Tank Gunner in WWII: T/5 Clement Elissondo

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Technician 5th Grade Clement Elissondo. Elissondo served in World War II as a tank gunner, and deployed to France just days after the Invasion of Normandy. In this interview, Elissondo describes the difficulties of tank warfare, narrowly escaping enemy capture, and the camaraderie amongst a tank’s crew.

T/5 Clement Elissondo:

After landing, which was five or six days after the initial invasion I can remember going down the gang plank, and I was in the gunner seat, and to the right of the gang plank, about 15 feet ahead, and to the right was the back end of a Sherman tank sticking out of the water about three feet. And I said, on the radio to my, who was standing behind me, I said, “Tell Henry to watch that we don't get into a hole,” because evidently, that was a bomb crater, and these guys had gotten into it, and they were probably still in there because the hatches and everything were all closed, and you can't open those up without water around.

Anyway, seeing that sort of make me realize initially that, whoa, this is another world and what I expected, I had no idea. I was in a new world that- I wasn't scared because I didn't know what to be scared about. Sure, war. But, so that was about it for as far as I didn't really expect anything. I was playing it day by day, I guess.

I never doubted that the tank was okay, but I found out soon that the German tank was better. I didn't really dwell on it. It was just a matter of who got the first shot, I guess, and where you hit him. And we were probably without the velocity in our shell, we were limited more on where we hit the German, that I knew from pretty early on.

And the other thing is, at this stage of the game, at the beginning, I didn't have enough background to analyze anything.

It's like you're driving a car at first in the tank. And once you know automatically your training, you know where to put your hands to do a given job automatically and don't have to think about it. If you have to think about it, you're in trouble.

So, you automatically work, and you don't really give anything too much. You know your job. And when you're given a fire order, for instance you do it. And when the guy says fire, it will, you're on your own.

And so, you make corrections until you make a mistake, and the tank commander helps you. But it's things happen so fast. As I said, you're trained to the point where you do what you have to, and if you come on the short end, then it's luck if you do the right thing. And I had more luck than skill.

You need four men to function a hundred percent. If you don't have four men, the shortages may get you in trouble, but if you've got four men doing each one, you depend totally on each other and you don't even worry about it, because if you functioned at training, you expect to function at war.

The first crew I went with, we were together so long that you never even gave it a thought that the other guy wasn't going to do his job. And later it gets tough because I remember once getting a replacement. It was dark and the first sergeant asked me, “Do you need anybody?” I said, “Yeah, one.” And he later dropped this guy off. And I asked the guy his name and got that, and I said, “What kind of training did you get?” He says, “infantry.” I said, “Did you go to Fort Knox?” “No.” I says, “Have you been in a tank before?” And he said, no. I says, “Oh my God.” I said, “What are you doing here?”

I don't remember if he was in the Air Force or something, ground something, and he was taken, and as a replacement, he was coming into the ground troops and stuff. And well, I can't describe what that was like, because we were not able to function a hundred percent in a situation like that. Well, we were lining up to move out, and so I put the kid in the assistant driver's seat.

And when we took off, well, it was still dark, but it was daybreak. And we went long enough that we got under some artillery fire. And we stopped at one time for whatever things were getting high. The front stopped the other vehicles, and we stopped. Anyway, it ends up that this kid gets out while we're there and a few of us to maybe relieve ourselves or whatever.

And the next thing a few shells came in, this kid gets hit, but not bad. In fact, I don't even know how bad it was. And he took off on me because we hadn't gone far, took off running, I still to this day don't know his name, and that's how long he was with us. But that was the only time I've ever heard about guys coming in that had no training at all.

Well, this guy said he'd never been in the tank, so you can imagine. I mean, that was a scary thing. So, we were still not functional as far as that goes for the day. But yeah.

I wasn't in a line company tank. I was in headquarters company with the Italian command tanks, which included the colonel's tank, the major's tank, and originally the platoon leaders’ tank, which is a lieutenant usually.

But being in a headquarters tank, the only reason I was always up close to the fire and sometimes a subject to direct fire was because the colonel, when I came back from the hospital after the first time I went in, I was in the colonel's tank, and the colonel was always up there with wherever we were attacking. So, I was always up where, and I witnessed them going in, and sometimes the front had passed up a few tanks, and you get the brunt of that. So, it's not that I choose to be number one, but they rotated number one. Being up front is, that's really scary, because every turn of the road, you don't know what's around the corner and that works on you. But thank God I wasn't there very often, but I was upfront a couple of times accidentally, and so you're not aware at the moment that you might be upfront. I used to feel for the guys in the line company who rotated.

But when you said you're going to lead, once you're been in there a while and you see the results of what happens to the tanks and the fires and a lot of these guys get burnt in there, and it's got to work on your mind some.

But I will say one thing, once the action starts, it erases any at least for me, you're thinking and you're looking to do your job, and all of a sudden, you're not really aware of the dangers. You're in it anyway. And it's hard for me to really explain, but I'm trying to be as honest in the field that I had. You sort of blot out everything else. You're focused on your job. And boy, I'll tell you, when you're looking through that gun site, you're looking pretty hard and you're concentrating pretty hard.

I can remember looking out of that site and seeing some tracers come across, And that is an experience because you feel so helpless and you're hoping that the tank commander, and at this time, my colonel was my tank commander standing behind me, and I'm thinking, God, I wonder if he saw that. I wonder if he saw that.

Well, I saw the second, then I knew what I saw. The first one, I thought, the second one I knew. And by the second one, I was so uptight. And when I saw the third one, I literally turned in my seat and looked up, and he's standing right behind me. I see him looking down. He was six foot something. And he's looking down at me and he's got a smile on his face.

And I turned around quick, he embarrassed me, and I turned around, looked at my sight, and I thought, and literally, you want the truth, I won't use the word I said to myself, but I used another one. I said, “You big bastard, if you can take it, I can too.” And he pulled me out of it, and I was alright for the rest of the day, except that we had to find cover, because wherever these shots were coming from the sides, and we couldn't see anything to shoot at. But when they're shooting at you and you can't pick them up, that's a little tough.

And a little later, the colonel ended up in this instance taking us next to a barn, and so that we had some cover, and he’s talking to the guys up front. And he said, “Clem,” he said, “I have to leave. I'm going to get the Jeep. You stay right here. Don't move until I called for you.”

Well, his Jeep came, he took off, and we stayed there, and he forgot us. And we stayed there until it was getting dark. So, these are some of the things that happened. And then I called a radio and tell him, I said, “Where in the hell is the old man?” He says, “He is here in the CP.” I says, “Here, where's that? We're in a house here.” Well, I found my way back and started again.

Interviewer:

How many tanks did you end up going through?

Clement Elissondo:

Well, I was in five different ones altogether, but four of my loss from enemy involvement. Most of them we went over mines and then that blew the tracks off, and then they were shot after. But we got out of those, yeah, we got out of all of the ones — well, all those that we hit mines with we got out of them before.

From training, there's no doubt that when you're on that gun, if you've got a fire, you can't hesitate and try to figure out, you got to pretty well know from experience. And you get that pretty much during training, as far as that goes, as far as distance.

And especially if you're shooting in a range that the tank commander will tell you, “Fire at will,” you're on your own in other words, it gets you to the target. And you can shoot quite a ways on your own a thousand yard.

It depends on your eyes naturally, but your site that you're using is pretty good, very helpful. It's calibrated, so that you know where you're at 500 yards, a thousand yards, 1500 yards. But the tank commander, it's great distances, you got to depend on him making the right guess on the yardage so that when he gives me the information, I got to put it on what he gives me.

So, it's strictly teamwork. And hopefully we all do our job and our estimates are correct. And so, and the only time you know that is if you don't do the right job, maybe they get you before you get them.

You don't know what you're coming up against. And if you're anticipating something and you make the wrong guess, you try to, well, he's going to do this and I'm going to do that. If you get in that situation, I think you're putting yourself in a tough spot.

You get concentrating so much on that site. At least I'm speaking for myself or maybe guys use different things. But I relied on the calibration and my estimate of what was in front of me to work with. And I had been in training in our platoon, I was a loader and then I got to shoot what the gunners shot, so I shot less. And I remember in England getting a higher score. So, why that was I can't tell you. I don't know why I hit and somebody missed. It's a matter of learning what's available to you and really learning your job and not have to guess or guess, not guess. Sure. When you're making an estimate, you're guessing a little, no doubt. But I don't like to feel that I'm guessing. Or should you say, I hope I guessed right. I don't know.

Now when the combat lineman has to — if he has to start guessing, that's tough. And you don't know that each one of us that are sitting in that gunner's seat better have learned his lesson pretty well, because there's no time when you get in combat to learn, oh there's no substitute for experience.

It was 7/11 of ‘44. At five o'clock in the morning, my driver and myself were standing guard together. And a runner comes, and he says, “Okay guys, you got to line up at five o'clock, be on the road.” And it was actually the first, this is in Normandy now, the first real concentrated thing that I had been involved with and I'm in the majors tank, I'm in number two, colonel was number one. And we have the number three tank lined up. We're in the tail end of this thing we're getting into. So, at six o'clock, I can hear Lieutenant O Sullivan says, “Okay, let's go in and blast him out.”

So, we all cranked him up and we took off and we're at the end of this column. And there was quite a few vehicles. I don't know the numbers, but I'm concentrating on the sides of the road and whatever you have. And we got down, we're going into Pole Air Bear the town. I can remember the sign on the side. And all of a sudden we get to the first intersection and we're number two. The colonel went through and we're the first — I guess by then the Germans had the idea that this is the tail end of the column, so they're going to blast the back and create a block. And then they were hitting the guys in front. Well, we're the number two tank, and we get hit in the intersection. And we rolled a little ways. And I remember the driver saying that he got back up and pulled the lever to pull the tank towards the ditch.

And by the time the … had been hit already now, and I'm on the floor, and I guess I was out for a little while because I looked up, well, I saw the fire around the turret coming around, like I was sitting in a frying pan. And my butt was burning a little, and when I saw the fire, I thought I was on fire. So, that made me look up at my tank commander, who was in the gunner's seat. And I said, “Ray, we got to get out of here.” And I guess I helped him a little. I could see he was slipping as he was trying to push out of his seat. Well, he got up, I guess I pushed him out. And all I could think of was rolling to the ditch, probably saved me from getting captured because they were on this side. And I rolled all the way to my right.

And when I got in the ditch, there were a sergeant goodnight, captain Barkley and first sergeant Guidry who was filling in, in our tank, our first sergeant battalion. And he said “You okay?” And I said, “Yeah.”

And I'm looking back to see if I had any fire. And God, everything looked okay. And by then the noise around, I took my mind away from the problems I had. And I started checking. And I see this tank coming back, and it was my colonel coming back. And they got into the intersection and got hit coming back. So, they didn't go very far from there. Or our number three tank got hit behind after we went through. And so, they got all three tanks within 15, 20 minutes.

Well, after I went through my whole escape deal, I got to the medics, and when the doctor got done, he said anything else wrong with you? I says, “Well,” I said, “I'll tell you, I thought I was on fire, and I thought I had something burning in my butt.”

And so, he told the medics, he says, “Turn this guy over.” And they turned me over on the table where I was, and they take the scissors, and the doctors started laughing. So, I said, “What are you laughing about?” Well, that made him laugh all the harder. And the guys around started laughing, and I thought, “What the hell?”

So, the doctor said, “Boy, you did get a hot seat.” And I had a blister on my left cheek about as big as the inside of your hand here. So, they just put a hypo in and sucked the water out and put a little sulfur powder on it. And that was it. And I never felt it again.

But that thing made me move pretty fast and might have saved me because if I'd have been on the other side, the rest of the crew got captured. I got in the ditch and stayed undercover until I thought, and all the moves I made were right. I escaped.

There was several bad mistakes made. One, we went in with no infantry. If you went into some major stuff, you went in there fully equipped to do the job or you tried to, unless you didn't have the equipment. But at this stage of the game, this is early on, we had plenty of infantry units around, and we also had an infantry in our own Third Armored, 36th armored infantry. So, I don't know what happened, but it was a pretty bad mistake to have what happened there, because there was no way in the world if we'd have continued, the Third Armored probably had the best record in all of the tank divisions from what I read. And we couldn't have accomplished what we did without.

But I'll tell you another thing. When I came back from the hospital which was three months later, we were already in Germany, I found out and I observed that we had a different armored unit here than I left three months before.

So, they had a lot of lessons. And it showed, and I could tell by the way we went in to combat as compared to what we did in the early stages. But I missed well, July, August, September, and right after we were the first unit to cross the German border.

I was lucky to be in the tank that I was in for as long as I was. After I came from the hospital, I was with a colonel, and that tank we carried, every so often we'd get a P47 pilot come and spend, say around a week or thereabouts. So, they were there to see how we could improve on the coordination between ground and air, so that we'd have that.

The other thing, the infantry protects us if they go in with us and on the back or whatever, or however. If the enemy is on the gutters on the side of the road, they can eliminate that because they can stand there to a certain degree, maybe not a hundred percent, but it beats nothing. Whereas when we're in that tank and the stuff is flying enough to where the tank commander has to button up, hey, you only see what you see out of that periscope. And that's very limited in a sense. So, you're so vulnerable that it's ridiculous because the guys in the ditches with a bazooka puts you out … that's the importance of the coordinated units.

Well your immediate crew, there's nothing that compares, especially, I was very lucky with the guys, the original guys were just proud to be with at any time. And I've met a lot of guys in my day. And these guys, if America was infiltrated by this kind of quality, I would like to believe that it would be, this is the greatest country in the world, but we're abusing the hell out of it. I think that's my impression. And we don't seem to learn from experience. Our history tells us. People say, well, we're not going to have another war. They've been having it since there were over two men in this earth, I guess they fought because that's the way it seems to be.

But yeah, no, the immediate crew you live and sleep together and this and that, you know about their wives, most of them didn't have children. Most of them weren't married, but they were great guys. Just great. And we are friends to this day. Those that are still living, and those, I'm talking about a very few, there's only Ray now and I. But you develop a comradery that it is hard to do in normal civilian life. And you go through an experience that is unusual.

I never thought about being killed. I'll have to admit though, towards the end, I had a fella that saved my life. He was a west point man, and I've been with him since the war a few times. And I've asked him a few questions when we were alone, since the war, it has been very rare that were … well, I wanted to ask for ever since it happened, which was that first combat. And his answer to me was, he looked at me after he says, “Clem.” He said, “I took orders just like you did.”

It meant that he wasn't going to point the finger at anybody, the war was over, or blame anybody. He took the brunt of this on his own, and I knew it. He didn't say that or anything. So, you learn your fellow man, you learn about him, and he's a guy I'd like to have as a friend.

The heroes are under those crosses. I did a job that I either had to do it or else I'd be in the brig and the brig didn't keep me doing that job. You're doing it, period.

No, I don't know. And looking back, you get to know a lot of guys in your company. And boy, it's amazing the mentality of some people and the different ways they react. I can remember a few guys in my company that were idiotic enough to go out and look for trouble. It was there all the time. You didn't have to look for it. And you wondered what the hell kind of a brain does this guy got because they were really sticking their chin out. Now they probably saved somebody else by doing it. That I don't know. But it was still not normal.

And so, you find a lot of non-normal people under stress. Although guy that I have in mind, one of those, I thought nothing could scare him. And one day out of combat, we were on reserve, and I went to chow. And I'm walking back towards the tank in this city that we were in. And this guy, I had walked past him. I knew him well. He was in my company. And he was one of these cold-blooded guys. And all of a sudden, he comes running past me and I couldn't figure out. And I looked at him, and I'm laughing. That's the first time I had seen him because of these artillery shells. And when he heard that he took off, well, I had seen him look at these things, many, many, but something hit him. And I know that feeling. At that moment, medley and everything. He just lost it. And I boot jacked him a little bit, kidded him at the door. Yeah. I said, “What happened? I saw you running.” I gave him a little bit of the boot, and it helped him sort of come out of it. And the next thing you know, he is back to his old self, and I never saw him run again. But yeah, there's a lot of variety of stuff that you witness. But we, all of us are a special piece of equipment.

And you if think you know somebody, you never know anybody, not … some guys you like to believe and they're a little more stable. You'd bet on them a little bit easier. Some of the few guys that I know today that I was in with, like I told you, are my friends.

And like this Henry, I never forget him, and he proved it later. When we got out of that first tank, and he was captured, Henry, and he's calling for me, and I was up in the tart, and Ray, I hear Ray tell him, yeah, “He's out, he's out.” I'd already gotten to the ditch, but the guy stood up there calling for me with all of this going on. And you know what he did after he got away from the Germans, before they got him in Germany, escaped out of a car of prisoners. So he ended up with a free French, and he was with a free French for a month and a half or two before the Americans moved up in the area there.

The guy that jumped with him got hit by some artillery. As the troops were coming, they hit him from the rear. Henry had carried him to a farmhouse after the rest of the Germans infiltrated through, they played dead.

But he was moaning and groaning, and he's telling him, keep quiet, try, and try. And he was hit bad when the Germans infiltrated through. He picked him up, walked to this farmhouse, couldn't speak a word of French, and he'd made him understand that he'd be back of some way.

And they put him on a bed, and he went out and met the oncoming troops. And as soon as he could, he talked to this tank commander, the first guy that he thought they were going to shoot him, because he saw the gun coming towards him.

And he says, “Oh, Jesus, my own tank's going to shoot me.” And he's waving and waving, and finally the guy waved him in, and he told him the story. He says, “I got a guy that get an ambulance up here.” Took the ambulance there, and they took him to the medics. And then he hitchhiked on supply trucks and stuff, and we were in Mosbach.

But he took me after we met one day, the first Sunday he comes to the house, I was in the basement. He had to stay with the cooks and stuff, you know, and he comes in there, Clem, because he had tried in England to get me to go to church with him. And I said, “Henry, you go out with me on Saturday night. I'll go to church with you on Sunday.”

Oh, no, he said, “What do you think I do on Saturday?” I said, “I'm not going to get you injured. But no, that wasn't the deal.” So, now after combat, he says again, “Go to church with me.” And I thought, “Well, I'll get him off my back. It won't hurt me.”

So, I go to church with him, and the place was full of GIs. We were on sort of reserve then, Third Armored in that area, getting all our equipment after the run through France and Northern and Belgium and everything.

So, he got me to go. And while we're in that church, the artillery started coming in, and the chaplain stopped, and he looked at the front and the officers in front, because, sir, he used the word sir term. So, I know he was talking to an officer. And he said, do you think I should break this up? And naturally, this guy's in front of 150 GIs, he's not going to show he's chicken. So, he said, “No, no, we'll be alright.” Well, I could have shot him right there myself.

But I'll tell you, I think the chaplain had a feeling himself because it seemed like the sermon was cut short. And when they opened those doors, we hit — boy, we went running down those streets to our respective wherever. And I'm running along Henry, and I'll never forget telling them, “Henry, don't you ever ask me to go to church with you again.”

Well, he had to tell everybody that we met in this country, that I got Clem to go to church with me, So, see, you have your light moments.

You know what we owe to each other? Every day, helping us create a better world. I don't envy a thing I see happening today. And I've been through the depression and World War II, and I wouldn't trade my next birthday. I'm going to be 80. I was old enough to realize what was going on when the first depression in 1929, when the banks folded. But, I knew enough to realize that how people responded. If you whistle, the guy said, what can I help you with? They jumped guy next door. I was in the country, on a ranch. And he jumped over the fence and come over and help you. No questions. You helped each other.

Today, it's a different world. It's a different world. Whether you can grasp that or not I don't know. Anyway, I've enjoyed my life, and I wouldn't trade it again for what I see today.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Technician 5th Grade Clement Elissondo.

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