A gem of an interview from 2004

Eugene Sand, left, and Edward "Smoky" Stuever

    Over the years, as I attended reunions of my father's tank battalion from World War II, there were several veterans I would see almost every year. As a result, I interviewed some of them on several different occasions, sometimes recording a casual conversation in the hospitality room with other veterans at the table, at other times doing a longer, one-on-one interview. As a result, I would sometimes have several different taped versions of the same story, each time with a few more details, or, frustratingly, a few details that differed from the time the same veteran told the same story two years earlier, sort of a one-man version of "Rashomon." Once, for example, I was listening in as Jim Flowers told the story of Hill 122 to a youngster who came to the reunion with his grandfather. I had heard Jim tell the story dozens of times, but as he grew older, he would sometimes have to reach for a detail, which would result in a lengthy pause. At one such pause I provided the detail, which prompted Jim to admonish me by saying "Who's telling this story, me or you?"
   There was one veteran, Ed "Smoky" Stuever, who had so many stories, about growing up in the Depression as the son of two hearing-impaired parents, about helping to build the Skokie Lagoons with the Civilian Conservation Corps, about having his tonsils removed, about life in the horse cavalry, about repairing and changing engines on tanks, about the death of his buddy Marion "Shorty" Kubeczko, that I resolved to sit him down and get his story from start to finish, which I finally did in 2005, when he was 88 years old. One of my earliest recordings, going back to 1991 or '92, was his account of how he got the nickname "Smoky." He was in the veterinary detachment of the 11th Horse Cavalry in California in 1941. His lieutenant's wife gave birth one night so the lieutenant passed out cigars in the morning, and the men sat around smoking their cigars before they began working on the horses. There was one horse which nobody wanted to deal with because it had a reputation for meanness, but it had a "stub" -- I believe he meant a thorn -- in its hoof, and somebody had to take it out. So Ed said he would take it out. He then said, "Watch my smoke."
   He had the horse's leg cradled in his crotch and was about to remove the thorn when the horse suddenly lay down, causing Ed to turn his head. He still had the cigar in his mouth and the horse's side made contact with the lit end of the cigar. "Watch my smoke," Ed repeated at that reunion. "There goes Smokeeeey!" as the horse sent him flying into several bales of hay.
   It was only after I'd heard that story many times that Ed remarked that he never liked the nickname, even though at every reunion all the other veterans would still call him Smoky.
   That 2005 recording was one of the highlights of my so-called career as an oral historian. Ed filled two 90-minute cassettes, then we broke for a battalion luncheon, and when we returned he filled another 90-minute tape. After digitizing and transcribing it, I realized there were several stories he didn't even cover, but that I had on earlier tapes.
   My New Year's resolution this year was to go through my old tapes and digitize some of the ones that I'd overlooked over the years. I digitized and transcribed two interviews -- with Bob Hagerty and Morse Johnson of A Company -- in January and here it is the middle of July, but this month I got back to keeping that resolution, and just the other day I discovered a hidden gem among my 600 hours of interviews.
   I didn't realize, or had completely forgotten, that the year before that 2005 session with Ed Stuever, I had interviewed him at the 2004 reunion. His daughter, Rita Cascio, was with him and she helped with the interview by asking him to provide some details which he might have overlooked.
   Ed Stuever passed away in September of 2014. He was 97 years old.
   Following is the audio of that 2004 interview. The full three-hour 2005 interview is available in my collection of "More Tanker Tapes," in my eBay store.

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

Track 4

Track 5

Track 6

Track 7

Track 8

Track 9

Track 10

Track 11

Track 12

Track 13

   Purchase "More Tanker Tapes," which includes the three-hour 2005 interview with Ed Stuever, in my eBay store.

   Thank you!

(Ed Stuever passed away in September of 2014. He was 96 years old.)

Edward H. Stuever beloved husband of the late Genevieve (nee Schmitt); devoted father of Tom, Mary, Rita Cascio, Therese, and Lora (Steve) Hall; dear grandfather of 10; great-grandfather of 15; great-great-grandfather of four. Edward was a US Army veteran of World War II and the founder of Stuever & Sons Draft Beer System. Funeral Monday, 11 a.m. from Salerno's Rosedale Chapels, 450 W. Lake St. (¾ mile west of Bloomingdale/Roselle Road), Roselle, to St. Matthew Church, Glendale Heights, for Mass at 12 noon. Interment Elm Lawn Cemetery. Visitation Sunday, 3 to 9 p.m. at the funeral home. Please omit flowers. For information, 630-889-1700.

Published in Chicago Suburban Daily Herald on Sept. 6, 2014 - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyherald/obituary.aspx?pid=172371586#sthash.QQZqA1Yq.dpuf

New and Improved: "Tales of Love, Food, Booze..."

Question: What's new and improved beside Palmolive dishwashing liquid, Dove bath bars, Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream and Chock Full o'Nuts coffee?
Answer: The new and improved, expanded audio edition of "Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes, Meeting General Patton and Winning World War II."

"Tales of Love, Food, Booze ..." was conceived in 2008, when Bear Stearns went under and the financial markets collapsed. Then-President George W. Bush issued the first $600 billion bailout of the financial industry. At the time, I was in the early stages of two years and five months of unemployment and figured I could use a bit of a bailout myself. Then it occurred to me that over the years I had interviewed numerous ex-prisoners of war, B-17 and B-24 crew members whose bombers were shot down over Germany; and paratroopers who were captured in combat. All of these men had, in effect, bailed out of airplanes. And so I decided to create my own bailout package.

That was in September of 2008. A few months later, I was digitizing my interview with Charles Feiler, who had been a dentist in the 101st Airborne Division. "Doc" Feiler, who served as a medic during the siege of Bastogne, had recently returned from the hospital and was medicated, which put him in a very good mood. His wife, Lillian, sat in on the interview, as did my neighbor Maurice Tydor, a 101st Airborne veteran who introduced me to the Feilers. Lillian Feiler was British, and had met her "Yank" in London between D-Day and Operation Market Garden. As I was listening to the story of how they met -- she described herself as a "kissless bride" because a day after they were married, Doc Feiler was restricted to base and then sent to Holland during Operation Market Garden, and Lillian didn't hear from her new husband for almost two weeks -- I realized it was Valentine's Day, and I thought I might make a themed audio CD with similar stories. Thus was born the CD "Tales of Love and War."

Next I thought of all the colorful dining and drinking stories I'd recorded over the years. Before you know it I had a CD for each, although the drinking CD has been expanded to two CDs, both of them 100 proof.

All that remained was a collection of stories about General Patton. Some of the veterans were yelled by Patton or witnessed someone else being chewed out by him. Others heard him give a speech or a pep talk and quoted it word for word nearly fifty years later.



And there you have it: Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes, Meeting General Patton and winning World War II, eight hours on eight themed CDs excerpted from my hundreds of hours of interviews with people of the World War II era.

Here are some audio excerpts, in mp3 form:

From "Love and War," Art and Ella Hary. Art was a veteran of the 712th Tank Battalion. He and his wife grew up in Hartford, Conn.

Art and Ella Hary

From "Food and War," Bob Hamant. Bob was a Marine on the island of Tinian. His interview is included in "Four Marines."

Bob Hamant

From "Booze and War," Joe Fetsch. Joe was a gasoline truck driver in Service Company of the 712th Tank Battalion. This story was recorded in the Hospitality Suite at a reunion of the battalion.

Joe Fetsch





From "Jumping Out of Airplanes," Hal Mapes. Hal was a waist gunner on a B-17 that was involved in a midair collision near Chartres, France. He was one of only two survivors of the crash.

Hal Mapes

From "Encounters With General Patton," Russell Loop. Loop was a gunner in the 712th Tank Battalion.

Russell Loop

 

Thanks for listening! The new and expanded "Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes, Meeting General Patton and Winning World War II" is available in my eBay store.

Coming soon: "Stories of the unusual and bizarre, faith in a foxhole, and humor in uniform"

And be sure to watch for the April release of my new book "The Armoured Fist," published by the new and exciting British imprint Fonthill Media. Email me at aelson.chichipress@att.net if you'd like information about ordering advance copies. Thanks, Aaron Elson.

P.S.: Here are some more clips from "Food and War."

Here are some clips from the audio CD "Food and War," which is included in the audiobook "Tales of Love, Food, Booze, Jumping Out of Airplanes, Meeting General Patton and Winning World War II."

Track 1 (Water) Reuben Goldstein

Track 2 (Menus) Corman Bean

 Track 3 (The March) Hal Mapes

 Track 4 (Rattlesnake) George Bussell

 Track 5 (Rations) Tony D'Arpino)

 Track 6 (Stealing beer) Bob Hamant

 Track 7 (Ham) Valentine Miele

 Track 8 (Potatoes) Tony D'Arpino, Reuben Goldstein

 Track 9 (Avez vous des 'erfs') George Bussell





Darrell Petty Part 3: Patton's speech

Darrell Petty

I met Darrell Petty, of New Castle, Wyoming, at the 1997 reunion of the 90th Infantry Division in Omaha, Nebraska. This is the third and final installment of our conversation.

Darrell Petty Part 1

Darrell Petty Part 2 

　

Darrell Petty: I wouldn’t take a million dollars for my experiences. I wouldn’t give a nickel to go do it again. But if they ever start getting over here, they don’t have to call me, I’ll grab my own gun and go. That’s the way I feel.

Aaron Elson: And what about the Nuremburg trials?

Darrell Petty: Oh, it wasn’t too much different than the ones at Dachau as far as that goes, except they were bigger names. Of course, old Goering, he cheated them, he cyanided himself. I don’t think they ever figured out where he had it hid, they thought maybe he had it hid in a glass capsule in his rectum because he was checked pretty well. He had a real deep belly button and he might have had it in there, but I think they would have checked it.

Aaron Elson: Now did you have any contact with these prisoners?

Darrell Petty: Just watching them. Standing guard there, watching them. And my folks saw me on a newsreel one time. My folks lived about 47 miles out of town. Anyway, the guy that had the place leased from them, I don’t know if you remember it or not, I don’t know how old you are...

Aaron Elson: I’m 46....

Darrell Petty: They used to have what was called the Pathe News and the film running over the screens at the movies, and it was on Nuremburg, and old Harry saw me there. Well, he drove clear to the ranch that night, and told my folks. He said, "You get in there tomorrow. Darrell is on film." And they came in and saw it.

Aaron Elson: Did you have brothers and sisters?

Darrell Petty: Yeah. There was five boys and two girls.

Aaron Elson: Were you the oldest, or the youngest?

Darrell Petty: I was the fourth child. Two brothers are older than I was, and a sister.

Aaron Elson: Did your brothers go in to the service?

Darrell Petty: My oldest brother served, spent the wartime in England. He was in the 844^th Aviation Engineers. They built airfields. And when he came over to France, they built airfields. Then he spent a couple of months in Vienna. It was Russian-occupied, and we kept two battalions of Americans there at all times to protect the people of Austria, Vienna, from the Russians. Yeah, our allies. And they needed it. He could tell a few things that happened up there. But anyway, then he shipped for home, and he come right back pretty near to Munich, a place called Erding, about 17 kilometers out of Munich, and there was a German airbase there. And I came in off pass one night, I had a class A pass, I came in and the charge of quarters said to me, "Your brother’s here." I said, "What?" He said, "Your brother’s here looking for you." I said, "Well, where in the devil is he at?"

He said, "He’s based out at Erding but he had to catch a truck and go back out." So I got me a weekend pass and went out there and saw him. Then, after that, we got together about four times before he shipped on home. He came home ahead of me. Of course he went in ahead of me, too.

Then my second brother, he lost his left eye in a gun accident. Didn’t lose the eye but it took the lens out. His eye looked pretty normal. Then he had a small hernia, and they wouldn’t take him. He tried to go when I went, but they turned him down. Then the first brother younger than I am, he was in Korea. Then my youngest brother was in Vietnam. He was 20, he put in 23 years, the youngest one. He was in Germany several times, he was in Vietnam several times. Got shot down over there. He was with a helicopter gunship, part of the 101^st. And he got shot down one time, he got out of it pretty lucky as it turned out.

My two oldest boys, they were in the National Guard, but they were in between Vietnam and Korea. Then the youngest boy ...

Aaron Elson: When did you get married?

Darrell Petty: My wife’s from England.

Aaron Elson: Did you meet her there?

Darrell Petty: I met her there, but we didn’t get married, she came to the States and we got married in ‘46.

Aaron Elson: How did you meet her?

Darrell Petty: Oh, just out on pass one time I met her, and we got to corresponding and we kept track of one another. She wrote me letters in Germany when I was there. I didn’t write her many back, because we couldn’t, and especially when they had blackouts, we couldn’t even correspond, we had to get our mail and read it and burn it.

Aaron Elson: Really? You had to read your mail and burn it?

Darrell Petty: Read it and burn it. Couldn’t wear insignia. And if we were gonna write a letter we had to write it when they could send it right out.

Aaron Elson: Why was that?

Darrell Petty: Censorship. Under blackout conditions. Because the Germans said one time that they knew where we was at, they knew where everything in the Third Army was. We never knew where we were. We’d be here, they’d pull us out of here and we’d be up here. That’s the way it was. Interrupted some meals I was trying to fix a few times, and pulled out. But anyway, after I got home, Elaine came to the States.

Aaron Elson: Did you ever ride on the back of tanks?

Darrell Petty: Yeah, I did. Whatever. You’d ride any way you can get. Sometimes the little ten and a halfs that pulled the antitank guns, 57s. I rode on them a few times. We’d jump on the tanks, halftracks, or whatever we could get on. In fact, when we went into Czechoslovakia the first time, I might have been one of the first ten GIs in Czechoslovakia. I’m sitting right astraddle that 76 gun on a Sherman. And the border was just a little ditch. It was about as wide as from here to the wall, just sort of halfway between here and that ...

Aaron Elson: You were straddling the 76 gun? And you could tell the difference between the 76 and the 75. A lot of the Shermans had 75s. But the lead tank, the lieutenant’s tank, often had a 76. So you were on the front tank?

Darrell Petty: Yeah. Oh, yeah, you could tell, you got to where you could tell the difference.

Aaron Elson: And that was on MacFarland’s tank?

Darrell Petty: I don’t think it was.

Aaron Elson: Do you know the name of the village?

Darrell Petty: We weren’t at a village at the time we crossed the border. We weren’t at a village, where I first went in. But we sat in Hof for quite a long time. And the irony of it was that the Germans sent word that if we’d come take Berlin, they’d send all the trucks that they could to help us take it. They didn’t want the Russians to have it. They wouldn’t let us go. Patton wanted to go, they wouldn’t let us go. Eisenhower said not to. Bradley, of course, told us that. Patton told Bradley, he said, I’m quoting from stuff I’ve read, but he said, "Hell, tell him you couldn’t find me and I went." And Bradley said, "No, he’d know that was one of your tricks." And he said, "You can’t do it."

I’ve also got, somewhere, I’ve got a shed and I’ve got stuff stored in it, I don’t know whether I can go through it and find it, somewhere I’ve got a magazine that’s got photocopies of two letters from Truman to Eisenhower. He gave him three options. He said, "I didn’t sign the line of demarcation. Roosevelt did." He said, "You can sit and hold, you can go into Czechoslovakia or you can go to Berlin." Yeah, we wanted to go. But then we went into Czechoslovakia. But I suppose, actually where we went in is close to Hof.

Aaron Elson: Were you in Hof when it was shelled by the railroad gun?

Darrell Petty: Yeah. I was shelled before we got into Hof, too. But we also went out and got a crew of a B-17 that blew up right over the line, and bailed out just before it blew up. I guess that was actually the first foray into Czechoslovakia, because they were trying to kill them in the air, shooting at them.

Aaron Elson: Really?

Darrell Petty: Oh yeah. Watching white tracers go up. And the tail gunner and another guy, they had come down on the wrong side of the line. We got on a jeep and went out there...

Aaron Elson: When you say the line, was this the border line or the...

Darrell Petty: Well, the Germans were dug in on one side and we were on the other. They weren’t crack troops, they were the trooops they just throwed in there for the last thing. And we grabbed a jeep with a .50-caliber on it, and I forget how many now, there was about probably six or seven of us hanging on that jeep all over. We went out through there and I was fortunate enough I got behind the .50-caliber, and we got both those guys. We got the tail gunner. He gave me his jacket and his flight suit. And they wouldn’t let me bring it home. They took it away from me when I tried to bring it home. But anyway, we got ‘em out of there. And we got our butts chewed a little bit. Our company commander got chewed out for us going across there, and he chewed us out, and then he turned around and said, "And I’m proud of every damn one of you." Anyway, yeah, we sat at Hof waiting there, getting ticked off because they wouldn’t let us go there, but then we eventually wound up going into Czechoslovakia. And when the war ended, when they officially stopped us, we were in a little village and I can’t think of the name of it in Czechoslovakia.

Aaron Elson: It wasn’t Susisce?

Darrell Petty: I don’t know. I know one of our kids, his grandparents had come from the town and they made him the honorary mayor, and throwed a hell of a celebration. But that’s where they stopped us. And we were on our way to Prague, supposed to go up there and help the patriots, but the Russians beat us in there. So they stopped us, and that was it. Then we pulled back across, and then we of course, we were in garrison just a little ways from the border, and we had outposts. We’d go up to them, in different spots. One little town we had an outpost in, half of it was in Czechoslovakia and half was in Germany.

Old Patton, our headquarters was in Weiden, we did a review for him. And a parade. He come down off that stand and he went down through the ranks, and he stopped and talked to every damn man. And if you had decorations, he asked what you got them for, and so forth. And his voice didn’t fit his stature at all, he had that high, squeaky voice. And he was a big man, and boy, decked out the best...

Aaron Elson: And what decorations did you get?

Darrell Petty: I’ve got three Bronze Stars, a Bronze Star and two clusters. And the V for valor. I’ve got a Purple Heart, or a Purple Heart and cluster. And I got the Victory medal and the Occupation medal, and the American defense...

Aaron Elson: Now the three Bronze Stars were for what?

Darrell Petty: Well, one off of that Hill 451. And one ... I’m gonna wear your tape out ...

Aaron Elson: That’s all right.

Darrell Petty: I got volunteered to take a jeep, a Red Cross jeep down to one of our sister companies and bring out some wounded. The guy that was the main medic on it couldn’t drive, I don’t know how, that was always weird to me, he had a driver, and the driver, I don’t know if he went AWOL or what he did, but he just disappeared. And he was looking for somebody to drive a jeep.

Aaron Elson: Now, when you say you "got volunteered..."

Darrell Petty: Well, Lieutenant Kelso was standing there. And he said, "Can you drive that jeep?" to me.

And I said, "Well, I never drove a jeep. I’ve drove a lot of trucks and a car, and I bet I can drive it."

Well, he said, "Go with him and take that jeep. Drive it." So I got volunteered. So we went down and we were coming out with those three guys, and that damn gun was trying to hit us, and we brought them out. So they turned me in for that one. And the other one I never figured I should have got.

Aaron Elson: What were the circumstances of that?

Darrell Petty: Well, I didn’t figure I’d done any more than anyone else.

Aaron Elson: But where was it?

Darrell Petty: It was just before we went into Czechoslovakia.

Aaron Elson: That was for going in and getting out the fliers, or something else?

Darrell Petty: He said he was turning us in for that, and I think that’s what it was. I just felt like that was something I should have done, anyway, and it’s probably a good thing we did. When they seen us going, they cranked up those TDs and tanks and come with us or we’d have been in trouble.

Aaron Elson: They went with you?

Darrell Petty: Yeah. But, you know, you do what you have to do. We was reviewing, like I said, for Patton, and he did that, and then he got back up on which it looked like a big prizefight ring, only about four times as big. And he said, "Now, men. You all are men or you wouldn’t be here." I was an 18, 19 year old kid there, I wasn’t 19 yet at the time. September, right after Japan surrendered. If they’d have stayed in the war two weeks more, we’d have been on our way to the States, 90-day leave, and then to the Pacific.

Aaron Elson: And what’s your birthday?

Darrell Petty: May 27^th. And, anyway, he said, "The damn parade’s over." He said, "And I’ve got a lot to say to you, and I want you to hear me." He said, "You fall in just as close around me as you can." And I was probably from here to that post. And he told us things I won’t begin to try to tell you all, but some of the high points, he said, "We should go and whip Russia right now." He said, "We’re here, we’re equipped." He said, "We’ve got the bomb, and they don’t." He said, "Let’s don’t wait till they have it, and they’ll get it." He said, "All we’ve got to do is turn these German troops we’ve got loose and they’ll help us do it." And they would. And that got him in trouble, too, for saying that. Not then, but later. And he said, he just went right down the line why they’d always caused us trouble and this and that, and why, it was like having a fire department, which you didn’t have to have but you had to have it. You know, things like that. And he said, "The Russians will never do anything but cause us trouble." He said, "They will try to keep us out of Berlin." He said "They won’t succeed but they’ll try." That was the Berlin airlift. He said, "Communists will take over China and Russia will be instrumental in them doing it, but in the long run China will become one of Russia’s worst enemies."

Aaron Elson: He said that?

Darrell Petty: Yes. He said, "We will have these little brushfire wars, mostly in Asia, that we will not be allowed to win."

Aaron Elson: He didn’t say that, he said that?

Darrell Petty: You bet he said it. And he said Ike has political intentions, he said he intends to be the president of the United States and he’ll run for whatever party can put him in there. That’s what he said. That was September of 1945. You’re damn right.

Aaron Elson: That’s incredible.

Darrell Petty: You better believe it is. I watched it happen. And he said, "You know," he said, "Ike would back me as long as it didn’t look like I was endangering his career or his political intentions." And that’s when he said he had political intentions. He said, "As you well know," he said, "I always had my ass in a jam." He said, he’s a good soldier, he said, "I’m not saying Ike isn’t a good soldier," but he told us that right there, those were some of the highlights. And he also, I’ve read the books on him, "Before the Color Fades," and "The Last Days of Patton." And he told his family that he wasn’t gonna come home. Yeah, he said, "I won’t be coming back," and he also wanted to be buried over there with his men.

Aaron Elson: Do you think he was murdered?

Darrell Petty: No. I did for a while. But I read the accounts. He got in trouble, and they relieved him of the Third Army and put him in charge of the 15^th, paper army we thought it was, cadre and paperwork. That was over his remarks about the Russians. Then he planned to go bird hunting, him and another general, and the other general come there and then he got called back in the middle of the night. That sounds kind of like maybe it could be a conspiracy and I’ll tell you the Germans, an awful lot of Germans think he was, think it was like Rommel, you know, and the admiration was terrific from the German people. Anyway, he completely changed his plans. He still was going bird hunting, but he was going a totally different route. He wanted to go past two or three of the battlefields. He wanted to go see the ruins of this one place, he believed he was an incarnation, and he changed his route around completely. There was no way they could have known that. But up to that time, I thought yeah, they did. But it wasn’t, I’m sure it wasn’t. In fact, I’m glad it wasn’t. But what a hell of a way to go after all he went through. And I had a guy trying to tell me the other day, oh, he was a crazy, bloodthirsty SOB, a couple of months ago. And I said, "Well, maybe in your eyes he was, but I’ll tell you something. I fought my war under his command." And I said, "If I had to do it again that’s exactly the kind of person I would want to command me." And I would. Because he knew how to fight a damn war. His theory was when you got a SOB, only he didn’t say it that way, running, he said you keep kicking him in the ass just as hard as you can kick him and then he said he can’t turn around and hit you. But he said if you let him slow down and turn around, he’ll hit you. He said, when Joe Louis had a guy in the corner and was gonna knock him out he didn’t back off and let him get cover. That’s the way he was. And one time when he was talking about his men, one time they asked him, "Why do you call your men sons of bitches?"

And he said, "Because they are." He said, "They’re my sons of bitches." But he said, "By the very same token, they know I’m their son of a bitch." He knew we cussed him. And we cussed him, but we didn’t let nobody else cuss him. When you’re hungry and cold and dirty and lousy and everything else ...

Aaron Elson: Speaking of which, did you ever get lice?

Darrell Petty: You’re damn right. And you know what they give us? You know, they talk about agent orange and that stuff? Okay, you know what they gave us to keep the lice off of us and kill them? Coming from little squirt cans like a Johnson baby powder can? DDT. We sprinkled it in our hair, we sprinkled it on one another’s necks, and we got a change of clothes once a month if we were lucky. No bath, but a change of clothes. We wore that stuff. We’d get sweaty and the pores would be open, then they’d cool down and they’d close up. We wore that stuff. DDT. I never heard of anybody getting anything out of that.

Aaron Elson: And where did you pick up the lice from?

Darrell Petty: Who knows? It seemed like France they’ve got them. It seemed like you’d get them there. Then if we could take over a house and sleep in a warm bed or something, we did. Whatever we can do.

Aaron Elson: The Germans all had lice.

Darrell Petty: Well, yeah, and yet they’re a real clean people. And it might sound funny, but being over there, I didn’t get to know the French very well till after the war was over, because I was too busy with other things. But I got to know the Germans pretty well after the war was over too, and personally, I prefer to be around the German people than the French people.

Aaron Elson: And why was that?

Darrell Petty: The morals, for one thing. I was standing in one of them underground tubes, the trains there, in Paris. I went back to see my brother, who was stationed there a little bit. And I got, about a 12 year old girl riding my leg propositioned me, right there in the middle of that damn train in front of everybody. That was just one incident. And not only that, they had their piss spots along the wall, and they’d be standing there holding their girlfriend’s or wife’s hand and talking to somebody else, taking a leak. And my dad told me they did it in World War I, I thought surely it wouldn’t be like that now.

Aaron Elson: Wait a minute, was your dad in World War I?

Darrell Petty: My dad was in World War I, 88^th Division. Browning automatic rifle.

Aaron Elson: And did he ever talk about it?

Darrell Petty: Some. He shot the propeller off of a German Fokker plane one day with that B.A.R. There was three of them after a little French Spad, and the Spad was out of ammunition I guess, and they were coming in, teeing in on him, and they come pretty near straight in on him, and he just pulled down and emptied that 20-round clip and took that old wood prop right off that, and down it went. I don’t know what else all else he got into. He didn’t talk too much about anything else.

Aaron Elson: Did he get gassed?

Darrell Petty: No, he was lucky there. He didn’t get no gas. Well, I seen one of my old buddies, I’d better go find him.

Aaron Elson: All right, I really appreciate your talking to me about this.

Darrell Petty: Well, I don’t want any, you know, I’m just trying to tell you straight facts, like it happened, like I knew it. Someone else might disagree, I don’t know.

Aaron Elson: I think it’s important to get a little bit of this down, recorded.

Darrell Petty: Well, our kids, I’m a member of the VFW, and we’ve been trying to go to schools and talk to the kids, present a little of this stuff to the kids. And you know, man, they’re full of questions. They’re curious. They want to know about it, when it’s over they’re all around you. They’re not being taught this. They’re not being taught this at all. One guy reviewed his daughter’s history book, not from New Castle, there’s another history book, I think she’s in college now. It’s got two and a half pages on World War II. Can you think of anything that’s affected this world any more than World War II has in the past fifty-something years? I don’t. About two paragraphs on the Korean War and nothing on Vietnam.

Aaron Elson: Unbelievable.

Darrell Petty: Yeah. See, it kind of makes you look sick. You know, but you wonder what you went to war for. I’d do it again if it had to be done. I wouldn’t be very good anymore, I had a new knee put in, this left knee, on the 8^th of July, and I’ve got to have this one put in the 10^th of October. So I don’t get around so good.

Aaron Elson: And how old are you now?

Darrell Petty: Seventy, I’ll be 71. Yeah. I never thought I’d live to get this old. I used to look at people and thought they were old, now here I am. I’ve got to find old Coffey and see what he’s doing. Thank you.

Aaron Elson: Thank you!

Darrell Petty: I didn’t mean to...

Aaron Elson: No, please! When I get this typed up, it’s gonna take a while because I have a backlog, but I’ll send you a copy of it.

 

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Read more interviews like this in "Conversations With Veterans of D-Day" and "A Mile in Their Shoes" by Aaron Elson, only $2.99 each on Amazon's Kindle

- - -

From Oral History Audiobooks:

Encounters With General Patton

The Tanker Tapes

From D-Day to the Bulge

The D-Day Tapes

From Chi Chi Press:

Tanks for the Memories

A Mile in Their Shoes

Got Kindle?

Conversations With Veterans of D-Day

Nine Lives: An Oral History

They Were All Young Kids

 

 

You can help Oral History Audiobooks

 



General Patton at the Crossroads

Suella and Russell Loop

   In my Oral History Audio CD "Encounters With General Patton," I included an anecdote related by Russell Loop when I interviewed him at his home in Indianola, Illinois, on Oct. 24, 1993.
   I might note that I almost didn't get to interview Loop, who, in his mid 70s at the time, was a farmer. I have somehow managed to get lost in almost every state in the nation. I even got lost in a parking lot, but if you've ever been to the Drawbridge Estate in Fort Mitchell, Ky., you might not be judgmental. And once in my travels when I was visiting my brother in Minneapolis and proceeded to visit a cousin in Madison, Wisconsin, I got off the highway to get a cup of coffee and managed to get back on headed west. The first few times I saw signs telling me how many miles it was to St. Paul, I thought, gee, I didn't know there was a St. Paul in Wisconsin.
   I can't think of a time, however, when I've been more lost than when I was on my way to visit Russell Loop and hs wife, Suella.
   He told me to get off the highway, look for a certain convenience store, take a road all the way to the end, make a right, and take that road to the end.
   This was farm country, and somehow the first road I took didn't end until I was probably in the next county, but what did I know, there was the end of the road and I made my right and drove for several miles until I finally came to a house with the number of Russell's house, and it's not like there were any streets signs along the way. I rang the buzzer, and a young couple with a baby came to the door. This must be Russell's son or daughter and grandchild, I thought. Except they had no idea who I was talking about. But they explained that Indianola was back the way I came, so I doubled back to the convenience store and called Russell, and this time I got it right.
   All that, of course, is not on the CD. What is on the CD is the part that follows my asking Russell "Did you ever see Patton, up close?"
   "Yes," he said. "Real close. We had just pulled up on a four-way crossroad, which was a hard road, and pretty nice roads for back that time. And we had not met any resistance there. But we had just pulled off and was waiting for further orders, and here comes Patton and his jeep, and his driver, and he just more or less walked by the officers and went around and shook hands and talked with nearly every one of the enlisted men. And while he was there, there was a German plane that strafed that crossroads both ways, twice. And he just looked up and said 'They must know I'm here.'
   "That's all he said, about that. But what he wanted to know was, 'Are you getting plenty to eat? Are you getting enough ammunition and gasoline? And is there anything that I can do to make it better?'
   "And of course we all said 'Yes, send us home.'" -- Russell kind of laughed when he said that -- "But I did, I got to shake hands with him on the front line.
   "He was I suppose by far the best officer we had. He got the job done. He didn't give them time to get set up and ready for us. He kept them out of bounds. And I think that was the whole deal, really, myself. I think that's the reason we got as far as we did as quick as we did. Of course, we were clear across Germany and Czechoslovakia when the war was over."

   Another time I got lost was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, looking for the home of Lex Obrient. Come to think of it, this one may even beat my search for Russell Loop, because I never did find Obrient's home; he lived in a cul de sac in one of the communities that seem to ring Albuquerque, and I drove around for a couple of hours before finally abandoning my quest. This, too, was in 1992 or 1993. I did keep in touch with Obrient's son, however, and in 1999 when I went out to Albuquerque to interview Vincent "Mike" McKinney, whose interview is included in my audiobook "The D-Day Tapes" and my Kindle book "Conversations With D-Day Veterans," I finally found Obrient's house.
   It wasn't until today, however, 13 years after that interview, while reviewing material for my forthcoming book "The Armoured Fist," which will be published by Fonthill Media, that I realized that Lieutenant Obrient (he later was a colonel with an engineering unit in Korea) was Loop's platoon leader for a while. Obrient was in D Company, the 712th Tank Battalion's so-called "light tank" company, while Loop was in C Company and my principal reason for interviewing him was because he was one of the tankers involved in the battle at Pfaffenheck, Germany, on March 16, 1945. But Loop started out as a gunner in D Company and later transferred to C Company's second platoon.
   As in many of my interviews, the subject of General Patton came up, and Obrient related one of the many colorful anecdotes I've been fortunate about front line encounters with Patton.
   "At Mortain," Obrient said, "my platoon was right there at the crossroads at Mortain. Lieutenant Godfrey's platoon went around where the cross-section was and he went down that way, and then Harry Coe (Eugene Godfrey and Coe were the other D Company platoon leaders at the time) went down even further. So we're sitting there, and just playing a flank guard for anything that was coming because they were getting ready to move the 2nd Armored, I was told, the 2nd Armored Division was getting ready to come through. But before that, here comes Patton down the road with his whole staff of officers, and three or four jeeps behind him. So he’s coming my way, and when I got up there and I reported to him, he returned it and said hi, and shook hands real quick, but he didn’t want to talk to me. He wanted to talk to my sergeants with the other tanks. And what he wanted to know was if they really understood what was going on. And he was very satisfied with what he heard. I mean, they told him, we’re here, and this is what we’re here for, and this is what we’re doing. He immediately left and I called on the radio and I told Gene about this. I said, 'Gene, you’re about to have some very special company. It won’t be more than two or three minutes.'
   And he said 'Thanks.'
   Sure enough, Patton went on down there, he talked to Gene, and he went down and talked to Coe, as I remember. But then we saw him come back. And then a funny thing happened. We got strafed. I don’t know how the Germans would have found this out, but I kind of feel like somebody had tipped them off that hey, I guess you couldn’t miss it, I mean gee, Patton with his brilliant, shiny helmet and dressed to perfection. Okay, that’s the second time I met Patton. I’m glad you brought that up. That’s what happened. Did Andy (Schiffler) tell you anything about that?"
   "No," I said. "You know who told me about that? Russell Loop. Do you remember him? He transferred to C Company, but he said that once Patton came up and spoke to the enlisted men. He was a sergeant, and you know, he bypassed the officers. So that would have to be the same, because he started out in D Company."
   "Russell Loop?" Obrient said.
   "Loop," I said, "From Indianola, Illinois."
   "Ah, yes, I remember him," Obrient said. "But you know something else that I don't know if Andy told you about, there was a woman there with her children in a house close by. And of course, this is one thing Patton insisted on, "Don’t you take any food from any of these people. You have what you need. Leave it alone." So I felt real sorry for this woman and her children. And we had fruit, we had some apples and we had oranges, and those children, they hadn’t seen any candy at all. Well of course all the candy we had was that D-bar, that highly concentrated chocolate, so I tried to tell her, listen, these are for your children, because I knew they hadn’t had any food there, I was told that they hadn’t had any oranges or apples, they didn’t know anything about any of that. And above all, they hadn’t had any chocolate. So I think Andy was one of them that gave her the chocolate.
   "So you know what she did? She was so grateful, she went and killed a couple of chickens, and boy, I thought, no ma’am, don’t do that, uh-uh. But she did anyway, and they came out there, and this is just before Patton showed up. So what we did, they had it on one of these oblong plates and cut up, I said 'Jesus Christ, we’re all gonna be in trouble.' So we took it, and thank God he didn’t get close enough to notice it, but we pushed it in under the bogey wheels and the track and covered it with jackets and so forth. Of course he wasn’t there long. Thank God he wasn’t. He just was in and out. So when he got out of there, I took that chicken and said, "Ma’am, please, for God sake, take that back, don’t do that." So we made her take it back. But if he’d have found out, I hate to think what would have happened. But he was real fast. He came up, and I bet he was gone in less than a minute and a half. But that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to talk to the sergeants and the other enlisted men that he could talk to.
   "So that’s the second time I saw General Patton, right there. The first time was on the hills in England, and then the second time I saw him was there. And then we saw him again up in the Battle of the Bulge, but I didn’t really get to say anything to him. I just saw him, and he went right on. It was fast. And then the last time I saw him, the war was over and we were in the theater at Amberg, and he came around and he talked oh, maybe ten, fifteen minutes, with as many troopers as could get in that theater. That was the last time I saw him, of course you know what happened to him after that at Mainz. No. Yeah, Mainz, that’s where it was [actually near Mannheim]. He was in his staff car and he was waiting for a train to go by, and these guys had been drinking, and they drove a two and a half ton truck into the back of him and broke his neck. You know that part, I’m sure."

   Watch for more information about and excerpts from my forthcoming book, "The Armoured Fist," from Fonthill Media. That's Armour with a "u" because Fonthill is a British publisher, besides, I do seem to have a small following in England and Australia, although I have no idea how Australians spell armor.
   My original Oral History Audiobook "The D-Day Tapes" is available from Amazon.com for download or on CD from eBay, and "Conversations With Veterans of D-Day" is available for Amazon Kindle.

- - -

From Oral History Audiobooks:

Encounters With General Patton

The Tanker Tapes

From D-Day to the Bulge

The D-Day Tapes

From Chi Chi Press:

Tanks for the Memories

A Mile in Their Shoes

Got Kindle?

Conversations With Veterans of D-Day

Nine Lives: An Oral History

They Were All Young Kids