My name is Harold Bradley, and I am a veteran of World War II.
I was inducted on February 19, 1943 and served in the U.S. Army, the 740th Tank Battalion, C Company, 3rd Platoon until December 1945. My basic training was at Fort Knox, Kentucky and then assigned to the California and Arizona Desert on a secret project. After our training we were ordered to Europe where we saw our first action in the Battle of the Bulge, which was the beginning of a number of battles including the Rineland, Adrennes Central Europe. Our Tank Battalion was a separate battalion and was never attached to one Division. We would go where we were needed. Later, we met up with the Russians at the Baltic Sea where they surrendered.
I was wounded and received the Purple Heart. I was in a fight where my Tank crew fought to save the other tank crew minus one that was killed and 20 Infantry soldiers and for this action my loader and I were awarded the Silver Star. My specialty job in my tank was the tank commander at 19 years of age. I saw several tanks knocked out. I came through all the action in this war and never lost a tank, but I lost a number of friends…
I had a brother Overton Bradley that was in the 101st Airborne who was trapped at Bastogne and was wounded. After they were rescued, he was patched up and sent back to the States never to see any more action. I also had a brother Billy J Bradley that served during the Korean War and I had a son, Phillip Harold Bradley that served during the Vietnam conflict. They never spoke to me about their wartime experiences. If they talked about it, it was to someone else. All three of them are gone and left me as the only family member.
The worst part of the war for me was in the Battle of the Bulge where the snow started to fall in late December 1944 into January of 1945 and having to sleep in our tank during the coldest weather on record in Belgium and Germany. My greatest fear while fighting the Germans was coming face to face with a German Tiger Tank with me in my Medium Sherman Tank, the Tiger with a 90 mm gun and me with a 75 mm. No way could I knock him out. The only way out of that mess was to fire a Smoke shell and get around him where I could get a shot off on his side or the rear, which is how we out-smarted the big hunk of steel.
My wartime experiences changed me from a kid out of high school to a man after the war. Before the war I was living on a farm with my family and did not have the slightest idea what I was going to become after I left home.
There was no reception planned for me when I got home. When I received my discharge in Camp Chafee Arkansas and they gave me a ticket on a bus to Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, where my wife was staying with her Mother and Dad while I was away serving in World War II. It was midnight when I arrived at their home and that was quite a reception for me to become a civilian again. My readjustment coming back home was very simple. Having Christmas with my family for the first time in three years and being married while I was in the Army, I didn’t have time think about readjustment I had to start looking for a job because I had a wife to feed. So the first place I started to look for a job was with a former employer I worked a short time before I was drafted and they told me then when I came home they would have a job for me and they did.
I cannot remember the name of the young fellow in this picture with me. I met him on my last trip to Belgium and Germany last May 2014 on Memorial Day at the American Military Cemetery near Holland. He wanted to hear my story and have his picture taken with me. I told him as much of the story as I could but had to cut it short our bus was ready to leave and I was the last one to get on it.
I will continue to enjoy my Facebook in my later years. I am 90 years old and still enjoying doing work around our homes. I walk each morning one mile. I have had to slow down over the last two years, but before that I was walking five mile a day five days a week.
A lady asked me how many miles I had walked after I retired, which was in 1986 and I figured I had walked over 19,000 miles.
~ Harold Bradley, WWII Veteran
It is a great privilege and honor to collect these stories from our veterans of all wars, none of whom reached out to me. I have found them to be a humble group of men and women. These stories are their stories.
~ Jenny Lasala
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