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Call Me SPEARHEAD

The Official Publication of the Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans

January 13, 2000                                                                                        Volume 00, Issue 1

Welcome to our first quarterly newsletter to be published in hard copy.  It has been long overdue, but we finally got it out and you can now expect to see this newsletter every three months.

Can you guess what the significance of this day is?  Today is the 59^th anniversary of the SPEARHEAD Division, along with a number of its subordinate units, being constituted in the Regular Army.   While this is not often remembered, this 1^st newsletter is to commemorate all of those members who gave their lives in the line of duty.  Other newsletters will be published on significant dates in SPEARHEAD history so stay tuned for more to come.

  Our membership is continuing to grow little by little.  We currently have had 134 members join since we started back in July.  I want to express my sincere appreciation to each of you for preserving the history of this great division. I would also like to ask that if you know of any veterans who have not joined that you offer a personal invitation to join. 

  For future editions, we would like to create a section for announcements.  These may include promotions, weddings, births, and any other significant events, which have taken place in your life or the lives of other SPEARHEAD veterans you might know.  Please let us know what they are so we can share in your joy and in your grief. 

  In the next edition, we will be asking questions about information that we have been unable to obtain.  If you know the answer or have a question you’ve been unable to find, please forward them to Mike Williard PO BOX 1499, Wake Forest, NC 27588-1499 or email to mwilliard@mindspring.com.  If at all possible, the answer will be in the following newsletter.

  In each newsletter we will also publish the SPEARHEAD memories of one or more veterans.  If anyone would like to have a story published in our next newsletter, please submit it to Mike Williard at the address above by April 1st.  We could also use ideas for recurring sections in the newsletter as well as topic areas that members would like to see information on. These may also be forwarded to the address above.

  Finally let me close this introduction in remembrance of our comrades who did come home from their tour of duty in the US Army. 

3AD Units still in the active force structure.

Many veterans often inquire about where their unit is now.  To help you understand what has happened to our units, the table below shows the familiar and not so familiar designations of 3AD units that still serve. 

The Army periodically redesignates units in order to preserve the history of famous regiments that might otherwise be lost.  This has happened numerous times since the Army began downsizing in the late 1980’s.  This is why many of our old units are not where they were when we left them. 

Other 3AD are right where you left them but are now serving under a different designation.  1-32 Armor (“Bandits”) and 3-32 Armor (“Iron Dukes”) had been stationed at Ray Barracks in Germany. These two battalions have never truly inactivated.  Both battalions have had their designations changed twice but the units are really old SPEARHEAD units with new names to maintain regimental ties associated with the 1^st Armored Division, which now controls them.

  While the SPEARHEAD is gone for now and with it many of the individual units we served in, it does live on in each our memories.  As long as we remember, the units will continue to live on in history.  Too many brave men and women have died to let the memory die.  Keep the flame burning by continuing to support your association.  Please refer us to fellow veterans that we may grow stronger.

A Veteran’s Memories

Submitted by Ray Reeder
Recon Company, 33d Armor 1942-1944

  About Early Training:

I submitted this the Newsletter section thinking that you younger vets of the smart bombs, scud missiles, heat seeking missiles, electronic gun sights and other technical wonders might be interested in what the Third Armored was like early in 1942 when I became a part of Recon Company. I joined the company one morning, was issued a web belt, a canteen, a blanket and a shelter half and was told that swampland maneuvers were to start soon after chow. I was asked if I wanted to be gunner on a cannon or a machinegun. I chose a machinegun and was immediately assigned to the back seat of a peep with a "T" shaped two by four designated as a 50-caliber machine gun.

     If I had answered a cannon, I would have held down a seat beside a small log tied to a peep, simulating a cannon on a medium tank. Those are examples of how ill equipped the Division was at that time. Our small arms and machine guns were so scarce that those we had were mainly used for nomenclature, assembly and disassemble study. So I went on maneuvers holding on to a two by four in the backseat of a peep and trying to convince myself it was a 50-caliber gun. Life has a funny way of working things out. That was my first assignment and I went through several others only to end up on a 50 caliber, ring mounted, on an M8 armored car.

     Now these maneuvers were really training on how to use a shovel to dig a vehicle out of the semi-swamplands of Louisiana, how to avoid the snakes and insects, how to keep from being eaten alive by those Louisiana vampire mosquitoes and how to make sense out of the reason for being out there. The master plan or should I call it the "Bastard Plan" called for us to go from the muggy swampland to the bone-dry sometimes 120 degree heat of the Mojave desert. So a few weeks later after receiving quite a lot of new equipment, the Division went to desert maneuvers. 

      That is another story that I would like to tell you because I had a ball out there, but I will be lucky if this is found to be worth printing in the newsletter. It is 50 some years too late to be news.

On experiences in Normandy:

Fellow Members: 

       I have used the Membership list/server twice to praise the book "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper and if the newsletter will print this I would like to explain why.

Our Division was in place as part of the forces, which were poised to start the offensive, which resulted in the Saint Lo breakthrough. We had moved into an area and were waiting for something when one morning a slow rumbling sound started building up until it reached the point of being a tremendous rumble that seemed that one could feel as well as hear. The sky overhead seemed to be filled as far as the eye could see with big bomber planes headed south towards the enemy lines. We watched this for several hours and could hear the distant sounds made by their bombs. I will always believe the St.Lo was possible because the magnitude effect of that bombing scared the hell out of those enemy troops near enough to see that much armament in the air. We moved out into what I believe was one of the first "Spearheads" of the Division. I know that it was my first part of a spearhead operation. We, my platoon, were put on point as we moved down the country roads of France. It was sided on both sides by the hedgerow type of fencing, but the fields inland seemed larger and the head rows were not as dense as those closer to the coast. The platoon was moving as a column and as we moved Thunderbolt fighter planes worked over our heads at such close range that the metallic links of their ammo belts fell on the roadway and sometimes bounced off of the vehicles. May God bless those guys; they saved many of us from dying. As we moved, we would see knocked out tanks, artillery gun emplacements, vehicles and troops, all of which could have played hell with our light armor. As we moved on, the most bizarre sight one can imagine was passed. It was a German soldier sitting stiffly erect in the driver's seat of a small German scout car in the middle of the road. Both of his hands gripped the steering wheel and he would have been looking directly ahead but his ears and his lower jaw were all that remained of his head. That is a sight that will never leave my memory, excuse me for laying it on you,

       We moved only a little ways until we came to a "T" road coming in from the right, My M8 armored car was not on the point but close to it. I was ordered to turn left into a break in the hedgerow where the road came in from the right. When we turned into the field, there was a barn behind a low stone fence about 500 feet away at the opposite end of the field. There were German soldiers moving around behind the stone fence. I was in the turret of the car on the ring mounted 50 caliber. I alerted the gunner and started firing at movement I could see behind the fence and at the barn. If our fire was returned, I cannot remember. What I do remember was a loud "clang" and a flash of red fire. My next memory is of being on the ground and of someone asking if I was all right. I was told that two of my crew was dead, but my gunner was OK. I wasn’t bleeding anywhere but I was turned over to medics and sent to the rear. The medics gave me some capsules, which were called "blue 88's" because of their color and the fact that they knocked the hell of you. When I came to, the army had broken through and was moving so fast that I was sent to a replacement depot. There is where I feel that I "chickened out". I was told I could rejoin my unit or go to wherever unit I was sent. I decided to take my chances with whatever unit the replacement depot sent me. Too many of my buddies had already been killed or wounded as part of Recon. Co. I figured I couldn't lose even if the infantry got me.

      I lucked out. The armies were moving so fast that combat MPs were needed so a battalion was formed and I became an MP. Until Mr. Cooper's book came out telling how badly outclassed we were in the armor field, I had felt like I let my buddies down by not asking to rejoin them. Now I feel much less like I chickened out. I feel like I lucked out. Hope I haven't bored you.

On being a veteran: 

Fellows, this was triggered by reading pages 4 and 5 of "Crusade", The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. I was born shortly after World War I, served in WW II and have been lucky to live to be old enough to observe Americans in four major wars, the Korean, the Vietnam, the Cold War and the Persian Gulf War.  During all those wars I watched supposedly patriotic Americans waving flags and saying...Go! Go! Go! While men were fighting and dying, and then when the fighting was done, they literally turned their backs on returning servicemen, saying Go to hell, we do not need you anymore. That attitude of the American public is well told on pages 4 and 5 of Crusade. The book also reveals that although that war only lasted 42 days, 42 seconds of combat is enough for you to be killed or experience a bit of hell.   Forty-two days of it was a long stretch of hell. If you haven't read that book, do so. Whatever your service was, you will feel proud you are a veteran. All overseas service deserves credit for those who pulled it.  Anyone who thinks the Cold War vet doesn't deserve credit for sitting on that powder keg for months in those unsettled times is a self-centered idiot who sat at home drinking beer while watching a ball game.

      Now there were many truly patriotic Americans, but they were in a minority. Ask vets from any war. I truly admire the combat veterans of Vietnam. They fought in the roughest of the wars and were the most ill treated of all. Bless them, they stuck together and finally got a little of the recognition they deserved. What I am trying to say with all this is: Be proud to be a veteran and use this website and the Association to remind the American public that service in the military forces is a sacrifice you and other men have made since the country came into being.