Vernon Leo Tyler was born in August 1923 in Los Angeles, California. There was no work [Annotator's Note: during The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. The government was giving out food. His father found work with the Pacific Railroad [Annotator's Note: the Union Pacific Railroad Company]. Tyler was washing his car at home when he heard Pearl Harbor was bombed [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He got into the service when he got out of high school. He wanted to join the Navy. He flunked the exam because of his tonsils. He paid to have his tonsils removed so he could join the Navy. While he was recuperating, he received his draft notice for the Army. He was inducted into the Army in downtown Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] on 15 February 1943. He had to relinquish his draft card when he was inducted. That night he and his friend went to go see a show and they were asked by a policeman to show their draft cards. They did not have them. The officer arrested them for draft evasion, even though they had just been inducted into the Army. He had to spend the night in jail. His father came to get him out the next day. He was sent to Arlington Reception Station [Annotator's Note: in Arlington, Virginia]. His brother was a sergeant there and he knew Lucille Ball [Annotator's Note: Lucille Desirée Ball, American actress, comedian, and producer] because of her service in the Army. Tyler was camped in Riverside [Annotator's Note: Riverside, California]. He was assigned to an anti-aircraft artillery until 1 January 1944 when he passed his exams to transfer to the Air Corps. Then he was transferred to Sheppard Field [Annotator's Note: now Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita County, Texas] for classification. He went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to train to be a co-pilot. Just before he was going to graduate, he was taken out because they had too many people in the flight program. He was transferred into the infantry in the 100th Infantry Division in North Carolina. He did basic training in the hills of North Carolina in the summertime. It was October 1944 before they went overseas.

Vernon Leo Tyler's the ride on the ship [Annotator's Note: overseas as part of the 100th Infantry Division] was miserable because everyone was seasick. They went in a convoy during the day. At night they were on their own because of German submarines. It took two weeks to get to France by a zigzag method [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver]. They landed in Marseilles, France. They fought their way up to Leon [Annotator's Note: Leon, France] and across the mountains in southern France. Then they went into Germany. His contact was with indirect fire. He did not see the enemy. He provided transportation for the forward observer. They were advancing and they continued to advance. He killed one German. It was freezing cold, and he had his rifle with him. He was going around a corner when he saw a German running at him. He shot him. When he got up next to the German to check him it was a jackrabbit. That was the closest he came to a German. After the war, he and his wife went back to Germany. He was looking for the school his company had stayed in. Later he received a letter from friends in Germany. He went back to Germany and met them in Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany]. A girl showed him a picture that was taken 45 years earlier during the war that he had never seen before.

Vernon Leo Tyler [Annotator's Note: in the 100th Infantry Division] had to climb ropes to get on the troopships. He stayed in a pup tent when he got to Marseilles [Annotator's Note: Marseilles, France]. The first two German words he saw were on a tank and they meant to drink water. In Leon [Annotator's Note: Léon, France] they were shaving girls' heads [Annotator's Note: the French did that to Nazi collaborators after liberation]. It was muddy, cold, and miserable going through the different towns. The danger was indirect fire. One time he was driving his jeep and as he got to an intersection two bombs went off in front of him. There was shrapnel in his windshield. They went into one place in the dead of night and did not know where they were. In the morning they saw they were next to a field full of sheep and there were Schu-mines [Annotator's Note: Schu-mine 42, Schutzenmine 42 or rifleman's mine model 1942] everywhere. There were several dead sheep from the land mines. He spent Christmas Eve of 1944 [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1944] in a farmhouse in France. A rat ran across his face while he was sleeping. He did not go back to sleep after that. The German's big counterattack was the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter-Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], but Tyler was in the 7th Army, so he was further south. His line held and was stable. It was the Maginot Line [Annotator's Note: the Maginot Line is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force them to move around the fortifications]. There was a convoy of German soldiers that got bombed out in the mountains. When they got to Mannheim, Germany they looted the farming headquarters. He liberated a compass, a camera, and Luger [Annotator's Note: German P08 Luger 9mm semi-automatic pistol] from a German prisoner, and a 25 caliber [Annotator's Note: .25-caliber pistol] from the Burgermeister [Annotator's Note: mayor]. He got a pair of German skis to take home from a friend, Heinz [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. He sold them for 20 dollars when he was a starving college student. Heinz left the German military, and this was punishable by death. He hid in his parent's basement. His neighbor wanted to turn him into the Nazis. He turned himself into some French troops. The truck he was on tipped over and he managed to escape. He made it back to his parents and the war ended. It was a good thing he did not get caught. Tyler does not remember all the little towns they were in. The mountains were difficult terrain. He was in a jeep, so he needed a road to drive. He was attacked in a house at one point when he was with the forward observer on the third floor. He ran to get down and out of there.

Vernon Leo Tyler was a cannoneer on gun crews [Annotator's Note: in the 100th Infantry Division]. Gun crew duties required them to be on the guns all hours of the day no matter the weather. The cannoneer loads the shell into the artillery piece. It was a miserable job. When the opportunity came for him to be a jeep driver, he was glad. There were land mines [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact] and he saw a lieutenant in a vehicle in front of him get blown up by one. Fortunately, he never hit one. The areas were not mapped, and they could have ended up in the enemy territory. After he dropped off a forward observer he would go back to the company and wait until he was needed to go back up again. He got lost a few times but would find his way back. One of his buddies made a battlefield commission [Annotator's Note: enlisted soldier made an officer in the field of battle]. Tyler was assigned to go get weapons from the Burgermeister [Annotator's Note: mayor]. There were weapons and a GI [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] in the back of the truck. He was messing with one of the guns. This was after the war was over. The weapon went off, went through the truck, and killed Tyler's friend. It was an accidental death. There were differences between the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] and the Maginot Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by France in the 1930s]. The Siegfried Line was filled with mines and tank traps and was built more efficiently than the Maginot Line. The Germans are the finest engineers in the world. Their tanks were designed better and had better firepower. The Germans had the nebelwerfer [Annotator's Note: nebelwerfer; German multiple rocket launcher]. Their engineering was fantastic. When they arrived at the Rhine River in Mannheim [Annotator's Note: Mannheim, Germany] they had to cross pontoon bridges. It was hard to drive vehicles across those bridges. The corps of engineers did a good job building the bridges because they made it across. When they went into Germany, they still regarded them as the krauts [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Germans]. They were antagonistic because they would not have been there if it was not for the Germans. Tyler had to kick a German lady out of her home. It was not a pleasant task. He would put her out one door and she would be back in by another door. They had to make it clear they were taking over the house. It did not hurt their conscience to take their stuff because they were the reason for the war. They actually preferred the German people over the French people. When they were in Heilbronn [Annotator's Note: Heilbronn, Germany], the engineers were generating smoke. They could not see anything in there because of it. They had to use rafts to get their vehicles across to the other side. There was a dead German soldier lying there for three days. There was too much firepower going on for them to get the body. Once they crossed the river, he sent his dad a picture of himself holding his German Luger [Annotator's Note: German P08 Luger 9mm semi-automatic pistol]. He sent the picture between April and June 1945. Their equipment was not set up they were just trying to get across the river. They had artillery hitting around them the whole time.

Vernon Leo Tyler occupied Stuttgart [Annotator's Note: Stuttgart, Germany] for several months before he came home. He came back in October [Annotator's Note: October 1945]. When they first started associated with the Germans it was against the rules to fraternize with them. He met the Scharbachs [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] early on and went to their house. He would walk down the street with his .25-caliber gun [Annotator's Note: German .25-caliber pistol] in his hand. Gradually, they started to relax the rules. He did not smoke, but he would get the cigarette rations. He would give his cigarettes to the cook and the cook would give him a can of coffee or food. He would then take the food to the Scharbachs and they would cook for him. The farthest south he made it was to Olm [Annotator's Note: Olm, Germany] near Mannheim [Annotator's Note: Mannheim, Germany]. He used the GI Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] and enrolled at East LA JC [Annotator's Note: East Los Angeles Junior College in Los Angeles, California]. He did two years of studies. Later he moved to Arizona and went to Arizona State [Annotator's Note: Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona]. Then he got married and went to work. He did not get a degree. The war made him appreciate home and the freedoms he has. He understood the price that was paid for the freedoms. If America did not win the war, Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] would have taken over the world. The war utilized a lot of sources that had to go into armaments and military equipment. The museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is a gift to future generations because otherwise, the war would fall into obscurity. It cannot be forgotten because there are too many men who made sacrifices during the war.