Once Upon a Tank in the Battle of the Bulge

   I started going to reunions of my father's tank battalion in 1987. I always had a small tape recorder with me, and I would sometimes plunk it down in the middle of one of those round tables where maybe two or three veterans and a wife or companion would be sitting, and I'd record a sometimes casual, sometimes animated conversation. I would also conduct brief interviews with individual veterans, or be lucky enough to get two or three together to talk about the same event.
   The 712th Tank Battalion spent 311 days in combat, and its veterans had stories that ran the width and breadth of the human condition.
   Because the conversations were spread out over more than a decade, it sometimes was years before, in reviewing the transcript of an interview from one reunion, I would discover a detail that contradicted or corroborated a story from another.
   One of the first veterans I interviewed, in 1991, was Ed Spahr, at the battalion's Detroit reunion in September of 1991. Ed was of medium height, thin, wore glasses and spoke with something akin to a Philadelphia accent, although he was from Carlisle, Pa.

Ed Spahr

    In later years I would ask questions with a laserlike focus, like "Do you remember a tank that had to be destroyed when the battalion retreated across the Saar River from Dillingen?" However, with Ed, my questions were more generic: Were you scared? How was the food? Were you wounded?
   "These scars on my hand I got one time, they had anti-aircraft guns," Ed said, "I think they were 20 millimeters, and they hit our tank. They didn't penetrate, but on the inside of the tank a little round spot would get cherry red, and the paint would sometimes catch on fire. That's what made these little white spots on my hand.
   "I was wounded on the inside of my left arm. Lieutenant Gifford, he was our tank commander. Our tank got knocked out and luckily we all got out of the tank. After we got hit, Lieutenant Gifford stuck his head out, and a machine gun bullet struck him around one eye. He had blood all over. When he got out of the tank, I don't think he thought he was hurt as bad as he was, and he stepped behind the tank, away from the incoming. They were firing machine guns on us, but we were behind the tank. Lieutenant Gifford tossed me his camera, and said, 'Take a picture of me.'
   "So I'm standing there with my hands up taking the picture, that's the only way I could have gotten hit in a spot like that, I had to have my arms up. It just felt like a bee sting. It was no big deal to me. I didn't think I was hit until the medic asked to see my hand because when I dropped my arm the blood would drop off my fingers. And then he said, 'It's coming down your arm. Take off your shirt. And there this was, I was bleeding like a stuck pig.
   "I haven't seen Lieutenant Gifford since. He was all right, but he never came back to the company after that."
    That was in 1991. The following October, the reunion was held in Harrisburg, Pa. Spahr was there again. And who should walk into the hospitality room, but Lieutenant Jim Gifford!
   Not only were Spahr and Gifford there, but Tony D'Arpino, who drove the tank on Jan. 10, 1945, the day it was knocked out just outside of Wiltz, Luxembourg; and Bob Rossi, the loader, were there as well. And I was able to get the four of them around one of those round tables, with the tape recorder in the middle.


   

Once Upon a Tank in the Battle of the Bulge

   Following is a partial transcript of that conversation:


   Jim Gifford: I was a lieutenant at the time, a first lieutenant.

   Bob Rossi:  I was a loader in Lieutenant Gifford's tank. I was a private first class.

   Ed Spahr: I think I'd better be classed as a utility man with all of C Company because I served in every platoon.

   Tony D'Arpino: I was a driver, first tank, third platoon, and towards the end I was a tank commander for a very short period.

   Aaron Elson: Where did you come together as a unit?

   Bob Rossi: Just prior to the Battle of the Bulge, Jim was brought in as our new tank commander.

   D'Arpino: He was our platoon leader.

   Rossi: We were in the Number 1 tank. We wound up in the town of Kirschnaumen in Belgium [France, actually]. I can recall so vividly how we wondered where Lieutenant Gifford was all day. We were in a hayloft, and he came up the ladder, it was a footladder, he said, "Come here. I want to show you something." He had draped the tank in white sheets. There was snow all over the ground, so he scrounged these white sheets from all over and he draped our tank so we'd have camouflage. That same night, he had gotten a package from home, and he had some canned chicken. He shared his package with all of us. We were talking about home, and he said to us, 'You know, I'd rather lose an arm or a leg than lose my eyesight. There's too much to see in this world." And the next day, he got hit in the eye. It was a hairy situation because we had gone into a pocket to flush out the Germans, and as fate had it, our left track was knocked off.

D'Arpino: Wasn't that the time that we just took one section of the tanks, just us and the second tank? We were almost ready to eat supper when we had to go out.

Rossi: We only had two tanks, us and [Sergeant Jim] Warren's. There was concentrated machine gun fire. Lieutenant Gifford got hit in the right eye, the bullet lodged in his cheek. I thought he might jump out of the tank, and I yelled to him to keep down or they would blow his head off. He said, "I don't want to jump out. I want Warren to come forward to help us." Then he said, "Rossi, how bad am I hit?" And I lied. I said, "You don't look bad, Lieutenant." But he looked like somebody hit him in the face with a sledgehammer.

D'Arpino: I remember something else about that. He was great for having a camera around your neck, right?

Rossi: I'm gonna get to that. So he says to me, "Fire the smoke mortar." And this is the joke. In my excitement, I forgot to knock the cap out of the top, and when I fired the first mortar it went like this [motioning straight up and down]. And then I fired some subsequent mortars to give a smokescreen. As we were abandoning tank, Lieutenant Gifford was firing his .45 and pulling Spahr out by one of his arms. Spahr's leg was locked."

Spahr: I had a little blood coming out, something had hit me. I went along with him back to the aid station.

Rossi: Ed was the assistant driver. His machine gun was firing by itself it was so hot. And I said, "Twist the belt! Twist the belt," so he could stop the bullets from feeding into the machine gun. And Klapkowski, who was our gunner, he and I were running in a zigzag, we could see the snow being kicked up around us. As we were running, a recon truck came toward us, and Lieutenant Gifford said, "Fire that .50 and protect these boys!" And the guy yelled out, "It's our last box!" He says, "Fire it anyway, you sonofabitch!" And that's when they started firing the .50 to give us cover. As we got out of the line of fire, he handed his .45 to me, he says, "Hold this for me till I get back." And with that, he says, "Take my picture." I says, "Lieutenant, I can't take your picture."

Spahr: I took it. That's the only way I could gave got hit, right here, when I was holding the camera up. It felt like a bee sting.

Rossi: And there he was, having his picture taken. He had gotten a Bronze Star that morning, he had the ribbon, his face was all puffed up, blood all over his combat jacket, he says, "Take my picture."

Gifford: I couldn't see out of my right eye, but I didn't know how bad it was. It's a funny thing, I didn't feel any pain when the bullet went in.

D'Arpino: I can remember plain as day one thing about that night, that evening. We were about ready to eat our meal, and they said that there was a small pocket, it was holding the infantry down, they wanted the tanks to clean it out. You took two tanks. It was just supposed to be a small pocket, and it turned out to be a little more than that, I guess.

Gifford: It was bad news.

Rossi: After we were knocked out, Sergeant Warren's tank came forward, and under  Lieutenant Gifford's orders, he set our tank on fire.

D'Arpino: We had ruined the radio. We put a grenade in the gun barrel. We did everything we were supposed to do.

Rossi: So the Germans couldn't turn the gun around and fire on the town.

Gifford: I had Warren shoot into the back of our tank, because the Germans were stealing the tanks. They'd use them against us. The track was blown off, so it was useless anyway.

D'Arpino: But the gun was still good.

Gifford: So we immobilized it by hitting it in the back.

D'Arpino: We had the best working escape hatch of anybody in the platoon. I used to oil that thing up good, so that when you touched the lever it would really fall out. Sometimes that was the only way of escape. If you're inside the tank and the hatches are down and the gun is traversed over your hatch, you can't open it to get out, you have to go out the other way. I can remember always telling Klapkowski, he was the gunner in the tanks that I was in most of the time, I always told him, "You sonofabitch, if we ever get knocked out, make sure that gun is in the center because if I can't get out because you've got the gun traversed over my hatch," I says, "I'll haunt you. I'll come and pull the sheets off of your bed."

Gifford: I'm sure there's a few guys that aren't here today because of that gun being over their hatch.

D'Arpino: That used to be my biggest worry.

- - -

   This conversation went on for two hours, and included many harrowing incidents both before, during and after the Bulge. I had interviewed Ed Spahr in 1991 and Bob Rossi earlier in 1992. I subsequently interviewed Tony D'Arpino and Jim Gifford individually, and I visited Stanley Klapkowski at his home in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. All five interviews as well as much of the group recording are included in the audiobook "Once Upon a Tank in the Battle of the Bulge" in my eBay store, where I hope you'll check out that and the many other oral history audiobooks, all in the veterans' own voices.

Visit my eBay store for great oral history deals

Walter Galbraith, Part I, "The Professor"

Lisa Keithley, left, and Dale Albee. Lisa's great-grandfather, Walter Galbraith, was Albee's gunner in World War II.

 

 

   My new book is finished, with a projected publication date of April 2013, so watch for an announcement. While writing it, I pored through transcripts of conversations I hadn't looked at in years.
   One of the first veterans I interviewed was Walter Galbraith, of Boston, probably in 1991 or '92. I think it was at the first Florida "mini-reunion" of the battalion I attended. I spoke with Walter and Caesar Tucci, both veterans of the battalion's D Company, which comprised the 17 1/2 ton "light" tanks.
   Walter passed away in 1994. It was not until the following year that I met Dale Albee, who'd been Walter's tank commander and platoon leader. Walter was the gunner in Albee's tank.
   In 2001 I received an email from Lisa Keithley, then 15 years old. Her great-grandmother had recently passed away and Lisa inherited the war memorabilia of her great-grandfather, Walter Galbraith.
   I immediately remembered how Albee told me how broken up he was when he learned that Galbraith, his gunner, passed away. So I wrote to Lisa and asked her if she'd like to get in touch with her great-grandfather's lieutenant. Albee had a daughter living in Vancouver and visited her during the Holidays. While there, he paid a visit to Lisa, who was doing a school project on her great-grandfather's experiences.
   I used a couple of Walter Galbraith's stories in my first book, "Tanks for the Memories," but as I read through the transcript I realized that there was so much more of his story to tell. Here, then, is my conversation with Walter and Caesar Tucci, circa 1991:
 

    

Walter Galbraith

   When we were in Germany, I forget what part of Germany it was in, but some of the houses only had just a wall up, so the GIs put their bedrolls against the walls. It was in wintertime, to keep the wind from ... anyway, the last man on guard, in the tank, had to make sure that you pulled the ammunition off the tank. So I climbed up on my tank in the morning, and my eye caught the brass. Who the hell did that? So I pulled it down. What I first went up there for was to check Little Joe. Little Joe is the motor that turns the turret. If you press your thumb on one side you start the machine gun, if you hit the other side you hit the cannon. So I got in and I saw that brass, I pulled it down and I cleaned out the chamber, I cleaned out the ammunition, and I threw it back in, and the breach came up. Now, if that fired, it comes back 18 inches. I had my hand on the guard, and if that had come back ... I remembered when I came in there it was to check on Little Joe, so I reached over and when I did my hand came up, and I hit the damn cannon. The periscope was in front of me, and I saw the road blow up. I blew the whole goddamn road up. And I thought, "Oh, my God, did I kill somebody?" That's the first thing I thought about. So I reached up, I raised my seat, and I looked out. I didn't see anybody walking around with no head on, and I felt good, I didn't care what they did to me, I hadn't killed anybody. And all of a sudden the company commander, the first sergeant, all the guys are walking up to that big hole that I made in the road, and I figured, well, I'd better go face the music. So I walked up there, and I was just gonna say, "Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles," and the first sergeant says, "Jesus. I drove over this road three times this morning and that goddamn mine didn't blow up."

   So Andy Schiffler says, "That was no goddamn mine," and I grabbed him by the back of the neck, I said, "You shut up."

   But anyway, what happened after that, at the same time, when the cannon flew out, some plaster from the side of the wall fell down on the poor guys who were laying there, and they thought the Germans had counterattacked, so they jumped up and they were scared like hell.

   Another thing that happened, while we were in basic training, we had to learn how to ride a motorcycle, the tank, cars, so after we got familiar with it, it was the old tank, and when you shift, that's with the rivets in them, you know, the old type, that was our practice, so you shift into first, second, third, fourth. By that time you're looking that way and the tank is going this way. The only directions that the driver would have is that the tank commander would press him on the shoulder, right shoulder turn right, left shoulder turn left. We had to go through this obstacle course with the tanks, and each had turns. I went through it, and then somebody else went through it.

   There were two huge trees, great big trees, with just enough room for a tank to go between them. When you're driving, they said don't stay in first all day, which some guys would do. As soon as that tachometer went so many thousand rpms, you had to shift.

   The instructor's sitting beside the bow gunner, and the driver's going, and so he'd tell you "Keep your eye on the tachometer."

   So my turn came and I went through the trees, and I'm looking through the periscope, it looks like the trees are moving. So I see these trees, and I come like that, and go right between them.

   Then this fellow got in, and we called him the Professor. I can't think of his name, but it was his turn, and he, if you asked him a question, he'd say, "Well, uh," it took him all day to tell you, but when he finally came up with an answer, he had a vocabulary that big. But anyway, it was his turn, so we get in the tank, and he's driving, and we're going, and the instructor said "Keep your eye on the tachometer."

   "Ow-kay." He talked like Mortimer Snerd, so he'd go like that, and again the instructor said "Keep your eye on the tachometer." So we went down through the course and we finally come to those two trees. I saw the tree move in front, and I thought at the last second he's gonna pull on the lever and go right between the trees. Then "Bang!" He hit that goddamn tree, and ruined the tank's transmission and everything, and all the tree's branches came down on top of us. I landed on top of the bow gunner, the tank commander landed on top of the driver, and everything got quiet for a second. And the instructor said something like "God damn you," I can't think of his name.

   And he said, "Well, you told me to keep my eye on the tachometer, didn't you?"

   That's about the funniest thing I can tell you, but those are the two things I can think of right now.

 

- - -

 

From Oral History Audiobooks:

 

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

 

(More of Walter Galbraith's interview coming soon)

 

　



 

The destruction of the 106th Panzer Brigade

Forrest Dixon and Fred Lemm (not sure which is which) with a
knocked-out German tank from the 106th Panzer Brigade

   Early in the morning of Sept. 8, 1944, at about 2 a.m., a fight broke out between the 712th Tank Battalion, which was guarding the 90th Infantry Division artillery command post, and the German 106th Panzer Brigade.
   Of the many tank battalion veterans I interviewed over the years, most of them believed that the German armored column was simply traveling at night and had no idea that it had stumbled upon the artillery command post. The firing in the middle of the night eventually died down, and resumed at first light.
   It's a shame that so many of the tankers have passed away thinking this was the case. This is for you, Don Knapp, a veteran of the battle of Mairy. Apparently the 106th Panzer Brigade knew exactly what it was doing, and just got whupped, at great cost to the 712th, which lost several tanks and men in the battle.
   Not only has the destruction of the 106th Panzer Brigade made into a French board game, but I recently discovered this article, written by a German historian. The article is excerpted below, but the full article can be found at:

The Destruction of the 106th Panzer Brigade

"

Surprising the enemy, Panzer-Brigade 106

Panzer-Brigade 106 was made up in July 1944 from the remnants of the Panzergrenadier-Division "Feldherrnhalle", which was routed during the Russian offensive in June 1944, and shaped into condition near the eastern city of Danzig. Nobody less than the famous Colonel Dr. Franz Bäke commanded this early unit of the succession of Panzer-Brigades. He was supported by experienced and highly decorated commanders, but the bulk of the troops consisted of inexperienced men and due to lack of fuel there had been little practice with the tanks. The training area could suggest deployment in the East, but in early September the brigade found itself as a reserve in the First Army sector in Lorraine. It was destined for the Lorraine counterattack against Patton's Third Army later that month.

In the beginning of September the frontline in Lorraine was stretching along the river Moselle from Nancy to Thionville. The Americans tried to establish bridgeheads over the river Moselle in weak sectors of the German defence. Their plan was to advance to the industrial area in the Saar. Although the German First Army's line of defence was thin it managed to fend off most of the American probing attempts to cross the river on 5th and 6th of September.

After this little success the commander of the First Army, Colonel-General Otto von Knobelsdorff, felt confident enough for a counterstroke on the stalled American forces. When the headquarters of Hitler gave away Panzer-Brigade 106 for 48 hours, Knobelsdorff had his armoured fist. His plan was to attack the exposed flank of the U.S. 90th Infantry Division north of Thionville. Knobelsdorff and Bäke were both seasoned officers who gained a lot of experience in Russia. They were confident that an armoured blow on the exposed flank and deep infiltration within American ranks would cause enough panic to make their units collapse and run, like the Russians would in similar circumstances.

Panzer-Brigade 106 found itself already in the sector of Luxembourg from the beginning of September. After the arrival of supporting infantry Panzer-Brigade 106 was send into action in the early morning of September 8th. There had been no beforehand reconnaissance, nor did the Germans know the exactly whereabouts of the American positions. Bäke split up his force in two parallel moving armoured columns infiltrating into the Americans position without actually knowing where to strike. The western column began to spread out just as the Americans start to spot the German intruders. Instead of fleeing in confusion when confronted with this German night attack with tanks the Americans rallied and start to counter the threat.

Now the German forces were scattered in the countryside while the Americans began to rally their forces to strike back. The American infantry was armed with numerous kinds of anti-tank weapons and closely supported by divisional tanks and artillery. Scattered American tanks fired upon the column, while infantry was taking positions at road crossings to block German movement. Now the Germans were harassed by tanks and pounded with artillery.

At dawn the net of American forces around the western column started to get tight and escape was impossible. Bäke lost control over his units as they desperately tried to escape from the deadly trap which was closing around them. Villages and dense woods formed an excellent killing ground, because the Americans could knock out the mighty German tanks from close range. The eastern column tried to come to assistance of the western column, but this move was too late as the Americans were alerted and awaiting the attack. The eastern column was ambushed, suffering heavy casualties and the attack was soon broken off.

At the end of its first day of combat Panzer-Brigade 106 was routed and had lost most of its tanks and infantry in the process. At least 750 men were taken prisoner by the Americans and 21 tanks and tank destroyers of the initial 47 were permanently lost, next to more than 60 half-track carriers – it lost three-quarter of its combat effectiveness and actually ceased to exist as a unit capable of any offensive operations.

This case showed the weaknesses in the deployment and the tactics of the Panzer-Brigades. Firstly, the attack was carried out without proper reconnaissance or knowledge about the American positions. Secondly, the Panzer-Brigade was send into battle without clear objectives. These two mistakes were the result of the wrong assumption that a night attack with tanks would surprise the Americans and made them run. This major underestimation of the morale and fighting capabilities of the American forces proved fatal, because the Americans not only had the will but also the means to counter the attack. Besides these mistakes it was not a wise decision to commit inexperienced troops of an untested unit in a night attack against seasoned and well-organised troops.

- - -

  I'm currently working on two books simultaneously. One, tentatively titled "War As My Father's Tank Battalion Knew It," will include a substantial chapter on the battle at Mairy based on the many accounts I've recorded. Watch for more details. Thanks for reading.

Of Cars and Cigarettes

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