"He was the best thief I had"

Forrest Dixon was the maintenance officer in the 712th Tank Bn.

   It's funny the snippets of literature you read when you were young that stick with you for the rest of your life. The long, slow, brilliant opening of "The Grapes of Wrath," for instance, or the description in Emile Zola's "Germinal," in which a coal mining family makes coffee using the same coffee grounds five times. Maybe it was three times. I think of that when I pop a K-cup into the single serve coffee maker (actually, I make coffee the old fashioned way ... in a four-cup Mister Coffee carafe).

   Last November I wrote a blog post about the critically acclaimed documentary "Blood on the Mountain," which my nephew Jordan Freeman co-directed, about coal miners, and I added the transcript I did of my impromptu 1996 interview with Eleanor Mazure, whose late husband, Frank Mazure, was a maintenance sergeant in Service Company of the 712th Tank Battalion. Eleanor grew up in Piney Fork, Ohio, which I think she said was about 20 miles north of Steubenville. Incidentally, Steubenville was recently mentioned in the news. The commentator remarked that while Steubenville is in the heart of coal mining country, coal mining is no longer its main employer. A hospital is. And that hospital will likely lose jobs if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. But I digress.
   Two weeks ago I received an email from a young woman in Ohio. "Hi, Aaron," the email begins.

I saw your blog entry from last year about your nephew's documentary "Blood on the Mountain" and your interview with Eleanor Mazure. She was my grandmother. I am the oldest daughter of the son you referred to as Frank Junior. 

I know very little about my father's side of the family because he wasn't around much after my parents were divorced. The interview was very enlightening! It gave me a mental picture of my grandmother and grandfather that I didn't have before. Reading it was a somewhat emotional experience for me.  Thank you for posting it!

I noticed some references to the interview being recorded. Is there any way I could get a copy of that recording? It would be wonderful to hear my grandmother's voice as she talks about that part of her life. My son never met my grandmother, so I think it would be valuable to him to hear the interview as well.

Again, thank you so much for posting the interview and the photograph. I don't have much knowledge or memorabilia from that side of my family and I will definitely add this to it.  Please let me know about the recording and let me know if there is anything else you may have that pertains to my family that you could share.

      I never met Frank Mazure, this woman's grandfather, but his name came up in some of my interviews with veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served. He was spoken of very highly, so I located a few passages in which Sergeant Mazure was mentioned and sent them along in a followup email. One of them was this excerpt from an interview with Forrest Dixon, the battalion maintenance officer, probably in the late 1990s.

Aaron Elson: What was it you told Mrs. Mazure about her husband?

Forrest Dixon: He was the best thief I had. I said to her, "I don't mean it quite that way, but he got spark plugs that we badly needed, which was much above t.o. [table of operations]" And I said "That's why our tank battalion had one of the best records of any tank battalion in Europe, separate tank battalion." The number of tanks that we had operating, we had one of the best records. Colonel Randolph told me we had the best record. At one of the meetings that Randolph was to, I don't know what general was asking how many tanks he had operational, he said all we've got are operational, as far as he knew. And then the general pushed him a little bit, and Colonel Randolph says A Company has so many tanks, and B Company and C Company. But he said the difference between the number we're supposed to have and that number isn't because they're sidelined, it's because we've lost them and they haven't been replaced. And the guy quit bugging him. And I later found out that the fellow was bugging Randolph to find out the number because he had a battalion that just didn't have very many tanks ever.

   We had, in most cases, if a company had ten tanks, they had ten operating. They might be back at my place for a few hours, but we had very few tanks non-operating. And what was knocking the tanks out was plugs, but we'd get 'em plugs right quick. I didn't dare give the companies, I didn't dare divide my number up, so we kept them, and we gave them, like if they had two tanks the plugs were going bad, we gave them, I guess there's two plugs per piston and what the hell did we have, nine pistons, I'd give them 36 plugs. And then I'd tell them to be back tomorrow with the old plugs. And then Mazure would take those and they'd clean them. We used them to get new plugs, and we kept the tank battalion running. That's about the whole thing that knocked out these tanks was running idle. But you couldn't tell them not to run them idle, good God, they had to move sometimes. They didn't have time to start the tank. They had to put it in gear and get the hell out of there. So we just had to live with it. I said "But we had enough extra plugs so we could supply 'em".

Aaron Elson: What did you say to Colonel Randolph on the third day in combat?

 Forrest Dixon: The second day. He called me up about midnight, and he said, "How many tanks have we got?" I said, "We've lost half of them. We're good for one more day."

   "No," he said. "We lost half of what we started with today. Tomorrow if we lose half of what we have left, and if the next day we lose half of those, we're good for several days." [Colonel George B. Randolph, the battalion commander, was a math teacher in Montgomery, Alabama, in civilian life].

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

   And I told him, "We'll have most of those tanks back in operation in another 24 hours."

   Part of our problem was just getting them out of the mud, or getting them hanging up on a hedge. Or replacing a section of track. And that we could replace.

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

   You see, one of the big jobs was to unbutton the armor plate. But we could do the whole thing in three and a half hours.

Aaron Elson: What would you replace them with, new motors or rebuilt?

Forrest Dixon: In the early part of the war they were brand new ones. They called them Series 13 motors. Everything was on them. Carburetors and everything. A Series 13 motor, all you had to do was take the old motor out, put the new one in and hook it up.

   By mistake we got a Series 11 motor I guess it was and good God, that's a 24-hour job. The carburetion and everything is off. You had to take this off and that off. But the Series 13, it's just like when you buy a motor for your car. Whether you buy a big motor or you could buy a short block. And every once in a while there'd be a package of cigarettes in the box the motor came in. Somebody back in the States would put a package of cigarettes in.

    This brought the following reply from Frank and Eleanor Mazure's granddaughter:

Wow! I really don't know what to say. Reading your reply brought an unexpected flood of emotions and I don't really know why. I think a gap that I didn't know existed is being filled for the first time in decades.

    I have since sent the young woman the audio of her grandmother's interview. My own maternal grandmother was a major part of my childhood, but I never knew my paternal grandmother, although a cousin of mine wrote a play about her, and I've seen a photo of her. And while I didn't have a similar flood of emotion upon finding the New York Times obituary of my great-great-grandfather, Meyer London, on the Internet, I did feel a swelling of pride at learning he was known as the Matzo King of New York.
   One thing I've learned about oral history is that the stories are about real people with real names and in some cases valid addresses. The story of Frank and Eleanor Mazure is an example of the upside of this phenomenon. In my next blog post, I'll write about the downside.

The original post about Eleanor Mazure: "Coal Miner's Daughter" 

The first chapter of "The Grapes of Wrath"

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

A Crock of Hooey

Ed Stuever

   More from the hospitality room at the 1993 Orlando, Fla., reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion:

                      Ed Stuever

   At Fort Jackson, South Carolina, when we became the 712th Tank Battalion, we had to go for a physical before we went up north. And we stripped naked, walked up to the desk of this doctor, and as I approached him, he says, "How in the world did you ever get here?"

   And I says, "I walked here, Sir."

   And he says, "Don't get cute with me. You're not fit for this man's army. You've got the flattest feet I ever saw. Did you ever make a five-mile hike? Did you ever make a mile hike?"

   I says, "I made 'em all, even the 30-mile hikes, and I carried my buddy in the last couple of miles so that we could all get a pass to go to town."

   And he says, "Aww, you're not fit for this man's Army. We can use you in a hospital carrying bedpans."

   And I says, "Why, I'd be on my feet more than ever."

   He says, "Don't get so cute with me. I'm going to send you back with this report."

   And when I took it back to the office, I didn't even knock, I just walked in there and threw it on Sergeant Bennett's desk, and he says, "Get out of here and come back in here like you're supposed to."

   I says, "I don't give a damn what you do to me."

   And then the captain says to me, "What's this all about?"

   And I says, "Here's my medical report. The man there says I'm not fit for this man's army."

   So the captain says, "Why, you're one of our best soldiers."

   And I says, "This report is a crock of hooey," I says, "There's nothing here I can't do."

   He says, "You're up for sergeant. Didn't you put it up on the bulletin board, yet, Sergeant Bennett?"

   And he says, "I was just about to."

   And he says, "Steuver, what do you want to do? Do you want to carry bedpans or do you want to stay with us?"

   And I says, "I sure as hell don't want to carry bedpans."

   So he tore up that medical report, and he says, "Congratulations. You're gonna stay with us." And then he dropped it in the wastebasket. And then when I was ready to leave, I apologized for the way I came in and I saluted him. Then I reached down and I picked up that report out of the wastebasket, and Bennett says, "What do you want to do with that?"

   And I says, "I want to remember that S.O.B.'s name so if I ever see him again, I'm gonna avoid him, or I'll run over him with my tank."

   That's the end of it.

   Oh, when we got to England, I didn't care to make some of them overnight affairs that we had, so I'd say to Sergeant Bennett, "Boy, my feet are killing me."

   And he says, "You son of a gun, you still got that report? I'm gonna shake you down till I find that thing." So he says, "You stay in the office here and run the office overnight." So I had to stay on duty all night. I didn't get away with it.

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    Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook (click on the cover):

 

Clip of the (almost every) day: Ocki Fleitman

Oscar "Ocki" Fleitman

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

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

I've broken the conversation into four clips.

Part 1
Part 2
part 3
part 4