Oral history interview of Roy J. Reynolds

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Roy J. Reynolds
Creator:: Kyle, Glen
Reynolds, Roy J., 1919-2008
Date of Original:: 2003-07-31
Subject:: Depressions--1929--Georgia
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Landing craft--United States
Torpedoes--Bangalore torpedoes
Sherman tank
Pay, Asher Knight, 1917-1945
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1887-1944
Chiang, Kai-shek, 1887-1975
United States. Army. Tank Battalion, 746th
United States. Army. Airborne Division, 101st
United States. Army. Airborne Division, 82nd
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 83rd
United States. Army. Armored Division, 1st
Queen Elizabeth (ship)
Location:: Belgium, 50.75, 4.5
Czech Republic, Elbe River, 50.0319222, 15.1943499
France, Carentan, 49.29476595, -1.25231194060659
France, Cherbourg, 49.6425343, -1.6249565
France, Île-de-France, Paris, 48.85341, 2.3488
France, Le Havre, 49.4938, 0.10767
France, Montebourg, 49.4882989, -1.380821
France, Sainte-Mère-Eglise, 49.4117704, -1.32682478113355
Germany, Bamberg, 49.8916044, 10.8868478
Germany, Elbe River, 52.4344639, 11.6813919
Netherlands, Rhine River, 51.97198, 5.91545
Taiwan, 23.69781, 120.960515
United Kingdom, England, Torquay, 50.4652392, -3.5211361
United States, Alabama, Dale County, Fort Rucker, 31.34282, -85.71538
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Maryland, Anne Arundel County, Fort Meade, 39.10815, -76.74323
United States, Texas, Bell County, Killeen, Fort Hood, 31.13884585, -97.715048633985
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Roy Reynolds describes his experiences in a tank battalion in Europe during World War II. He enlisted in the Army in 1936, motivated by economic reasons. He participated in the landing at Utah Beach in support of assault troops and describes that experience vividly, including the tremendous Naval bombardment and witnessing the collection of the dead. He recalls surrounding a battalion of Germans, seeing American troops march through Paris and being welcomed by the French with flowers. After the war, he found employment with the railroad, but was not satisfied and joined the National Guard. He was sent to Korea and became an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek.
Roy Reynolds was in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II.
ROY J. REYNOLDS WWII Oral Histories Atlanta History Center [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: [tape noise]…Reynolds and he's gonna talk to us to day about his time in service. If you could, just for the record, could you please state your name and where you live? Reynolds: Roy J. Reynolds, 4720 Springdale Road, Austell, Georgia, 30106. Interviewer: Okay. And your birth date again please. Reynolds: Is September the eleventh, nineteen nineteen. Interviewer: Okay. We'll just get started. You told me that you enlisted in nineteen thirty-six. Reynolds: Yeah. Interviewer: Could you tell me why you decided to enlist at that time? Or what sort of motivations you had? Reynolds: Things were tough at that time and I decided to join the service to get some kind of employment. And so that was the main reason that…because I was home and I was…my father had been killed in an automobile wreck. So… Interviewer: What did the rest of your family think when you enlisted? Were they supportive? Reynolds: Yeah, they were really supportive. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Interviewer: What did you do from thirty-six to nineteen forty? What was your military specialty and where were you stationed? Things like that. Reynolds: I was at Fort George, [inaudible] Maryland and then World War Two started and I went to Camp Rucker, Alabama, and they formed the seven forty-six tank battalion. And we trained there and we went to Europe on the Queen Mary. And we trained in Europe also and we were with the assault troops on D-Day on Normandy. So we were practicing with the…just exactly what we would be facing when we got to Europe. And we were supposed to have…well we left Torquay and we were supposed to land on the fifth. But it was so rough that they decided that they would wait another day. Then on the sixth… Interviewer: What was your…what was going through your mind when they canceled the invasion for that day? Reynolds: Well, nothing. It was just another day. Another day of waiting to get off of that LST. So, we went across the channel and we were pulling a small boat…bandelors [phonetic] on them, I believe. The engineer…there was a lieutenant engineer with a couple of men and they were to blow up any obstacles on the beach so that we'd get our tanks in. So we turned the…but when we got there the Navy was bombarding the…everything with their guns and there was one particular ship that had rockets on it and it looked like there were just hundreds of them going off at one time. So we landed on the beach and you have to get off the beach. The beach is hot. People are dying, getting killed and so forth. So you have to get off the beach. So we got off the beach and they…we were fighting for St. Mere Eglise. We were supposed to relieve the paratroopers in St. Mere Eglise. The hundred and first and the eighty-second airborne division. We were fighting with, as supporting armor, for the fourth infantry division. Paratroopers with laying out…dropping…they were out of the trees, hanging out of the trees and everything else with their throats cut and everything else. And I asked this one paratrooper, I said, “What's this German soldier doing here?” He says, “Well I've shot him in the foot, so he can't run. He can't get away.” And then from St. Mere Eglise we were fighting for Moneyberg [phonetic] and they pulled us out of Moneyberg and shoved us into Cherbourg. We took Cherbourg and then…then they put us to their right in Kerintan [phonetic] with the eighty-third infantry division. And from there they had the breakthrough and we went into…we thought we were going into Paris, but they pulled us to the right and we went around Paris and they had some troops that had just come into from the States. They used them to parade in Paris. Let's see. We had lost so many people and tanks that I was the intelligence sergeant and they…I was put in as a tank commander and it seems like every night the Germans would surround the…the engineers were on the front line, plugging up the holes. And every morning we'd have to go with our tanks and go through the forest and relieve the engineers. Then we started through Belgium. We…we were fighting through Belgium and I had three tanks under my command and we were supporting the ninth recon outfit. We were way out in front of the division, like a sore thumb. And we ran into, at one time, we ran into about a battalion of Germans, who ran into some woods. We surrounded the woods with our tanks and armored cars and…so what the…they had with us. And we opened up the firing and just shot them as far as we could. I guess I shot a couple of boxes through the anti-aircraft gun and we stopped there and we went into the next town. They could hear us firing and they came…all came out, putting flowers all over the tanks and everything else. They were so glad to see us. And from there they sent me to C Company as the first sergeant. I stayed with C Company a couple of months, I guess, and then they transferred me to headquarters as a first sergeant of headquarters. We were the first separate tank unit across the Rhine River. Captain Asher K. Pay was killed on the Rhine River. [silence] And we went on up and…was on the Elbe River when we were waiting for the Russians to come down. And I went across the Elbe River and came back, because that was the territory that the Russians were supposed to occupy. Then after that they…they signed the armistice and so forth and they said that the ones with the highest points would be the first transferred back to the States. Well, my unit at that time had put over two hundred and seventy-seven days in combat and I was one of the first men to be sent back to the States. I rode a stretcher…from Battenberg, Germany, to Le Havre, France, [chuckles] and came back. I was discharged in New York. Interviewer: Hmm. Um, if it's all right, I'd like to go back and ask a couple of questions about what you've talked about so far. Go back to the very beginning. You were in service during Pearl Harbor. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing? Reynolds: Yeah. Yeah, I was in G Company, thirty-fourth in the regiment at Fort…at…Fort Mead, Maryland. Um-hmm. Interviewer: What did you and your fellow soldiers think about when you got the word? Reynolds: We knew that…that there was going to be a war and the captain, I forget his name now, but he cried. He knew how serious and the number of men that would die in a war. Interviewer: Before Pearl Harbor, did…were you all thinking with events the way they were in Europe that there was going to be a war, that you all would be involved in, that the United States would be involved in? Reynolds: A war in Europe? Interviewer: Yeah. Did you think that eventually the United States was going to have to get into it? Reynolds: No, we didn't at that time. Not until after Pearl Harbor. Yeah. Interviewer: While you were overseas, I know you went to England first to do some of the training. How much contact did you have with friends and family back home? I'm assuming it was just letters. Reynolds: That's all. That's all. Letters. Yeah. Interviewer: Were there a lot of letters? Reynolds: There was a few. Not too many. Yeah. Interviewer: The training that you received in Europe and in your time previous, starting in thirty-six, do you…do you feel that it prepared you for what came after the invasion? Do you think the training was good or did you have to learn most of it the hard way? Reynolds: The training was good, but you see…I was the intelligence sergeant and I wasn't in the tanks at that time. I was plotting on the maps and stuff like that as to the…what position we'd take and all that stuff. But I was prepared, like I say, they put me in as a tank commander and you learn right quick. Interviewer: When did they stick you in a tank? Was it before the invasion or after? Reynolds: It was after the invasion. Yeah. We'd lost so many men and tanks. We lost over forty medium tanks in combat. Interviewer: Just so I know, the tanks you're talking about, or they all Shermans? Reynolds: Yeah. Interviewer: All Shermans? Reynolds: Yeah. Well, some of them are light tanks, you know. With a seventy-five millimeter gun…we…we got…one company, A Company…right before the Rhine River, we got a company of seventy-six millimeter…tanks with seventy-six millimeter on it. They put…and they gave them all to A Company and they kept A Company in reserve. They didn't want to put them up on the line and lose them all. So they kept the…B Company and C Company with the seventy-five millimeter guns on the…and uh…the first time that I saw them I thought they were German tanks. [laughs] Interviewer: There's a…I know there's been a lot written about our tanks, the United States tanks versus the tanks the Germans had. Would you care to elaborate a little bit on…on your experiences relating to that? You know, just…soldier's view? Reynolds: Yeah. The seventy…the German tank could hit one of our tanks, it'd go in the front end and come out the back looking for another one. We had paint-remover tank guns. You hit the tank and it'd ricochet off. And you can imagine what was going through the minds of the tankers that had to use them. We said at that time, “If the Americans mothers knew [laughs] what we were fighting with they would storm Washington” [laughs]. Interviewer: How did you deal with that? Did you just overwhelm them with numbers? Reynolds: Superiority in numbers. That's the only reason that they beat the Germans is superiority in numbers. They were good fighters. They had the equipment. They were trained fighters. They would not give up. There at the right at Kerintan, we were fighting with the eighty-third infantry division and we were up against the sixth SS parachute outfit from Germany. And they would not surrender. You had to kill them. Interviewer: While we're on the topic of Germans, while you were in the war how did you feel about Germans? Were they just the enemy? Did you hate them? Did you…I mean, how did you feel towards them? Reynolds: I felt that any German that came out in front of us, if he was knee high on up, he was out there for one purpose and that's to hurt some doughboy or kill somebody. So if he's out there, we're gonna shoot ‘em. That's what I thought of them. Interviewer: Okay, good. About the D-Day landings. Could you tell me…in talking to some other veterans, it's amazing the breadth of emotion that can run through you. Can you tell me a little bit about what was going through your mind as the ships were approaching the shore? Reynolds: Well, I really didn't get engrossed in anything except just watching shells go off. We were in the boat and you just…you're not actually in the fighting. But when they let the ramps down on the boat and we got down, you could see the dead men lying down and then you knew that this was for keeps. This was not play. This was for keeps. They didn't pick anybody up for a few days after the war started. There was no grave registration people there. We moved in and then a few days later, they had picked up the dead. And these hedgerows are small. And I looked in one hedgerow and they had dead American soldiers lying like cord wood. They were six foot high and maybe fifty foot long and many, many of them like that. Interviewer: When…as you got further in from the beaches, did you find that life got easier or harder? Reynolds: You die a thousand deaths when you're in that situation that we were in. I ran into General Teddy Roosevelt and he says, “How are you getting along, son?” And I looked at him and I said, “Fine, General, fine.” I was scared to death. He died up there with the eighty-third infantry division. They were losing so many troops. I don't know if he died of a heart attack or if he died by shrapnel or something like that because he would go right up on the front with the troops. [Note: General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the oldest soldier and the only general who landed with the first wave of the D-Day invasion, died of cardiac arrest on July 11, 1944, and was buried in St. Mere Eglise three days later. Doug Wead, All the Presidents' Children.] Interviewer: As the war went on and you got closer and you said you got…were at Remaugen [phonetic] and you took your…with the battalion you went across everything, you got to the Elbe and the armistice was signed. How did you feel when you got the word that Germany had surrendered? Reynolds: Great. Great. Yeah. Well, we knew the war was over when we reached the Elbe River cause we had stopped there and there was nothing going on. We'd defeated the Germans and we were just waiting on the Russians to come down. We knew that the war was over. Interviewer: What did you think about the Russians at that time? Reynolds: We didn't think much of them. Interviewer: Why not, if I may ask? Reynolds: I really don't know. They…I don't know. They had a lot of battles that…but I have no idea. We didn't care too much for the Russians. Interviewer: Was there ever a time in Europe that your unit specifically or you yourself personally ever suffered from a lack of supplies? Reynolds: No. No. Interviewer: So you always had everything that you all needed. How about…we're talking about our different enemies and allies, did you ever have any interaction with the British? Reynolds: No. No. Uh-uh. Interviewer: Okay. When the war ended you were very elated, went back home. When you got home, did you find it difficult to re-integrate into society? Reynolds: Yes. Interviewer: Could you tell me a little bit about why and how and what kind of job you got afterwards, if you did get anything or something like that? Reynolds: I started to work for the railroad and I didn't care for that. So I re-enlisted in the Army and I was advisor for the National Guard. And during the Korean War, I received a direct appointment as a second lieutenant and then I was with the first armored division in Fort Hood, Texas, during the Korean War…I mean at the start of the Korean War. Then they sent me to Chiang Kai-shek as an advisor at the armored school from fifty-one to fifty-three. Then I came back to the States and was assigned to Fort Rucker, Alabama, and I was in a tank company. And the G-4 of the regiment…or the battalion…division called me and wanted me to come up and see him, so I did. And he wanted me to go down and look at the procurement office because they were losing their procurement officer and he wanted to sign me down as the procurement officer. So I came back and I told him, I says, “I still don't want it. I would not like to be a procurement officer.” So he called me up another day a little later and asked me to go down and take another look. So I did and he came back and I said, “Well, I still don't want it”. He said, “Well, you've got the job”. So I was the procurement officer at Fort Rucker, the Army aviation school, from fifty-three to fifty-six. Then I went to Europe and they found out I was in procurement so they signed me as the procurement officer at Stuttgart, Germany, and I stayed there until fifty-nine when I came back to the States. Interviewer: Did uh…during your time in China were you [inaudible] directly to Chiang Kai-shek or just his… Reynolds: I was…we were in Formosa. China…China had kicked Chiang Kai-shek out of China. And we were the first American troops sent back to Chiang Kai-shek since that happened. And that's about all I know about that, other than the fact that I was there from fifty-one to fifty-three. Interviewer: Why did you join the Army as opposed to any of the other branches of service? Reynolds: I really couldn't tell you cause there just happened to be a recruiter there, I guess, that was looking for warm bodies at that time. Interviewer: Let me ask you a little bit about again the years after the war. How often after you got home did you think about your time in the service in Europe? Reynolds: Every day. Interviewer: Good, bad? Reynolds: I couldn't talk about it for a long time. It didn't crack…cracks me up. Interviewer: Well, what made you generous enough to talk to us today? Reynolds: Well, I think that I'm getting over the things that I went through and so…because it was so…it was so hard on you mentally that…it's had to describe. Interviewer: The United States did pay an awful price in World War Two. In your opinion, was it worth it? Reynolds: Yes, it sure was. Yeah. Because Hitler was…he would have really…he was a tyrant. He was…and Stalin was no better. So I think that Hitler was…he was a madman. Interviewer: Did uh…why is it important that we remember today what your generation did during World War Two? Reynolds: Well, just to remember the sacrifices that were made, the individuals who were involved. That we still have a great country, one of the largest and greatest countries in the world, that the world has ever known. I don't know. It's…it's hard to describe just exactly how you do feel and what had come out of the sacrifice that the people have made in World War Two. [Tape 1, Side B] Interviewer: There's no doubt in my mind and I'm sure yours that's it important that we do remember this sort of thing. What do you think is the best was we can maintain the memory of those sacrifices? Reynolds: I guess by talking to people and recording it and re…maintaining the weapons and things that they had at that time. But…I don't think that we should forget the great sacrifices that those people have made and we should…at the holidays that are…you know, the holidays that they have for Armistice Days and stuff like… Interviewer: Memorial Day. Reynolds: Yeah. That…those are the days that they can remember the sacrifices that were made by the people that were in the different wars. Interviewer: What about you personally? For you personally, was it worth what you had to give up and did it make you a different person, a better person? Reynolds: Oh absolutely, yeah. I would hate to do it again, but if it came to it I would. I would defend this country in any war that was declared by the President of the United States. Interviewer: Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about or would like to mention? Reynolds: No. No. No, the glider planes that came in there in Normandy, I went up and looked at…inside a few of the gliders and the men had never even unbuckled their safety belts. The Germans had gone up one side and down the other with their burp [phonetic] guns and killed every one of them. That's…I guess that's about the extent of the…of it, really. It's hard to describe just what you went through. Interviewer: I can only imagine. I can only imagine. I have only one more question to ask. This is sort of another retrospective. With recent talk and controversies about this subject, dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. How did you feel about that at the time and has your opinion of it changed? Reynolds: I felt great. It shortened the war and saved a lot of men's lives and I felt great. Interviewer: Good. All right. Well, so unless you have anything to add, I think we'll wrap it up. Reynolds: Good. Interviewer: And I'd like to thank you very much for coming out. Reynolds: [chuckles] Okay. Interviewer: All right. [end of tape]
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/387
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 39:53
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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