THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240488
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
The snow was hip-deep.
In the woods up a slope were German machine guns and a Royal Tiger tank shielding foot troops.
Staff Sgt. Archer T. Gammon charged them, giving his life Jan. 11, 1945, to save his platoon near Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge.
Gammon was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his ``intrepidity and extreme devotion to the task of driving the enemy back, no matter what the odds.''
A bridge at Danville will be named for him Thursday. In the crowd will be eight of his 10 living siblings, five from Hampton Roads.
Archer grew up in Pittsylvania County in a sharecropper family of 15 children.
As 10th in line, Archer ``always took care of the younger children while our mother cooked and washed and cleaned,'' the youngest sister, Elsie Stovall, said Tuesday at her home in Virginia Beach.
In a letter to the local paper, a former classmate, Clyde East, remembered that Archer, a gifted athlete a head taller than other boys in the fourth grade, ``would take up for the smaller youngsters being mistreated by older boys.''
He was smart ``and kept up with the rest of the class with little or no noticeable exertion.'' He was called upon often to read aloud.
``We were hard workers,'' Elsie said. ``All the farmers loved to have us harvest tobacco, except to feed us. They cut watermelons first, to fill us up; but we learned to wait until we had eaten fried chicken.''
They went to the fields together, the older ones walking the dirt roads, the younger ones riding the wood sleds behind the mules.
Sunday, they lined up chairs in rows, as if they were pews, in front of the radio and listened to the church service.
``Archer was happy but more reserved than the others. He thought a lot before he did anything. He wasn't one to jump right in. He weighed pros and cons.
``When he came home before going overseas, so were the four others from the service. One night we went bowling and had as much fun as at any time we were young.''
The dedication of the Archer T. Gammon Bridge will be at 2 p.m. at the entrance of Dan Daniel Memorial Park. Kin from hereabouts are Elsie, Virginia Beach; James Gammon, Norfolk; Ethel Carl, Hampton; Ruby Lerner, Phoebus; Gertrude Burns, Yorktown.
Guests will hear how, when enemy fire pinned his platoon, Archer charged 30 yards and silenced with grenades a machine gun crew of three. ``Disregarding all thoughts of personal safety,'' he crossed the width of his platoon's line and wiped out a second crew of four.
``With supreme daring,'' he moved within 25 yards of the tank and shot two infantrymen. The tank, withdrawing, stopped to fire; began backing again, stopped and fired from its heavy gun the round that killed him instantly. He was 27.
``To save his men, he had little time to ponder,'' Elsie said. ``God must have been with him.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff Sgt. Archer T. Gammon gave his life Jan. 11, 1945, to save
his platoon near Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge.
by CNB