Lewis E. Belcher was born on Christmas Day 1923 in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. His father did a lot of things, including working for a railroad and in coal mines. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] he got a railroad job that moved the family to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. Belcher was an only child. He went to high school in Altoona [Annotator's Note: Altoona, Pennsylvania], graduating around 1943. He went into the service during his senior year. By this time, his father had been killed on the railroad. His mother was not too thrilled he was going into the service, but did not say much about it. He was drafted into the Army, inducted at New Cumberland Army Depot [Annotator's Note: in Fairview, Pennsylvania]. He then went for basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He tried to join the paratroopers but was not allowed to because of vision problems. Once he completed basic, Belcher was given two choices: to go to officer candidate school, or to go into the Army Specialized Training Program, or ASTP [Annotator's Note: the ASTP was a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers]. He chose to go into the ASTP, but it was disbanded six months later and he was sent into a combat outfit to be shipped overseas. He had been going to North Carolina State [Annotator's Note: North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina] and then went to to the University of Georgia [Annotator's Note: in Athens, Georgia]. When the ASTP was ended, he was assigned to the 10th Armored Division [Annotator's Note: Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division]. Its tank units were beginning to train for indirect fire, and Belcher was made a gunner for the platoon leader. Training involved maneuvers and firing weapons. He got to know a few of the other men in his outfit. The Division was already established, and many of the men were regular army. Belcher remained a gunner until the first time they were shot at and his platoon leader was taken off the line. Belcher was then made tank commander.

Lewis E. Belcher [Annotator's Note: serving with Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division] was deployed overseas around August 1944 as a gunner [Annotator's Note: on a M4 Sherman medium tank]. The first action he saw was near Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France] near 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 Saar River. They had to fight their way across the Moselle River three times. [Annotator's Note: Belcher laughs.] There was a lot of close fighting at that time. The platoon leader could not take it and was relieved [Annotator's Note: and Belcher than became commander of his tank]. Belcher became close with his tank crew of five men. Three of the five of them would be in the turret of the tank, while only the driver and his assistant were down below. The assistant passed ammunition to the turret. It was noisy and cold inside the tank. When they reached the Siegfried Line, their mission was mostly taking out pillboxes [Annotator's Note: small, concrete emplacement for machine guns and anti-tank weapons]. The tanks generally functioned individually, not in groups. They did not stay long in the area. Most of the time was calm, until they were called on for the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945].

Lewis E. Belcher and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division] were called up in December 1944 when the Germans began making a big push in the Ardennes [Annotator's Note: Ardennes Forest, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but also Germany and France] near Luxembourg and Belgium [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. Colonel Chamberlain was the battalion commander at the time [Annotator’s Note: US Army Colonel Thomas Chamberlain, commander of the 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division]. They got word to road march overnight towards Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Bastogne, Belgium]. The 101st [Annotator's Note: 101st Airborne Division] soon arrived as well. Belcher only knew that Bastogne was a crossroads the Germans used to move supplies to and from Antwerp [Annotator's Note: Antwerp, Belgium]. The Germans sent a demand to surrender to the 101st. The 10th Armored was assigned to the 101st at the time. The commander of the 101st, McAuliffe [Annotator's Note: US Army General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe, commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne] simply replied "Nuts!" to the Germans. Belcher knew that they were basically surrounded by the Germans at this point. He was confident in his crew. They had more training than he did. Knowing they were not going to surrender, they prepared for an onslaught. It was the coldest winter in Europe in 50 years [Annotator's Note: 1944 to 1945]. They did not receive winter uniforms and boots until later, it was late in arriving. Supplies were airdropped when the weather permitted the planes to fly. They had very little air support. Belcher never doubted that they would win the war. What sticks out the most in his memory is the cold.

Lewis E. Belcher [Annotator's Note: a tank commander in Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division, sent to Bastogne, Belgium in December 1944] did not have any experience with Germans coming behind the lines, though there were lots of rumors to that effect. Once the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was over, they headed west with the goal of reaching the Rhine River. They quickly captured Trier [Annotator's Note: Trier, Germany]. Belcher was assigned to point, meaning his was the first vehicle. One evening after things had slowed down, they pulled into a stop and Belcher and a second tank commander, Sergeant Perry [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], were called in by officers for a briefing and told where to go. Belcher wrapped himself in toilet paper and walked down the road so the tank driver could see him in the pitch black of night. They approached a bridge and pulled over when a vehicle came up behind them, and they heard someone speaking German from the vehicle. Perry began firing at it but it took off in the other direction. There was only one platoon of armored infantry with them. This unit cleared the bridge of explosives, and believed the vehicle was Germans coming to blow up the bridge. The day they reached the Rhine, they arrived at a spot which the Germans had zeroed in with 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery]. Belcher's tank was hit and caught on fire. He was pushed out of the tank but as he was escaping, another shell hit the tank and he was hit by shrapnel. He was worried that was it for him. He headed for a ditch and does not remember much. He woke up in the ditch, and felt air sucking in [Annotator's Note: he gestures towards his chest] and out his back. He was hospitalized for several days at a MASH [Annotator's Note: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital], and then to an evacuation point where he was flown across the Channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel] to Birmingham, England. Belcher got out of the hospital on the day before VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945]. He later learned the assistant driver of his crew was killed, but he does not know what happened to the rest of his crew.

Lewis E. Belcher [Annotator's Note: wounded in action in Germany as a tank commander in Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division] and the other tanks in his group were ordered to remove numbers, names, and any identifying markers from their tanks when they were heading north to Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Bastogne, Belgium] in December 1944. They became known as the "Ghost Division". Belcher's tank was hit with two 88 [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] shells, and he was wounded by shrapnel. Previously, before Bastogne, they had been hit and the tread was knocked off the tank. They ran over mines a few times. There was not really any defense against mines except a few companies of tanks with flails [Annotator's Note: mine flails, essentially rotating chains, were sometimes attached to the front of tanks to deliberately set off mines]. The Germans main defense against American tanks were land mines and the 88. The infantry would do their best to knock them out. Belcher lost a few friends during the war, not necessarily in his unit. He learned about their deaths through letters from home from his mother and girlfriend. Belcher spent about two and a half months recuperating in England [Annotator's Note: after being hit by the shrapnel]. His family was notified that he had been wounded in action.

Lewis E. Belcher [Annotator's Note: wounded in action in Germany as a tank commander in Company B, 11th Tank Battalion, 10th Armored Division] left England [Annotator's Note: after a hospital stay] by ship and arrived in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and took a train home. His parents met him at the train station. He did not think much about transitioning back to civilian life. He worked in a store and had a milk route. He was married shortly after he got home. After he was released from the hospital in England, he was sent to an airport in Germany where a redeployment camp was set up. The people with high points were sent home [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home], and those with low points would be shipped to the South Pacific. The war in the Pacific ended [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] before anyone was shipped out. Belcher was not able to return home until January [Annotator's Note: January 1946]. He was young enough to quickly readjust to civilian life. He did not think about the war a lot after he got home. He belongs to the VFW, American Legion, and Disabled American Veterans groups.