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Below Excerpts from Veterans Memorial Book
OUR TIME, OUR SERVICE
by
George Reiswig
Chip Bertino
Jerry Harlowe
Stories of the Veterans Honored at the
Worcester County Veteran Memoral
Ocean Pines, Maryland
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Clif Streat |
The first sign of trouble on his guard duty was the sound of German rockets. “They sounded like motorboats in the sky.” There had been a German attack the day before but the Americans had managed to repel the attack. However, on the second day they were overwhelmed. German artillery was firing air burst anti-personnel rounds non-stop. He recalls walking over the still hot shrapnel and thinking “My God, how am I going to survive this?” They began to retreat but were quickly surrounded with no food or supplies. The air was filled with tracer bullets. Jeeps and trucks were being blown up. They had run squarely into German General Karl Von Rundstedt’s armored divisions. He was known as "a high priest of strategy”. At the time of the Allied D-Day invasions in June 1944, Von Rundstedt was German supreme commander in Western Europe.
It was American M-1 rifles against German Tiger Tanks. The German Tiger and especially the later King Tiger tanks were awesome weapons. The German King Tiger Tank was the most powerful tank in use during WWII. It had a powerful 88mm gun and an almost impenetrable front armor. For the allied forces, the sight of a King Tiger on the battlefield was terrifying. Clif and his fellow GI’s were now face-to-face with them.
Anticipating capture, they opened the throttles on their trucks and sent them off into the forest to prevent their capture and use by the Germans. He observed a jeep travel up a steep hill unaware that there was a Tiger Tank waiting at the top. It scored a direct hit on the jeep and “the wheels flew 40 feet into the air”. They were surrounded. Their Captain waved a white handkerchief and ordered them to ……..
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Wally Starck | It was a very successful mission in that he downed three German Me 109 fighters. However, the tail section of the third German airplane came off and the debris struck his airplane. “The P-51 Mustang had an excellent gun-sight but I was awfully close and slightly underneath the target. I clicked off a few rounds but somehow miscalculated and my gunfire hit his tail section.” The engine oil and coolant lines of his aircraft were damaged. He turned his plane towards England and radioed his “boss man” (J. C. Meyer) and told him that his aircraft was damaged and he was returning to base. He dropped down to lower altitude and slowed the airplane in an effort to keep the engine cool. The engine was overheating and the oil pressure was low. He managed to keep the airplane flying for about 20 minutes until smoke and flames began shooting up around the outside of the cockpit. “It was time to go. I knew that I was at the north end of the Ruhr industrial area but didn’t know exactly where.”
“I blew the canopy off. I was afraid that I would hit my knees on the edge of the canopy or hit the tail section of my plane when I jumped. I unhooked my belt, radio and oxygen lines. I stood up, crouching on the seat, and set the trim to put the plane into a dive away from me when I let go of the stick. I rolled the aircraft on its back and the next thing I knew I was out in nothingness.” He has the presence of mind to delay opening his parachute so as not to be “floating around in the sky” presenting a target to either ground fire or German aircraft in the area. He opened his parachute, thinking that he was at about 6,000 feet altitude. “I felt a jerk.” One of the riser buckles struck him in the chin and stunned him. “I felt a second jerk a moment later, came to, and when I looked around I saw that ……
For further details, email Sherri Lassahn at: Sherri@opvets.com
 
Article #: 2443
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