100 Year Old Army Veteran Describes the Largest Japanese Banzai Charge Ever! (Battle of Saipan)

we went to saipan their saipan was one heck of a rough place we would say on saipan a long time the day we moved up got off the ship and got on there at that time i was in a tank company i switched uh from a coming to entertain company while i was in highway any anyway i was in anna tank company and when we started moving up somebody said well this is june 26. i said what do you know i had a birthday three days ago and we moved up and they were company commander told us all to hunker down said he's going to take his platoon officers for reconnaissance he took his four or five officers up front and one guy raised his head up to four and he was shot right in the head and killed he was the best lieutenant out of the bunch the best he was from georgia he was a football player really a nice guy and captain ruffle i remember his name he come back and the body of the lieutenant was laying on the stretcher and captain roper went over and sit on the bank of a ditch and hung his head sitting there alone by himself i walked up i walked over there and talked to captain rupal tried to console him and he told me said i'm very sorry because that lieutenant stuck his head up too high and a jab killed him but that's what happened to captain drupal after that i don't know he stayed with the company but he was very sorry he took the lieutenant player for reconnaissance we moved up after that we moved up to the front line and we stayed there 15 days without a bath and after we were relieved we went back behind the line and they had another suit of clothes for us and we were washed up the best we could you had to pour water in your helmet and wash up the best you could and shape and then went back on the line and that i said believe in july sometime in july anyway we went on the front line about five o'clock in the evening and they put a shoulder to shoulder and there's we fought all night long i fired a 37 millimeter and a tank gun all night long fired up all my all our ammunition that we had and i called for more ammunition they said it's all over and by that time it was getting daylight out in front of my gun position there were jabs and they had dug a little trench up trying to get up to us but one sergeant told me said fire that you're down is lower your gun barrel as low as you can and fire that antler personnel and i did and the next morning was ted chapters i didn't count them i i don't believe in it going around and bragging about how many i killed a lot of people say oh i killed so many well i didn't do that i don't believe it those japanese soldiers in front of your position how far were they would you say from your actual anti-tank gun maybe 10 15 feet just not too forward i'd say about 10 feet so right in front yeah they were right in front but when i when that sergeant said lower your barrel down as low as you can get it and fire and i personally it's like a shotgun shell and then when it fired it it they just spread out a little pellets spread out you got up the you got out the next morning when everything calmed down you got out there and walked around and looked and see what happened you saw what you see a bunch of japanese dead and some over on another part of the island near the ocean they ripped apart somebody had fired i guess machine gun and they ripped them apart there's one little boy in our outfit was put on a machine gun and he fired all night long just like i did with the hannah tank gun we fired all night long rifles machine guns and a tank gun we had to because there was 6 000 japs holed up in one corner of the island and we didn't i didn't see anybody get hurt get wounded or anything americans you didn't see any americans getting no i don't know of any that did that that night that was in july uh after i saw lower we left there and went back and got washed up and cleaned up and got ready for another trip can you talk to us about your memories of okinawa before we go back through the whole thing oh we our outfit landed d-day plus 10 that's 10 you know 10 uh days after the initial battle and we went up and i was on the front line for a while but i never i didn't get to nah nah i was a big city and well we did mostly protecting the headquarters with our 37 millimeter in the tank and we was deployed different places i was stayed there and one night the jab shall shelled us pretty heavy i was laying in the box hole i had dug and a piece of shrapnel this long as big as your finger landed just a short distance from my head i picked it up it was still hot too hot i laid it back down and after that the battle was over and we got to come home you

Channel: Legends of WWII (apart of Remember WWII)

Views: 330,148

Rating: 4.9470973 out of 5

Keywords: world war II, veterans, world war II veterans, world war 2, combat veterans, heroes of world war, heroes of war, soldiers, marines, navy, airforce, combat, army, interviews, WWII, fighting the germans, fighting the japanese, Allied forces, Allies

Id: yJNmvJjzKa4

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021