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ARMY EXPERIENCES- WORLD WAR II
Calvin C. Boykin, Jr.
8407 Shadow Oaks
College Station, TX 77845-4603
Cal was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1924 and raised in Big Spring and
Rochelle, Texas. He graduated from Big Spring High in 1942, then enrolled
at Texas A&M College in June 1942 and completed two semesters by
January 1943, majoring in agricultural administration. In Big Spring he
volunteered for the draft and was inducted into the army in Lubbock, Texas
on February 13, 1943. Processed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he was sent to the
Tank Destroyer Replacement Training Center at Camp Hood, Texas.
Cal joined the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion while the unit was on
maneuvers in Louisiana, then shipped to Fort Devens,_Massachusetts.
February 14, 1944 the battalion boarded the converted French liner lie de
France at Halifax, Nova Scotia and debarked in Grenoch, Scotland.
Following three months near Birmingham, England, the battalion shipped to
the coast near Dorchester in preparation for the Normandy Invasion.
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The battalion, following a period of servicing troops preparing for D-Day
landings, loaded their MI0 tank destroyers (three inch guns), other armored
vehicles, jeeps, and trucks on LSTs at Weymouth and landed on Utah Beach
on August 8,1944. Attached to the 7th Armored Division of General
Patton's Third Army, the 814th contributed to the drive through France in
record time. Cal served as gunner on a reconnaissance company's M8
armored car and often led an armored column as it moved forward. Being
fired on by a German antitank gun while moving into Rambouillet is one of
his war highlights and in 1997 he and his wife Rosemary returned there to
lay a wreath at the American Eagle Monument to the Americans killed.
The 7th Armored and the attached 814th moved into Holland and supported
the British in the Peel Marsh. At times his reconnaissance platoon served as
infantry. In Maastricht, Holland he made friends with a Dutch family, whom
he and his wife Rosemary have visited many times. The 7th Armored was
called into action near S1. Vith, Belgium a day after the Battle of the Bulge
began on December 16, Cal's recon company and a platoon of four M36
tank destroyers (90mmguns) attached to Task Force Jones, helped fight a
rear guard action on the night of the 23d as the 7th Armored withdrew after
holding the "fortified goose egg" for seven days. Callost his armored car as
his platoon was overrun by German armor and some 20 of his company
captured. The armored car replaced, he found himself promoted to section
sergeant and commander of the replacement vehicle. Moving into
Germany's West Wall, he assisted his platoon leader in locating tank
destroyer gun positions in support of infantry.
The 7th Armored, on reaching the Rhine River, used its M36 tank destroyers
for indirect fire across the river. Then they crossed on a pontoon bridge after
the Ludendorf Bridge had collapsed and moved on into the Ruhr, Cal, who
qad never had a furlough, received a seven-day pass to England, which he
took, the time spent mostly in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Returning to the 814th Cal saw little action as the 7th Armored moved across
the Elbe River and into the vicinity of Lubeck near Hamburg. German
soldiers were surrendering in mass rather than to the Russian, and roads
were jammed with the constant flow of displaced persons of various
nationalities, many in need of immediate food and medical attention.
Hostilities ceased, for the most part, on May ~. In early June the 814th
moved to Wolfen, near Halle and Leipzig, in the Russian Zone, where they
managed a huge German prisoner of war camp. Cal often served as sergeant
of the guard and remembers particularly the actions of the prisoners and the
civilians in town when the Russians moved in and took over.
Cal served in the Army of Occupation until late November 1945. As the
battalion was training for service in the Pacific the atomic bombs were
dropped on Japan, ending the war-a time of relief rather than celebration.
Sent home aboard the Sea Owl, he received an honorable discharge at Fort
Sam Houston, San Antonio on December 13, 1945.
Home again in Big Spring, Cal returned in February to Texas A&M and on
June 30, 1946 married Rosemary E. DePasquale of Dickinson, Texas, one
week after she had graduated from Southern Methodist University. He
graduated in 1949. They have four children: Karen, Anne, Clay, and
Thomas; seven grandchildren; and four great grandchildren.
Mter over 30 years of service with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the
Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Texas Agricultural
Extension Service, living mostly in College Station, Cal retired in 1986.
Accompanied by Rosemary he worked on assignments, including Syria and
southern Mrica, until 1993. In 1995 they published a history of his battalion.