Petersen Erik O.
I fought in the “Sixteenth Armored”
Erik O. Petersen, member of the 16th Armored Division
My family immigrated to the US in 1927 under the immigration quota allotted to Denmark. I was seven years old at the time. I grew up in the Great Neck neighborhood of Long Island, New York. My older brother Fred (b. 1912) served in the 13th Armored Division in California. He convinced me to join his unit, but I remained a civilian until 1943. I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training. After that, I worked as a weapons instructor for three months and tank driver instructor for another six months. Then I was transferred to the 16th Armored Division as a young cadet. I got into tank mechanic school at Fort Knox, but decided to be a tank driver.
And then we boarded. The 13th and 20th Armored Divisions were in the same convoy that crossed the Atlantic with our “16th Armored.” I got the tank in Rouen, Normandy. It only had 11 miles on it. By the time the war was over, it had 1,000 miles on it. Our unit was temporarily assigned to infantry divisions that needed armor. We didn't get the whole division together until Nuremberg, Germany. Seeing all those tanks together made me feel safer. As a tank division we were moving faster and we were mostly in places behind enemy lines where it was quieter.
We got to the Czechoslovakian border about May 4 near the German Waidhaus. In the Sudetenland there was a sheet hanging from every window. That night we slept in a house that had been damaged by one of our 105mm guns. The next morning we continued on to Pilsen. It was the first time that people gave us a friendly welcome. At one of the stops a Czech woman took my cheeks in her hands and said something to me in Czech. I asked the charger, Krawicki, who spoke Polish, what the woman was saying to me. She said, “You are the healthiest looking person I have ever seen.”
The lead tank took a hit from a 37mm cannon, which tore off about 75 track couplings welded to the front of the tank. The pile of metal fell onto a street paved with cat heads. Tank after tank then rammed it deeper and deeper until a large hole was created, making the road impassable for wheeled vehicles. Finally we reached Pilsen. The Skoda plants were still working. We parked in front of the factory while our officers went inside to stop the production of German war material.
On the way to the city center, people from the bakery threw a loaf of bread at each tank. It was so good! When we reached the square, the enemy opened fire on us, even from the church. We fired back with our .50 caliber machine gun and small arms. We made quite a mess on the facades. Then we headed south towards Bory. People shouted at us that a German column had passed about a minute before us. We caught up with it about 3 miles from Pilsen and captured some 125 men. Tankers don't normally take soldiers prisoner. We couldn't spare the tank crew, so the cook was assigned the task of taking them back to Pilsen. When he came back, he told a story. He said the prisoners were no trouble. When they arrived in Pilsen, some Czechs asked to be allowed to take them over.
The night after, we set up the tanks in a circle in the open. The first sergeant said that the war was over, and we could take off our shoes and sleep in our sleeping bags. The next morning the sergeant whistled at us. I looked up and saw about a hundred women with trays full of food. One of them washed my face and hands with a warm washcloth, and another put a tray in my lap, on which was a plate of ham and eggs and rolls. Another poured me a cup of coffee and a glass of apple juice. One even supported my back. That's how grateful the locals were.
From the book 500 Hours of Victory by Karel Foud, Milan Jíša, Ivan Rollinger
