The Middle of Hell

   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"

Hill 122

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.