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| Ed "Smoky" Stuever |
Ed "Smoky" Stuever, a maintenance sergeant in the 712th Tank Battalion, never missed a reunion. He loved to bring memorabilia from his days in the Civilian Conservation Corps and the horse cavalry. As I go through the digitized files of interviews and conversations I recorded some 25 years ago, I'm finding a treasure trove of stories from Ed and many others that I'll be sharing as the podcast grows. I welcome comments and questions and even relevant audio clips that listeners would like to share.
Podcast: Lieutenant Tarr's Platoon
The following is an excerpt from "The Hospitality Room," my sequel to Tanks for the Memories.
Russky gonna cut you throat
"In Normandy," he said, "they liberated a young Russian. He was about 21 years old, and the Germans had him digging foxholes. When he heard the Americans were coming he hid out, and he waited till we came along. Then they told me to take him with me, he's a good worker.
"I had him doing hard work, moving the tracks around. We had him from Normandy until we were in Briey, France. He was walking down the main street, and he saluted a colonel of the MPs in a jeep with a cigarette in his hand, and they hauled him away. We never saw him again.
"In all this period, he would always approach me and he'd say, 'Sergeant, what you do when Russia and America come together?'
"I says, 'Oh, I go home.'
"'No, no, you no go home. Russky gonna cut you throat.' Time and again he would approach me with this, 'Smoky, what you do when America and Russia come together?'
"I couldn't sleep with that guy around. I had a real sharp dagger, and I had an extra pair of boots on the truck. They were all worn, and I wanted to exchange them when I got a chance. And he said, 'I want them.'
"I says, 'No, you can't have them.'
"He says, 'Let me have your knife.'
This was still in Normandy. And the next day he comes back with a shiny pair of Nazi boots on, and he gave me my bloody knife back. So I could never sleep with him around."
"In Service Company," Dick Greca said, "we'd go fishing with hand grenades. Throw 'em in the river, fish would come up. Big German brown trout. And we'd pick 'em up. I was on a little rowboat and I dropped one off the side of it, that's the last one I done with that, because that water wasn't too deep, and you could feel the concussion.
"One night we went up to check the tanks, and the crew heard us talking, and they got scared and thought it was the Germans out there, and they threw a hand grenade out. Two of us got hit, but not serious. We all walked away. I jumped under the tank so I wouldn't get the shrapnel, and the doggone tank started to move. I says, 'Now what?' I got out of there real quick.
"Jim Cary remembered me going up on the first day of combat. His tank was acting up, and I came up and took care of it. I can remember that real well. I can remember after he got hit, what do you call them things, booby trap. His raincoat was all shredded. And he was always one to preach, 'Watch out for booby traps.' The guys got a kind of a kick out of it, not that they laughed at him, because he was so strict.
"I seen a guy come out of a barn, and he had one of these things in his hand, one of those potato mashers, but he was all slaughtered up. He was still walking, and the handle was still in his hand. He wasn't with our outfit. We just passed him. He probably went to look for a dozen eggs someplace."
"If I had it all to do over again, I'd probably do it the same way," Jim Flowers said. "Even knowing what I know right now."
"Like I always say," Greca said, "I wouldn't do it for a million, what I done before, I wouldn't do it again for a million either. We done our goofing off, lifted a few. We always had some cognac or Calvados, or something around. I think that probably got us through better. You know what I mean."
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