turn in a narrow street, but knocked down a good part of a low stone wall to do it. Eleanor got a scratched right fender and bumper, but no real damage. Right after that she got her major decoration. We crossed the German border at Roetgen on September 12th, and then stopped for the night. The next morning we came to the first dragon's teeth of the Siegfried Line. One of our tasks was to provide .5o caliber and .30 caliber covering fire as the engineers blew some steel beams embedded in the road. Eleanor shook and vibrated as we fired into the wooded area where the kraut pillboxes were.Our C.O., Lt. Hall was shot this day. He always wore a leather Air Corps jacket and, unfortunately, it must have been a prime target for a sniper in the pillboxes. We got past the roadblock and approached the town of Rott. Something noisy was happening up ahead and we coiled into a field to the left of the road. When we stopped, I turned around in the ring mount and told the men to dismount. They started scrambling out the back door, and as they did, there was a loud, sharp CRACK and Pfc. Steve Serbin, who was still at the .30 on the left side of the track, fell over. I thought one of the squad had accidentally discharged his rifle. When I realized it wasn't an accident but that we were under fire, I bailed out over the ring mount.Two or three seconds after that, there was another loud "crack" and a tank shell went through the armor plate at the ring. It came in from the left, went under the ring mount, through the musette bags, and out the armor plate on the right side. A piece of Eleanor, I guess, or perhaps something else, hit me in the chest. Happily, it was an armor-piercing shell and not a high explosive one. So - Eleanor and I both got the Purple Heart on September 13, 1944.After I left the hospital, I rejoined E-12 in Germany near Eschweiler, Germany. The squad was billeted in a two-story house and we were very comfortable - sleeping in beds and eating hot food. Now that was a great way to fight a war!Eleanor was parked alongside the house and didn't move for days. We did "house-to-house" training because we expected plenty of it as me moved farther into Germany. The training was also good because we had lost many more men after I got hit. The Stolberg corridor was deadly to the whole company.The night of December 16, a great number of kraut airplanes came over and our anti-aircraft guns opened up on them. The squad was outside watching the action when we heard the clang of metal hitting Eleanor. It was AA shrapnel coming down. We all made a mad dash back into the house.On the 19th we were given a three-hour alert for the Ardennes. In a fast scramble, we were packed up, gassed up, and on our way south, ending up in Trois Ponts, Belgium. Our mission was to find the German columns and to engage them. Our Task Force Lovelady hit Peiper's supply groups and then set up a roadblock in Trois Ponts. The Germans then cut us off and isolated us. We were trapped there until Christmas Eve when the 30th Division broke through the German lines and relieved us.While in Trois Ponts, we asked for mortar support from the 82nd Airborne. They were on a hill to our rear, across the Ambleve River. They dropped a short round right on one of the 2nd Platoon's half-tracks that was parked near Eleanor. Their track was demolished; Eleanor caught a lot of debris.On Christmas Eve, we started the engines to get out of town, but all the tracks and wheels were frozen to the ground. Rocking and pushing finally got us moving. Once in column on the icy road, the fog came down from the hills and we slid into a ditch. We were trying to follow the cat-eyes on the track ahead - E-11 (nicknamed "Eightball"), and when she slid sideways, we were right there with her. Late that night we were pulled out of the ditch. By the time we caught up with Task Force Lovelady, we had been up all night. After first light I slept for a few hours on Eleanor's nice warm hood. That was Christmas Day. Our big celebration was K-rations for dinner, period. That afternoon the orders came to move out. We had to help the new 75th Division, who was moving into the line. Back up on the front again, our squad set up a roadblock at a curve in a narrow road. Eleanor was next to a farm building, and my squad was dug-in along a brush line. The first heavy snow fell the next day. That night five engineers came along the road carrying mines to put in place in front of us. The mines exploded for some reason and the five men simply disappeared. In the morning, I had to climb on top of Eleanor to remove many small pieces of the men from her winter cover.On New Year's Day, the Combat Command was in a new assembly area. I was standing in Eleanor's ring mount with a pair of German binoculars watching fighters and bombers in a dogfight right over my head. It was a clear, cold day. Then something flashed across my lenses and I said "What the hell is that?" I realized it was a fast-moving airplane - very fast. I had just seen my first jet, but didn't know it.On January 3, 1945 we left Eleanor to go on foot in the big attack to push the Germans out of Belgium. The snow was deep by that time - maybe 14-15 inches, and we still had our regular GI uniforms, no special winter gear, and no white coveralls like the krauts had.During the middle of the Bulge, we came out of the line and E-12 came up to us. We had a short rest, got new socks, long overcoats, and the big twelve buckle overshoes - then back into the fight. That was the last time I saw Eleanor. I know she went on to the end of the war and wound up no one knows where.E-12 was a good vehicle. She was made by White and gave us a great ride when we were with her. She was infinitely more comfortable than the back deck of a Sherman M4 tank. And it sure beat walking. Her armor wasn't that much, but when we were in her it was all we had, and it felt good.I went to the ETO in the USCG Wakefield, a large fast transport that carried many thousands of troops across the Atlantic. I tracked the Wakefield on her last journeys and found that she ended up in India and then was scrapped. Eleanor took our troops from England to France to Belgium then to Germany, and I have often wondered where she finished her travels. Maybe, as war surplus, she continued to fight on in Israel, or Russia, Africa, or South America. Wherever, I'm sure she carried on, just as reliable as she was with the 3rd Armored Division.
