Oral History Audiobooks

The Finger of Fate

2011-08-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran into Steve Krysko, one of the veterans I interviewed many years ago. Steve isn't the veteran in the picture; that's Hilding Freeberg, whose widow, Alyce, let me scan pictures from Hilding's photo album after he passed away.

It was kind of sad seeing Steve. He was outside in front of the high rise where he lives on the upper West Side of Manhattan, with a walker, getting a bit of exercise. I asked him how old he is now and he said 90. He said he has a lot of things wrong with him now and that he's nearing the end of his life. He seemed depressed, and complained that while the cost of everything is going up, his income hasn't gone up in five years. He has a pension and Social Security. He worked for American Express after the war until he retired. He said he didn't know what he would do without the excellent health coverage that he got when he retired; I assumed he meant some kind of retiree health coverage from American Express but I didn't ask him to elaborate. He did say he had skin cancer on his head and showed me a scar where it had been removed, and he said they gave him a salve to apply, I think he said the price was $900 for a three-month supply, which was covered. But that and some other medications he's taking, he could never afford otherwise.

He said he was in the hospital recently, and that his defibrillator -- he has one of those implanted -- was acting up. And he said there was a young man in the hospital, he couldn't have been more than 20 or 22, and he had no hands and no legs, and he said imagine having to spend your whole life having somebody dress you and wipe your rear end when you go to the bathroom. He didn't use the words "rear end."

Steve was a rough and tumble kid from Scranton who moved to New York City and then Bridgeport, Connecticut, before he was drafted. I said earlier that I interviewed him but I didn't really interview him; when I showed up to conduct the interview he said he thought about it and he didn't want to talk, but in place of the interview he had written an account of his experiences, and he handed me a manuscript that was 15 to 20 pages. Like a dummy I had my tape recorder with me but I didn't turn it on. And as I looked at the manuscript I would read a short passage from it and he would elaborate. I wish I'd gotten that elaboration on tape but I didn't.

After seeing him yesterday I re-read his story, which he titled "The Finger of Fate." Only half to two-thirds is up on the site, and the rest of the manuscript is, hopefully, in a filing cabinet or a box of papers in my apartment somewhere.

About ten years ago the producers of "The Color of War," a documentary that was on the History Channel, used some passages from my original web site, tankbooks.com, having actors read the passages to illustrate original footage from World War II. They needed pictures and consent forms, so I contacted Steve and he gave me the following pictures:

Steve Krysko

Here's a link to Steve's story, "The Finger of Fate." The language is a little salty, but like I said, before World War II, Steve was a rough and tumble kid from Scranton, not the kindly old gentleman I used to see feeding the squirrels in the grassy areas outside the building where he was a neighbor of mine.

July 3rd, 1944: A Tank Battalion's First Day in Combat

2011-07-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from "Tanks for the Memories: Expanded 2nd Edition," which will soon be available in an amazon Kindle edition.

Tony D’Arpino

You were talking about the first day in action. I remember that day, because I was trying to make a little joke about it. All this training you had, like I was the assistant driver, and an assistant driver in the States, his job was to go back and open up the engine compartment and stand there with a fire extinguisher before the driver started the tank. So that first day in action I said, “Do you want me to open the engine compartment?”

Lieutenant Lombardi said, “Forget all that shit.”

Now we aren’t in action, I don’t know, three hours and we hear Sergeant Schmidt in the second platoon, the tank commander’s killed. They told him, “Don’t ride the turret.” And he was like sitting on top of the turret. Sniped right between the eyes. He was the first casualty in the company.

I don’t know if it was the next day or the day after, Captain Cary, who was our company commander, he used to tell us, “Watch out for booby traps.” He opened a gate or something, it was booby trapped and he got wounded.

But I remember that first day of action. Then you started saying, “Hey, they’re playing for real, this is no more games now.” And you’re saying to yourself, “I wonder who’s gonna be next.” And you look around. It could be any one of us. Who knows?

Jim Cary

We arrived in Normandy 20 days after D-Day, and were immediately attached to the 90th Infantry Division, and our first operation was set up for July 3rd.

When we jumped off, our tanks made contact with the infantry and moved out. They hit a strong point. I was in a halftrack, coming right along behind. There was a firefight in a ditch, or a sunken road. The tanks came around and there was a German machine gun nest there. They shot that up, and the Germans pulled back.

I came upon that scene right in behind the tanks, and there were Germans trying to surrender or they were on the ground, wounded, and there was a GI lying on the ground in front of them, also wounded, and he starts shouting at me, he wanted help. There was a brush barrier there. So without thinking I run over, put one hand on that brush barrier and try to vault over it. It was booby trapped and the thing went off. I thought that most of it went over in back of me and maybe it did, but it knocked me flat as a pancake, and knocked me a little bit cuckoo for a while.

I took part of the blow in my left side. When I recovered enough to get up, I pulled up my shirt and I was skinned a little bit, but there didn’t seem to be any damage. And the back end of my raincoat was all blown to pieces. We got up and went on, and later in the day we had another firefight. I was in my tank by this time. We went out on a road junction and fired at the basement of a house where the infantry thought the Germans were holed up as they made an attack. We poured fire in there and that attack went pretty well, they made a little progress.

We never found out if there was anybody in there or not. It’s bothered me a little bit, there could very well have been Frenchmen in there for all I know, but this was a situation where you had to go along with what they wanted you to do.

Then my tank started having a lot of trouble with the engine. It was fairly late in the day. I was also starting to have some trouble walking.

I went back to the company bivouac area, and the next morning I was having a lot of trouble walking. I could feel liquid running down my back, and I was sore, so I went into an aid station and that’s when I found out I had a penetration wound in the left thigh. I had cuts across the back, not too deep. One of them was fairly deep, but superficial type cuts. And the doctor said – no, I was dealing with a ward boy, an enlisted man – he said, “You’ll have to go back. They can’t handle that thigh wound here.”

I said, “Well, I’m not going to,” something to the effect that I couldn’t do that. And I started to leave.

He went and got a doctor, an officer, and the officer came over to me and said, “You have to go back. That has to be taken care of.”

He led me to believe it could be done in a few days and I’d come right back. I’m not trying to paint myself in heroic terms here, but that was what I thought was going to happen. I didn’t think I was hurt that badly. But the doctor said, “You could lose that leg if you don’t get that slug out of there.”

I went and told Colonel Randolph, and went back, and they evacuated me, and instead of being operated on in a field hospital they sent me back to a much larger medical establishment further back.

As soon as I found out what was going on I tried to call Colonel Randolph. I spent four or five hours trying to get through to him, but never was able to get through. You had these wet-noodle lines, the field telephones, and you get so far and then the call disappears.

They opened up the leg and took out a rock that had been blown in, and I had all kinds of dirt blown into the wounds in my back. They were festered up.

I didn’t get back to the outfit until September.

Bob Hagerty

Bob Hagerty, of Cincinnati, was one of 14 battalion members who received battlefield commissions.

It’s funny, you remember not the tragic things, like when you see somebody who just died, because no matter how much you mourn him you’re not going to bring him back. What you tend to think of is the goofy things. Like the time, I think Big Andy [Bob Anderson] was my tank driver, and we were supporting the infantry. We came across a little clearing, and we came to some small trees, and I had to urinate. We didn’t see anything out in front of us. I said, “Andy, hold it right here, I’m gonna get out a minute,” and I jumped out and started to urinate right by the tracks.

A couple of the other guys decided to get out of the tank as well. And we all were about half-finished when we heard some small arms fire. There were Germans, we hadn’t seen them. Whatever we were doing, the process stopped right there. We jumped onto the back of the turret, and we had the turret between us and them, we were able to duck inside the tank. You know, that’s so many years ago, but I still remember that.

Or a time right after we’d been committed in France, I think it was even before the first person in the battalion was killed, and our tanks were being brought up to a certain place in support of the 82nd Airborne Division. They were dug in, and they fancied themselves as super soldiers. They had these distinctive outfits, they carried grenades hooked onto their uniform legs, and they had big knives, they said they killed quietly rather than shooting, so it all sounded very grizzly.

We were supposed to take our platoon of tanks – Ed Forrest was our platoon leader – into position just slightly behind where the infantry would be. That meant we had to go up a little dirt road and make a turn onto a smaller dirt road and that would bring us into position.

Forrest went first, then the No. 2 tank, the No. 3, and I was No. 4, I was the platoon sergeant. Somebody had told Forrest, “When you go up this road and you take the right turn, hit the gas, don’t worry about sliding around the turn or maybe running into some small saplings, hit the gas because there’s a German gun that’s trained on the road.

So he goes up and gets around there, and he goes over where this infantry position is, and No. 2 goes up, and No. 3 goes up, and then I went up. And as I made the turn, I heard this loud metallic sound, but the tank kept moving, so I thought, “We haven’t been hit?” Then the No. 5 tank came along behind me.

When we got up behind the infantry, and we got out to see if anything had happened, there was a big hole in an apparatus on the back end of the tank that was useful for a tank that was discharged into the water, it redirected your exhaust portals. The German had fired as I rounded that corner, and his shell went through this shield. We were a millisecond away from him penetrating our tank.

People who knew said, “Oh, that was an 88.” You could tell by the size of the hole. Well, an 88 was big enough to knock out our tanks any day in the week.

After that, the guys in the company who hadn’t yet been exposed to battle, you know, they didn’t have any war stories – they were gonna have damn shortly, but they didn’t have them then – they could say, “Look at Hagerty’s tank, look at that hole.”

George Bussell

We still had those big shrouds on the tanks from landing in the water. Hagerty was the tank commander and I was his driver. We were coming down this road, we stopped at this crossroad, and boy, one came in close. Because they had everything zeroed in.

I said to Bob, “We’d better move.” So we moved on up to a hedgerow, and backed around so we could get a shot at anything coming.

I got out of the tank, and went back and was eating a sandwich. I leaned over on the tank with my hand, and in that shroud that comes up, just below the end of the tank, there was a big hole. That 88 went clear through it. I said to Bob, “That’s pretty damn close, ain’t it.”

And we were carrying Bangalore torpedoes on the back of the tank. They came in two pieces, and you could hook them together. Then instead of blowing up, they blew down. You could use them to blow a hole through a hedgerow. I saw that hole, it was inches from those Bangalore torpedoes. I said to Hagerty, “Look at that. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting rid of these torpedoes.” I threw ‘em over the hedgerow. That was too close for comfort.

Dess Tibbitts

Phil Schromm and I enlisted about the same time. We both went to the horse cavalry back in Fort Riley and took our training, and we ended up in Camp Lockett.

I played a dirty trick on Phil when we got to Camp Lockett. On the way out we said, “Now we’re not gonna get in that stable gang.”

Well, there was an old sergeant, he said, “If you get in the stable gang, you’ve got it made. You eat ahead of everybody, you get everything you want and you don’t have to stand any duties.” So when we were walking down there that morning I said, “Phil, remember now, we’re not gonna get into the stable gang.”

First thing, one of the officers said, “Anybody want to join the stable gang?”

And my hand shot up.

Phil said, “You rotten bastard.”

I’m the only one that raised his hand.

Schromm always said, from Day One, he used to say, “I’m gonna be the first one killed in action.”

“No,” I said, “you’re not, Schromm.” We used to kid one another all the time. By god, he was serious about it, and he damn sure was the first one.

I forget the officers he was with, and maybe I didn’t even know them. See, we jumped off with the 82nd Airborne when we left, there was just a small front there when we went in. And he was walking with these officers up there in the front somewhere, they said the shell hit right out in front of him. And then shortly after that, Lieutenant [George] Tarr got killed.

Jim Flowers

On the morning of July 3rd, 1944, the 712th Tank Battalion, being attached to the 90th Infantry Division [two line companies of the 712th were attached to the 90th, and one to the 82nd Airborne], was making an assault toward Hill 122.

My first platoon, Company C, had been assigned to work with the 1st Battalion of the 359th Infantry Regiment. Company A was assigned to work with the 82nd Airborne Division.

The day before, Colonel Paul Hamilton, the battalion commander from the 359, and I were planning how to make this attack in our little sector, and we had gone out and climbed up a tree so we had better observation. We were looking down a slight hill toward a creek. In the morning, after the artillery lifted, Colonel Hamilton took two companies and jumped off toward the village of Pretot going down the hill, across the creek, and up the other side to the village, which was probably a mile in front of us. We were off on the left hand side of the road going toward the village, but I couldn’t take my tanks down to the creek and cross it because the banks were too steep.

After Hamilton took his two companies into the attack, they hadn’t been gone very long until somebody said that Hamilton had been wounded by a treeburst artillery shell.

About the time Hamilton was moving out to make the attack, I heard some tanks coming down the road. I was about 50 yards off the road. I ran out to the road and looked, and here comes a column of five tanks, and George Tarr from A Company is in the lead tank.

He stopped, and said he’s looking for where he’s supposed to be.

The people with the mine detectors had already come by and were maybe 300 yards down the road in front of us. Tarr continued on down the road and stopped when he got even with the engineers. He got out of the tank and was talking with the lieutenant of the engineers. And this infantry lieutenant might have said, “Get those tanks out of here, fella, you’re bringing fire in on us.” And Tarr turned around, went back over to his tank and started climbing up over the side of it – you put your foot up on a bogey wheel, and then up on the track – and he thought of something else and he turned around, and he went back to the lieutenant. After the lieutenant answered his question, Tarr turned around and started to climb back up on the tank, and a shell landed on the road right beside the tank and right behind George, and that was the end of it for him.

They dragged George over in the ditch beside the road. I can still see him, he’s over there in the ditch, leaning back, doing what George did best of all, taking a nap.

Jule Braatz was the platoon sergeant. I guess he got in Tarr’s tank, the lead tank, and went on down the road, and he hadn’t gone very far until he hit a mine. In a few minutes, Braatz came walking back up the road and he looked like a zombie, he was pretty upset. He stopped, and I asked him what had happened. He said that Tarr got killed, and that he had taken the tanks on down and had hit this mine, and he’s going back for some help. I said I’d get on the radio and call back to battalion and tell them what had happened.

Jule Braatz

Lt. Jule Braatz, of Beaver Dam, Wis., was the first of 14 sergeants in the battalion to receive a battlefield commission.

When we landed in France, we hadn’t see or even heard a German yet, and George Tarr was killed.

We landed in the dark of night. We went down a road and we pulled into a field alongside some 155 Howitzers, Long Toms, and they were shelling. We took off our waterproofing, and the next morning, it’s raining and drizzling, and we were supposed to report to either a regimental or battalion headquarters of the 82nd Airborne. So we’re going down a road, a little old farm lane if you want to call it. My crew at that point was Pete Charapko, Elvin Wilder, L.E. Stahl and Mike DePippo.

We’re going down this road. I’m in the fourth tank and I can’t see what’s going on up at the head of the column. It’s raining and muddy and slippery, and all of a sudden over the radio comes [John] Pellettiere, who was the gunner in Tarr’s tank at that time, hollering for me. He says Tarr has been hit.

I got out of the tank and walked down this road and I couldn’t see anybody. There was a blacktop road that came through, and he had taken that. I went over to his tank, and Tarr was dead.

The infantry outfit wanted the tanks in a hurry, so I took over Tarr’s tank. There are five tanks in a platoon, but now I only had two, that tank and another one, because the third tank got stuck, and my regular tank and the fifth tank couldn’t get around it.

So I take over those two tanks, and I was supposed to go up to the road to meet these 82nd Airborne people. Right ahead there’s a crossroad, and there’s a building up ahead on one of the roads. The infantry officer said, “We’re receiving fire from there, can you shoot into it?”

I asked the officer, “Has that road been cleared of mines?”

“Oh, yes.”

We advanced down the road, and I told Pellettiere to fire when he could see the building, and I thought he had fired, because when you’re sitting with your head out of the turret and that gun fires there’s a backblast. Then all of a sudden these guys are trying to push me out of the turret.

What happened is we hit a mine. And underneath the tanks we had an escape hatch supposedly which just had a little bitty ridge around it to keep it from going up. When the mine went off, it blew the escape hatch right up into the ceiling of the tank. Russ Levengood was the assistant driver and Percy Bowers was the driver. It killed Levengood. In fact, we all went out in the ditch and I said, “Where’s Levengood?”

Percy said, “He’s coming out of the escape hatch.”

Well, what he had seen was the escape hatch blowing open. When I went over, Levengood was dead.

Wayne Hissong

Sgt. Wayne Hissong, of Argos, Ind., was an ammunition truck driver in Service Company, and was assigned mostly to A Company.

When I went into the service, there were four of us who went in together. One of the fellows, John Charles Mitchell, he and I graduated from high school together. He was in B Company, and I was in Service Company. We went through everything, we got overseas, and he was one of the first ones in the battalion to get killed.

His mother wrote me two or three letters overseas and wanted me to detail to her what happened. But your letters were censored. And I really couldn’t tell her too much anyway.

Orval Williams

Pfc. Orval Williams, of Macalester, Okla., was a loader in B Company. He was wounded on the battalion’s first day in combat.

Sergeant Diel was our tank commander, and when we got to St. Jores, somehow he got us separated from the rest of the platoon. When we got knocked out and I got out of that tank I couldn’t see another tank anywhere. And when they got us on a jeep and started back with us, the other tanks were way down north of us. There was a railroad overpass there and the men were gathered up under that overpass talking. Sergeant [Tullio] Micaloni and a bunch of others waved and hollered when we went by. But they were way back there. We had gone way up ahead and were broadsided across the road right at a curve.

The first shot that tank fired at us missed us. I heard it and I pulled my periscope left. I told Sergeant Diel, “Someone took a shot at us from the right side.” I turned my periscope around, and I’m looking right down the tube of the gun on a German tank, just about a half a block from us. And about that time they let her fly again. I was in the tank when two shells came through it. The first shot killed John Mitchell, my driver. I could see him, he was right in front of me. Just about half his head was gone.

Mitchell was a big guy, he probably weighed about 220, 6 feet tall, and just pleasant to be around. That first shot killed him. The first shot also got me, knocked me off my seat, tore three inches of little bones out of my left hand. They told me when they went to operate on me at the evacuation hospital that they might have to take the hand off – my arm was paralyzed up to my shoulder. They put me to sleep about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and at 4 o’clock the next morning the nurse woke me up, and when she woke me up I didn’t know whether my hand was on or not. But I reached over and my hand was still there.

Dan Diel

Williams was the loader in my tank the first day that we saw action. We went out at daylight and I don’t remember how long we lasted, but I think it was somewhere around 10 o’clock. We confronted a German tank that had the drop on us, and he got us before we could get him.

We’d been sitting there for quite a while. But the German tank came around the corner. They knew where we were, and they came around and had us before we could get a shot off. Our gun was facing in the wrong direction. I looked up and saw the tank coming and I hollered “Tank!” I had a master control to bring the gun around.

When I hollered “Tank!” we had a high explosive shell in the breech and it was automatic that you opened it up and removed the high explosive shell and put in an armor piercing shell. And that was the wrong thing to do. It was the right thing for the way we were trained, but it was the wrong thing for the circumstances, because while he was unloading and reloading, they got the shot in. And if we’d have hit them with the high explosive, even though it wouldn’t have hurt them it might have stunned them enough or slowed them down from the debris and the smoke that we could have got another shot in. But it didn’t happen that way.

The first shot killed the driver, John Mitchell. Zygmund Kaminski was the bow gunner, and as I recall, he got out of the tank without a scratch and then got shot. And Williams, I think he got shot in the wrist, I don’t know whether he’s ever been able to use his arm since then. Vernetti was the gunner, and it seems to me like he got hit in the foot. And I got hit in the leg. I was the tank commander up in the turret, and when I went out of the tank I went over the side and went right on over to the ditch, because there’d been an infantry officer killed right beside the tank that was trying to talk to me, while he was talking to me he got shot. And every time I’d stick my head out of the turret, they’d spray across there with a machine gun and I couldn’t get the machine gun located. But eventually what happened, by our being there and drawing some fire and returning some, we drew enough fire off of the infantry that we got a company out of there. So our mission was accomplished even if it cost us a tank and a driver.

I don’t know where the other four tanks in the platoon were. We had gotten separated. And we were firing until we were disabled. When the tank was disabled, we evacuated, damn quick.

I went out the top of the tank, and there was a machine gun firing at us. I didn’t know where the machine gun was at, but on the hatch that closes, I had one side open and it had a little foam rubber padding on it so you wouldn’t bounce your head against the metal, and that was riddled with machine gun fire. I didn’t dare stay there so when I went out I went right on over a hedgerow and hoped that I was out of the line of fire, and I waited for the other people to come to me. And nobody ever came. They went in the other direction. When I got to the aid station, Kaminski came in, and he’d been shot in the thigh I think with a sniper bullet. And I was surprised, I thought he got killed when Mitchell did, because I could see Mitchell from where I was but I couldn’t see Kaminski, and then they hit the tank four times. After they’d done the first damage they hit it three more times and eventually it burned and blew up. So there wasn’t any fighting or any return fire or anything after that first round went in, we were through.

Cleo Coleman

Cpl. Cleo Coleman, of Phelps, Ky., was a gunner in B Company.

I was in Sergeant Vink’s tank in combat. We were following Sergeant Diel’s tank that first day. The front tank was knocked out, too.

I was a loader at that time, and right at the side of me there was a mine explosion. They said a jeep blew up. I couldn’t see it. And the front tank was hit by an 88.

The night before, they had gone out on reconnaissance, and they said, “You’re not going to face heavy arms.” All small arms. Then we ran into roadside guns, and the front tank was knocked out, Sergeant Diel’s tank was knocked out. I don’t remember at all who was the tank commander in the front tank.

We spotted an ammunition dump in front of us so Vink said to fire on the ammunition dump. We opened up, and to our right there was an 88 that opened up on us, and Sergeant Vink said, “Get the hell out of here.” He said to back up under cover. The tank driver started to back up and we bogged down, and Vink gave the order to abandon tank. We all got out, and I lost my helmet. Louis Gruntz was the assistant driver. He was scared – we all were scared – and he left his gun. He grabbed mine out of my hand and said, “Coleman, you have to go back there for your helmet. You pick my gun up.”

I said, “No way.”

Freddy Bieber was the driver. He always told me, “Coleman, if we ever get in a tight spot, we’ll stick together,” because he could see more when he was driving than I could. I got out of the tank and he said, “Follow me.” We went to a ditch, and I was going toward some Germans, and he said, “Hey, Coleman, this way.” They were shelling the place terrible. So I followed him. Machine gun fire was cutting twigs out over my back. I had to get as low as I could. Him and me both. We crawled, pulling with our arms, but we got over to our doughboys, and then they were shelling the place terrible and they were trying to dig in.

One of the boys saw that I didn’t have a helmet or a gun and he said, “One of our boys is laying over there, he doesn’t need it. Why don’t you go over and get his?”

I said, “No way! That’s out in the open.”

He’d been in combat for a few days probably. So he said, “I’ll get it for you,” and he ran over to get it. The boy had a death grip on the gun. He forced it out of his hand and got his helmet. There was blood all over it. I took some leaves and wiped it off, and put that helmet on my head, and he said, “We’ll go behind the lines.” I didn’t know where I was going. He didn’t either. But we went back, evidently, where the Germans had been knocked out. We saw our vehicles were burning. Finally we got to a new outfit of our own, they had just arrived, and they asked us how it was up there.

“Oh,” I said, “I’m too scared to tell you. It is rough.”

And they said, “Well, here’s a shovel. Dig in.” We dug in. I didn’t sleep any all night. I was scared. I was all to pieces. And this was my first day in combat.

The next morning they got hold of our company and trucked us back to our outfit, so the next day we were right back in combat. It was 53 days I believe before we got the first break.

Andy Schiffler

One of our men got killed by one of our own guns. I wouldn’t say the name of the guy, it was all an accident. We were all waiting to go, they were supposed to go up on a hill, in order to mount up. I’m talking to him, and he’s right in front of the gun where the assistant driver is. The assistant driver jumped in and he didn’t have the safety on. I’d just moved away and he shot the guy right in the back.

I was talking to him. We were resting and talking. And the gun is right behind him. But when they said “Mount up,” I got up and moved a little, and in the meantime when the assistant driver jumped in, the machine gun went off.

Caesar Tucci

Sgt. Caesar Tucci, of Tonawanda, N.Y., was a member of D Company.

We had just moved into the hedgerows, and we were waiting for our first combat assignment. Sergeant [Harold] Heckler, one of the tank commanders, was called to receive some combat orders. He received them, and then he went back to his tank to tell his tank crew about what they had to do. And his tank crew was preparing the tank for combat. The machine guns were loaded and ready to go, and the bow gunner, I don’t remember his name, was turning to get on his knees to check the ammunition stowed behind his seat in the bow position. Just as he did that, he reached back and leaned on the back plate and handle and trigger of the bow machine gun. And at that time Sergeant Heckler reached up and grabbed the 37 cannon and started to mount the tank, like it was customary to do. He grabbed the tank and started up. And just as he did that and got up there, the bow gunner accidentally set off a burst of machine gun fire, and caught Sergeant Heckler right across the middle. He was the first casualty of our company. He was killed before we ever got into action, and was killed by his own man in the tank.

Later on, there was a replacement made. Sergeant [Everett] McNulty took over his tank, and they were on a mission, and their tank was hit, and the whole tank crew was killed. Sergeant Heckler was our first casualty. That kind of hit hard, you know, this is for real. A great guy, a redhead.

Lex Obrient

I was standing right there. I had just finished talking to him, and Lord, I don’t remember what I had said. I don’t remember that part. But whatever we had been talking about, I turned around and I went back to my tank, and then I heard a burst, about two or three rounds, I don’t know how many. But I turned around and I looked, and there he is lying on the ground. I’ll tell you, I felt awful about that.

Andy [Schiffler] was there too. We were just getting ready to move out. Here’s what happened: The man who was the bow gunner on that tank was getting into the hatch and his foot hit the machine gun, the .30-caliber. I guess if I hadn’t turned around and was in the process of walking away, who knows, maybe it would have been me, but it was not. It was all just a big accident. But when I turned around I was in a state of shock, I mean there he is, I had just been talking to him, and then to see him there, the bullets caught him in the abdomen or the groin, because he reached down, I do remember that, and then after that he was dead.

Dale Albee

Harold Heckler was one of the nicest people you’d want to know. And a good cavalry man. He went up the line real quick. He was one of the men who were brought in from Chicago. He was just one of those people that never gave you any trouble, and was so easy with his crew, his crew worked as a team.

They had had their briefing and were getting ready to move out, and you didn’t clear your guns until you knew that you were gonna come back into the company area and part of the time you were very careful. But for him to clear the gun he would have had to lift the breech, remove the belt, and then you operated the operating handle one time. But he got in and somehow or other with an open trigger, he kicked the machine gun and fired a three-round burst, which meant that the belt was still in the weapon. It hit Heckler in the groin. I don’t know how long he lived, but I think he was dead before they evacuated him.

For something like that to happen, it would be the same as shooting your brother, because that’s what the crew is, it’s a family. You work and you train and everybody is dependent on the other, because if one screws up it’s gonna hurt the whole group. And it becomes so automatic that you do things without ever having to give orders. And that’s what Heckler’s crew was, it was just a team, because instead of saying “You do this, you do this, you do this and that,” he could just say, “All right, we’re going to clean the tank. We’re gonna clean the guns.”

I think Ezerskis was the driver, Jezuit was the bow gunner, so Jezuit may have been the one that kicked the gun and shot Heckler. But that whole crew, Ezerskis, Jezuit and Roselle, was the crew with McNulty, that same crew, McNulty took over after Heckler was killed.

Mike Anderson

Sgt. Mike Anderson was a tank driver in the Headquarters Company assault gun platoon

We were on a hardtop road, and we came by a farmhouse. I was in the first tank, and they let us go through. The second tank got hit and burned. That’s the one in which Richard Howell was killed.

After we passed the farmhouse, we got into the orchard, and we were weaving back and forth around the trees. There was a German tank in the corner. He shot at us a couple of times. The first one hit the ground, and the second one knocked our track off. We fired back, and our first round went over it. Our gunner dropped the barrel as far as he could and let the next round go, and it caught that German tank right under the big gun, right above where the driver was sitting.

After we got squared away, we walked over and looked at this tank. The driver was still in it, he was dead. The rest of the crew had jumped out and gone back. But they had another round in the gun, and that breech was almost closed completely. If they’d have closed it, I think that’s the one that would have gotten us before we got them.

Bob Atnip

Cpl. Robert Atnip was a gunner in Headquarters Company.

We went up to go around a road, at the edge of an apple orchard. The Navy was going to fire a couple of smoke shells from a ship, to lay down a screen for cover. They fired two shells, but the wind blew the smoke away, and we didn’t have any cover. They said “Go,” so we went. We were just exposed.

There were three tanks in the assault gun platoon. I was the gunner in the third one. I don’t know why, but I happened to be looking at the second tank, which was 75 or 100 feet away, when the first round hit it. They hit it twice. Sergeant Shelton was the tank commander. Herman Hall was the gunner. Richard Howell was the loader. Philip Morgan was the driver and Olen Rowell was the assistant driver.

The first round seemed to jar the tank, and then when the second shot hit it flames flew up, they just mushroomed out in a matter of seconds. I saw Shelton come out of the tank, carrying Hall by the shirt collar. Shelton was a very strong person, and he literally flung Hall out of the tank and onto the ground with one hand. I didn’t see anybody else come out of the tank, and it was burning fiercely.

After the tank had burned for quite a while, I saw the 90th Division infantrymen bringing Morgan to an old house, and I hollered at them, “Where are you taking this man?” Morgan was blind at that time, the skin around his eyes was swollen together and he couldn’t see. So an infantryman said, “Do you know this man?”

I said, “Sure! He’s out of that tank there.” He had an odd-looking helmet, and the infantrymen thought he was German. So he said, “I’ll take him to the medics, then.”

Rowell just got killed in an automobile accident in the last year or so. He lived in Mississippi, down in Meridian. The [tank] driver and the assistant driver went out the front hatches, and they got around where this old building was, where just moments before the Germans were occupying but they took off when all this action started. This infantryman went on around, and that’s where he came out with Morgan, thinking he was a German.

And I never did see Howell.

We sat there all night, since the first tank had been damaged and ours was the only tank left. The infantry said “Just hold it, don’t move. If we’ll be needing you we’ll tell you, because when you come up here, all you’re doing is drawing mortar fire on us.” We sat there all night, and the next day our maintenance crew came up there with a tank and pulled the old hull that was left off of that pile of ashes, and we sifted through all that. We couldn’t find any fragment of bone or body. The only thing we found was some little brass buttons, like they had on the Army fatigue. Everything else was just cremated. So I always thought the driver and assistant driver went out and I didn’t see the assistant driver until a few minutes later, maybe somehow Howell got out that way too, but he was the loader.

We went up the next day and looked at the gun I’m sure that did the damage. It was an old tripod mounted 88-millimeter German gun. I think what they must have done is left one man on it, he knocked out our tanks, and then just went off and left the gun.

Ed Stuever

On one of our missions we had to go in and pick up a tank that had a 105 on it. It was disabled, but it had disabled a German Mark IV tank back in the corner of this orchard.

There were a bunch of disabled tanks, German and American. But this one particular German tank, that Mark IV back in the corner, the body of this man driving was still in there, and this portfolio that he had had in his coat pocket, or his uniform, was laying on his lap. I looked at it, and it had the pictures of his wife and children in it. He was a very handsome man. He looked like he had been a movie star or something, that’s the expression that one of the other guys said, “He must have been a movie star.”

As the war went on, maybe months later, we were somewhere in Germany, and they told me that there’s a room upstairs in this building that you can spend the night in, because they always told me where to bed down. I never had time. I always had work. When I went up into this house, I saw this man’s picture.

I said, “Who is that?”

“That’s my husband.”

I couldn’t sleep in that house. It was just like what we saw in that portfolio, with the two kids and the wife, and the picture of him. I called some of the guys’ attention to it. I think Wallace was one of them that remembered it, and Patsy Barchetta recalled the incident. That was a choking time.

Fred Steers

Sgt. Fred Steers, of The Dalles, Ore., was a member of Headquarters Company.

The first day in combat Phil Schromm got killed. That scared the bejeebers out of the whole bunch of us in the reconnaissance platoon. They told me they thought he had a direct hit with a mortar. He was right there alongside the tank, he couldn’t hear anything coming in, and they figure he got just about a direct hit. And about that time I was talking to a paratrooper who’d been in there for about three weeks. I said to him, “You lucky sonofagun. You’ve been here three weeks.” And I didn’t expect to see the sun go down that night.

Forrest Dixon

Colonel Randolph called me up about midnight, and he said, “How many tanks have we got?”

I said, “We’ve lost half of them. We’re good for one more day.”

“No,” he said. “We lost half of what we started with today. Tomorrow if we lost half of what we have left, and if the next day we lose half, we’re good for several days.”

“But,” he said, “how many of them are battle casualties?”

I told him, “We’ll have most of those tanks back in operation in another 24 hours.” Part of our problem was just getting them out of the mud, or getting them hanging up on a hedge. Or replacing a section of track.”

I had a good crew. Sergeant Mazure had two crews, and each one could replace a motor in three and a half hours.

In the early part of the war we would get brand new motors. They called them Series 13 motors. Everything was on them, carburetors and everything. All you had to do was take the old motor out, put the new one in and hook it up.

By mistake we got a Series 11 motor and good God, that’s a 24-hour job. The carburetion and everything is off. But the Series 13, it’s just like when you buy a motor for your car. And every once in a while there’d be a package of cigarettes in the box the motor came in. Somebody back in the States would put a package of cigarettes in.

Postscript

July 3, 1944, was the battalion’s first day of combat. The battalion would spend 311 days in combat.

Memorial Day 2011: Tarr's Platoon

2011-05-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

Lieutenant George B. Tarr of Newtown, Pa., was the first officer in A Company of the 712th Tank Battalion to be killed, on July 3, 1944. He was also the officer my father replaced, until he himself was wounded but a few days after joining the battalion.

Clifford Merrill was the A Company commander, although he, too, was wounded and evacuated before my father arrived on or around July 27th. Ellsworth Howard was the company executive officer and eventually took over as company commander until he was wounded in the Falaise Gap. Charlie Vinson was the company's first sergeant and, to the best of my knowledge, he didn't get wounded and even recalled my father reporting back to the battalion in early December after recovering from the wounds he sustained in Normandy.

In the second, expanded edition of my first book, "Tanks for the Memories," which I'm currently formatting for Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, I have a story about George Tarr. It was told by Cliff Merrill, and was about a train ride from Fort Gordon, S.C., to Camp Myles Standish outside of Boston, which was the battalion's port of embarcation for England and eventually France.

Tarr's wife, Dorothy, had recently given birth to a son, and Merrill wanted to keep Tarr's mind occupied on the train ride so he wouldn't worry about his wife and baby. I don't know if he was any more or less nervous than any other soldier who had just become a father -- several members of the battalion became fathers shortly before or after going overseas, including Sam MacFarland, a sergeant and later lieutenant in A Company who learned he had a daughter while his tank was in an apple orchard in Normandy, and who named his daughter Lucky. Grayson LaMar, a tank driver in C Company, married his wife, Arlene, while stationed at Fort Gordon but had a sergeant who kept putting him on KP instead of allowing him to take the bus to a nearby town where his wife was staying. Mrs. LaMar wrote a letter to Grayson's lieutenant, Jim Cary, explaining the situation and Cary made the sergeant stop putting Grayson on KP. The LaMars' eldest daughter, Judy, who was born while her father was overseas, once thanked Cary at a reunion and said that without his intervention, she wouldn't be here.

In order to keep Tarr busy on the train, Merrill asked him to count the soldiers on the train. "Go count noses," is the way he recalled the request. Tarr protested that he took a head count just a short while before, and Merrill reminded him that the battalion was about to go into combat and you never knew but one or more of the soldiers just might get a notion to jump off the train. Merrill couldn't recall whether he gave Tarr the assignment himself or had Ellsworth Howard tell Tarr to count noses, but the two of them shared a laugh while reminiscing at one of the battalion's reunions several decades later.

Clifford Merrill was wounded on July 13, 1944, spent almost a year in the hospital and wouldn't return until the war in Europe was over. As he was a career soldier, he was assigned to be part of a tribunal at the Dachau war crimes trials, and later served as a provost marshal, the equivalent of a chief of military police, at the compound where the prisoners were kept.

While he was in the hospital, his first sergeant, Vinson, would write to him to keep him abreast of developments in the platoon. The way he got around the censors, Merrill said, was that if a battalion member was killed, Vinson would write that he joined Tarr's platoon.

One day, Merrill's wife, Jan, gave me a copy of one of the letters he had saved in which Vinson made mention of Tarr's platoon.

"27 January 1945, Somewhere in Luxembourg

"Dear Captain,

"One of the members of the Battalion staff tells me that you say I owe you a letter with a little poop on our past actions. Well I might owe you a letter, but as yet I have had no reply from the last one I wrote you. It could be that the APO is screwing up, as our mail has come through very slowly.

"There is a lot that I would like to tell you about, but it would never get by the censors. We are still with the same division. And the outfit is really getting to be appreciated by the Infantry. Especially since our last big operation. The tankers really did themselves proud. The second and third platoons raised hell with the enemy armor. Sgt. Hagerty did all right with three Mark V’s and crippled a Mark VI. The second platoon accounted for six Mark V’s, a self-propelled gun and a prime mover. Then Lt. Forrest got himself a Mark V to finish things off. After that the enemy sort of got a little discouraged. The co-axials did a great amount of damage too. It is still a very wicked weapon.

"The company isn’t exactly the same as when you left, but there are still plenty of the original members left. Greener, Pacione, Koschen, Coburn, Hagerty and Lieutenant Forrest are all operating again. Schneider, MacFarland and Hagerty are in for commissions, and Braatz is in for first. Lt. Cozzens, the CO, is a new officer, but all the men think he is okay. He is doing a good job. Lt. Forrest is getting a much deserved rest now. He will be the exec and maintenance officer. He is one of the best all around officers going in my estimation.

"The men in the company are getting quite a few decorations. E.E. Crawford is back in the States on a furlough as is Sgt. Colton. Both men have been decorated twice. Each has the Silver and Bronze Stars. Bahrke has the Silver and Bronze Stars too. Pacione has the Silver Star and the Purple Heart with Cluster. Lt. Braatz, Tibbitts, MacFarland, Johnson, Ringwelski, Craven, Pellettiere, Hagerty, Bob Anderson, Bussell, Justice, and Borsenik have the Bronze Star Medals. Cameron has the Silver Star, and three new men whom you don’t know have the Bronze Star also. Shockley, who transferred to us from Headquarters Company, has the Bronze Star also. There are from 15 to 20 new awards pending for the men in the company. Pilz and Bynum, who are with Lt. Tarr, have been awarded the Bronze star too."

Now, what censor would question a letter like that? Edmund Pilz, a tank driver who spoke German, was killed in the Falaise Gap. The German 7th Army, trapped in the Gap, was trying to escape and A Company was in its way. Pilz's platoon, along with a company from the 90th Infantry Division, was in a field, and they could hear the Germans in the woods nearby. Pilz, according to Joe Bernardino, the loader in his tank, was calling in German for them to surrender. Some did, but many remained behind. Bernardino told Pilz to stop biting his fingernails because it was making him nervous, and they had an argument. Bernardino figured he would apologize in the morning, but shortly after daybreak the Germans began an artillery barrage. The first shell struck the tank, wounding Bernardino and killing Pilz.

Quentin "Pine Valley" Bynum, the other tanker who joined "Tarr's platoon," also was a driver. He was killed during the Battle of the Bulge. There was some question about how he got the nickname Pine Valley, but five decades after his death his buddies speculated it was from his hometown in the Ozarks. Only he was from Stonefort, Illinois, and there is no Pine Valley in the area.

There is, however, a Pine Valley in the mountains near Camp Lockett, where Bynum trained with the horse cavalry in 1942.
Of the others mentioned in the letter, Pete Borsenik, a mechanic, got the Bronze Star for repairing a tank under fire. Hank Schneider was killed by a sniper the day he received his battlefield commission, and Ed Forrest was killed in a freak explosion on April 3, 1945, barely five weeks before the end of the war in Europe. Chris Bynum, Quentin's nephew, inherited his uncle's dogtags and is one of my Facebook friends. I'm sure he's thinking about his uncle this Memorial Day.

The Memorial Day CD

2011-05-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

My mother, may she rest in peace, loved to knit. For some odd reason she never made me a sweater, although she made several for other members of my family. Maybe it's because I never asked. She passed away in 1992 at the age of 67. I have a couple of remnants of sweaters that she made for my siblings, one she never finished, the other has a couple of holes in it, they don't exactly fit, but I've always kept them as a reminder of her.

Jack Sheppard, the company commander of C Company in the 712th Tank Battalion, also loved to knit. He suffered what likely was a pretty nasty concussion during the battle for Hill 122 when a shell struck his tank while his head was sticking out. He had serious headaches for years, maybe decades after the war, until a doctor suggested he take up knitting. The concentration somehow helped immensely with the headaches.

Me, I weave. Not shawls or blankets, I'll leave those to the folksy artisans who populate craft fairs. I weave stories. Not just stories, but audio snippets of interviews I've done.

This year, for my third annual Memorial Day CD, I've woven, as best I could, the story of Pfaffenheck, using excerpts of interviews with the Wolfe twins -- Maxine Wolfe Zirkle and Madeline (pronounced Mah-de-lean) Wolfe Litten -- as well as with Otha Martin (with comments from Andy Rego), Bob Rossi, Russell Loop, Francis "Snuffy" Fuller and Wes Harrell.

Except for the Wolfe sisters, all of the principals in this story have passed away, so there's no going back to the source for clarification. And even Maxine and Madeline, who are identical twins, I have difficulty telling which one is which. The interview with Otha Martin, which is pivotal to the story, was conducted rather informally in the hospitality room at a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in the mid-1990s, and the excessive background noise prevented me from using some of the audio. I hope that the audio I did use from that interview is understandable.

Pete DeVries, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, told me he doesn't tell war stories because the stories that are told should be about those who never got the chance to come home. Billy Wolfe, Jack Mantell, Lloyd Heyward, Russell Harris are four such young men.

There is more about the battle at Pfaffenheck in my previous entry, and there will be more in future entries. I don't know if it is due to my shortcomings as a writer or to the fact that the written word is no substitute for the voice of the person who was there and who is telling the story. I leave that for you the reader/listener to decide.
Listen to an excerpt:

"So long kids, and if I never see you again, goodbye"

"I'm giving you a di-rect order!"

The story of Pfaffenheck, which I've chosen for this year's Memorial Day CD, is more than two hours long, and thus fills two audio CDs. For now it is only available in my eBay store. Or, in the immortal words of Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller to Otha Martin, you can call 1-(888) 711-8265 and say "I'm giving you a di-rect order!" for this year's Memorial Day double CD, which, incidentally, costs $5.95. Mention you read about this in my blog or on my facebook page and receive the 2010 and 2009 Memorial CDs as a bonus.

Pfaffenheck

2011-03-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Billy Wolfe

March 16, 1945. In less than two months the war in Europe would be over. Nine days earlier the famed bridge at Remagen was captured, and the Allies were crossing the Rhine and pouring into the heart of Germany.

The 90th Infantry Division and its attached 712th Tank Battalion were in the Rhine-Moselle Triangle just south of Coblenz. They had crossed the Moselle at Hatzenport under "artificial moonlight" -- giant searchlights bouncing off the clouds -- and were preparing to cross the Rhine at Mainz.

Waiting for them in the villages of Pfaffenheck and Udenhausen -- which, in a letter written decades later Sergeant Burl Rudd would call Edenhausen in referring to Billy Wolfe, who grew up in Edenburg, Va. -- elements of the German 6th SS Mountain Division North were digging in as best they could, setting up defenses in the houses, forest and fields for the attack they knew would be coming.

Pfaffenheck, Edenhausen and the surrounding area are picturesque, an area noted for the hunting in its forest. Even the principal road going through it has a picturesque name, the Hunzruck Hohenstrasse.

Estimates of the size of the German force vary wildly, from a few hundred men to six thousand. The German division spent two years fighting the Russians in Finland and then, when the Finns and Russians signed an armistice the Finns were under pressure to evict the German Lapland army. After marching 1,000 miles and leaving from the north of Finland, the 6th traveled by ship to the south of France, where they were deployed in Operation Northwind, a German counterattack in the Vosges Mountains that is sometimes referred to as the "other Battle of the Bulge." After fighting there, they were sent north to try and stop the unstoppable, and prevent the Allies from crossing the Rhine.

"If I were to be blind after today," Billy Wolfe wrote in a high school essay, "I would want to go off by myself in the mountain, climb to the highest cliff, and look out across the valley at the towns, farms and farmhouses."

It was an interesting assignment, because there was as much to see and love about the Shenandoah Valley, where Billy grew up thinning corn for spending money and picking up Indian arrowheads and Civil War bullets in the fields and among the black walnut trees, in an area as picturesque in its own way as that surrounding the Hunzruck Hohenstrasse where he would find himself with the Second Platoon of the 712th Tank Battalion's Company C, only a couple of years later.

"I would want to picture each native tree in my mind, the rough bark and the shapely green leaves," Billy wrote in the tenth- or eleventh-grade essay. In order to get to the one-room schoolhouse in nearby Palmyra, he often rowed across the north fork of the Shenandoah River and took a shortcut through the woods.

"I would want to see the squirrels running and leaping from one walnut tree to another, and the birds flying. I would like to see the deer run and jump swiftly and gracefully and leap across the fences, and lie in a tree that leans across the water and watch bass laying under the rocks and dart out after a fly.

"I would go through the house from one room to the other picturing each piece of furniture, every corner and everything, in my mind.

"I would like to see all my sisters, brother and parents together as we were, and picture each as they look for future reference.

"I would want to see all my friends and relatives so I would know what the person looked like when I would talk to them after being blind.

"I would want to go fishing and hunting and do the things I know I couldn't do after being blind."

Today is the 66th anniversary of the battle at Pfaffenheck, which Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller said in a letter to Hubert Wolfe, written later in 1945, was his worst day in combat. Fuller, a Reserve officer from Buffalo, New York, who joined the battalion as a replacement in September, was a few years older than most of the men in his platoon.

Although I never met many of them, the second platoon of Company C had more than its share of rough and tumble, hard drinking characters. One of them, Wes Haines, "done imbibed him some" one day, according to Otha Martin, a tank commander in the platoon, and remarked that Fuller looked like Snuffy Smith in the comics, and the nickname stuck.

Snuffy Smith

Snuffy Fuller

Over the course of the many years that I recorded the stories of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served, I even became a part of some of the stories its veterans liked to relate, even though I never was in the military and never saw a day of combat in my life.

One story, for instance, that Paul Wannemacher, the battalion association president, likes to tell, is about the time I was listening to Jim Flowers relate the events on Hill 122. It was a story I'd heard him tell many times. Jim spoke with a slow, almost syrupy Texas drawl, and often he would pause or stretch out a couple of syllables while he searched his memory for a detail. Once, as he was trying to recollect a piece of the story he likely had told a thousand times, I corrected him on a minor detail, having heard him tell it many times. I thought I was doing him a favor. Jim locked me with a stare from under his bushy eyebrows and said, angrily, "Who's telling this story, me or you?"

But Paul's favorite story that he likes to tell about me is when I was talking with Otha Martin in the hospitality room at one of the battalion's "mini-reunions" which were held in Bradenton, Fla., every January. The Wolfe twins were at the very first reunion I attended, which was their first reunion as well, as a result of which while I was learning about the death of George Tarr, who was the lieutenant my father replaced, they meeting Lieutenant Fuller and other members of the platoon who served with their brother, and the veterans of C Company were reconstructing the battle at Pfaffenheck, in which Billy Wolfe was killed.

I forget who told me that Otha Martin, a burly rancher from Oklahoma who worked as a guard at Macalester State Prison after the war, had been at Pfaffenheck, but about twenty minutes into the conversation I asked him, "Do you remember Pfaffenheck?"

Paul Wannemacher was standing nearby and loves to recount Otha's reaction: He suddenly stopped and got a dead serious look on his face, and he said, or rather announced, "Pfaffenheck." Then he said, slowly and deliberately, "March 16th, 1945. I was there." And he proceeded to name each of the five crew members in all of the five tanks that took part in the battle that day. Subsequent research proved him to be off on only a couple of the names, despite the passage of more than 45 years.

Four members of the second platoon were killed in Pfaffenheck: Billy Wolfe, Jack Mantell, Russell Harris and Lloyd Hayward.
(More on the battle at Pfaffenheck will be in my next entry)

Why I began recording veterans' stories

2011-02-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

Alyce Freeberg

Often I'm asked how I got started preserving the stories of America's World War 2 veterans. Like some of the veterans I've interviewed, I have a standard response. However, while listening recently to a 1995 interview with Hilding and Alyce Freeberg, I discovered something a bit more candid and off the cuff.

Hilding and Alyce Freeberg

Alyce Freeberg: This is wonderful (my book "Tanks for the Memories"). I'm very moved by all of this.

Aaron Elson: I think that, I started this, actually I got this little tape recorder when my dad was in the hospital, this very one. I said "I'm gonna go sit down with him and make him tell me his war stories."

Alyce Freeberg: Good.

Aaron Elson: I didn't. I left it home. I went to visit him in the hospital, and then he got out of the hospital, he didn't follow his diet, and then two weeks later he had a heart attack and passed away. But the tape recorder was in a drawer, and I took it with me, I got the newsletter, it was sent to him like five years after he passed away he was still getting it, and I found one and I wrote to Ray Griffin, and he wrote back and said why don't you come to a reunion, so I did. That's when I started doing this, I had the tape recorder, I found three people who remembered my dad. But at the same time, I couldn't believe the stories that I was hearing. And like Andy Schifler said, and this is something I've heard so many times, that they never tell these things to their kids.

Alyce Freeberg: No. He (Hilding) doesn't, either.

Hilding Freeberg: And the only reason my daughter has the stuff is because she was here a month ago or so, and we got talking about the Army, oh I know, what I heard on the radio, on TV, they said that all the people, all the Army personnel that were involved in D-Day are heroes, so I told her, hey, I'm a hero. I think it's D-Day 10, or 6, I don't remember, but I'm a hero, being I was there.

Alyce Freeberg: Yeah. And that's how she wanted them. She's one of those really interested people, you know.

Hilding Freeberg: So she took it all. Then I had a book of, one of the infantry...

Aaron Elson: The 90th Infantry?

Hilding Freeberg: Well, it wasn't the 90th, the book I had on, but it showed all around where we went also. So she took that. We were attached to the 90th, but I don't have nothing about the 90th, not a thing.

Aaron Elson: But that's one thing that a lot of fellows who were there just don't...

Hilding Freeberg: No, they don't say nothing at all.

Aaron Elson: Even Forrest Dixon said, he's got three grown children, and he's very active, goes to all the reunions, he said one day he was talking with somebody and the other person referred to him as Major, and he said his son said, "Gee, Dad, I never knew you were a major."

Alyce Freeberg: He never mentioned that he was a major.

Aaron Elson: So that's why I started doing this, taking the tape recorder and putting some of this stuff down. Because I think in 25 years it will be good to have as complete as possible a look at one unit. I don't think anybody is doing anything like that from this perspective.

Hilding Freeberg: No, they're not.

How times have changed, a Valentine's Day story

2011-02-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

Lou and Olga Putnoky, in 1994

   I should start calling this feature the "clip of the week," but I've been adjusting to a new job and experimenting with tapes I recorded in the hospitality room at reunions of the 712th Tank Battalion. Some of those tapes have considerable background noise and I'm hesitant to post excerpts until I've tested them on some unsuspecting listeners.

   In the meantime, with Valentine's Day fast approaching and a long overdue email newsletter to put out, I may not get to another clip of the day for a couple of millennia, so I've selected a love story for today's "clip of the (almost every) day."

   My full-length interview with Lou Putnoky, a veteran of the Coast Guard who served on the USS Bayfield during four invasions, including D-Day, is included in the "D-Day Tapes" collection. This story, excerpted from that interview, was told to me by his wife, Olga, while Lou was on the phone talking to a former shipmate about their upcoming reunion. The following clip is also included in my audiobook "Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes, Meeting General Patton and Winning World War 2." A loose transcript follows.

Clip of the (almost every) Day: Olga Putnoky

Lou Putnoky: Normandy as I know it and Desert Storm as I've seen it on television, the one big factor sticks in my mind is press coverage. During the war, and many people, you had one hundred percent censorship. Now Desert Storm, you didn't have it, because it's a different world. And I've often said to myself, we could never... (phone rings)

Olga Putnoky: This has been so funny, because Lou has been getting calls from all over the United States. And it is cute because, the best part of it is, in 48 years I've never been able to get him to go to Las Vegas, I've been dying to go. And he's been getting calls from all over the United States, and the conversation will start out, "Are you that tall, skinny, curly headed kid?" And Lou will say "Are you the redhead that I pitched the football to and fell off the dock," and so forth. It's the nicest thing, it's wonderful.

Aaron Elson: How did you and Lou meet?

Olga Putnoky: Lou and I lived in Carteret, and we belonged to the same church. I was, I think five years old and he was six, I was in the church play, and his mother and he were sitting in the first row, he said, "See that dark-haired girl? When she grows up I'm gonna marry her." And we went to different schools, I went to Woodbridge, and he went to Carteret. We started to date, nothing serious until after he got home from the service. We were friendly, and we did go to different schools, but we dated occasionally.

Aaron Elson: And you have how many children?

Olga Putnoky: We have two children. We have Bruce, he's 44, and Diane who's 40. Our son was born in 1950. He lives in Holmdel, and our daughter lives in Carteret, nice and close by.

We'll be married 48 years in May. We just had four 50th anniversaries, our close friends. And our children were invited to all of them, they just could not get over it. Lou's parents were married over 70 years. His dad was 102 when he died. We had him for six years or so, taking care of him. Most of our friends have been married around the time we got married. Lou's buddy, his closest friend, his shipmate, he called this morning from Long Island, William Uhlendahl(?), we visit, we're godparents.

We do not live for just today, I think that's the thing of it. Today's youngsters live for today. I was at a checkout line of a supermarket a couple of years ago. There were two very pretty young girls, and one said to the checkout girl, "Well I hear you're getting married. What made you decide?"

She said, "Well, you know, if it doesn't work out, so I'll get rid of him." I was just shocked. I didn't say a word, I just listened, but what fools. Don't get married if you have that kind of an attitude. But, we've just been very lucky, very, very lucky in our relationship. I guess we picked the right friends.

Aaron Elson: Did you work in a defense plant?

Olga Putnoky: I worked in U.S. Metals, I was the first girl hired in personnel. They hired me in '41, and I stayed on until '49.

Aaron Elson: Did they make ammunition?

Olga Putnoky: Oh yes, yes. They had, and our bosses used to go to New York, or North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, to recruit labor. You know, all the boys and the men from around here were in the war, in the service, so they were a very big copper industry. We had the war bond rallies, it was really nice, everybody's attitude was, most of the women in town worked there, because the men were in the service. I have some pictures of the women who worked there. They had such an attitude, these nice, quiet old ladies, even the elderly women came to work, and they just put their noses to the grindstone and they worked. We had a lot of women during the war. And then slowly as the men came back they were replaced.

Clip of the (almost every) Day: Ellsworth Howard

2011-02-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ellsworth Howard

For my next oral history audiobook, I'm considering a collection of vignettes recorded in the hospitality room over the years at reunions of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served.

Yes, there's background noise, and I'd like some feedback from listeners as to whether the background noise is too much of a distraction to make for a quality audiobook.

Today's audio clip is from the 1993 reunion. Ellsworth Howard was the executive officer of A Company, and became the company commander on July 13, 1944, when the original company commander, Clifford Merrill, was wounded. Howard himself was wounded a little more than a month later, on August 18 or 19, at Le Bourg St. Leonard, during the closing of the Falaise Gap.

Here is an audio clip of the conversation, along with a transcript to make listening a little easier:

Ellsworth Howard

Aaron Elson: Where were you wounded?

Ellsworth Howard: On my body, or ...

Aaron Elson: Both.

Ellsworth Howard: I got shot in the belly, a shell fragment in the belly, in the Falaise Gap. We were there when it first started, walked right into it. Courtesy of Jack Galvin.

Aaron Elson: What did Jack Galvin do?

Forrest Dixon: You got this on, or don't you?

Aaron Elson: It's on.

Ellsworth Howard: We were in relief, A Company was. Colonel Randolph had given us instructions, you're gonna be here for several days, so clean up your tanks and your guns and write letters. Before the day was out, why, he came over and said "I need you to send five tanks up there to Le Bourg," and I said, "I don't think I've got five tanks. We've got the engines out of the darn tanks and their guns are out and everything else."
He said, "Well, you're gonna have to do it."
I went back and told Szirony [maintenance sergeant Steve Szirony] "We've got to have five tanks right away." So they, after a round of obscenity, put together five tanks.
He [Colonel Randolph] said there's nothing going on up there, that B Company's been up there on guard duty for a while and there's nothing going on, they're just tired and need to be relieved. So they pulled out and we went there with five tanks and had to fight our way in there. And before the day was out, we had everything we had in there. Then I found out that Galvin and Dougherty were drunk up there, and Randolph pulled them out because they couldn't handle it. We just about lost our whole company in that deal. When I got shot we were down to six tanks. What was the number of that tank destroyer outfit [the 773rd]? Their medic picked me up and hauled me back, and there weren't any hospitals around there, because of the way the front was moving, the hospitals didn't know where to set up, and they took me over someplace, and the best I can remember there wasn't a darn thing there, but they let me lay on that ground there on a cot until they put up a tent, they called a hospital unit in there and I stayed there for a while, and I stayed there for a while, and then they took me into Chartres and flew me back to England.

Clip of the (almost every) day: Ocki Fleitman

2011-01-29T15:37:00.000-08:00

Oscar "Ocki" Fleitman

When I began recording the stories of veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served, I would take my little Sony Walkman style recorder into the hospitality room. There, I would record the kind of reminiscences that make their way into few documentaries or popular history books. Sometimes the background noise would be prohibitive and I could only use a transcript of the conversation or the story. Other times the audio, with some background noise, would be sufficiently clear to put on a CD or post on the Internet.

In 1993, I recorded the following conversation in which Joe Fetsch and Wayne Hissong reminisced with a couple of other members of the battalion's Service Company. Fetsch was a gasoline truck driver, and Hissong drove a truck that delivered ammunition to the tanks.

I've broken the conversation into four clips.

Part 1
Part 2
part 3
part 4

Clip of the Day: The first time ...

2011-01-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

Forrest Dixon on his farm in Munith, Mich.

One of my favorite storytellers from the 712th Tank Battalion was Forrest Dixon, the battalion's maintenance officer. Of the many remarkable individual feats accomplished by members of the battalion, Forrest climbed into a tank whose engine was being repaired on the morning of Sept. 8, 1944, in the village of Mairy, France, and singlehandedly knocked out a German Mark IV tank that had broken through into the maintenance area.

In this excerpt, he talks about the first time he was fired on, in Normandy.

The first time

Clip of the Day: Tonsillectomies

2011-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

Art Horn at Camp Seeley, California

The inscription on the back of the photo, which Art sent to his girlfriend

In 1941, some 500 recruits from the Chicago area were sent to Camp Seeley, California, to fill out the ranks of the 11th Cavalry. Two of those recruits were Art Horn and Ed "Smoky" Stuever.

For some odd reason, Stuever in recent years came to dislike his nickname. Nevertheless, he always loved to tell how he got it. When he was working in the veterinary detachment, a horse was brought in with a thorn in its foot. Stuever's lieutenant had just become a father and passed out cigars, and Stuever went to remove the thorn from the horse's foot while the cigar, lit, was in his mouth. The horse shifted and its thigh came in contact with the business end of the cigar, and the next thing Stuever knew he was flying through the air. "There goes Smoky!" one of his colleagues shouted.

Interestingly, there was a popular comic strip at the time called "Smoky Stover," and I've often wondered if that didn't have something to do with his being given that nickname as well.

At one reunion, Stuever and Art Horn were reminiscing, Stuever about his days in the Civilian Conservation Corps and Horn about his time in the cavalry, when the subject of tonsils came up. Which leads me to today's "Clip of the Day." Be forewarned, however, this story is not for the faint of heart.

Clip of the Day: Tonsillectomies

Clip of the day: Plaster Fried Chicken

2011-01-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

Tony D'Arpino

You may have seen Tony D'Arpino, of Milton, Mass., on "Patton 360" on the History Channel. Tony was a tank driver in C Company of the 712th Tank Battalion.

Tony often spoke of his gunner, Stanley Klapkowski. In this excerpt, he describes a meal cooked by Klapkowski while his platoon occupied a house in Maizieres les Metz, where they spent three weeks. I guess the title gives it away a little bit, but it's one of my favorite stories anyway.

Plaster fried chicken

Introducing: The Clip of the Day

2011-01-21T05:25:00.000-08:00

The Miner crew. Pilot Reg Miner is in the front row, second from the right.

This is, after all, an oral history blog, so beginning today, and hopefully every day, but knowing me more likely every couple of days, I'll be posting a "Clip of the Day" from my vast audio archives.

How vast are they? They're so vast, the Hubble Space Telescope would need glasses to find them. Would you believe they're so vast that six of them would fit on the head of a pin? At any rate, I have a lot of them.

Today's clip is from an interview with Reg Miner. Reg, who lives in the scenic Finger Lakes area of New York State, was the first stop on my Kassel Mission interviewing trip in 1999. I first learned the story of the Kassel Mission earlier that year when I took a trip to Germany to visit the village of Heimboldshausen, where a tragic incident involving the 712th Tank Battalion took place. But more of that anon. While there, I met the German historian Walter Hassenpflug, who has been instrumental in preserving the history of the Kassel Mission, on which 35 B-24s apparently flew off course, lost their fighter escort, and were ambushed, by most estimates, by somewhere between 100 and 150 German fighter planes.

Miner's B-24 was shot down, and he became a prisoner of war. However, on a mission before Kassel, he encountered what he considered a more stressful situation, even though, thanks to his skill as a pilot, he managed to crash-land his plane in a field, with only one injury to a crew member.

Without further ado:

Reg Miner on crash-landing his B-24

Reg Miner in 1999

Two funerals and a pile of cash

2011-01-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

The first email came from Mike Simpson, the tireless force behind the 445th Bomb Group web site. It alerted me to the fact that John Harold "Robbie" Robinson had passed away at age 92. Robinson wrote one of the best memoirs I've read about World War II. I don't think that's just my opinion, because when, in 1999, I was able to find a copy of "A Reason to Live" on amazon.com, it was in its sixth printing, I think by Crown Publishers. I say "I think" because I loaned my copy to Ed Hays, a former tail gunner and POW who traveled to Berlin to meet the German fighter pilot who shot down his B-17. Ed passed away several years ago without ever having returned the book, but that's okay.

I read "A Reason to Live" shortly after learning about the Kassel Mission of Sept. 27, 1944. Robinson wasn't on the Kassel Mission, having completed his 25 missions well before that took place, but his book, drawn from letters to his then new bride (his "reason to live") and I think a diary he kept, was like a descent into madness, chronicling the minutiaie of each mission, the little incidents that played upon a flier's mind, the brushes with death that seemed to take place with regularity.

I had the great fortune to meet Robinson at the 1999 reunion of the 8th Air Force Historical Society in Savannah. I didn't have a long conversation with him, but if memory serves me correctly, I think I asked him if his book would ever be made into a movie. He said some people wanted the movie rights but he turned them down because the movie "Memphis Belle" was so far from reality. I was amazed by this remark because when I saw "Memphis Belle" I was struck by how realistic it seemed. As I learned more about the experiences of fliers in B-24s, I came to realize how correct he was.

Of course I googled Robinson after learning of his passing, and I discovered two interesting things. Robinson lived in Memphis, and in 1999, the same year I met him but likely a few months later, a Memphis police officer named John Harold Robinson Jr. was killed when he was run off the road by two suspects he was pursuing. An article about the incident said the two suspects are now serving life sentences. Sure enough, when I found Robinson's obituary -- one of those paid obits, the Commercial Appeal didn't even give him a staff written obituary -- it mentioned that his son, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty in 1999.

The other item I found by googling Robinson was a post on a forum titled "Earl's Story." It's too long to quote extensively so I'll include a link. It was written by the nephew of Earl Doggett, a member of Robinson's crew who was killed while assigned temporarily to another crew.

Earl's Story"

One other note: Robinson is survived by his "reason to live," his wife of 68 years, Virginia.

The second passing in recent days was that of Major Dick Winters, the leader of "Easy Company" made famous in Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" and the mini-series of the same name.

I almost met Winters once. It was a year or two after "Band of Brothers" was a huge hit on HBO (mind you, I've still only seen the first two episodes. It was at the Lititz Library in Lititz, Pa., where I'd been invited to take part in a World War 2 program and was told I could display my books (this was in the days before I began producing my oral history audiobooks). I gave a short talk and then was given a table where I sat, mostly by my lonesome. I saw a line from another table, the line passed my table, went out the front door and snaked around the side of the library. It was then that I learned that the featured guest was Major Dick Winters. People on the line were carrying VHS tapes for him to sign, books for him to sign, pictures, they'd have him sign the back of their hand just to come in contact with such a famous piece of history.

Fact is Winters was one of those modest heroes, who would have been happy spending the rest of his life on a farm in rural Pennsylvania if Ambrose and Stephen Spielberg hadn't turned him into an icon.

Which brings me to the pile of cash. How's that for a transition? Today I received an email from Paul Belleperche.

"Dear Mr. Elson," the email began. "Could you please contact me. I found an interview that you did with Jerome Auman on the internet and my father was mentioned in the interview (Frenchy Belleperche). I am trying to gather information about my father, he died in 1970 when I was 16. I had heard parts of that story as a kid, but to read it coming from a third party was very shocking. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration."

Here's a link to the story, which involves a cigar box containing $13,800, the production and marketing of "torpedo juice," a spell in the brig, and is on my original tankbooks.com web site:

Frenchy

A tale of two uncles

2010-10-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

The Saar River at Dillingen, December 1944. Photo by
Robert Pitts, 150th Engineer Combat Battalion.

On Oct. 6th I received an e-mail from Patricia Robison, asking if, in my interviews with veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion, I came across any information about her uncle, Lee Miller, who she said was killed on Feb. 27, 1945. The name rang a bell -- well, I mean it really rang a bell, like ding-ding-ding-ding-ding -- but I was uncertain just where in the dozens of interviews I've done with veterans of the 712th, the unit with which my late father served, I'd heard his name.

I knew he was in B Company, so I forwarded the e-mail to Lou Gruntz Jr., the B Company historian. The reason I remembered Miller's name was because his company commander, Jim Cary, once told me he put Miller in for a silver star -- which he was awarded -- for volunteering to disable a tank that had to be abandoned when the battalion retreated across the Saar River in December of 1944.

The battalion didn't really "retreat" across the river, the way the Germans retreated from Stalingrad or Napoleon from Moscow. Rather, it was a strategic withdrawal, effected after the 712th and its attached 90th Infantry Division (I know, I know, it was the other way around) fought for and captured the city of Dillingen, where my father was wounded for the second time. Dillingen was about 100 miles south of Luxembourg, where the Battle of the Bulge had begun. The 3rd Army was needed to break the siege of Bastogne, although according to one account I heard, there was some concern that the German juggernaut might turn south and overrun the 90th Division.

At any rate, the division pulled back across the Saar and the 712th tanks went across first on a pontoon bridge, and when that was destroyed by German artillery, on a ferry. Two tanks, one in C Company and one in B Company, were inoperable and had to be left behind.

Lee Miller stayed to destroy the B Company tank, most likely by pouring a five-gallon can of gasoline into the hatch and then dropping in a hand grenade. He was given a set of coordinates and was to meet two infantrymen, who would escort him across the river in a boat.

When he arrived at the meeting point, there were no infantrymen and no boat. So he swam across the Saar River, in the middle of an exceptionally cold December.

Cary was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge and never did learn of Miller's fate until he spoke with some B Company veterans at the 1993 mini-reunion of the 712th in Bradenton, Florida.

It was there that I interviewed Juel Winfrey, a B Company veteran, who spoke about Miller. A search of the B Company interviews in my files turned up this passage:

Juel Winfrey: "I recall an incident, and here again, this was further in -- well, it was after -- the next real thing I remember was Dillingen, Germany, where we had to cross the Saar River. We crossed on pontoon bridges. And I was on a tank at that time with a young fellow as a tank commander named Lee Miller. Lee was another boy from Oklahoma, where I'm from. However, I didn't know him before. But the Sixth Cavalry had made arrangements with the 712th Tank Battalion to get one company -- not one company but one platoon -- of tanks in an area to support them. And they sent this lieutenant back to pick us up.

"Well, this lieutenant came back and he led us by jeep, with the tanks following, to an area that was supposed to be secured. And when we got up there, our platoon leader, Lieutenant Gaggett, he said, 'Now you guys, one tank of you get your mess kits and your rations and go in this house back here, and make an evening meal.' He said, 'Now the other two tanks, you keep a loader and a gunner in the tank just as an outpost, and the other three of you go.' Well, we climbed out of our tank, got out in front of it, and we had a German ammunition..."

Here, the 45-minute side of the tape ran out, and some of what Winfrey said was lost before I could flip the cassette. So I'll interject a little supposition. The trip on the pontoon bridge was the aforementioned withdrawal, and the incident where the platoon was supporting the 6th Cavalry is the one where Miller was killed some two months later, when the battalion would have been in the Siegfried Line.

Once again, Juel Winfrey: "Five of us got out, and you know how wide the front of a tank is, we were lined up, me right in the middle, and Lee Miller on my right side, and I can't remember who the assistant driver was, but he was on the other side. Aaron Craig, who was the loader, was over here on my left side, and then the other member of the crew was over here. And all at once, we heard the German shell come. And Lee Miller said 'Look out!' And that's the last words the man ever spoke. The shell caught him right, the shrapnel, caught him right in the back, and it killed him like that. Standing right here at my shoulder. Aaron Craig over on this side, he was badly wounded, and they had to get the medics to take him back to the hospital. And the other three of us didn't get scratched once. Now that's one of those close calls that make you think the Good Lord's with you, too.

"But this Lee Miller had been with, I was also in a tank crew with him when we went across the Saar River. And when we crossed the Saar we went into Dillingen. The town had been completely vacated, there wasn't a handful of civilians left. And we sat there for a few days waiting for the infantry to cross and catch up with us. Which they never did. Or at that time at least. Because that's when they started the Bulge. And they gave us orders to pull out.

"And we had one tank that had been mired down in the mud, and they wanted a volunteer to stay behind and blow up that tank after the rest of us got back across the river. We were going back across that pontoon bridge. Well, he was to meet a couple of infantry guys and the three of them would come back together, because the infantry guys had a bunch of ammunition they had to blow up.

"And when Lee got back to this designated place that he was supposed to meet the two infantry men, they never did show up. This is in December.

"He stayed and blew up the tank, and came back to the place to meet these two guys and they weren't there. He swam that Saar River, that December night, cold as the dickens, and I don't remember the exact date, but it must have been a week or ten days before he was able to find our unit, to catch up with us. And after all of that, he was the one that was killed later in this situation that I just described."

I'll admit it. I patted myself on the back and said to myself, "Damn you're good!" But the truth is I get many requests like Patricia's and am only able to provide such valuable information for a few of them. I haven't heard yet from Lou Gruntz Jr. but with his extensive knowledge of B Company's history -- he traveled to Europe with his father and they retraced the company's battle route, and Lou chronicled the company's history in an excellent, yet unpublished, book -- I imagine he could send Patricia even more information about her uncle.

'The Flower That Never Blossomed'

One other recent incident, however, also deserves a proverbial pat on the back. I was formatting my book "A Mile in Their Shoes" for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader -- when I say formatting, I mean retyping, because the original document was lost with the demise of a computer several years ago. And it's a good thing I retyped it, because I discovered about two dozen misspellings of names and places that were easy to verify on the Internet today; not so easy in 1996. But I digress.

One of the dozen veterans whose edited interview transcript I used in "A Mile" was Ed Boccafogli, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division who jumped into Normandy. Ed's was one of the first interviews I posted on my World War 2 Oral History web site @ tankbooks.com, and it has served as source material in a couple of books, properly credited, that I know of, and some or all of it has been re-posted on a couple of other sites.

John Daum

I thought it would be a good touch for the Kindle edition to add the date of Ed's death, so I went to the Internet in search of an obituary. I didn't find one, but I did find the date that he died, and added it to the book.

I also found, at a web site for the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, an account written by Thomas Stumpner of Fox Lake, Wisconsin, who is the nephew of Johnny Daum, about whom Ed told a story. The story, about a premonition Daum had that he would be killed on D-Day, was picked up and used by the author John McManus in a book called “The Americans at D-Day.”

“For as long as I can remember," Stumpner wrote in April of 2008 in a story he posted on the 508th PIR web site, "my mother always had two pictures of my Uncle 'Bud' hanging on the wall. The first was a group picture of Company D, 71st Battalion, at Camp Robinson, Arkansas. The other was an 8-by-10 of him in his paratrooper uniform.

“As a child I would occasionally ask questions about him. She would usually just answer that he died in the war. That he stayed back to guard the camp and was killed by a sniper. The Army even reported that he was killed 6/23/44 when the actual date is listed as 6/8/44. After I moved from home I would think of Bud but never really followed through with more questions. When I was very young, I told her that I would go to Europe and find out about him. At the time I don’t know if she (or for that matter, even myself) believed that I would follow through with my actions.

“In 1994, the 50th anniversary, my interest piqued again about my Uncle Bud. I remember seeing stories about the invasion on the 'Today' show with the veterans at Normandy. It was at that time I realized what battle my uncle was in and that he may have been killed on D-Day. I remember a fishing trip at the time with my brother Chuck, who served in Vietnam. We talked about the jump and what Bud may have gone through. Little did I know of the things he went through that night. My sister Virginia had a friend that had visited the Normandy American Cemetery at this time. She took a picture of his cross and brought back booklets of the cemetery.

“Then, when the show 'Band of Brothers' came out in 2001, it really started to make me think about Bud. I really wanted to find out about him. I started thinking, 'How do I start? Who and how do I contact somebody?' What compounded the problem is that I did not know my Uncle’s name. All I ever knew him by was Bud. I always assumed, wrongly, that he was named after his father, Paul. It was not until my mother took ill in 2006 that I found out my uncle’s name was John A. Daum.

“I did a search for him on the computer and found out that he was with the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. I have found out a lot about him through the help of Dick O’Donnell and his web site, www.508pir.org. With this information I have decided to tell everyone about my Uncle Bud.

“John Daum was born on April 24, 1924, to Paul and Frances Daum in Marathon County, Wisconsin. He was the third child of four. He had three sisters, Helen, Marcella and Rosella. He received his education at St. John’s Parochial School. He later worked for a farmer near Nasonville, Wis. From October 1942 to April 1943 he worked at the Weinbrenner Shoe Factory in Marshfield, Wis.

“In April 1943, he entered the military service. He served basic training at Camp Robinson, Ark. From there he was to go to Fort Sheridan, Texas, but instead he joined the paratroopers.

“In August he went to Fort Benning where he started his paratrooper training. At this time he was with Company H of the 541st. During the next two months he trained to become a paratrooper. He stated how they trained, that they would run everyplace and did a lot of exercises all day. He claims to have had fun doing five- and ten-mile runs, which does not sound like fun to me. He learned how to pack his chute, jump from towers and finally from a plane. In a letter that he wrote to my mother, Helen, he told her to tell my father that 'a lot of fellows were getting sick' but he didn’t and he didn’t even have to 'clean his shorts.' He also wrote to his father after one of the runs. He said that it was 'really hot and a lot of soldiers were getting sick,' but he didn’t and he kept going. 'That Daum blood kept me going,' he wrote. It paid to have a sense of humor going through training.

“On Oct. 2, 1943, he received his wings. From there he went to Camp Mackall and joined the 508th. He wrote his mother and said 'the 508th is a good company to be in and they will be going overseas in three or four months. I am proud to be in the 508th.' Sometime at the end of October he came home for the last time. In returning to camp, he recalled of him and a fellow trooper from Illinois having trouble making the train because of a flat tire on the bus, but they both made it okay.

“At the end of 1943 John and the rest of the 508th went to Northern Ireland and then to Nottingham, England. It was there that Sergeant Walter Barrett had told me of his contact with John. 'I knew him personally. I was closely associated with him while we were stationed in Nottingham. We trained at this location preparing for the D-Day invasion of France. John was a good-looking airborne soldier – with a full head of blond hair. He could have easily impersonated a German soldier. One thing I remember about our brief association was that John and I, along with the guidance of an old regular Army sergeant named John Petric, would practice ‘The Manual of Arms’ (precise movements in handling of a weapon during a drill or ceremony). We became pretty good at it. I was proud to have entered combat with John.'

“In his letters home from England John said there was not much to do in England but to train and to go into town. He compared Nottingham to Marshfield and mentioned the English girls as being nice. In his last letter home on May 10th he mentioned the training and receiving a package from home. He enjoyed the candy and was wondering if in the next package his mother could send some socks. He also told everyone not to worry and that he hoped to be home in a year. In almost all the letters he sent home he would sign them 'Good luck and love, Bud.' In hindsight, it was they who should have wished him good luck.

“On June 6th the invasion of France was on. In the book 'The Americans at D-Day' by John McManus there was a story by Ed Boccafogli of my uncle the day before. The story goes as follows: 'Some could not escape the terrifying, depressing feeling that they were witnessing their last sunset. Not far away from where Sergeant Brewer sat writing to his father, Private Ed Boccafogli, the B Company trooper who was so disappointed at the previous day’s postponement, noticed one of his buddies, Private Johnny Daum, standing outside the tent, ‘like a statue looking into space.’ The skinny, towheaded Daum barely looked a day over sixteen. Boccafogli had never known him to act so morose. He was a few years older than Daum and thought of him as a little brother. He walked over to him. ‘Hey, Johnny, what’s the matter?’

“ 'Daum hardly even replied. He just stood there in a kind of stupor. Boccafogli was really concerned now. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’

“ 'Daum finally replied in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I’m gonna die tomorrow.’

“Boccafogli tried to cheer him up: ‘Ahh, come on. Some of us will, some of us won’t, but you ain’t gonna be one.’

“ 'Daum could not be dissuaded. He insisted on the imminence of his death. Eerily enough, he was right. He got killed on D-Day. Boccafogli never forgot him. ‘These things stay with you the rest of your life.’ ”

“Today John is laid to rest at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. His grave is Plot F, Row 23, Grave 42.

“In a conversation that my niece, Gayle, had with my mother she explained why Bud was never returned to the States. “My mother did not bring him home because a neighbor had brought her son home for burial and it was like losing him all over again and she did not want to go through that again. Plus Bud was resting where they had buried him.”

“So that is the story of my Uncle Bud at this time. What I have learned was that my uncle was not a very big man, probably about 5-4 and maybe 140 pounds. My mother once told my niece that my uncle “was not very big, was quiet, and enjoyed to smile and laugh.” In the past my mother always told me that her mother said that “Bud was the flower that never blossomed.” I think today she would not find this to be true at all. As Walter Barrett had e-mailed me, “I am proud to have known him – John A. Daum – a great American and a brave trooper.”

“About the only thing left to say is: 'Good luck and love.' ”

A remarkable voice of World War 2

2010-09-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

The most unique literary voice to come out of World War 2 that I've encountered belonged to Morse Johnson, a veteran of A Company of the 712th Tank Battalion. Morse was a Harvard educated lawyer from the ritzy Far Hills section of Cincinnati and could have had a cushy desk job during the war; instead he allowed himself to be drafted, became a sergeant in the horse cavalry at Fort Riley, and was one of 14 members of the battalion to earn a battlefield commission.

When the war in Europe ended and the battalion was stationed at Amberg, Germany, as occupation troops, the 712th was given an opportunity to write its unit history. Every original copy that I've seen has had its cover worn off and its pages tattered from being read and shown about so much. And although there is no clear indication of who wrote what, it's clear from the eloquence of the prose that only one person could have written it.

Today I opened the unit history, titled "Well Done," to a random paragraph. This is how it goes:

"October was a month of nibbling -- at the Metz bastion -- and waiting -- for more gas, for more ammo, for warmer clothing. Fall weather had set in and with it incessant rain. The roads became mucky; the fields in which the tankers did their indirect firing became big seas of mud. Firing used up 24 hours a day and all crew members became experts with the Azimuth Indicators and Gunner's Quadrants which though inexact did not prevent one gunner from putting a shell through a window when the forward observer called for it. Ingenuity was at a premium as the tankers dug caves in the mud and built elaborate houses -- even mess halls -- with the crating slats and cardboard shell cases. In the north the 1st Army fought and won the battle for Aachen and Germany proper was at last penetrated. In the relatively quiet 3rd Army sector Metz still stood, taunting and fearsome. And as the month closed the 712th knew that it was destined to be once again involved in one of the vital campaigns of the whole war."

I don't know about you, but I get choked up when I read stuff like this; but when I first read it, more than two decades ago, I had no idea who Morse Johnson was. I even interviewed him in 1992 and still didn't know he was the author of the unit history, and the subject never came up. We talked about his youth, his time in the horse cavalry, his experiences in combat, and especially about Oberwampach, where he was a platoon leader when his tanks and infantrymen from the 90th Division withstood nine German counterattacks. Nor did I know it then but he was already exhibiting early signs of the Alzheimer's disease which would claim his life a few years later.

Morse is probably the only veteran of the 712th Tank Battalion who has a statue named after him. I was unable to find a picture of it on the Internet although I know there was one a few years ago when I first discovered it. It isn't your typical soldier on a horse with his sabre held high; in fact, you'd never know he'd been in combat, or that the statue even represented a person. In other words, it's kind of abstract. Morse, you see, was a patron of the arts, and the Morse Johnson Statue stands in front of the Playhouse in the Park in Cincinnati's artsy Mount Adams section.

After the war, when he was a prominent Cincinnati lawyer, Morse dedicated much of his time to a group called the Shakespeare Oxford Society, which is dedicated to proving that William Shakespeare didn't exist. "Founded in 1957," the society's mission statement says, "Founded in 1957, "the Shakespeare Oxford Society is a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to exploring the Shakespeare authorship question and researching the evidence that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (1550 – 1604) is the true author of the poems and plays of “William Shakespeare.”

Morse Johnson

Morse Johnson was rather passionate on this subject and was probably one of the founders of the society. But it was a collection of his letters that his mother and sister saved -- his father died when Morse was young, 16 if I recall correctly -- that led to the realization that not only did Morse write the eloquent text of the unit history, but that he had one of the most unique literary voices to come out of World War II.

There are excerpts from 20 letters in the collection, which is posted at my original web site, tankbooks.com. Here are two of them (I suspect that in the second one, his mention of the "umpteenth counterattack," is a reference to Oberwampach):

* * *

We were in the process of taking a fair-sized town in which we had found little resistance. Oh, there was an occasional sniper from a window which forced us to throw several rounds into some of the houses and we spotted a Heine column of some 20 infantrymen retreating over a hill in the distance. But nothing else. Our tanks clanked through the streets, with the infantrymen riding on them. I noticed the door of a house begin to open and the face of a young man appeared. Instantly he beamed and turned with a beckoning gesture to his rear. At once, a little waif of a young woman – say 22 years – came out. She was thin and had an impish face which obviously never concealed emotions. The man pointed to our tank and the girl stared unbelievingly at us for a few seconds. She suddenly screamed "Viva! Viva!" clasped her hands together and then threw them outstretched heavenward. She babbled and punctuated each new burst of emotion by throwing her arms around the young man. Then started the frenzied throwing of kisses and mad dancing around like Ophelia, as we moved past and out of sight. Whether she was French or Polish or, perhaps, a German Jew, I do not know but it made me tingle all over to know that I had assisted in liberating her.

* * *

I don’t believe I ever told you about "Brooklyn." At one of our tight spots, we shared a room with an infantry squad, all of the members of which we got to know quite well. One was "Brooklyn," obviously from Brooklyn. One night he mentioned having written a song for his C.O. and with little urging sang it for us, with a song plugger’s voice and style – like Irving Berlin or even Eddie Cantor.

"Good," I applauded and it really was, "let’s hear some more of your stuff."

Here was an extrovert of the first order and for a half-hour he stood in the middle of a Heine kitchen singing his songs and telling the story behind each with a smart vaudevillian patter. I began to doubt whether all these songs were his and told him so. At once he asked me the name of my girl – which I faked – and my home town. Not five seconds later, he was singing a catchy ditty about me, the girl, Cincinnati, etcetera.

I told him to do the same for Mac, my driver, and he had just started when the guard rushed in and we had to rush out to repel the umpteenth counterattack. We worked a lot with those boys and Oley’s and my crew were always happy to see them.

The other day "Brooklyn" rode on my tank and I coaxed him to write a song for us. At once he burst out with a really dandy tune, the first words of which were: "There will be no more falling arches, there’s no more walking Yank; going to hitch a ride, going to hop inside, going to Berlin on a tank." The tank stopped and "Brooklyn" was just about to write it all down for me when his squad was called to clean out a slight pocket.

We tanks were in close support but the terrain did not permit us to be right with them. I guess I heard the shots – there were a lot of them – but I didn’t see him get it. I did see him, however, and fortunately he had died instantly.

* * *

The collection of 20 letters is at http://www.tankbooks.com/stories/stories2/morse/morse1.htm.

No Way to Treat a Widow Lady

2010-07-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Late in June, Sarah Schaen Naugher, the widow of Lt. Jim Schaen, traveled from her home in Pontatoc, Mississippi, to visit the grave of her husband. Sarah is 87 years old. Lt. Schaen was killed on the ill-fated Kassel Mission bombing raid of Sept. 27, 1944, and is buried at Arlington Cemetery.

Despite trying for two days, Sarah was unable to reach her husband's grave. Upon returning to Pontatoc, she described her experiences in a letter that she sent to President Obama. If you are as outraged as I am by this, I hope you will forward her letter to anyone you think would be interested in reading it. This is what she wrote to the president:

To Anyone Who Cares:

"For quite a number of years, I have been saving in anticipation of making one last trip to Arlington National Cemetery to visit my dear husband's grave for one last time. As I will soon be 88 years old, I must face that reality. A nearby Travel Service announced that they would be going to Washington, D.C., for six days on June 20, 2010. I immediately saw my chance to get back to visit Jim's grave for my last time.

"Our tour group planned to go to Arlington, as a group, on Wednesday, June 23rd, where we were told that we would take a Tourmobile and could get off at any point and catch a later one when it stopped. Wonderful. I could get off near Jim's grave and stay with him as long as I desired.

"It didn't happen. The Tourmobile driver said that they didn't go to the Section 8 part of the cemetery. After taking two tours, I got off and returned to the Visitors Center. I went to the information booth and talked with the person in charge. She told me that I would have to call a taxi and by using my Pass to Arlington, I could give the driver the section number and the grave site and he would take me to it. She told me the telephone number to call. As it was too late to call on Wednesday, I revised my schedule and decided to come back to Arlington on Thursday.

"On Thursday, my bus driver brought me back to the main entrance to Arlington and put me in a taxi to take me to the Visitors Center. As this driver didn't know anything about Arlington, I had him to let me out at the Visitors Center Information Booth where I had been the day before. I had them check the telephone number and they assured me that it was correct and that this was what I must do to go to my husband's grave.

"I told the telephone operator who answered that I needed someone who spoke English; someone who was familiar with Arlington Cemetery; and someone who could take me to the Comfort Inn in Fairfax, Va., when I was ready to go. She told me that she was sending an Arlington yellow cab and that it would be there in 15 or 20 minutes. As I was told to do, I waited at the main entrance for 35 minutes. No taxi. I went to the person who was directing traffic and told her what I was waiting on and that at my advanced age, I couldn't stand in the heat and wait longer. She said she would check with the taxis that were in line, which she did. None spoke English and were not waiting for me. Soon a red-top taxi drove up and she asked him and he said he was to pick up Naugher and I knew that it was for me. I gave him my Pass and told him to put it in front of him on the dash, which he did.

"He could barely speak English but I could understand him. As he knew nothing about Arlington Cemetery, I directed him to turn left on Eisenhower, and then a right on Patton Drive, which he did. As there was no Section 8 sign (I had given him a map of the cemetery and showed him Section 8), I told him to stop. As many new tombstones had been added since my last visit, I couldn't climb up the steep hill to look for Jim's grave, and the taxi driver was no help at all.

"After looking as much as I was able, I told him the address of the Comfort Inn in Fairfax, Va., and told him to take me there. I had spent two days at the cemetery and four days on the trip and had not yet visited my husband's grave.

"James Schaen of Des Moines, Iowa, was drafted in the first draft in the Spring of 1941. He did not volunteer but went willingly when called. He became an Air Force pilot on a B-24. He left me in Topeka, KS, on June 6, 1944, to fly across the Atlantic Ocean with his crew. He was stationed in Tibenham in England and was on his 15th mission when he was shot down by German fighters who attacked the 445th Bomb Group and shot down 25 B-24s within five minutes in the deadliest mission of the Eighth Air Force of WWII. I got the message that he was missing on October 14, 1944, but was not told that he had been killed when he was shot down until Jan. 25, 1945. During the winter of 1945 I was pregnant with our daughter, and did not know whether I was a wife3 or a widow. Our daughter, Jima Carter Schaen, was born in February, 1945.

"As his plane was shot down in East Germany near Gerstungen, Jim's remains and those of six other airmen were buried by the German citizens in the city cemetery. They were not exhumed until 1950 and Jim was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on January 31, 1951.

"I have been able to return to his gravesite five times over the years but failed on this last attempt. I called the Arlington National Cemetery telephone and asked if there was anything that I could have done that I didn't do and was told that I did everything right. I have grieved for my precious husband for 66 years and yet I couldn't get to his grave to tell him goodbye. He gave his life for America -- he never saw his daughter who just had her 65th birthday; nor has he seen his three grandchildren; nor has he seen his six great grandchildren.

"Is this the way a loving widow is to be treated? One who is trying to visit her husband's grave in the National Cemetery. Is this the appreciation America shows to those who have given their life for their country?

"With all my heart, Sarah Carter Schaen Naughter."

The Middle of Hell

2010-06-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

   A word about nicknames. Some of the nicknames given in World War II were anything but politically correct. The 712th Tank Battalion had a cook named Harry Speier. Speier was a German Jew who came to America in the 1930s. When I heard one veteran say that the men called him Gestapo, I edited it from the tape, but later Michael Vona, a veteran of Company C and a survivor of the battle on Hill 122, called him "Gesund." When Koon Leong Moy, from New York's Chinatown, joined the battalion as a replacement, a sergeant gave him the nickname "Chop Chop" and tried to have Moy transferred to his crew "so he could cook for him," according to Bob Rossi.

   The battalion had several Native Americans, more than one of whom was nicknamed "Chief," and one of the only two surviving crew members of a tank that was knocked out in the Battle of the Bulge was nicknamed Frenchy, only I'm not sure which -- Roy R. La Pish or Hilton Chiasson, of Thibodaux, Louisiana.

   Edward Dzienis, the loader in Lieutenant Jim Flowers' tank, was nicknamed "Mother" because he never drank when he accompanied his friends to Columbus, Georgia, or Phenix City, Alabama, and while his buddies were trying to get drunk or pick up girls, he would shop for sheets or pillowcases and other items to send home to his sisters. And Wes Harrell, an assistant driver in the first platoon of Company C and later a driver, was a little "broad in the beam," which led his gunner, Donald Knapp, to tell him he had a "butt like a Wac," and thus he was christened "Corporal Wac."

    When Michael Vona, the assistant driver in Sergeant Kenneth Titman's tank, referred to his tank commander as "Titless Tittie from Salt Lake City," I was sure he was kidding. But Clarence Morrison, the tank's driver, also mentioned that the crew called Titman "Tittie." Behind his back, I hope.

Lieutenant Francis A. Fuller, who took over the second platoon shortly before the Battle of the Bulge, was in his mid to late twenties and might have been older than the men in his platoon, but I'm sure it was an exaggeration when an enlisted man named Wes Haines, who had "done imbibed him some," according to Otha Martin, a tank commander in the platoon, said Fuller "looked like Snuffy Smith in the comics." Henceforth he was was known as Snuffy Fuller.

    These were the men of the 712th Tank Battalion, some of whom you'll meet in "The Middle of Hell," my most ambitious oral history audiobook yet. It tells the story, in the voices of the veterans involved in the battle, of the events on Hill 122 in Normandy that led to the destruction of the first platoon, Company C.

   The 712th landed in Normandy on June 28, three weeks after D-Day, and entered combat on July 3. The battalion suffered heavy losses during its first week of combat but the first platoon of Company C, led by Lieutenant Jim Flowers, was relatively unscathed despite several close scrapes that left some members of the platoon on edge.

   On July 11, 1944, the platoon, with five tanks still at full strength, was called on to go to the aid of a battalion of the 90th Infantry Division on a plateau atop Hill 122. The battalion was surrounded by elite German paratroopers. One of the tanks experienced a transmission problem -- the tank hung in reverse -- and was unable to accompany the others to the staging area.

   The four tanks broke through the German lines and reached the infantry. Flowers and the infantry commander, Colonel Jacob Bealke of Sullivan, Missouri, decided the tanks would lead one company down off the hill, and the rest of the battalion would follow.

    Despite an intense firefight, the tanks made it to the base of the hill, but the infantry company took 80 percent casualties. Its survivors dug in at a road at the bottom of the hill, and the tanks kept going forward, over one hedgerow, across a field, and over another hedgerow. One tank bogged down in the first field.

   Suddenly, well-concealed anti-tank guns opened up on the three tanks in the second field and all three burst into flames.

   "I like to dramatize this a little bit," Jim Flowers would say 49 years later, when I interviewed him in Bradenton, Florida, "by saying I'm now standing in the middle of Hell, with all this fire shooting up around me."

   These are the veterans you'll meet in "The Middle of Hell."

   Jim Flowers. My full-length, three-CD interview with Jim Flowers is included in my first oral history audiobook, "The Tanker Tapes." I've excerpted a half-hour of that interview along with a brief interview with Claude Lovett, the infantry lieutenant who rescued Flowers after he lay in no man's land for two nights and three days.

    Jim Rothschadl, Flowers' gunner, lay out in the field with Flowers, both badly burned.

    Jack Sheppard was the company motor officer when, on the first day in combat, his company commander was injured by a booby trap. Sheppard became company commander and saw his first, and very nearly his last, combat in a tank when he took part in the assault on Hill 122, and a shell struck the turret of his tank about a foot from his head.

    Louis Gerrard was the gunner in the tank commanded by Sheppard that fateful day. Gerrard lost an eye in the battle and played dead while German soldiers removed his watch and tried to take a ring off his finger, then propped him up against a hedgerow so his body could be found.

    Earl Holman was the loader in Sheppard's tank. When the crew abandoned tank he, too, played dead while the Germans searched him for cigarettes.

    Kenneth Titman was the tank commander of one of the three tanks that burst into flames. His gunner and loader both died in the tank and Titman was wounded in the leg and captured.

    Michael Vona, the assistant driver of Titman's tank, was stunned by the explosion of a hand grenade and set upon by a German soldier who vaulted over the hedgerow. As they grappled the German put a luger to Vona's head and pulled the trigger. It clicked, but the gun was empty. The German was then shot, and Vona pulled him, still alive but moaning and in shock, on top of him to protect him from other Germans who were roaming the battlefield.

    Clarence Morrison, the driver, also escaped Titman's tank but was wounded and dazed. He and Vona shared a German foxhole until it was dark, and then they managed to escape.

    Jake Driskill, the company motor sergeant, repaired the transmission on Sergeant William Montoya's tank, and was among the men who inspected the damage after the battle was over.

    Donald Knapp was the gunner in Montoya's tank, and later became a tank commander when the company was reorganized.

    Myron Kiballa had just gotten out of the hospital after being wounded in Anzio when he learned that his brother Gerald, the assistant driver in Flowers' tank, had been killed.

    Cliff Flora, one of Sergeant Driskill's mechanics in Company C, was at mail call after the battle when a box addressed to Harold Gentle, the loader in Sergeant Abe Taylor's tank, arrived from Gentle's mother. Taylor's entire crew was killed. Among other things, the box contained cookies. After a brief discussion, the members of C Company passed the cookies around, but it always bothered Flora that there they were eating the cookies from Gentle's mother and she didn't even know yet that he'd been killed.

    Any one of these interviews gives a picture of what it was like in World War II. Together they paint a unique verbal portrait of the far-reaching and long-lasting effects of a battle.

    The entire set is 17 CDs, or about 17 hours, long. Here are some excerpts:

"I'm now standing in the middle of Hell . . ."

"Balloom! We got hit right on my side, and I practically flew out of the tank."

"Poor Evelyn was only 95 pounds from worrying about me."

"He said, 'I feel like I'm gonna get it sometime, this may be it."

"It looked like that dead German was pointing at me. So I just told the old boy, 'Don't be pointing at me, I didn't kill you.' "

Order "The Middle of Hell ($25.95) from our eBay store!

Read more about the battle in the online version of "They Were All Young Kids"

D-Day and the Bulge

2010-05-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

Pete De Vries doesn't tell war stories. The stories that are told should be about the young men who didn't get to come home, he said when I interviewed him in 1997. Well, De Vries, who served with the 82nd Airborne Division, the Rangers, and the 10th Special Forces in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and retired as a sergeant major, did tell one war story, somewhat reluctantly. And he told it not to bring any glory upon himself; in fact, he steadfastly declines to identify the hero of the story, and the only reason he told it in the first place was to illustrate a point.

He told the story in a letter to the editor of the "Static Line," a monthly newspaper for and about paratroopers. The letter was in response to an article by a Marine about the pride that the Marine had in his unit.

A lone GI with a bazooka was guarding a road during the Battle of the Bulge, Pete's story went, when several American soldiers, led by a lieutenant, emerged from the forest and asked the way to the American lines. The GI showed them the way, and the lieutenant said he'd better accompany them because they were being pursued by two German tanks.

At which point, the lone GI said, "You don't have a thing to worry about, Sir. I'm in the 82nd Airborne and this is as far as the bastards go."

A few years later, Pete was attending a dinner when he noticed a sketch on the wall of a paratrooper in full gear. Underneath him was the caption "I'm the 82nd Airborne and this is as far as the bastards go." A short while later, he said when telling me about this, he heard that someone at another table was claiming to have been the GI who originally made the statement. So he went over to the table and asked the veteran if he remembered who the lieutenant was who was looking for the American lines.

"How should he remember that?" I asked.

"I'll give you a hint," Pete said. "He had a famous father and was a senator."

I still had no idea, so Pete told me it was Will Rogers Jr. Actually, Rogers was a Congressman who resigned his seat to enlist.

I didn't do much homework in high school, but since I've become an oral historian I've become far more diligent. So the next day I called the Will Rogers Museum and the curator sent me copies of a few pages from "Gare la Bete," by Calvin Boykin, a book about the 7th Armored Division. The pages included an account of a reconnaissance platoon led by Rogers on Dec. 23, 1944, in the vicinity of St. Vith, being shot up before reaching the safety of the American lines.

Pete still declines to take credit for being that lone sentry, and at least one other veteran of the 82nd Airborne that I found on the Internet is given credit for the saying. Nevertheless, one of the citations Pete allowed me to read into the tape credits him with singlehandedly destroying one German tank and disabling another.

Pete's and several other interviews are included in "D-Day and the Bulge," an 11-hour collection of interviews that make up my newest audiobook.

Other veterans in the set include Len Lebenson, a sergeant in the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division who went into Normandy in a glider that crashed into a shed; Maurice Tydor, a radio operator in division artillery of the 101st Airborne Division; Samuel Feiler, a dentist in the 101st; and a group interview with five veterans who talked about the siege of Bastogne; and Valentine Miele of the 1st Infantry Division. Also included is my 1994 interview with Leonard Lomell, the Ranger credited during the Normandy invasion with destroying five large German coastal guns that were supposed to be on Pointe du Hoc but were actually inland.

Memorial Day 2010

2010-04-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

"The real heroes," a World War II veteran once told me, "are the ones who didn't come home." This second annual Memorial Day audio CD contains several stories, told in the veterans' own voices, about crew members, colleagues, even the enemy, who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for their country.

John Sweren

Bob Cash

Order the Memorial Day 2010 CD from amazon.com or eBay

Reflections of a tank company commander

2010-04-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

Harlo J. "Jack" Sheppard went overseas in World War II as the motor officer with the 712th Tank Battalion. When Captain James Cary was wounded by a booby trap on the battalion's first day in combat, Sheppard took his place as commanding officer of the battalion's Company C. The company had three platoons of five medium Sherman tanks, as well as its own maintenance section.

On his sixth day as company commander, July 10, 1944, Sheppard filled in for an injured tank commander during the battle for Hill 122 in Normandy. A shell struck his tank in the gunner's periscope two feet from where Sheppard stood with his head outside the turret. He was patched up in an aid station and made it through the rest of the battalion's 11 months in combat, minus a week in the hospital for "battle fatigue." He re-enlisted after the war, was in Germany during the Berlin airlift, and also served in Korea.

I interviewed Jack Sheppard in 1993, for my first book, "Tanks for the Memories: The 712th Tank Battalion in World War II."

A couple of years before I interviewed him, Jack began writing a memoir because his children kept asking him to put down the events of his life. Two weeks before the interview, he took the memoir out and began adding to it, working almost night and day.

During the interview, I read the memoir into my tape recorder, and Jack kept interrupting with comments. Also, he showed me photographs and described them. I can't reproduce the pictures here, but I felt his explanations of what the pictures were were both descriptive and significant enough to include in the audio excerpts of the interview.

The interview spanned two days, and filled five 90-minute audiocassettes and about 20 minutes of a sixth. I transcribed the first two tapes in 1993, and I didn't even listen to the rest of the interview until recently.

My initial thought was to include the interview in an audiobook about the battle for Hill 122, which was the "bloody piece of French real estate" where Lieutenant Jim Flowers lost both of his legs. (Jim's dramatic account is included in my first audiobook, "The Tanker Tapes.") But because the interview contained so much information of a technical nature that would be valuable to any history buff -- for instance, Jack explained the various parts of a tank and the differences between the M4A1, M4A2 and M4A3, not to mention the M4A4 -- I decided instead to present Jack's interview as a separate, five-hour audiobook.

Jack passed away more than a decade ago, and his wife, Betty, died in 2005. A narrative drawn from the two tapes I transcribed is at my original web site, tankbooks.com. Here are some excerpts from the new audiobook, "Reflections of a Tank Company Commander."

"Daddy, what happened to your in your lifetime, especially during the war?"

"Everybody was a hero, some of them were more hero than others."

"Hey, Mac, what in the hell happened to you?"

"I did lots of men favors of stretching the truth a little bit."

"The shrapnel and the powder from the bursting shell hit me in the face."

"Up the other bank, almost to the top of the hill, was a German Tiger tank..."

"Couldn't hear a thing, except this voice coming out of the clear, Look out in the jeep, I'm a slidin'!"

"Barbecued people..."

Order "Reflections of a Tank Company Commander" from amazon.com for $9.95 plus shipping.

Of Cars and Cigarettes

2010-04-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the fifth tape of my 1993 interview with retired Colonel Harlo J. "Jack" Sheppard. When I transcribed the interview for my book "They were all young kids" almost 15 years ago, I stopped after two tapes.

This interview is different from many of my interviews in two ways. One, it's somewhat longer than most of my interviews, as I spent two days interviewing Jack in Bartow, Fla. And two, much of the interview is actually me reading a memoir Jack wrote into the tape recorder, while he made comments along the way. I'm not going to win any awards as a reader, so I hope you'll bear with my sometimes monotonous voice.

Today's sound clip, from the fourth 90-minute cassette of the interview, includes stories about two things that appear frequently in my conversations with World War II veterans: cars and cigarettes. Sheppard reenlisted after World War II and spent time as an officer with the occupation forces.

Jack Sheppard

A mystery solved

2010-04-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

Harlo J. "Jack" Shepard was one of the veterans I interviewed back in 1993, when I was writing "Tanks for the Memories." Trouble is, the interview filled six 90-minute cassettes over two days, and when I got around to transcribing it, I stopped after the second tape. That was 17 years ago. Jack and his wife, Betty, are both since deceased, and until a few days ago, I still hadn't listened to the third cassette.

I'm one of these people for whom stories go in one ear and out the other, so that when I listen to a tape -- especially after nearly two decades! -- it's like hearing the stories for the first time. Jack has already cleared up one mystery for me that I thought I'd never solve. It may not rank with what happened to Raoul Wallenberg, but to me it was a question I never thought would be answered: Why did Colonel Whitside Miller make his executive officer, Baxter Davis, doubletime in front of the whole battalion?

It was an episode that contributed greatly to Colonel Whitside, as he was known, being relieved of his command, and was described to me by several officers in the battalion. But none of them could remember just what it was Major Davis did that got him reprimanded in such a matter.

And then, there it was, right on tape 3 of my interview with Jack Sheppard.

Here are two sound clips -- this is, after all, an audo blog -- from my interview with Captain Jack. Although he went on to serve in the Korean War and retired as a colonel, he was a captain and company commander with the 712th Tank Battalion. In the first clip, he describes the incident with Whitside Miller. In the second, he talks about the Silver Star he was awarded with the battalion. The faint background music is provided by Jack's wife, Betty, who was listening to music in the next room during the interview.

Whitside Miller

Silver Star

A Love Story

2010-03-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

I've spent the better part of March transcribing the interviews I conducted in February. One of those was with John Sweren of Mesa, Arizona. John was the tail gunner on a B-26 and flew 58 missions in Europe before his plane was shot down.

About five years ago a French aviation historian, Christian Levaufre, contacted John and told him that the village where his plane crashed, Fierville-Bray, was going to put up a monument and hold a ceremony. Although his pilot and co-pilot survived the crash, while the other three crew members were killed, John was the only surviving crew member to attend the monument's dedication in 2005.

Some time later, John was on an airplane and he found himself sitting next to Brett Schomacher, a history buff who became fascinated as John told him his story. He visited John on several occasions and recorded their conversations. He had the tapes transcribed, but the transcription service subsequently lost or threw away the original tapes.

After Brett sent me the transcript, I decided I'd like to interview John myself, and so I spent two days visiting him in Arizona on my recent trip.

What follows is a small portion of John's story, as he told it to me, and earlier to Brett:

"I used to call the west side of Longview, Washington, the blue chip neighborhood, because that's where the people who had more money and bigger houses lived. Most people had wood stoves, and some of them had sawdust burners, so they'd get sawdust hauled in, and they had doors that opened up but somebody had to shovel it into the basement. So I'd go around, and if I saw somebody with a pile of sawdust I'd knock on the door and ask if I could help them. That was my way of earning a couple of dollars. One place nobody was home, so I stacked all their wood before they even got home. Then I knocked on the door and said I stacked your wood up there.

" 'Thanks kid.' That happened a couple of times, when I didn't get paid, but I guess that's life.

"One day I saw a house with a pile of sawdust outside. I knocked on the door and a lady answered. I said, 'I hope you're not busy. I see you've got a load of sawdust out there. Would you like me to shovel it into your basement?'

"And she said, 'What's your name?'

"I told her.

" 'Do you live around here?'

"I said, 'No, I live all the way over on the east side.'

" 'Have you done this before?'

"I said, 'Yes, several times.'

"She said, 'Okay.' So she brought me a shovel and I shoveled it into the basement. Then I knocked on the door and asked her if she had a broom. I swept the driveway, and she looked and said, 'What a beautiful job you've done, Johnny.'

"And I said, 'Thank you.'

"And she said, 'Did you ever trim any shrubs?'

"I said, 'Yes. I worked for a landscaper and he showed me how.'

"And we spoke some more and she said, 'If you've got the time, I'd like to have you full time. I mow my lawn every week, and the shrubs I trim about every month, and sawdust I get,' I forget how often. 'And I get planer ends, too,' which she used for starting the fire in her wood stove.

"She kept me pretty busy, and she paid me some and kept track of everything. Then one day she said, 'I'd like to meet your mother and father.' She never did. She said, 'You seem like a nice boy. You were raised properly. I always wanted to have a boy, but I never did. The only boy I had was my husband, and he's gone.' And she'd go to the store and bring me cake and cookies out there, so I was just like part of the family.

"She went away for two weeks, and left the key to the garage with me so I could get the tools, because usually she brought the tools out to me. That's when I saw the Cord.

"When she came back she was so happy at all the things I did, and she said, 'How did things go, Johnny.?

"I said, 'Oh, fine, Mrs. Jacobs. But I fell in love while you were gone.'

" 'Oh,' she said. 'Who's the lucky girl?'

" 'It wasn't a girl,' I said. 'It's that car in your garage.'

"Then, after I talked to her, she said she would sell me the car and I could work it off. I think I worked for her until Pearl Harbor. She cheated herself, I know. She gave me the title to the car and said it was paid for.

" 'It can't be,' I said.

"She said, 'I kept track of everything.' So she gave me the keys and the title, and God, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

"I sold it when I went in the service, and got $1,750, which was a lot of money. But I went to the Barrett-Jackson car show in Scottsdale this year, that's one of the biggest collector car shows in the country, they have it every January, and they had a Cord for sale. It went for $575,000. And I didn't see it last year, but they said they sold one last year for $1.2 million."

A 1937 Cord (generic photo)

Gold Out of a Dollar

2010-03-21T07:26:00.001-07:00

Recently a researcher from England contacted me. He's working on a documentary about Omaha Beach for the Discovery Channel. He said the author Joe Balkoski ("Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944") told him I might be able to give him some information about the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion.

Chuck Hurlbut, one of the veterans in my book "9 Lives," was an engineer with the 299th, whose job was to blow up the obstacles on Omaha Beach. Balkoski found Hurlbut's story on my original web site, tankbooks.com, and wanted to know if I had more information on the battalion. I made a copy of a tape I recorded in 1998 and sent it to him.

It's not a tape I was especially proud of, as it was recorded in a mall atrium with a noisy waterfall in the background.

Chuck invited me to Ithaca, N.Y., to interview him in 1998. While I was there, he organized a group interview with four of his fellow veterans from the 299th. The original members of the battalion were all from upstate New York, towns like Auburn and Ithaca and Syracuse, Skaneateles and Buffalo. Yes, Virginia, there is a Skaneateles. These men grew up together, went to school together, were in the same outfit, and many still lived in the region.

We found a table in the mall and I planted my tape recorder in the middle.

After about an hour, the group headed to a nearby Holiday Inn for lunch, and I continued to record the conversation. One moment they would be talking about Omaha Beach, another about fallen comrades, another they would be gossiping about veterans who weren't there, then they would shift to the Battle of the Bulge. It was your typical conversation when a group of veterans get together.

Due to the excessive background noise and the fact that even though they introduced themselves, it would have required major concentration to identify who was speaking, I never transcribed the tape.

Now, 12 years later, Balkoski recommended to another researcher that he contact me about the tape. I told him I'd transfer it to CD and send it to him. While doing so, I listened to it, and discovered a gem of a story.

The story is kind of gross, so if you've a sensitive streak in you, you may want to skip the rest of this item. There was way too much background noise -- at least two conversations going on at once and some kind of singing group rehearsing loudly in the next room -- so I've chosen not to create an audio file, although the speaker, Sam Trinca, was very animated and I doubt that the written word can recapture that animation. And while some might doubt the veracity of the story, thinking perhaps Sam was slightly embellishing it, which he may have been, I've heard similar stories from combat veterans told in more somber and reflective settings.

At one point, the conversation turned to brothers. One of the 299th veterans had two brothers in the service during World War II, and one of them was killed. He remarked that he didn't learn of his brother's death until two months after the war in Europe was over.

At which point Chuck remarked, "Sammy, you met your brother over there, didn't you?"

"Speaking of brothers," Sam Trinca said, "now that you mention it, my brother was, oh, he had a job! He was in the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force) headquarters. He was doing the payrolls of all us guys. That's how he found out where I was. By looking at the records, he found out that I was in Nuremburg.

"I was pulling guard duty at the house we were staying at. All of a sudden a jeep pulls up and my brother gets out. He's all dressed up, and here I am all dirty, like a bum. I look at him, he looks at me, I said, "What the hell, I must be dreaming." So we took pictures that day. And he asked the sergeant, "Could you let Sam go for a couple or three days?"

"Ahhhh," the sergeant says, "I don't know."

"Jeez," my brother says, "we haven't seen each other for three years."

"Wellll, go ahead, you can go," he says. "So I didn't even bother changing. I had the clothes I had on. I jumped in the jeep and we took off, and their headquarters is Salzburg, Austria. He took me down there. A guy comes out, opens the jeep, my brother walks right in the hotel, service with smiles. Now the guy looks at me as if to say, "What the hell's this guy doing?" He says, "Jesus, you need a bath."

"Thank you very much. What is a bath?"

So he took me up, I don't know if it was the second or third floor, the guy says, "Here's where you sleep."

I look at the place. It's a hotel. Sheets. Beautiful bed, clean bed.

"What?" I says. "Do I sleep here?"

"Yeah, that's your room."

At this point, Chuck interjected: "You died and went to heaven."

"I took a shower," Sam said. "Nice. They gave me some clean clothes. Then it was time for mess. So we all went downstairs. We went down to big tables, all sitting down, they're all eating, and the guys I was sitting down with, my brother's next to me, and all the rest of the guys were shooting the bull, this and that, and I took it all in. And all of a sudden they put the food on the table.

"'Jesus! Is that all we get? They give us the same old food all the time, god damn!' They're all bitching. "'What? Again we gotta eat this good food?' I mean, Food! FOOD! We ate our K rations and C rations, that was food! This was like giving you gold out of a dollar. I looked at that food, Wow! And these guys were all bitching. I says, "Why you..." I spoke up. "Why you rotten sonofabitches," just like that I told them, "You guys don't even know what the hell you're talking about." I says, "You're bitching about that food?" I says, "How would you like to eat on top of a dead body with maggots coming out of the body?" I says, "and eating C rations if you're lucky you got it." I just sat down, I says, "Thanks, fellas." I ate like a pig. "Thank you very much fellas, now get the hell outta here. I don't give a damn what you think." To me, that was food! For the first time in two years, man, chicken ... vegetables ... hot stuff. I'll tell you, I was in heaven."

When the researcher called me, I told him I'd try and locate a couple of veterans of the 299th for him. I found a listing for a Santa Trinca in Auburn, N.Y., and left a message on the answering machine. I thought Santa might be an old-world name shortened to Sam. A short while later Santa Trinca called me back; it was Sam's widow. She told me Sam had died in 2007. She told me they were married after the war, but that they were married for, it might have been 59 years. She remarked on how close the veterans of the 299th were, they got together all the time, and how there were so few of them left. She provided me with the names and phone numbers of two who were still living, and I passed them on to the researcher.

The documentary will be on the Discovery Channel, I presume sometime around June 6th of this year. I'll be at the Reading (Pa.) World War II weekend that weekend. Hopefully, somebody will tape it for me.

One morning in England

2010-02-28T04:39:00.000-08:00

This is all still in my taped interview with John Sweren of Mesa, Arizona, which I have yet to play back or transcribe, so some of the details will be sketchy, but I wanted to share this story while I have some time before flying home this afternoon.

Sweren flew 58 bombing missions as a tail gunner before his B-26 was shot down in France late in July of 1944. He flew out of England, where he was stationed with the 9th Air Force. Whenever he got a pass, he would rent a room in a house owned by an elderly woman and her middle aged daughter. John was about 19 at the time.

One night he had a little too much to drink at a local pub and could barely stagger back to the house. As he climbed the outside stairs, he leaned on an expensive vase, knocked it over and shattered it.

The women of the house were very understanding and told him not to worry about the vase. They helped him up to his bed and tucked him in, and he promptly fell into a deep sleep.

During the night the air raid siren sounded, and the two women headed for a shelter, assumiing John had done the same. Only he was still asleep and didn't hear the siren. A "buzz bomb" slammed into the street nearby and the concussion caused part of the ceiling of the house to fall in. When the two women returned, they found John covered in debris and rubble, still asleep and thankfully, uninjured.

After they woke him and he shook off the plaster, one of the women remarked to John that she was so glad that he had broken their vase, and not the Germans.

More details will have to wait until I transcribe the interview, but I wanted to share that story, one of many poignant, humorous, sad, compelling anecdotes I was fortunate to record in the last four weeks.

On the Road Again

2010-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

During the last three weeks, I drove 7,500 miles, interviewing World War II veterans in Florida, Dallas and Arizona, and making a stop at the Atlanta Armor Modeling and Preservation Society's annual show on my way back East.

It's been an emotional journey, never mind the 60 miles of icy slush in Maryland and the driving snow between Memphis and Little Rock, or the record snowfall in Dallas that greeted my arrival.

I don't have any sponsors, but I do feel a debt of gratitude to Hertz for providing me with a reliable car -- a relatively new Mazda 3 that got more than 35 miles to the gallon on the highway (okay, so I avoided the tempation to go 80 mph even when that was the posted speed limit in parts of Texas), and to McDonald's for their free wi-fi and senior coffee (I still can't bring myself to ask for a "senior coffee," but most of the kids they have working there recognize my antiquity).

Above all, I thank J.R. Lemons, a veteran of the Kassel Mission, for arranging a series of interviews for me in Dallas. J.R. is a member of the Happy Warriors, a group of mostly World War II veterans who gather on the fourth Friday of every month to share their experiences. I was unable to plan my trip so I could attend a meeting, but J.R. set up the interviews. One was with his pilot on the Kassel Mission, James Baynham. Another was with Louis Read, a survivor of the Bataan death march, and a third was with Bob Cash, who was the only survivor when his B-17 was shot down and told me of his experiences in Stalag Luft IV and the 90-day march across Europe. J.R. also set up an interview with a veteran who flew in a B-24 on the first Ploesti raid.

A prime reason I took this trip was to meet and interview John Sweren in Mesa, Arizona. John was a tail gunner in a B-26 that crashed in France. He was one of three survivors among the six-man crew, but other planes on the mission counted only two parachutes, so John's parents were informed that he was killed in action. He was sent to Stalag Luft IV and also took part in the 90-day march, and when the Red Cross helped him make a phone call to his family upon being liberated, his mother angrily asked who he was ... until he told her he couldn't wait to have some of her pierogis, upon hearing which she dropped the phone and fainted.

Now I'm faced with what I think a sound technician would call "white noise." Before I left, I started writing a book about the battle for Hill 122 in Normandy. I also began digitizing and editing an interview with Jack Sheppard, a former company commander in my father's tank battalion that stretches out over six 90-minute cassettes, for an audiobook to accompany the book on Hill 122. While in Florida I promised Sybil Swofford, the wife of a pilot on the Kassel Mission, that I would write a book about the mission; Sybil chastised me for taking so long because everybody in her church is waiting eagerly to buy a copy. Add to this the need to revise and update my web site, and all the changes coming to eBay, and I don't know where to turn first.

The conversations on this trip were recorded with my new Zoom H4, a digital recorder which produces a clearer sound than many of my earlier recordings. I plan to post excerpts from the new interviews at audiomurphy.com just as soon as I have them available.

The Civil War in Tweets

2010-01-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

Just thought of a great idea for a book: The Civil War in Tweets. Fer example:

Bull Run no picnic, was like Roll Over, Pamplona

Little Round Top, like WOW, didn't know my uncle was in the Civil War

Appomattox, didn't his great-grandson pitch for the Braves?

Your suggestions and contributions are welcome!

We interrupt this blog . . .

2010-01-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

. . . for a little terrorist humor.

One of the duties of a general is to give speeches. At the 1993 reunion of the 90th Infantry Division, my finger must have accidentally struck the "record" button of my tape recorder during the after dinner speeches at the Saturday night banquet. Yesterday I played the tape and discovered a speech by a general.

It's always a good idea to begin a speech with a joke or two, I think that's part of the Toastmasters' credo. So this particular general, whom I shall not name, told a somewhat self-deprecating joke at the beginning of his speech.

A little background is in order. It was still eight years and a few days before 9/11 and six months after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in which six people were killed and 1,024 injured. But the tower didn't collapse after a large bomb was set off in its underground garage, the incident was downplayed and the true extent of damage, along with the bomb's near success, only became evident in retrospect after the twin towers were brought down. And while that was an act of terror, other incidents that would be considered terrorist today, such as the seizure of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, were mostly referred to as hijackings.

So this general begins his speech with, how shall I say it, a terrorist joke. I'm sure given the hindsight afforded by later events he would have substituted another bit of humor, like "How many generals does it take to change a lightbulb?" (Generals don't change lightbulbs. That's what colonels are for ... I made that up). So this is, roughly, how the terrorist joke went:

A private, a sergeant and a general are captured by terrorists, who hold a quick trial and rule that the trio must be executed. The terrorists tell the three they can have one last request.

The private goes first. "I'd like a Big Mac and a strawberry shake," he says. So the terrorists send one of their group to McDonald's to grant him his request. In the meantime, they ask the general for his last request.

"I'd like to give one more speech," he says.

While they're waiting for the general to begin his speech, the terrorists ask the sergeant what he would like for his last request.

The sergeant says, "I'd like you to shoot me now, before I have to listen to the general's speech."

I suppose the general could still use that joke today, only he'd have to change the word "terrorists" to the phrase "enemy combatants."

Hill 122

2009-12-31T16:13:00.000-08:00

I plan to spend New Year's Eve with two of my favorite ghosts, Jim and Jeanette Flowers.

I've finished digitizing my interview with Jim Rothschadl, Jim Flowers' gunner and companion for those two fateful nights after their tank was destroyed. I used to go back and forth about whether Flowers should have gotten the Medal of Honor for his actions in the battle for Hill 122. The 90th Infantry Division recommended Flowers for the Medal of Honor, and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest military honor.

After listening to Rothschadl's interview, I no longer have any doubt that Flowers should have received the MoH. Even though Jim's daughter, Judy Rothschadl, once told me that her father was always conflicted because Flowers saved his life, but it was Flowers' decision to continue the attack after reaching their objective that almost got Rothschadl killed in the first place.

Thanks to the Military Times web site (http://www.militarytimes/), I was able to find Flowers' DSC citation. It has a couple of inconsistencies, such as the date -- Flowers' assault to the top of Hill 122 and back down took place on July 10, not July 11; he spent not one but two nights waiting to be rescued; and Jim Rothschadl was with him in addition to the mortally wounded infantryman, but I'm sure that inconsistencies such as those are common in such citations, many of which were written up well after the fact. Without further ado, Flowers' DSC citation:

"Awarded for actions during the World War II

"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to First Lieutenant (Infantry), [then Second Lieutenant] James F. Flowers, Jr. (ASN: 0-1017690), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while Commanding a platoon of Company C, 712th Tank Battalion, in action against enemy forces on 11 July 1944, at the Foret de Mont Castre (Hill 122) in Normandy, France.

" Lieutenant Flowers led a combined tank and infantry assault to relieve a battalion surrounded by a strong force of enemy paratroopers. Again attacking on his own initiative, under heavy enemy mortar and artillery bombardment, he led his force against a strong hostile position. Suddenly they came under deadly anti-tank fire. With flames leaping from the turret, despite the loss of his right foot from gunfire, he assisted the crew members from his tank and, to meet the new German assault, quickly organized a defense with the surviving tankmen, using rifles, carbines, knives, and fists to drive off the foe.

"After the repulse of the attack, he ordered all men not too badly wounded to withdraw, while he remained with a seriously injured infantryman. The following day, with their area under a heavy bombardment of artillery fire, an exploding shell destroyed his second foot and again severely wounded his companion. Redressing their grave wounds as best he could, he struggled desperately to maintain hope and life for his comrade and himself, until friendly infantry drove off the Germans and again took the position.

"Lieutenant Flowers' courageous leadership, heroic conduct, and devotion to his comrades are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army."

Service: Army

Rank: Second Lieutenant

War Department, General Orders No. 147 (December 9, 1946)

Interestingly, some of this appears to be rewritten from Flowers' own account of the episode, written from a hospital bed in 1946. Rothschadl said he submitted an affidavit but at the time of my interview with him his service officer was trying unsuccessfully to obtain a copy. I never followed through on that, but I would love to have seen it.

I'll post Flowers' written account in one of my next posts, but I want to address why I waffled over whether he should have gotten a Medal of Honor. Flowers himself would have said he was only doing his job and the medal would have meant far less to him than the lives of his men, the loss of which I believe haunted him throughout his life, whether he let on that it did or not.

There was an element in his account of impossibility. Otha Martin, who joined C Company as a replacement, once told me the reason many veterans didn't talk about the war. I quoted him in the introduction to my web site, tankbooks.com. In fact it's still there. This is how the quote went:

"A lot of people say veterans never talk to them. The reason they don't talk is they couldn't get the picture over to somebody that wasn't there. Somebody that wasn't there, he would think that you're making that story up."

I have a confession to make. While I didn't misquote Otha, I took his quote out of context. Way out of context because what he said next I didn't believe myself. He went on to tell a story about Jim Gifford, a veteran I would later interview at length. He said Gifford spent so much time on the front lines looking for action that one time a German soldier's head was blown off and Gifford caught it before it hit the ground.

I never doubted that Gifford was always looking for action and spent a lot of time on the front. I may have asked him once if that happened and I know that if I did he denied it, but if I did ask him I haven't got it on tape.

But back to Jim Flowers and the virtually impossible incident that convinced me he deserved the Medal of Honor. I should note that Flowers' account and Rothschadl's account differ on what happened, although Flowers had told the story hundreds of times and Rothschadl probably told it only when he was asked to write an affidavit in support of Flowers' MoH recommendation.

According to Flowers, after an armor-piercing shell from an anti-tank gun penetrated the turret of his tank and tore off his right forefoot, he reached down and pulled Rothschadl out before going to climb out of the turret himself, at which point he fell back into the burning tank yet was able to hoist himself out once again.

Rothschadl, however, said that when the tank was hit, with flames shooting out of the turret, he managed to pull himself halfway out, and he saw Flowers laying on the ground with blood spurting out of his foot. Rothschadl got as high as his shoulders and then fell back into the turret. Flowers, seeing that his gunner was still inside the tank, climbed back onto the tank, reached into the turret, pulled Rothschadl out, and they both fell to the ground.

That alone, in my opinion, should have qualified Flowers for the Medal of Honor.

There was a third occupant of the turret, loader Ed Dzienis of Fitchburg, Mass. Flowers wasn't sure how Dzienis got out of the turret, but Rothschadl said Dzienis went down into the driver's compartment and escaped through either the driver's hatch or the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank. Dzienis was captured.

Of the two occupants of the driver's compartment, driver Horace Gary and assistant driver/bow gunner Gerald Kiballa, Gary escaped unharmed. Kiballa, according to Rothschadl, made it halfway out of the hatch, probably the driver's hatch, and was struck by machine gun or small arms fire and fell back in, and burned in the tank. Flowers was always adamant that Kiballa escaped from the tank and was killed while trying to make his way back to the American lines. It's possible Flowers said this because he didn't want Kiballa's family to know he burned inside the tank.

I have my work cut out for me this New Year's Eve, and for some time after. But I'm looking forward to hearing the voices of Flowers and his wife, Jeanette. I interviewed them together on a few occasions, unfortunately always in a public place like a hotel lobby or a hospitality room, with considerable background noise. But I was surprised by how clear their voices came across on this particular tape, which I recorded at the 1993 reunion of the 90th Infantry Division, I think in San Antonio. As this blog develops, I'll be posting some audio clips, so I hope you'll keep checking for new entries.

Thanks for reading.

Hill 122: Jim Rothschadl

2009-12-22T19:12:00.000-08:00

I'm about to embark on my most ambitious audiobook yet, the story of Hill 122 as told by the survivors of Jim Flowers' platoon.

Some of you are familiar with Flowers. His three-CD interview is included in "The Tanker Tapes." Flowers was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on Hill 122 in Normandy. But he paid a terrible price: the lives of nine members of his platoon, and the loss of both of his legs.

Flowers and his wife, Jeanette, were two of my favorite people. I would see them at almost every reunion. Despite having two prostheses, he would drive from Dallas (excuse me, Jim, "Richardson, you know, that place where Dallas is a suburb of") to Bradenton, Fla., for the battalion's annual mini-reunion, or to whichever city in which the main reunion was held.

Flowers once said I should interview Jim Rothschadl, his gunner, who spent two days in no man's land with him. They never saw each other after the war. Flowers said Rothschadl was an American Indian, while a little voice inside my head said "Huh?"

When I looked up Rothschadl's home town of Waubun, Minn., there it was, smack dab in the middle of the White Earth Indian Reservation. When I called him, I asked how he was an Indian with a name like Rothschadl.

Oh no, he said, he was the son of a Czechoslovakian immigrant. His father was swindled into buying land at an inflated price from Indians who in turn were swindled into selling it for a couple of dollars an acre with the help of an act of Congress. He knew because he was a town official and had looked up the records.

Jim and Jeanette Flowers are both deceased now, as is Jim Rothschadl. There's no going back and asking them to clarify a point here and there. But I have their voices on tape, as well as the voices of Judd Wiley, one of the tank commanders in Flowers' platoon; and Louis Gerrard, who lost an eye on Hill 122; and Kenneth Titman, another tank commander; and Michael Vona, one of the crew members in Titman's tank; and Myron Kiballa, whose brother Gerald was killed in the battle; and Jack Sheppard, the company commander who filled in for one of the tank commanders in the tragic battle. I don't know about Vona or Kiballa, but all of the others are deceased.

Bob Levine, an infantryman who was wounded and captured in the battle and is a neighbor of mine, is very much alive, and I plan to include his voice in this audiobook as well.

I've already digitized my three-hour 1993 interview with Flowers, but I have several shorter interviews I hope to draw from for the audiobook. First I'm going to tackle my Oct. 21, 1993 interview with Rothschadl.
I'll keep you posted on the audiobook's progress and include sound clips here and there.

Thanks for reading!

2009-11-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

It began with a simple, straightforward question, one I've asked in a hundred different interviews.

"What was your rank?"

The answer started out fairly simple. "Private ..." Then it escalated.

"...Pfc. ... Corporal ... Private ... Pfc. ... Corporal!"
Followed by a burst of laughter.

What ensued was a poignant story, involving a small group of rowdy Marines having some fun in San Diego, a Congressional Medal of Honor, Iwo Jima and Kwajalein. The speaker was Nick Paciullo, whom I interviewed in 2002. I didn't realize just how poignant the story was until I edited the interview for my latest oral history audiobook, "Four Marines." It lacks the details an author might add: the weather, the sounds, the scenery, the dialogue, but to me the story is just like out of a movie.

Nick Paciullo (real audio)

On Memorial Day in 1998, I participated in a program at a new World War II museum in Eldred, Pa., and interviewed several veterans who attended. Two of those veterans, William M. Scheiterle and Jerome Auman, are included in "Four Marines."

Paciullo, a veteran of Iwo Jima who also fought in Saipan and the Marianas and was wounded three times, was a neighbor of mine in New Jersey. I interviewed him shortly before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, an event that triggered serious episodes of post traumatic stress in Paciullo.

In 2005, Diann Hamant of Cincinnati contacted me through my web site, tankbooks.com, and asked how she could find someone to do an oral history interview with her father. A few months later I attended a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in Cincinnati, so I interviewed him myself. Bob Hamant spent a year on the island of Tinian, and witnessed the Enola Gay being prepared for its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

For more information about World War II Oral History Audiobooks, please visit www.audiomurphy.com