John Broadhurst

I tried to start my military career, while in High School, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. I left school and went with a friend to join the Navy, at seventeen years old. He was accepted and I was rejected because of flat feet and a heart murmur.

First of all, let me say that everything I tell you in this biography is true, as I remember it as it happened.

Two years later I was drafted into the Army at nineteen years old and accepted. I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, in March 1943, for tank training in preparation for D-Day. We had four months as a tank crewmember and after basic training, we stayed on at Ft. Knox for additional tank warfare training.

You might say my first close call with disaster came when we rolled a tank onto its side while going down a hill at the wrong angle. There were no injuries, thank God.

After nine months of training for D-Day, which we now know was for the French Coast on the sixth of June 1944, we were alerted to proceed to England for more training in preparation for D-Day. We were moved by rail to a New York harbor and boarded a ship on New Years Eve 1943 and we sailed from New York on New Years day, 1944, arriving in England four or five days later. We had to zigzag across the ocean because of a German submarine, so we were told. After arriving in England, we were sent to different towns for different kinds of tank training. We were told for the first time that we would have an amphibious tank, unheard of up until now. We were actually dropped off the ship a half to three quarters of a mile from shore in a tank, and had to float to shore like a boat. A thirty-two ton medium tank was not made to float. Someone had a brilliant idea to put a canvas all around the tank just above the tracks. The canvas was raised by air bottles and held in place with struts that could be locked in place to keep the canvas up. Then a propeller attached to the tank motor and alas, we have a boat.

We were sent to different towns for training. We had six months to get ready. We had artillery ranges. We had coastal towns for amphibious training. Some of the towns were Bath, Frome, Pembroke, Winchester, Andover, Yarmouth, and probably other towns that I have forgotten.

For people who know little about tanks, here are a few facts. A medium tank has five crewmembers; a driver, assistant driver, tank commander, a gunner and a loader. Each crewmember must be able to perform the other crewmember's job in case he was needed.

On D-Day, we had a 75mm cannon on each tank, plus two .30 caliber machine guns, and a .50 caliber gun mounted on the top of the tank. We could not use any of our firepower while the canvas was up.

We were a tank battalion, which were attached to the 4th Infantry Division. If I remember correctly, a battalion has six companies, four companies of tanks, one service company and one headquarters company. A company has four platoons, each platoon has five tanks for a total of twenty tanks per company, or eighty tanks per battalion.

On D-Day, we were finally delivered to the coast of France by LCTs. (Landing craft tank.) An LCT would carry five tanks. We were dropped off the LCT about three or four hundred yards from land, because of the rough seas. We had our canvas up and we floated under our own power just like a boat. Absolutely unheard of that a thirty-two ton tank could float and move under its own power. The Germans thought they were facing a small boatload of soldiers, until we dropped the canvas and they were facing a tank.

On D-Day, sixth of June 1944, the code name for the invasion was 'Overlord' and the code name for a tank was 'Dog tag'. We landed on the beach at 6:29, 1st wave on our beach. We spearheaded the invasion.

Now lets talk about D-Day!!!

After the war was over for me, I never wanted to talk about the war, I just wanted to forget, but now that I am getting old and I realize how close I came to disaster on four different occasions, I want to tell everyone. On two different occasions I really put my life on the line and I feel above and beyond the line of duty.

I realize our life is on the line every day in combat, but sometimes you're asked to do a little more than anyone else and I feel that on two occasions I should have received an award, but it never happened.

Let me explain the first occasion. On D-Day morning, we got close to the French coast, Normandy, Utah beach, by LCT, which holds five tanks (a platoon). I was in the lead tank, the platoon leaders tank. We put our canvas up and prepared to leave the ships. Finally, we left the ship and floated like a boat. Two of the struts that help keep the canvas up were not locked in place, so the tank commander told me and one other crewman to get out of the tank, put our backs against the strut and our feet against the turret of the tank to kind of help keep the strut locked in place. It worked, and as soon as our tracks were on land and we dropped the canvas, we were back in the tank, at least safe from small arms fire. I do believe the Germans were shocked by what they thought was a small landing craft turned out to be a tank. This was a great asset to establishing our beachhead.

Now let me explain the second occasion. As we left the beachhead and moved towards the small towns, we arrived at St. Marice Eglese, and proceeded through the town. The Paratroopers had already been in town before us. As we started to leave the town, we turned a corner and found some German soldiers coming towards us. As they saw us coming, they turned into a field and hid in the hedgerows. We followed them into the field and after firing a few shots into the ground, the German soldiers stood up to surrender. Our tank commander said "Broadhurst, get out and take these prisoners to the rear to the infantry or to the military police." I can understand why he picked me. At the time I was the assistant driver and I could be spared more than the other crewmen. So I got out of the tank with my .45 caliber sub-machine gun and started up the road with my six prisoners. We walked up the middle of the road waving white flags in hopes we wouldn't get shot by my own tanks still coming down the road. As we were walking up the road, I could see more German soldiers lying in the ditches. I fired shots into the ground and soon I had ten or twelve prisoners marching up the road in front of me. Lucky for me, there were more of my tanks in the area. That was my protection. After leaving the prisoners with some of our infantry, I headed back to my outfit, which had pulled in for the night.

The third most exciting situation happened as we were entering the city of Cherbourg. I think it was around the twentieth or twenty-first of June, we were hit by an enemy shell toward the right side of our tank knocking the track off and injuring some infantry of ours that was walking beside our tank. We, the tank crew, had no injuries and we still had our firepower, we just couldn't move until the service company crew came up and fixed the track. It was a situation that we, the crewmen, could not fix. You have to have the right tools to take the track off and put a new link in it and then put the track back on. Once again, the Good Lord was on our side. A foot higher and the shell could have hit the motor or the gas tank causing an explosion, so we were lucky.

Cherbourg was a very important city for the success of our mission. It was a coastal city and it was crucial to our bringing in more supplies and troops. After securing Cherbourg we started on our long journey towards Paris. For the most part, our journey towards Paris was what we called a road march, not too much opposition. Although for me, it was another life threatening situation.

One morning, our dozer tank, a tank with a blade like a snowplow, had made a holethrough the hedgerow, so we tanks go through. We proceeded through the hedgerow after the dozer tank. I was in the turret this day acting as tank commander. I spotted some German soldiers clearing some brush from their position, and then they started firing at us. Suddenly, I saw a blue lash of light to my right near the top of the turret. As I looked closer, I could see the paint was cracked and the nose of a bullet could be seen looking straight at me. We figure it must have been about a 40mm ack ack gun, mostly used for aircraft. The German soldiers had fired a few shots and then took off. We couldn't find them.

After those four life-threatening moments, I have described my remaining days as a tanker and they were not too exciting. We lost another track by a mine during the battle of the bulge, no injuries.

I was involved in five different campaigns since D-Day, including Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe. We received the Presidential Unit Citation for D-Day and a bronze arrowhead for spearheading the attack.

The 'Battle of the Bulge', otherwise known as 'The Ardennes', was one of the fiercest battles of the war.

When it came time to rotate back to the states, it was determined by the point system. Naturally, the troops that came over first had the most points so were sent home first. I do believe I had around eighty points when I returned to the states and discharged. The points were determined by one point for each month of service, an additional point for each month overseas, five points for each campaign and five points for each award and citation. I was discharged from the Army after thirty-one months of service. I was glad to be back home. I never thought I would be back in the Military service in less than a year. In fact, I never wanted to talk about the war or Military Service.

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