Breakfast at Denny's

Reuben "Ruby" Goldstein

The following is from the preface to my book "A Mile in Their Shoes":

 "

Have you had breakfast? Perhaps you’ll join me at Denny’s. I’d offer to pay, but Cliff Merrill insists on picking up the check. Cliff is a retired colonel. Who are we to argue?

Cliff’s wife Jan will join us, along with Reuben and Sue Goldstein. Ruby is fond of reminiscing about the Great Depression and is a big fan of the $1.99 Grand Slam breakfast – these are 1994 prices, mind you!

Let’s take this table in the corner. It’s Sunday morning, and the restaurant in Bradenton, Fla. – where the veterans of the 712^th Tank Battalion from World War II are having their annual Florida “mini-reunion” – is crowded. Soon the waitress brings our plates, with their neatly arranged sausage patties, their bacon, pancakes and sunnyside up eggs. She disappears momentarily and returns with two thermal decanters of coffee.

Before long, as it always does at these reunions, the conversation shifts from restaurants in the Boston area – another favorite topic of Ruby’s – and salmon fishing in Alaska, an annual pastime of Cliff and Jan – to Normandy and 1944.

Cliff is solidly built, even as he pushes 80, with pale, chiseled cheeks and a splash of red beneath his eyes. He could still fit into a uniform, while Ruby, with the exception of his facial features, bears little resemblance to the rail-thin cavalry sergeant in 50-year-old snapshots.

When the battalion experienced its first combat on July 3, 1944, in the Haye du Puits sector of the Normandy battlefield, Cliff was a company commander in the 712^th. Ruby was a tank commander in his company.

“Do you remember,” Ruby says, “we had these flare guns in the tank?”

“Smoke,” Cliff says.

“Yeah, smoke mortars,” Ruby says, although the next few times I hear him tell the story it will still be a flare gun. Memory is funny that way.

“I had mine wired to the inside of the basket of the turret,” he says with his Boston accent, “and I took it with me after the tank was hit.” This was on either July 4^th or 5^th, 1944. A few days later Cliff would be wounded and would miss the rest of the combat in Europe, although he would return to the European theater as a member of the tribunal at the Dachau war crimes trials, and later as a provost marshal. Ruby would be wounded too, but not until the Falaise Gap in August, and he would later return to the outfit.

“There was a machine gun nest in the field,” he says. “He was waiting for somebody to cross the opening to the field, then he’d let go. So I started to fire it [the smoke mortar] and lobbed it over the hedgerow. It couldn’t do any damage, but it must have scared the hell out of them, because I fired quite a few shots. But he caught one paratrooper that was trying to go through the opening. He caught him and killed him.”

“It was a captain of the paratroopers,” Cliff says. “I tried to stop him.”

Cliff pauses amid the clinking of coffee cups and animated conversations at nearby tables. He glances down, as if he is deep in thought.

“Before your tank was hit, you ran over,” he says, staring now at his plate, his voice barely audible, “there was a wounded German. You ran over him with your tank. Did you know that?”

“No, I just kept going.”

Jan Merrill, who is Cliff’s second wife, glances knowingly at Sue Goldstein, who married Ruby shortly after the war, as if to say you’d think our husbands wouldn’t talk about these things over breakfast. But the women know it’s better to talk about it over breakfast than to not talk about it at all.

“Jesus,” Cliff says, “you flattened him right out.”

“We kept going,” Ruby says. “Didn’t stop for anything.”

“He wasn’t wounded any longer,” Cliff says. “The tracks ran the whole length of him.”

***

GOLDSTEIN, Reuben "Bob" Of Hull (Mass.) Entered into rest June 22, 2012, at the age of 94. Bob was a proud U.S. Army Veteran of WWII and a Purple Heart Recipient. Beloved husband of the late Sylvia (Raskind) Goldstein. Devoted father of Martin Goldstein and his wife Pamela of Randolph, Stuart Goldstein and his wife Donna Marie of Hanover, Barry Goldstein of NJ and Donna Goldstein of Hull. Loving brother of the late Melvin Goldstein, Nathan Goldstein, David Goldstein and Jack Goldstein. Cherished grandfather of Alyssa, Ashley and Philip. Services will be held at the Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 475 Washington St, CANTON, MA on Monday June 25, 2012 at 10:00 AM. Interment Lindwood Memorial Park, (Moses Mendelsohn Section), Randolph. Memorial observance will be held at the home of Martin & Pamela, on Monday beginning at 6:00 PM and on Tuesday and Wednesday beginning at 2:00 PM. In lieu of flowers expressions of sympathy in his memory may be made to a charity of your choice. Stanetsky Memorial Chapel 781-821-4600 www.stanetsky.com

Ever since I began attending reunions of the 712th Tank Battalion, I can't recall Ruby Goldstein ever missing one, either the annual reunion or the Florida minis. I heard two stories at the first reunion I went to, in 1987, which were instrumental in turning me into an oral historian. Neither story was the kind of story you'd expect to hear, about courage under fire, about bravery. One of the stories, told by Wayne Hissong, was about all the things he did upon returning home to avoid facing the mother of a buddy with whom he'd entered the service, and who wanted to know how her son was killed. The other story was told by Ruby, and was about a rabbit. Those of you who knew Ruby have probably heard this story more than once, but here it is nonetheless:

Reuben Goldstein

I was in the replacement depot waiting to rejoin the battalion, and we were getting hungry. It was after breakfast, and it’s getting close to noontime, and who know when the heck you’re gonna get chow, or what you’re gonna get.

So this fellow and I, we take a walk, and we get to a farmhouse, where we get some eggs. But we bought them. The Germans wouldn’t buy them, they’d take what they want. I had some francs in my pocket. I said, “Give me six eggs.”

I put them in my field jacket, three in one pocket, three in another. We go along, go into another farmhouse, and I want some more eggs.

The woman in the house could understand what I wanted. She goes out to get the eggs, and I go to sit down – forget it! I made a mistake. I crushed the six eggs in my pockets. What a mess I had!

I got the other six eggs. I cleaned up as best I could. I cleaned out my pockets. Then I said if she had a rabbit we could buy a rabbit. So it cost me, I think it was ten francs, it’s two cents a franc, twenty cents, and I got a rabbit. It was a nice, big, fat one.

We get back to camp, we said, “How the hell are we gonna kill this and cook it?” So this one kid from down South, I don’t remember his name, he says, “I’ll show you how we do it.”

He takes the rabbit by the hind legs, on the tree, Bam! Hits the head right on the tree, holds the hind legs, puts the rabbit on the ground, puts his foot under the neck, and pulls his head right off. Then he takes a knife and guts it.

We got a couple of branches from a tree, and two forks, cleaned them off, dug a little pit, and started a fire. I got some salt from a guy, and we poured it all inside of the rabbit to clean it out, we didn’t have any water. We poured all the salt, and we’re scraping it with knives to clean it out, and everybody, their mouths were getting full of saliva, you know, we’re gonna have something to eat.

We turned that thing, and we’re turning it and turning it, it should be done by now. We break a piece off and go to eat it.

Did you ever eat shoe leather? You started chewing, you figured look, it’s better than nothing. You spit it out, you couldn’t eat it.

***

 One day I was driving my goddaughter Avery somewhere, she was in her early twenties at the time, and I had a recording of Ruby telling that story. I said "Listen to this," and I played it on the CD player. Two thirds of the way into the story, she made me turn the CD player off. "Ewww," she said, or a word to that effect. Maybe it was "Yuck." Only then did I realize how graphic a story it was.

One day Tony D'Arpino, who lived in Milton, Mass. -- Ruby lived in Hull -- came into Ruby's dry cleaning establishment. The two of them got to talking, and they discovered that the both were veterans of the 712th. Ruby was in A Company and Tony in C Company, so they didn't know each other during the war, but from that point on they were good friends. The last few years they were both widowers, and they would travel to reunions together; sometimes Tony's daughter Ann would drive them, other times they'd struggle in wheelchairs through airports.

When I went to Milton in 1992 to interview Tony, Ruby came over and I interviewed them together. Ruby brought some pictures and memorabilia, including a training manual. I opened it up, and immediately my respect for Ruby rose several notches.

"Wow," I said. "This was autographed by a general?"

Ruby didn't know quite what I was talking about.

"Right here," I said. "The general signed your book."

Ruby looked quizzically at the page, and then laughed. It was the page with his address.

"General Delivery," he announced. "It was signed by a general!"

"Uncle Ruby, you're my hero," George Goldstein wrote on the obituary guestbook.

Reuben Goldstein was one of my heroes as well.

- - -

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

　

Memorial Day 2011: Tarr's Platoon

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.