CHARLES "CHUCK" TOBIN

By Travis Carter

Mr. Tobin was born in South Dakota.  He was the fourth oldest out of six sisters and three brothers.  When he was young, he came west by freight train.  Charles got married in 1952 and has four children.  He worked for McGregor's for 50 years and now lives in Hooper. 

Mr. Tobin got a draft notice for the military when he was twenty-two years old.  He went to Spokane to be inducted and then Fort Lewis for basic training, then on to Fort Knox to train to be a tank sergeant and driver.  The reason why Charles became a tank driver is because he worked for a farmer and he knew how to drive a tractor.

He said, "Driving a tank and a tractor is the same, except the steering clutches are different on a tractor than on a tank."

Chuck Tobin went to England for four or five months.  Then he went to France for thirty days.  That is where he saw the most action in his military career.  He was very active when he was in France.  He fought at the Battle of St. Lô.  The Battle of St. Lô was after D-Day.  He and other reinforcement troops were sent in about two weeks after the conquest of Normandy.

Mr. Tobin drove an M5 tank, a mid-sized tank.  They worked very  near the front lines.  The bigger tanks were behind him.  He was told where they were to go by a commanding officer who was sticking his head out of the tank.  The M5 tank's job was to shoot down German men with heavy arms, like bazookas, so that the Germans would not get a shot at the larger tanks and the infantry men who were behind them.

Chuck's tank did pretty well until after they were in France about thirty days.  One day his tank got hit by a bazooka, which just crumpled the front end of the tank.  Not even an hour later, when Chuck had driven the tank through a hedgerow, they started down a little incline and ran over a land mine.   Charles lost the front portion of his right foot and broke his left foot.  Nobody died out of the four people in that tank, but they were all thrown out onto the ground and the Germans kept shooting at them.

After spending six months in an English hospital, Charles came home with a Purple Heart, which he showed us during the interview.

He told me he will never forget having to walk five miles in the morning to where they parked the tanks and five miles back in the evening every single day for two months while he was in training.

CHARLES TOBIN

By Jessica Lane-Zehm

Charles "Chuck" Tobin was born in 1917 in a small South Dakota town.  He was the fourth oldest of six girls and three boys.  During the Great Depression while he was in school, he spent his free time working for a farmer to earn any extra money he could.  In 1933, at the age of seventeen, he came to Whitman County to look for a job.  He traveled by railroad in the dirt and filth of any freight train car that was not already full.  Chuck settled in LaCrosse, Washington and started work for a local farmer.  He remained in LaCrosse until he was drafted in 1941.  At age twenty-two he reported to a draft board in Spokane for induction, then was moved by train to Fort Lewis.  A month later he was in Fort Knox, Kentucky where he spent many days and countless hours in training.  At the fort he was taught how to drive a tank, which he says is not much different than your everyday tractor.  They learned to shoot, drive, and above all to take orders.

"The hardest part was probably the marching," he said.  "We had to get up and march five miles every morning."  Another hard part of the training was the gun drills.  The men were ordered to crawl along the ground while machine guns were fired over the top of them.

"One guy panicked and jumped up in the middle of the drill.  He was lucky though because they had stopped shooting long enough to reload."  Chuck remembered that incident very well.

After training Charles was sent to England for five months, then went to France.  He was sent into battle at St. Lô.  Reaching the battle site was a long and tiring process.  They had to wait for high tides to come in before they could get up to the beach where they could unload their tanks, which took days.  For Chuck combat went by as a blur.  They never got a relaxing or easy moment.  They were constantly on their toes.  "We were always scared, but we just went in to do our job and hoped we came out alive."

There were four people in his tank when they would go into battle.  Chuck was the tank driver, and there was also a navigator, a gunner, and a lieutenant to command progress.  Their job was to find and destroy German machine guns to clear the area so the infantry could walk in.  When Chuck was asked what motivated him to keep going, he shrugged and said, "I guess you could say it was those one hundred guys out there on foot, out in the open,  coming up behind me."

After they had been in France about thirty days, they were in combat one day and Chuck had been watching for Germans when a bazooka hit the tank at close range.  Looking out the hole in the tank, he could see Germans close enough to see the detail on their faces.  He watched them as they tried to hunt him down. 

During the chase, which lasted less than an hour right on the front line, Charles maneuvered his tank through a hedgerow.  As he was starting down a slight incline on the other side of it, he hit a land mine, blowing off the front end of the tank which was about two inches thick.  The lid of the tank blew off too and all four of the crew were thrown out onto the ground as the tank caught on fire.  Chuck tried to crawl behind the tank for protection from the enemy machine gunners, but his feet were both seriously injured and he had trouble moving under the barrage of German fire.  One of the men was severely burned and flying shrapnel had injured the lieutenant.  It was amazing that the Germans, who were so close to them Chuck could see the expression on their faces, failed to hit any of the four of them. 

When the medics reached them they were all hauled off to different medical establishments to be treated.  Chuck's left foot was badly broken and his right foot was partially blown off.  He stayed in a treatment center in England for six months before returning home.  The nurses and doctors treated him the very best they could, giving everyone their full attention, even though there were rows upon rows of injured people to attend to.  The nurses were constantly exhausted but tried to make his stay as enjoyable as possible.

He was supposed to stay in bed and not try to walk, but on some occasions he would let himself off the bed and crawl around the hospital.  One of the orderlies would find him away from his room on his hands and knees and just wrap his arm around Chuck's waist, pick him up, and carry him back to bed.

After the war and after he healed, Chuck moved to Hooper, Washington.  He worked for McGregor Land and Livestock for fifty years before retiring.  At the age of thirty-five he married and had children who have long since grown and moved out of the house.  He plans to remain in Hooper where he is happy, spending his free time at Sara's store for a daily coffee hour.

Charles "Chuck" Tobin earned a Purple Heart for being wounded in the line of duty, and also gold bars and a Bronze Star.  Those medals were all well earned through his bravery, determination, and honor for his country.

Charles was a lot of fun to interview.  He told me some great stories, and basically made the experience interesting.  I really admired him for his courage, determination, and strength.  He went through a lot and never gave up, but kept trying through it all.