William Earl Gast was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in September 1924. He grew up with two sisters. His dad worked for the Hamilton Watch Company. His mother was from an Indiana farm and they often took long visits. Gast walked to school and to church. He enjoyed his childhood and had everything he needed. While in high school he took machine shop to learn a trade. Halfway through his senior year, he enlisted into the military in December 1942. He decided to enlist in the service because he wanted to get away from normal life and find an adventure. [Annotator's Note: A woman's voice interjects into the interview at 0:08:34.000.] At first, he wanted to join the Navy, but he failed his physical. He decided to try the Army and he was accepted. He was inducted at New Cumberland, Pennsylvania and sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training. After basic training he was sent through armored force school and learned how to work on jeeps, trucks, and other motorized vehicles. He was then shipped to Camp Campbell [Annotator's Note: now Fort Campbell, Kentucky] where he learned to operate various equipment, such as a half-tracks [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] and tanks. One day they got a tank stuck in a swampy area, and his instructor told him that his team had to get it out and meet him back at camp. It took three or four days for his team to free the tank and return to camp. They had passed the test. Gast enjoyed his experience in training.

[Annotator's Note: William Earl Gast joined the Army and went to armor forces school at what was then Camp Campbell, Kentucky to learn how to operate M4 Sherman medium tank.] Everything in a tank is made of iron. There was no cushion to sit on. There was an instrument panel that they used to drive the tank. He worked with five different engines. The last engine they had was a Ford V8. To drive the tank, you sat on a little seat, and used two leavers, an accelerator, and clutch. There was a five-gear speed box to shift gears. He would look through a manual periscope to see outside when he was driving with the hatch closed. Gast believes that the fastest he could get it [Annotator's Note: the M4 Sherman medium tank] was 35 miles per hour. The gunner sat behind the sight so he could zero in on targets. They used a machine gun with tracers to help with accuracy. There was very little room to move around in the tank. The only way they received ventilation was when the hatches were open. The tank commander was the eyes of the tank. He calls the position of where to go and when to fire. There were times during combat when the communication was difficult, so the tank commander would use his feet and tap Gast on the right or left shoulder to tell him which way to go because it was challenging for Gast to see out of the periscope. After tank training, Gast was sent to Camp Laguna, Arizona where he practiced maneuvering tanks in the sand. He thought that he would eventually be sent to Africa. When he arrived in Arizona all he could see was desert and nothing else. They began walking through the sand until he reached the camp. He was assigned to a four men tent. There was a big water tower that they used to shower. About five times a day they were required to change the air filters in their tanks. Gast soon heard that the war in Africa concluded and he would not be going there.

William Earl Gast was sent to Camp Shanks [Annotator's Note: in Orangetown, New York] for embarkation. While he waited to be sent overseas, he was not allowed to leave the camp but was given all the English beer he wanted to drink. He boarded the Aquitania [Annotator's Note: RMS Aquitania; in November 1943], crossed the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean] without a convoy, and landed in Monrock, Scotland. During the trip over, he was on kitchen duty. He was peeling potatoes when the ship hit a big wave, knocking all the potatoes on the floor. When he landed in Monrock, he and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 30th Infantry Division] were given Thanksgiving dinner and slept in an old barracks building. Very soon, his unit was sent to England [Annotator's Note: 25 November 1943]. While he was on a leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], he went into town and ate the best fish and chips he ever had. He got along great with the local English people. He had a chance to visit London [Annotator's Note: London, England] during a furlough. While his unit was stationed in England, they worked on various maneuvers. He wore all wool clothing. They washed their clothes in an iron kettle or sometimes washed them in gasoline. When the tanks were shipped overseas, they were packed in Cosmoline [Annotator's Note: brown wax-like petroleum-based corrosion inhibitors]. Gast had to clean the wax off the tanks which took several days. He and his unit trained to seal the tanks properly so water could not penetrate. They practiced loading and unloading on a landing craft, tank. They had to back three tanks onto the LCT [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Tank]. Gast remembered that one time, they were ordered to load the tanks up at night, which was unusual because they previously been training during the day. The LCTs moved across the English Channel, bobbed around for a while, and returned to England. They did the same thing the next night [Annotator's Note: 2 and 3 June 1944]. Gast recalled that it was cold and raining, and had no idea what was going on, but he never saw so many crafts and ships before that early morning.

William Earl Gast and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 30th Infantry Division] were on a LCT [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Tank] heading across the English Channel to Normandy, France [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. The driver of the LCT guaranteed Gast that he would get the craft to the beaches without damaging the tanks. The driver made through on his promise and when the gate of the LCT fell onto Omaha Beach, Gast was able to roll his tank off the craft and head up onto the sand. He could hear bullets bouncing off the tank. He could see tanks on fire because they were easy targets. There were many obstacles in his way, and he was afraid that in trying to maneuver around, he may have rolled over men. His goal was to reach the beach wall by the end of the night, which he did. Out of the 15 tanks in his company, only five made it through the first day of Normandy. When he reached the wall, most of the German fire power went over them. During the night, the engineers came in to blast a cliff, then the infantry followed. Gast sat in his tank with the hatch closed waiting to receive his next orders and did not sleep a wink. After the first day, Gast and his unit advanced past the beaches and into the hedgerows where they were met by the Germans again. Gast received orders from his platoon leader, which were very basic. Most of the time it was just when they would be moving out. He did not exactly know where he was going or what the mission was for the day. Gast cannot remember everyone in the tank with him during the Normandy invasion. He does remember one guy, Bob Fager [Annotator's Note: unable to identify], who was a cook, but wanted to be Gast's assistant driver. Gast thought it was fine. During his first time in battle, Fager froze and Gast had to shove him to get him to start shooting the gun.

William Earl Gast was assigned to the 743rd Tank Battalion [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 1st Infantry Division], while he was training in Arizona. On D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], his unit landed on the beaches with the 1st Infantry Division. Ten days later, his unit became attached to the 30th Infantry Division for the remainder of their tour in Europe. After he transferred to the 30th Division, they advanced off the beaches and into the hedgerows [Annotator's Note: thickets that are planted along property lines]. In France, properties and farms were divided off with hedgerows. The Germans would set up machine guns on the other side of the hedgerows and attack the American troops as they tried to advance through. The Germans were successful in knocking out several of the tanks. The Americans decided to make bulldozer tanks. The bulldozer tank would knock out the hedgerow, so the rest of the tanks could pass through. Gast remarked that at first, the infantry men did not like the tanks because they were so loud and often gave away their positions to the Germans. Once they advanced further into France, the infantry liked the tanks because they could get behind them and use them as protection. As they moved into Brussels [Annotator's Note: Brussels, Belgium] many of the troops sat on the outside of the tanks and rode into town.

Most of William Earl Gast and his unit's [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 30th Infantry Division] goals were to clean up pockets of resistance so Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Army could come through and take the towns. On one mission, shortly after Operation Cobra [Annotator's Note: Operation Cobra, the breakout from Saint-Lo, France, 25 to 31 July 1944], Gast's unit was assigned to clean up Mortain, France, but they failed their mission and were told to retreat. During this battle, Gast lost three tank commanders. He became a tank commander and driver. Many American troops were surrounded by Germans on Hill 314 [Annotator's Note: Operation Lüttich, German counterattack during Battle of Normandy at Mortain, France, 7 to 13 August 1944]. Gast recalls that they fired shells containing medicine to the trapped group. Gast was told to leave the tank and head for safety. He retreated on foot with the Germans shooting machine gun fire in his direction. Gast realized that his safety point was no longer there and decided to run back towards his tank. When he got there, he saw that his tank had been blown up by a German bazooka. He rescued two men from the tank. During this event, he was wounded in the back by shrapnel. He was taken to a field hospital which was bombed by airplanes because the Germans were trying to make Patton's Army retreat. Gast left the hospital to find his outfit. Gast remarks that Operation Cobra devastated the infantry men. He was in Saint-Lo, France during the operation and witnessed the Americans drop bombs on their own infantry men. When the bombs started to drop, Gast said he got into his tank and closed the hatch. The amount of damage was significant. Gast would later suffer from post traumatic stress disorder [Annotator's Note: usually referred to as PTSD].

After William Earl Gast left the field hospital, he searched for his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 30th Infantry Division]. He had met up with them in Malmedy [Annotator's Note: Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944] and was assigned as a liaison corporal. His role was to provide communication between the tank battalion and the infantry. He was given a jeep, radio equipment, and a driver named Norman Hamilton [Annotator's Note: Army PFC Norman E. Hamilton], who was an artist by trade. Gast commented that Hamilton was a good man but did not know anything about war and how to protect himself from enemy fire. Gast was impressed, however, with his drawing skills and his ability to make their boots warm using skip skin [Annotator's Note: unable to identify]. During the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Gast and Hamilton had to drive across a road several times to dispatch information because the radio equipment was not working properly. Every time they crossed the road, they heard explosions and saw trucks being blown up by land mines. One time they were part way across, and they received machine gun fire. Hamilton did not know what to do. Gast was worried about Hamilton and requested to his commander to transfer him for his safety. His commander agreed. Hamilton was transferred to Headquarters and was given the task to illustrate for a book called "Move Out, Verify: The Combat Story of the 743rd Tank Battalion" [Annotator's Note: by author Army PFC Wayne Robinson]. Gast recalls that the weather was cold, but he stayed in a farmhouse during his time during the Bulge. Upon the battle completion, Gast's battalion moved through Belgium and passing through, Stavelot [Annotator's Note: Stavelot, Belgium] and Tournai [Annotator's Note: Tournai, Belgium] as they headed into Holland. There whole battalion ran out of gas and had to wait for supplies to reach them.

William Earl Gast remembers the first time he changed into new clothes. He was staying in a house and slept in the basement. He contracted body lice and was loaded up on a truck and taken to Aachen, Germany. He was taken to a coal mining factory where they had showers for the workers. Gast stripped his clothes off, dusted off with DDT [Annotator's Note: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; developed as an insecticide], took a shower, dusted more with DDT, and was given a new change of clothes. Gast recalls from the D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] landing until that moment he had lost the soles of his shoes. At times, they had to relieve themselves in their helmet. At other times, they ate their food out of their helmets. Gast recalled reaching Magdeburg, Germany and liberating the towns people [Annotator's Note: 20 April 1945]. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 743rd Tank Battalion, 30th Infantry Division] also helped liberate some of the slave laborers in the factories. At one point, when he was on guard duty, he saw buzz bombs [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] flying through the air. He never knew where they landed. He was in Magdeburg when he heard the news that the war in Europe ended. Gast recalled a friend told him that a train was coming through town with concentration camp survivors. He went to the station to see them, but they had already departed. Once war was over, they had to take their tanks to a place and remove all the ammunition. Gast was sent to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France] for a few days, then boarded SS Kingston Victory ship. After 21 days at sea, they arrived in Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. Gast remembers eating greens and ice cream for the first time since he left the United States.

William Earl Gast remarks that during his time in Europe, he lived day by day. He did not think about whether he would make it or not. He thought they had proper clothes and equipment, and good training. Gast says he went in as a kid and came out as a well-seasoned man. He learned about comrade and affection with others. He grieves for America and how the nation has become greedy. He believes during World War 2, the country was united, unlike today.