Delbert Frank Wombacher was born in Lawrence, Nebraska on a farm [Annotator's Note: in October 1918]. He grew during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. They produced some of their own foods, but the dust bowl [Annotator's Note: period of severe dust storms that damaged the ecology and agriculture of American prairies during 1930s] came and there were seven years where they could not produce anything. They had 360 acres. Shortly after he graduated from high school, he went to Washington with a family that was moving. He got a job there on a chicken farm. He later returned to his hometown and drove trucks for his brother's business. Scrap iron was being shipped to Japan; Germany had gone into Poland [Annotator's Note: German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939]. A man in the 4th Cav [Annotator's Note: 4th Cavalry Regiment] was home on leave and told Wombacher he should join then so he could pick his outfit. He enlisted and chose the 4th Cav. It was still a horse-drawn unit when he went in. He learned to handle his mount and take care of it along with weapons training and basic training. This was at Fort Robinson, Arkansas [Annotator's Note: Camp Joseph Robinson Army Base, North Little Rock, Arkansas] in the winter in tents with temperatures as low as seven degrees below zero.

Delbert Wombacher enlisted in December 1939 at Fort Crook, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: now Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska]. The 17th Infantry [Annotator's Note: 17th Infantry Regiment] was there then. He was shipped down to Little Rock [Annotator's Note: Little Rock, Arkansas] on a train and trucked out to Camp Robinson [Annotator's Note: Camp Joseph Robinson Army Base, North Little Rock, Arkansas]. Every man carried an extra shoe [Annotator's Note: horseshoe; his outfit, the 4th Cavalry Regiment, was a horse cavalry] in his saddle bags. It could not be rusty in an inspection. He learned to take war cloth soaked in oil and wrap them up. He learned to not let the saddle blanket to get tight on the horse. He had been around horses all his life, but he had to learn to ride the Army way. They took care of their horses before they took care of themselves. He became a marksman with the Springfield rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber Model 1903, or M1903, Springfield bolt action rifle]. He was expert in the .45-caliber pistol [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol].

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Delbert Wombacher was his role was in the Louisiana Maneuvers, series of Army exercises held in Louisiana in 1941].] He started out as an individual soldier. Someone was needed to handle a pack horse and their regular mount. He was assigned to lead the kitchen pack horse. He swapped horses reluctantly with another soldier. The last day of the maneuvers they made the longest single day march the Cavalry has ever made, 75 miles in one day. Wombacher was sent once to block a road crossing. They dug foxholes and set up their guns. A little colored boy [Annotator's Note: colored, is an ethnic descriptor historically used for Black people in the United States] came up and they were talking to him. They bought eggs from him. Wombacher thought he would take off with the money, but he brought back eggs. They were rotten though and they could not eat them. The maneuvers were a try out for war. They learned they had remarkable officers. General Rogers [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General Gordon Byrom Rogers] knew what he was doing. When left Camp Robinson, Arkansas for Louisiana and shipped their horses by rail to Beaumont, Texas. They saddled them there and swam the river at flood stage into Louisiana. They could not put their saddles on the ground there because the wild hogs would eat the saddles. It was not fun, but it was probably the best training he ever had.

After the Louisiana Maneuvers [Annotator's Note: series of Army exercises held in Louisiana in 1941], Delbert Wombacher went to Monroe, Louisiana and then to Fort Meade, South Dakota. Fort Meade was a beautiful post. He was there for about two and a half years. When Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] first happened, everything was confusing. Their commander, John B. Coker [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] assembled the regiment and told them a lot of them would be sent to train and organize new units. The American military, including the 4th Cav [Annotator's Note: 4th Cavalry Regiment] was way under strength. His final statement was that how well they did their jobs might well determine the outcome of the war. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher gets emotional.] Wombacher went to organize and train the 8th Armored Division at Fort Knox, Kentucky. General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] was there. The rush was on to develop a suitable tank and new models were shipped to Fort Knox. Wombacher and 21 others were selected by Patton to field trial the tanks. One tank that turned into the Sherman [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] later, had two engines. It was July and it started having engine trouble. Wombacher blistered his arm on the tank due to the heat. He told his buddy he wished General Patton had the tank up his butt. Patton was standing behind him. It turned out alright. Patton treated them well. That tank was the earliest model of the M3 [Annotator's Note: M3 Lee medium tank; British versions called M3 Grant]. The suspension system was inadequate. The suspension that ended up on the production Sherman tank, was Wombacher's idea. The original suspension would break on rough ground. He drew it out on a scratch pad and turned it over to Patton himself. In a couple of weeks, they got one to try and it worked. Back then, things were in a hurry. He also made improvements to the engine compartments. He only reported to General Patton as part of this group. Wombacher was sent to guard duty. Patton said that would never happen again and it did not. When the duty was finished, Wombacher returned to his regular unit.

[Annotator's Note: After working on tank trial tests with US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., Delbert Wombacher went back to the 8th Armored Division.] He was in the maintenance section of the division. He became First Sergeant of Company C, 8th Armored. He was sent in a cadre to organize and train the 22nd Armored Division [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] with six others. They went to Camp Perry, Ohio [Annotator's Note: Erie Township, Ohio] right on Lake Erie. They changed the 22nd to the 918th Heavy Automotive Maintenance Division [Annotator's Note: unable to identify]. That extended the training period. They then transferred to Fort Knox, Kentucky. The first training they gave soldiers was how to drive the tank and do basic maintenance. They had to learn how to operate the guns. Wombacher had more to do with the vehicle maintenance. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer talks about the differences between the M4 Sherman, Medium Tank and the German tanks.] The main turret gun was grossly inadequate. The 75mm [Annotator's Note: 75mm gun M3] did not do much. The later 90mm [Annotator's Note: M26 Pershing heavy tank] was a good gun. The .50 caliber gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] was a good gun and is still being used. The biggest single problem was the engines. They eventually made some good ones. One of the best was a V-12 engine [Annotator's Note: Ford GAC engine] designed for aircraft use built by Ford Motor Company.

Delbert Wombacher organized and trained the 922nd Ordnance Battalion [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] at Camp Rucker, Alabama [Annotator's Note: now Fort Rucker, Alabama]. The 66th Division [Annotator's Note: 66th Infantry Division] was there then. They helped get the 66th ready to go overseas, and then they followed. He left off an old Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], rusty and shot up. At sea, they learned the cargo was a load of artillery ammunition. While waiting for the convoy, Wombacher was summoned to the forward deck. The ship's crew did not know how to raise the anchor. They landed at Wales [Annotator's Note: Wales, England] and took a train to Glasgow, Scotland. They had none of their equipment. Wombacher went into Glasgow and got to see the shipyards. They went to G-25 Ordnance Depot [Annotator's Note: General Supply Depot G-25 in Ashchurch, England]. They lived in tarpaper shacks. They were getting the equipment ready to go across the Channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel]. They worked around the clock. England weather is dreadful. They crossed the Channel from Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England]. They were given C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] to eat before they boarded an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. Everywhere he looked was ships. It took two days to cross. They landed near Le Havre, France. They had to winch their vehicles ashore. The engines were full of water. They spent the night on the beach. He took a head count of the men and they were one short. He guessed who it was. He was written off as missing in action. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher tells the story of this man.] The war was over and Wombacher was in Metz, France. A soldier came in with a duffel bag and said hello. It was the missing man. He told Wombacher he had stayed on the ship when they landed in France because he was scared. Wombacher thought it would do no good to shoot him since the war was over. Nobody ever knew the difference.

Delbert Wombacher landed in Le Havre, France in 1944. They were to move as far into France as they could and set up shop. They went to Reims, France. They stayed in the Reims soccer stadium [Annotator's Note: Stade Auguste-Delaune]. It was not heated but it was dry. They did all of the maintenance work. They took care of Ike's [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] headquarters vehicles, but their assignment was servicing the Red Ball Express [Annotator's Note: Allied forces truck convoy system]. Any damaged tanks or trucks they could salvage were rebuilt there too. They operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They came across a Mercedes Benz limousine and got it running. They lost it to Ike. Wombacher was First Sergeant in France. Two Polish people wanted to stay with them. They had escaped from a German labor camp. They were nearly starved to death. They let them stay. They were the two most helpful people Wombacher ever had. Wombacher could not take them with him when it came time to leave. The two men decided to try to go back to Poland. The men gave them money, blankets, and clothes. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher gets emotional describing their gratitude.] He wishes he knew what happened to them. There are a lot of things he wishes now he could find out the outcomes of.

Delbert Wombacher was in Reims [Annotator's Note: Reims, France]. A call came out from headquarters, who knew they had an ambulance, to take it to the local airfield. Patients were coming from a concentration camp and they moved them to the hospital. Wombacher went and they could load four at a time. The patients were being given some broth. Some could not tolerate it. There were GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] there too awaiting treatment. One asked him for a cigarette. Wombacher had to lean in and put it in his mouth. The soldier was physically holding in his own intestines. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher gets emotional.] The man was not complaining. He wonders if the man made it. He will never know. Wombacher was in Reims quite a while. He left the company to go to Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France]. Once the war ended, the Red Ball Express [Annotator's Note: one of several American military truck convoy systems that transported supplies from the coast of France to Allied forces advancing across Europe] slowed down. A short while after getting to Metz, he took some mail to headquarters. He saw a French truck with wine barrels with no driver. Wombacher watched an American truck pull up and take the wine. In Metz, the Battalion [Annotator's Note: 922nd Ordinance Heavy Maintenance Battalion; unable to verify unit] would have a French orchestra playing at the mess hall. Wombacher would sightsee in Luxembourg. The locals would not let the Americans buy anything, everything was free. His company commander was leaving for the United States and had a motorcycle. He gave it to Wombacher. When Wombacher was leaving, he gave it to the new commander. That commander crated it and sent it back to the United States. Wombacher was in Metz about four months after the war ended. He had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to go home. He left there and went to Grave, France. Wombacher was put in charge of the men going back.

Delbert Wombacher was at Camp Campbell, Kentucky [Annotator's Note: now Fort Campbell, Kentucky] doing some military training maneuvers. There was an Army scout plane there. Wombacher was going to sketch the area that was swampy. He asked the pilot to go lower and unfastened his seatbelt. Wombacher nearly went headfirst out of the plane. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher laughs.] It accomplished the goal though. The plane was a Piper Cub [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub light observation aircraft]. When the war ended in Europe, units were being assembled to go to the Pacific. The atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] took care of any having to go. He was sweating it out. He left Europe 23 November 1945. [Annotator's Note: The tape cuts and Wombacher says December 1939 reading from a sheet of paper. He adds other dates.]

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Delbert Wombacher to talk about the 4th Cavalry Regiment's transition away from using horses. Redesignated as the 4th Horse-Mechanized Corps Reconnaissance Regiment, spring 1940.] They had been to Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha, Nebraska] to put on a bond drive [Annotator's Note: campaign to encourage Americans to buy United States Treasury bonds to finance World War 2] and were on the way back to Fort Meade, South Dakota. They stopped at Fort Robinson, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: now part of Fort Robinson State Park, Nebraska] which was a remount station that raised horses. At Meade, they started getting motorcycles, trucks, armored vehicles, but not tanks yet. He got into maintenance then. He had gone to ordnance school and been trained on the motorcycle. He was in 2nd Squadron doing heavy maintenance. The men were wrecking the motorcycles. They had to send the wrecked ones out to the factories which took too long. Wombacher and another man made a machine to do the work themselves.

Delbert Wombacher used the G.I. Bill after the war by attending a school in Omaha, Nebraska. He was working and went at night. He gave up after a short time. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if he went to USO, or United Services Organization, shows while overseas.] He did not have time to do that. They worked around the clock for months on end. He did attend some in the states. At Camp Perry, Ohio [Annotator's Note: Erie Township, Ohio, he saw Bob Hope [Annotator's Note: born Leslie Townes Hope, American comedian, actor, singer, author]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Wombacher to tell him about a cane he found.] He was going through Frankfurt, Germany. The Germans used concrete ties on the rails, and some track was standing up in the air. There was a steam locomotive on top of another one. Wombacher was in a jeep, saw a cane laying in the rubble and grabbed it. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Wombacher to tell him about something someone made for him.] He was with the 922nd [Annotator's Note: 922nd Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Battalion; unable to identify] at Reims [Annotator's Note: Reims, France]. He had German prisoners helping them with mechanical things. The sent a truck to German prison compound in Compiegne, France and got a truckload of them. Some were quite talented. No one in the German Army knew anything about engines though. They had a tank recovery outfit with a big truck to haul them with. Most tanks were put back in service within three days. They picked up one tank once that had four dead soldiers in it.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Delbert Wombacher how World War 2 changed his and his life.] That is the hardest question he has been asked. It made him independent. Some skills he learned served him well and still do. It helped him transition to TVA [Annotator's Note: Tennessee Valley Authority]. When he went to train there, they needed people to operate hydroelectric plants. It was compressed engineering training over 18 months. He made it through and had a good job. He thinks the war was probably the most unifying thing that ever happened with the general American population. The country really pulled together. Once a tank was approved and went into production, they were producing four or five a day. His wife's mother worked in aircraft factory during the war. Wombacher was at Camp Perry, Ohio near Erie Proving Ground [Annotator's Note: also called Camp Perry Proving Ground, Erie Ordnance Depot, or Erie Army Depot, Erie Township, Ohio]. A lot of women worked there, and they worked on tanks. The war definitely changed the world more drastically than anything before or since. The United States found out quickly that they needed friends overseas. The cost of the war in personnel and material was a tremendous expenditure in a negative way. The time taken away from non-war production was another negative. World unification was the largest positive. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Wombacher what he thinks the significance is of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.] The younger generation at school-age and older have any idea of what took place. That is one place they can get some idea of what the sacrifices were. The government did not build that. The GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier], including him, are the ones who built it. There were people in Washington [Annotator's Note: the United States government in Washington, D.C.] who did not want the museum built on its current site. The Iwo Jima memorial [Annotator's Note: United States Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington, Virginia], the Korea War memorial [Annotator's Note: Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C.], and the Vietnam memorial [Annotator's Note: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C] were government financed. He could not donate much [Annotator's Note: to The National WWII Museum] but he did what he could. He recommends to someone off-camera that they visit and give themselves enough time to get into the details. He did the tour in a day but that is not enough time. [Annotator's Note: Wombacher gets emotional.]