Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:08 | To get away from the drudgery of the dairy farm, Roswell Evans joined the Army. It was 1939 and he found himself first at Ft. Benning for basic training, and then at Ft. Knox in an armored unit.
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Roswell Evans says that if he’d kept his big mouth shut while at Ft. Knox, he could have just stayed there. He didn’t, and it was off to North Africa where he was outgunned by Tiger Tanks and overwhelmed by French cooking.
Starting in Algiers and then across North Africa, Roswell Evans made many friends among the British and Free French troops fighting alongside him. He was not a friend, however, of the designer of the inadequate gun in his tank.
Roswell Evans recalls a great advantage the Germans had in Italy, surveyor plats of the entire country, which allowed them to accurately target their artillery without marker rounds. A disadvantage was their non-splintering shell casings.
Roswell Evans' unit had to leave their tanks and hoof it on the narrow mountain trails of Northern Italy during the winter. Pack trains carried all the ammo and supplies. He was glad when he finally returned to his tank.
The war was nearly over but Roswell Evans' armored unit fell in the friendly sights of an Allied bombing mission over Italy. They barely moved in time before their camp was flattened.
Roswell Evans told his company commander that there was a Tiger tank behind a farmhouse targeting the road. Ordered to advance right into its sights, he refused and was promised a court martial. It never happened.
Though it was against policy to deploy all members of a family, all of Roswell Evans' brothers were in the service, and one was killed in the Battle Of The Bulge. At the war’s end, he was shipped home immediately because he had over thirty points.
