T-4 'Wac'

T-4 Wesley Harrell, 2nd Platoon, C Company, 712th Tank Battalion. Photo courtesy of Don Knapp.

   I received an email yesterday from the nephew of Wesley "Wes" Harrell, who was a tank driver in the 712th Tank Battalion, and whom I interviewed in Hobbs, New Mexico, in 1994.
   "My uncle served in Company C of the 712th from Normandy thru Germany," the nephew wrote. "He was a Sherman tank driver and lost two tanks in battle that I know of that you wrote about. He never spoke about his service. I only learned about it shortly before his death back in 2003. I am putting together a shadow box for future generations of my family to remember him as both of his sons (my cousins) have already passed -- neither of them ever had children. His wife (my father's sister Laverne) is now in a nursing home in Hobbs, NM. I want to finish the shadow box so she can see it. It will have the flag from his military funeral as well as the medals he was awarded, photos, his dog tags, T/4 patches, a certificate from the 712th Tank Battalion Association, etc. ...
   "I wish I had spoken to Uncle Wes more about his service but like so many it just wasn't something that he spoke of. My childhood was spent reading military history books of those that served in WW2. I was in my late 30s before I even knew that I had a hero in my own family. I know Uncle Wes never would have considered himself a hero, but he always will be one of mine.
   "I look forward to hearing back from you -- and thank you for both your father's service and your efforts on behalf of these supremely brave men."

    T-4 Harrell, a.k.a. T-4 Wac, was of special interest to me because he was involved in a battle that took place on March 16, 1945 -- coincidentally, his nephew's email arrived on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of that battle -- in the village of Pfaffenheck, Germany, which his platoon leader, Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller -- said in a letter to Hubert Wolfe, whose brother Billy died in the battle, was his "worst day in combat."
   It was Harrell's tank commander, Don Knapp, who gave him the nickname Wac.
   "We had access to coveralls which I liked," Knapp said when I interviewed him at the 1994 battalion reunion in Cincinnati. "They were all one piece, and it enabled you to crawl around because sometimes if you had to crawl through the basket in the fighting compartment down into the driver's compartment, you didn't get caught on things. But I guess he liked the two-piece fatigues that were made more for infantry. They had baggy pockets on the side to keep things in, and in the process of getting out of the driver's compartment he sometimes got his pockets caught. And he was a little broad in the beam, he was just a heavyset, well built young man, but I said, 'Man, you've got a butt on you like a Wac.' [WAC stood for the Women's Army Corps.] So the name stuck. And he didn't mind, because he was that kind of a person. He resented nobody.
   "I remember one time we were clearing out from some woods and he caught the 75 a little bit on a tree and he almost put the gun out of battery, and I went down and I guess I kind of stomped on his head, and that night I said, 'Babe, I'm sorry, I just got mad at you.' And he said, 'Oh, that's all right. I shouldn't have done it, it's a dumb thing to do.'"

   The battalion crossed the Moselle River on March 14, 1945. On the night of March 15, C Company's 2nd Platoon was in the village of Udenhausen when it learned of the battle taking place in the nearby village of Pfaffenheck. Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller said he would proceed to the village in the morning, as it was too dangerous to travel at night.
   Harrell was driving one of the platoon's five tanks. His tank commander was Sergeant Lloyd Heyward of Decker, Michigan, who took Knapp's place after Knapp was diagnosed with "combat exhaustion" a couple of weeks before. The gunner was Johnny Clingerman of Zanesville, Ohio. The loader was Pfc. Billy Wolfe of Edinburg, Virginia. The assistant driver, or bow gunner (also called the bog), was Koon Leong Moy, of New York City, whom the platoon had nicknamed Chop Chop.
   On the morning of March 16, the second platoon approached Pfaffenheck through an apple orchard, as Fuller preferred to avoid the road leading into town.
   "When we went into town," Harrell said during that 1994 interview, "they told us to drive up beside this building. They told us they were firing at hidden guns. There were a lot of guns in town.
   "They'd already got the first tank. Then they told me to move out, and I started to pull out from behind that building. And when I did, why, that 88 went through the side, and we had about 180 gallons, maybe 200 gallons of gas in that thing. And man, it caught fire just like that [he clapped his hands loudly]. Of course we had drills before to see how fast we can get out of them tanks in case of fire. Me and Chop Chop, I don't know which way he went, but when I got out, they were firing with small guns, machine guns, at me because they was hitting pretty close to me. And I crawled to a hedge, a pile of dirt, and I hid behind there.
   "And then they quit. I don't know whether somebody knocked him out or what, but they didn't fire no more."

   Of Harrell's crew, Pfc. Billy Wolfe and Sergeant Hayward were killed. Johnny Clingerman lost an eye, Moy was burned on his hand and face, and Harrell's eyebrow and hair were singed. Jack Mantell of Milwaukee, the loader in Lieutenant Fuller's tank, was killed, and Sergeant Russell Harris, one of the other tank commanders was killed.
   One company of the 90th Infantry Division suffered heavy casualties in the battle. The village cemetery is the final resting place for 100 members of the 6th SS Mountain Division.

Front Row, from left: Russell Loop, Indianola, Illinois; Joseph Rickel, Racine, Wisconsin; Lloyd Seal, Orange           , Texas. Back row, from left: Jack Mantell, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, KIA; Lt. Francis Fuller, Tonawanda, New                     York; Carl Grey Jr., Oswego, Kansas; John Zimmer, Macedon, New York; Otha Martin, Leguire, Oklahoma.                     Photo courtesy of Don Knapp.

  

Billy P. Wolfe, Edinburg, Virginia, KIA Pfaffenheck, March 16, 1945.

Russell Harris, Decker, Michigan, KIA, Pfaffenheck.

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Gold Star sisters, Part 1

Maxine Wolfe Zirkle and Madeline Wolfe Litten, 1993

   A death in combat does not end with a rifle in the ground. Back home there are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, in many cases even sons and daughters, as the American War Orphans Network can so eloquently testify. And those lives are almost always changed forever.
   I met the Wolfe twins, Maxine and Madeline, in 1987, at the first reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion I attended. I was there looking for veterans who remembered my father, who died of a heart attack seven years earlier. They were there at the invitation of John Zimmer, a veteran of C Company, hoping to meet Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller, who commanded the Second Platoon of C Company on 16 March, 1945, the day their brother, Pfc. Billy P. Wolfe, was killed.
   Ray Griffin, the battalion association president, was a veteran of C Company. Before the reunion he made some inquiries about Pfc. Wolfe. As a result, while I was making my first inquiries into the history of the battalion, the battle of Pfaffenheck, in which Billy was killed along with three other members of his platoon, would sometimes come up in conversation.
   In 1993, I drove to Quicksburg, Virginia, and interviewed Maxine and Madeline. Their mother, who had since passed away, took Billy's death very hard, and never received the kind of closure the sisters obtained by attending the reunion and speaking with veterans who remembered Billy.

Gold Star Sisters, Part 1

(Audio of this interview will be included in my forthcoming Oral History Audiobook, "Widows and Siblings.")

  

Billy Wolfe

Maxine Wolf Zirkle

Madeline Wolfe Litten

Quicksburg, Va.

Oct. 30, 1993 

Gold Star Sisters, track 1

Aaron Elson (reading into the tape):  Following is an essay written by Billy Wolfe in school:

   "If I were to be blind after today, I would want to go off by myself in the mountain, climb to the highest cliff, and look out across the valley at the towns, farms and farmhouses.

   "I would want to picture each native tree in my mind, the rough bark and the shapely green leaves.

   "I would want to see the squirrels running and leaping from one walnut tree to another, and the birds flying.

   "I would like to see the deer run and jump swiftly and gracefully and leap across the fences, and lie in a tree that leans across the water and watch bass laying under the rocks and dart out after a fly.

   "I would go through the house from one room to the other picturing each piece of furniture, every corner and everything, in my mind.

   "I would like to see all my sisters, brother and parents together as we were, and picture each as they look for future reference.

   "I would want to see all my friends and relatives so I would know what the person looked like when I would talk to them after being blind.

   "I would want to go fishing and hunting and do the things I know I couldn't do after being blind."

   (Billy Wolfe got a C-plus on this assignment!)

Maxine Wolfe: This is another English assignment:

                           A deer

   "Last fall, during deer hunting season, I took my rifle and went out on a deer crossing. I sat down about 15 minutes, then heard something come quietly out through the woods. I stopped behind a clump of bushes. I cocked my rifle and waited. I could see the dim outline of a deer's head and shoulders.

   "I put my rifle to my shoulder. As the deer stepped out, I was ready to let him have it.

   "A doe stepped out and walked slowly through the woods. By this time, I had broken out in a cold sweat, and trembling like a leaf in the wind. Boy, was I relieved when I saw it was a doe."

Madeline Wolfe: Does that make sense? This is 1944, our older brother, Hubert, left to be inducted in the Army on the 14th of July, '44, and then, the next month, on the 23rd, Billy left for the army.

Aaron Elson: Was Hubert drafted?

Maxine: Yes. He was two years older than Billy.

   This is the newspaper that we received the day, on March 16th, Mom has written here that "This paper was printed the day Billy gave his life for the country."

   And this, on Pearl Harbor day, our church burned, our little country church.

A.E.: Which paper is this?

Maxine: This is the Northern Virginia daily, our local paper. And it's dated March 16th, that's the day he was killed.

A.E.: And the headline says: "Mile of Superhighway Held by Yanks/ Reds Slash East Prussian Pocket Into Two Segments/Five American Armies Strike Along Blazing Western Front/Assault Beyond Rhine Captures Four German Towns/Stab Into Five Others."

   "Paris, Friday, March 16th, AP -- The U.S. First Army deepened its Rhine bridgehead to six miles yesterday, seizing command of more than a mile of the great six-lane highway to the Ruhr, and the Germans said five American armies were striking along 235 miles of the blazing western front.

  "The drive beyond the Rhine gained more than a mile during the day, swept up four more German towns, and stabbed into five others.

   "The Germans said the new U.S. 15th Army had sprung into action on the bridgehead where 100,000 American soldiers now were massed.

   "The U.S. Third Army smashed six miles south from its newly won Moselle River bridgehead near Coblenz in an offensive that was cutting in 80 miles or so behind the Siegfried Line facing the Seventh Army front.

   "Already the push had sealed off the Rhine transit city of Coblenz, was nearing the Rhine south of the city, was pinching off the enemy's Little Ruhr, the Saar basin, and was challenging the Nazis' last 150-mile grip on the Rhine's west bank.

   "The Third Army was by far the deepest into Germany of any Allied army in the west."

Maxine: Hubert was at Coblenz.

   Gold Star Sisters, track 2 ("Mom just kept everything") 

Madeline: Mom just kept everything. This is the almanac for the year he was born, May 1, 1926. And here's his death certificate. That's the Purple Heart. And here's what he wrote, another assignment: "Why I don't want to choose an occupation now."

   "I don't want to choose an occupation now because I am not sure what type of work I want. I will soon be of draft age and may be put in the service.

   "After serving my time my views may be vastly changed. I may, if the war don't last too long, want to take a little more schooling. Or I may get specialized training from Uncle Sam which might be my life work..."

Madeline: It was his life work.

Gold Star Sisters, track 3 (Billy's last trip home)  

Maxine: That picture was his last trip home.

Madeline: He was sick when he came home and my sister was a registered nurse, and she wanted him to see a doctor and be delayed a little bit, but he would not because he didn't want to leave his buddies.

A.E.: Who's Grubby?

Maxine: That's a little neighbor boy and girl. Charles Turner was his name and his daddy nicknamed him Grubby. They grew up together.

Madeline: Here's the telegram. Our sister that was a nurse was home on just a little break I guess, and she walked to the mailbox and got it.

A.E.: How many sisters did you have?

Madeline: There were seven of us, five girls and two boys. We're the babies.

A.E.: Now this is May 4th, 1945, "Private Billy Paige Wolfe Killed in Action," this is the Shenandoah Herald. "Mrs. and Mrs. Hubert L. Wolfe Sr. of Edinburg, Va., received word from the War Department March 27 that their son, Private Billy Paige Wolfe, was killed in action in Germany on March 16th..." Now, who was the Paige that Billy got his middle name from?

Maxine: Mom just picked it up. We have no idea. She just liked the name.

A.E.: "Private Wolfe was inducted in service Aug. 23, 1944, and took his basic training at Fort Knox, Ky. Before going overseas in February he spent his furlough with his parents. He left for overseas duty Feb. 3 and spent some time in England and France, and was sent to Germany about March 1.

   "Billy was born in Shenandoah County May 1, 1926, and was a senior at Edinburg High School and a member of the Congregational Christian Church Palmyra since childhood.

   "He is survived by his parents, five sisters and one brother, Miss Geneva Wolfe of Portsmouth, Va., Mrs. Eugene Bowers, Woodstock, Va., Madeline and Maxine Wolfe, and Mary Wolfe, R.N., at home.

   "His brother, Pfc. Hubert L. Wolfe Jr., is now serving in Germany with the First Army.

   "Billy was a highly esteemed young man of amiable disposition. He had many friends who grieve with his family over his death."

Gold Star Sisters, track 4 (The Purple Heart) 

A.E.: What was your mother's reaction?

Maxine: Oh, she clammed up and Mom would not talk about it. She thought it was all a mistake, that he would eventually come home. And at night we would hear crying and she'd be up, and later we found letters that she'd write to him, but just keep 'em. She always thought he was coming back, until it went on, for years.

Madeline: But she would set up and write him letters, every night.

Maxine: Of course we wrote, that was our ritual, we wrote to the boys every night.

Madeline: She never got over it.

A.E.: How old was she at the time?

Maxine: Fifty-six.

A.E.: And how old was she when she passed away?

Maxine: Eighty-two. And she never knew what happened. She didn't know the stories that we know.

Madeline: She knew nothing beyond this right here. This counter is what she knew about. This counter right here.

A.E.: Now this is Henry L. Stenson, "April 21, 1945, Dear Mr. Wolfe," (this is the Secretary of War) "At the request of the President I write to inform you that the Purple Heart has been awarded posthumously to your son..."

Madeline: This is the letter from Woodle, that was with Billy, he didn't write until 1949, and he wrote Mother a letter and sent a picture, the last picture we have of Billy.

   "Dear Mrs. Wolfe, For some time I have been gone to write to you in regard to your son Billy.

   "I took my training at Fort Knox with your son and was rather close with him. We went overseas together, and even shared the same seat on the train when we crossed England.

   "We were both assigned to the same outfit, 712th Tank Battalion, but not the same company, after we arrived in France. He was assigned to C Company and I went to Headquarters Company for a short while. It was at this time your son was killed.

   "I and several others were sent to C Company after they were badly hit. They lost several tanks in a short while. I was then assigned to a tank that the driver was with your boy when he was killed. He gave me a snapshot of your boy which I am sending you. I am only sorry that I haven't sent it sooner.

   "I was not right where your boy was killed and cannot name the town or place, but I will give you the name of the fellow that was with him, and in that way will he be able to get any information you want.

   "I was going to write sooner but I thought that you might have heard from some of the others sooner. I cannot express myself the way I feel, and I want you to know that I will never forget him.

   "If there is anything that I can tell you, please don't hesitate to write." Truly yours, William Woodle, Box 153, Mapleton Depot, Pa."

Maxine: He's passed away...

Gold Star Sisters, track 5 (Shipping out)

Following are some letters from Billy Wolfe:

   "August 24, 1944,

   Dear Mom,

     "I am now at Fort Meade, Md. I don't know how long I will remain here. I am in Uncle Sam's Army.

    "We got in here about 9 o'clock this morning. We rode almost all night.

    "I washed windows in the barracks this afternoon, went for my meals, and slept. A real busy day.

   "Give my best regards to the friends, and I will write a letter later when I get an address. My address is on...where you can write. Love, Bill"

 

    "August 31, 1944 -- I received your letter "A" yesterday. I wrote to Hubert, Peg, Gigi and you the other day.

   "I had to cut Peg's card short and go scrub barracks. I didn't go to church Sunday. I was on KP. I have been on day KP twice and on guard from 12 to 3 o'clock once.

   "By the time you receive this I will be on my way. I am shipping out at 3 p.m. today. I will write the first opportunity when my destination is reached.

   "Vic Fleming and Doug Bennett are going, too.

    "Love, Bill."

    "August 25, 1944 -- Dear Mom, While I think we get our uniforms tomorrow, I think I will get an overnight leave this weekend, too.

   "I am on guard duty from 12 to 3 o'clock tonight.

   "I just watched a parade, and I'm waiting for supper or chow.

   "I wrote a card yesterday. I suppose you received that. We haven't taken any shots yet.

    "We will get some tomorrow.

   "I just went over to the PX to get some stationery. I didn't bring any along.

   "I will try to write more after chow.

   "Saturday afternoon -- I got back from chow. We have good food but it don't taste like it does at home.

   "I am sending some important papers -- save them for me. Tell all the folks back there hello, and I will write to them when I get time.

   "I have my uniforms. I go on KP tomorrow, 5:30 a.m., ain't that something?

   "Well, news and time is scarce, so I will say so long. I am going to send my clothes home Monday I think.

   "We were in line for a pass this weekend, but we go on KP. Love, Bill."

Gold Star Sisters, track 6 (That rough tank business)

 

This is Sept. 2, 1944:

    "Dearest folks, We left Fort Mead 6:20 p.m. Thursday, arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana, about 11:30 p.m. Friday. We got in Louisville, Ky., about 7:30, had dinner, and arrived in Fort Knox, Ky., where I am now stationed, at 3 a.m. Went to bed about 4 and got up at 5:45.

   "I am to begin training in the tank corps week after next. The lieutenant took us around and showed us a few important places.

   "I don't know where Vic and Kenny Fleming went. They were with us a while. I think they went to St. Louis, Mo., and hard to tell where after that.

   "I hate to think of that rough tank business. That is really rough. I just watched about a dozen and saw enough to turn my stomach. We just had a physical checkup this morning. I received your letter "A." I don't believe I have mentioned the twins in any of my letters. Are they still awfully fat? Are they ready to go to school? I am to start training with the infantry about tanks, then shift to a medium tank.

   "I haven't written to anyone except you and the family since I left. I bet Miss Cleda wonders what happened to me but I have been too busy to write much. Will you please give Mary, Gigi, Dad and Hubert my address."

Maxine: Miss Cleda was the lady that lived down the river from our home, and the day that Mom got the telegram she went down and spent the afternoon with her, she couldn't stay at home so she went down and stayed with Miss Cleda until we got home.

    "It seems like I can't find time to write. Boy, twins, you should see your handsome young brother in his uniform. I have most everything dirty, that damned train..."

Madeline: Momma would get so angry when he'd say "damn!"

   "We just had a fire drill and a lecture on military courtesy. It is about time for chow so I will have to cut this short. Be sure to have my adress, you know what. I mean even if I have forgotten the spelling.

   "P.S. I just got back from chow. White beans, cooked tomatoes, buttered bread, coffee and jello. It was good. Well, I think I will close and go to the PX."

Madeline: After he got away from home he could say those little words.

 

   "September 3, 1944. Dear folks, Are you old, fat twins ready to go back to school? I'll bet both catalogs are worn out by now. How about that, Mom?

   "I just got back from a trip to the swimming pool with Doug Bennett. We couldn't go in because we didn't have bathing trunks. How about sending me mine?

   "Did Gigi and Peg come up today? I haven't written to Peg yet, only a card from Mead. I wrote to Gigi and Miss Cleda yesterday.

   "The camp is right in the mountains. Big trees and hills. It is almost as pretty as Virginia. Indiana is pretty, too. The soil is almost black.

   "It is level as a walk, and pretty big farmhouses. It isn't quite as pretty as Virginia.

   "Well, I don't know anything else to say, so I will close for this time. Please send my trunks soon, before it gets too cold to go in swimming. The weather here is almost like back there. It may be a little warmer.

   "Write soon. You can send my stationery, too, if you can pack it. I had to buy some at the PX. I wrote to Hubert twice and haven't heard from him yet.

   "Tell Mary M I will get around to writing to them one of these days. What is Scorcher..."

Madeline: That's a neighbor. Scorcher was his nickname...

Gold Star Sisters, track 7 (A big pile of money)

   "Sept. 18, 1944, Dear Maxine and Mom and Madeline, Maxine, I received your letter just before chow. I just back from eating and am going to try to answer it.

   "I got a letter from Elaine Painter, too. Tell Perry and Shack, also Neff, to write.

   "So Lloyd Thorpe is home? Has he a discharge? Was June Bug in? Yes, Doug and I still run around together. We went to the PX last night and to the new hall, had a couple of games of ping pong, met a Puerto Rican boy, and the three of us went back down to the PX. The boy's name is Bisiena. He is nice.

   "I had KP yesterday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Just my luck to have it Sunday. And Mom, I thought of you Saturday and Sunday almost all day. We haven't been having so much rain down here. It has rained about twice.

   "We had grenade and gas mask drill so far today. Also a film on camouflage. So far, we go on an eight-mile hike with and everything tomorrow. We are supposed to have a gas attack and everything just like real battle. A lot of boys got gigged Saturday for not having their shoes greased, or dubbed, as we call it. Polish is strictly forbidden. I will have to get a pair of brown slippers for dress. They have to have plain toes. If I ever get to Louisville I will, but I will need a stamp. Oh, well. I don't really need them.

  "Miss Matt (Madeline), what is wrong with you? Are you miffed? I will add your name to the salutation, but you had better write next time. I suppose you have the boys on your mind. How about that, Maxine?"

 

    "Dear Madeline, Here is your pin. Take care of it, and no boys are to wear it. Also I want a big letter of thanks, understand? That costed me a big pile of money, you old soak. You never write. Maxine does. Well, don't be too bad, now. I am in a hurry. So long, Love Bill."

Gold Star Sisters, track 8 ("So long, kids ..." 

 

Madeline: This was the last time he was home, January 30th, 1945. We didn't have any transportation, and we walked him to the Greyhound bus, up to Route 11, and this is the last time we saw him. And when he said goodbye to us he said "So long, kids, and if I never see you again, goodbye." And he waved all the way down the road.

Maxine: But going out the road, that mile, he walked between us and there was snow on the ground, I'll never forget. And that snow laid for it seemed like weeks. And every day, when we went to school, we would walk in his tracks. That's how sentimental we were.

(to be continued)

 Gold Star Sisters, track 1

Gold Star Sisters, track 2 

Gold Star Sisters, track 3

Gold Star Sisters, track 4 

 

Gold Star Sisters, track 5

Gold Star Sisters, track 6 

Gold Star Sisters, track 7

Gold Star Sisters, track 8 

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Gold Star Sisters, Part 2

   

"Goering's Gifts" (Pfaffenheck, Part 2)

Fritz Gehringer, a veteran of the 6th SS
Mountain Division North, standing in
1995 beside the tree where he was wounded
five times on March 16, 1945.

   "Don't go. You'll only humanize them."
   That was my supervisor talking when I told her where I was going on my vacation in 1995.
   Over the years, as I gathered the stories of the 712th Tank Battalion, I, myself, became the subject of a handful of stories, like the time, having heard Jim Flowers tell the story of Hill 122 several times, I supplied him with a detail he seemed to be grasping for and he blurted, "Who's telling this story, me or you?" Or the time, knowing the answer but not nearly suspecting the force with which it would be delivered, I asked Otha Martin if he was at Pfaffenheck. "Pfaffenheck," he repeated coldly, fixing me with a stare. "The Sixteenth day of March in '45. I was there. I can tell you every man that was there." And he proceeded, with remarkable accuracy, to name the five crew members of each of the five tanks in the second platoon of C Company, including his own, that took part in the battle.
   My own interest in Pfaffenheck goes back to 1987, the year I first attended a reunion of the 712th, where I met two sisters, Maxine Wolfe Zirkle and Madeline Wolfe Litten -- twins -- whose brother Billy was killed at Pfaffenheck when they were 16 years old. Billy was 18. There are some pretty remarkable twists to the story, but long story short, John Zimmer, a member of Billy's platoon, had contacted the sisters so that he could deliver a plaque in Billy's memory. Thus started a journey of discovery for the sisters. Because I was beginning my own journey of discovery at about the same time, the two journeys crossed paths. In 1992 I interviewed Bob Rossi, who described the battle at Pfaffenheck although neither he nor I knew it was Pfaffenheck he was talking about. The newsletter reprinted a letter written by  Byrl Rudd, the platoon sergeant, to Ray Griffin, the newsletter editor, describing the battle. And Rossi showed me a copy of a letter written by Lt. Francis "Snuffy" Fuller to Hubert Wolfe, Billy's older brother, who was in the 78th Infantry Division. Hubert never showed the letter to his family, and didn't tell his sisters about it until he was on his deathbed.
   As I gathered the stories of the battalion, I always asked about Pfaffenheck. And then in 1995, one of the veterans told me there was a notice in the 90th Infantry Division newsletter saying there would be a ceremony in Pfaffenheck commemorating the 50th anniversary of the battle.
   I wrote to the person who sent in the announcement and said that I wasn't a veteran but that I had interviewed several survivors of the tank battalion that fought there, and that I would like to come to the ceremony.
   I got quite a shock when the reply came: I would be very welcome to come, only it was not being put on by the village, but by the Germans who fought there.
   Not only that, but this was an SS outfit. And I'm a Jewish kid from New York. At least I was a kid some 50 years ago, or 35 years before this ceremony was to take place.
   Needless to say, the letter gave me pause. Byrl Rudd's letter described the SS troops his platoon encountered as "fanatical," and Fuller's letter said pretty much the same, indicating that they fought almost to the last man. On the other hand, I spoke with a 90th Division veteran who was captured by the 6th SS Mountain Division, Reuel Long, who lived in Minnesota. He wanted to go to the ceremony but couldn't get a low-cost airfare and had to cancel. But he said that he was captured at Pfaffenheck and his captors treated him very well and with respect; it was not until he was sent to the rear that he suffered abuse. And just by coincidence as I was reading a book called "Raid!" about the attempt to free General Patton's son-in-law from a prison camp, I came across an account of another soldier who went out of his way to say that the 6th SS Mountain Division treated him well when he was captured.
   The liaison, whom I can't name because he wrote a book about his experiences under a pseudonym, stressed that the division was fighting in Finland for much of the war and was not in any of the areas where atrocities attributed to the SS took place. He said that it was basically an elite fighting unit. When I pointed out that the couple of references I'd seen to the battle described them as fanatical, he said they knew the war was lost but that they thought that by continuing to fight, they could gain time for a negotiated settlement, and that they were fanatical not in their devotion to Hitler but in their devotion to the comrades beside whom they'd been fighting for three or more years. And he wrote a letter to Paul Wannemacher, the battalion association president, saying that he owed his survival to the fidgety trigger finger of a tank gunner, who fired five rounds at almost point blank range into his machine gun position, and yet he survived. (There was a touch of humor when he wrote this, but in his book the scene is absolutely terrifying).
   In a way, I guess, my supervisor was right. I arrived at Pfaffenheck a day before my hosts, and encountered two of the German veterans, Fritz Gehringer and I don't remember the other's name. Because we were the only three there, they took me on a little sightseeing tour, the highlight of which was the tree beside which Gehringer was standing when he was struck by five bullets. He said to make matters worse, they were hollow point bullets, which were against the Geneva Convention.
   As we stood by the tree and Gehringer posed for a picture, the other veteran said that they had just that morning broken into a house and found some food, and ate for the first time in a couple of days. And he said that the division had recently gotten a number of replacements, whom he said were described by the battle-hardened veterans of the war in Finland and the Vosges Mountains as "Goering's gifts" -- Luftwaffe trainees who were reassigned as infantry replacements

Pfaffenheck in 1995. Lieutenant Fuller's five tanks approached the village
through what was then an orchard off to the left on March 16, 1945.

.   My supervisor was right. These were veterans of the Waffen SS, but to me they were humans. It was a strange feeling during the ceremony as I watched one of their veterans place a wreath in the cemetery at a monument dedicated to the anti-tank platoon, knowing that its weapons had knocked out three of Lieutenant Fuller's five tanks, killed four members of his platoon and wounded several others. And it was an even eerier feeling meeting the veteran who fired the antitank gun that struck Sergeant Hayward's tank, cutting off his legs -- he was later killed either by a sniper or machine gun fire as Fuller and his gunner, Russell Loop, tried to carry him between them to safety -- and either killing Billy Wolfe instantly or burning him to death inside the tank. It was a very strange feeling indeed, to learn at the banquet -- where my hosts set up a table for me to interview some of the veterans, with two of them acting as interpreters -- that the fellow who fired the antitank gun was in turn wounded -- likely by Sergeant Loop, who claimed to have gone up to the second story of a house, taken a rifle and picked off the members of the gun crew that disabled his tank -- and allowed to return to his family after getting back across the Rhine, and then, either weeks or months later, turned himself in so as to become a prisoner of war because he was unable to find work.

The grave marker of Gunther Degen, a battalion
commander and Knight's Cross recipient, who
was killed at Pfaffenheck.

   When they held the ceremony in 1995, the Germans were expecting protests because anything to do with the Waffen SS was frowned upon in Germany. There was a significant police presence, but perhaps because it rained that day no protesters showed up.

   I returned from that reunion with about six hours of interviews in German with only the brief synopses by my two interpreters. I learned that the 1995 ceremony was unique only in that it marked the 50th anniversary of the battle, but that the veterans of the 6th SS Mountain Division North gathered in Pfaffenheck every year on the anniversary of the battle because 100 members of their division are buried in the village cemetery, and more are buried in the nearby town of Buchholz where there was another pitched battle, but one that to the best of my knowledge did not involve my father's tank battalion. When I went with the German veterans to the ceremony in Buchholz, they showed me an antiaircraft gun preserved in the village, that had been used against the ground forces. One of the men killed in Pfaffenheck, Sergeant Russell Harris, was struck in the head by a shell from a 40-millimeter antiaircraft gun.

   One thing I will say is that while I found the German veterans to be very human -- I remember overhearing something about Gehringer's wife suffering from depression, and Gehringer himself, who was the burgomeister of a medieval town called Rothenburg on the Tauber, would die the following year -- I can't say as much for some of the younger people who attended the ceremony/reunion. There was a young museum director I think from Koblenz who brought with him a rusty old pistol that had been found in the forest, and he was trying to confirm that it had belonged to Gunther Degen, and I very much sensed that he was more upset than most of the veterans that the Germans lost the war. And there were a couple of young what seemed to be neo-Nazis from Switzerland. I also sensed that my hosts were at least a little bit uncomfortable with what to some is the cult status of the Waffen SS.

   Those tapes -- and another three hours worth from 1996, when I returned to Pfaffenheck for their reunion, but more about that anon -- languished on a shelf until last year, when I heard from two men in Germany who belong to some sort of archeology club and were researching the events at Pfaffenheck. I was able to put them in touch with one of my hosts -- the other has since passed away -- and I sent them copies on CD of the interviews, which they promised to translate, although I haven't yet received the translations.

(Next: The Mark of a True Soldier)
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Udenhausen (The Ides of March, Pfaffenheck, Part 1)

From left, Sgt. Byrl Rudd, Lt. Francis "Snuffy" Fuller and
Capt. Harlo J. "Jack" Sheppard at the dividing line between
Belgium and Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge.

   Today is the Ides of March. I doubt, however, that any members of the second platoon, C Company, 712th Tank Battalion, had either Julius Caesar or William Shakespeare on their minds on March 15, 1945, in the village of Udenhausen, Germany, in the picturesque Rhine-Moselle Triangle, although they were about to play a role in a tragedy of their own.

   Ironically, an officer in the battalion's A Company, Morse Johnson, would go on after the war to a distinguished career as an attorney and philanthropist, and would become a founder of the Oxford Shakespeare Society, an organization dedicated to the belief that Shakespeare didn't exist. But A Company was elsewhere on March 15, 1945, and there were few if any highbrow intellectuals in the second platoon, C Company.

   There was Otha Martin, a burly tank commander from Leguire, Oklahoma, who was asked by the company commander, Capt. Harlo J. "Jack" Sheppard, to fill in for a gunner in a different tank that day and the next. There was Bob Rossi, a skinny 19-year-old loader from Jersey City, New Jersey, who was on loan from the third platoon after his tank was knocked out on Feb. 8 in Habscheid, Germany, and he was awaiting a replacement; and two replacements of two weeks duration in the platoon -- Billy Wolfe, age 18, of Edinburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, and Jack Mantell, age I don't know, married with a wife and baby at home in Milwaukee, Wis. The platoon had been in combat since July 3, 1944, do the math, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, almost all of that time in near daily contact with the enemy, with the exception of about six weeks when General George S. Patton's vaunted 3rd Army was stalled at the Moselle River. There was Russell Loop, a farmer from Newman, Illinois, who was the gunner in the platoon leader's tank. The platoon leader was Lt. Francis "Snuffy" Fuller, who got his nickname when Wesley Haines, a member of the platoon who, according to Otha Martin, had "done imbibed him some," told Fuller, who was in his early thirties, that he looked "like Snuffy Smith in the comics." There was Russell Harris of Detroit, Michigan, a tank commander who joined the platoon after spending most of the war in a rear echelon position and hoped to get a promotion by getting some time in combat before the war ended, and Byrl Rudd, the platoon sergeant, a farmer from Ada, Oklahoma who'd been with the platoon through a succession of lieutenants. There was Wes Harrell, a tank driver from Stonewall, Oklahoma, who was nicknamed "Corporal Wac" because of the blousy uniform pants he liked to wear; and Koon Leong Moy, a loader from Boston who joined the platoon in September of 1944 in the same batch of replacements as Rossi. Moy quickly acquired the nickname "Chop Chop," and was sought after in vain by Sgt. Jim Warren, a tank commander in the third platoon, who wanted Moy to cook for him. Today that nickname would be interpreted as way politically incorrect, not to mention stereotypical, so imagine the response in the 1960s or '70s when Rossi was driving with his wife, Marie, through New York's Chinatown after visiting their daughter in New Jersey. Rossi thought he saw Moy crossing the street, and so he stopped his car, honked the horn, stuck his head out the window and yelled "Chop Chop! Chop Chop!" There was no response from the person he was calling to, but I can imagine he elicited a fair number of stares.

  There was Lloyd Heyward, another sergeant who joined the platoon as a replacement. Heyward was from Decker, Michigan, which is the town where Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols lived on a farm while they planned the Oklahoma City bombing; McVeigh was executed and Nichols is serving a life sentence. Coincidentally, Lambert Hiatt, an officer in the battalion's D Company, lived in Oklahoma City at the time of the bombing and felt his house shake when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was blown up on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people.

   There was Jack Green, a hard-drinking, rowdy tank commander who Don Knapp, a mild-mannered, sensitive tank commander, called the Mister Hyde to his own Doctor Jekyll. Green died shortly after the war of carbon monoxide poisoning when he was drinking in his car in North Carolina and fell asleep with the engine running. Knapp wasn't with the platoon on March 15, his place having been taken by Harris after the Battle of the Bulge. There was Guadalupe Valdivia, a Mexican-American, who was the assistant driver in the lieutenant's tank. And there was Carl Grey, the driver of Fuller's tank, who the lieutenant said reminded him of Li'l Abner.

   That puts Snuffy Smith and Li'l Abner in the platoon, but there was nothing comical about what was about to occur.

   Early in the morning of March 15, Bob Rossi was pulling guard duty in his tank in Udenhausen when he spotted some German soldiers emerging from the woods on the outskirts of town. He leaned down into the tank and whispered, according to Rossi, "Krauts! Krauts!" According to Otha Martin Rossi whispered "Heinies! Heinies!" Either way, Martin grabbed Rossi by the shoulders and yanked him into the turret, unintentionally slamming Rossi's head against the steel side of the tank. (Many years later, at a reunion, Rossi would tell Martin he thought Martin was trying to kill him. "I didn't have no problem with you," Martin said.)

   With Rossi out of the way, Martin grabbed his Thompson submachine gun, rose through the turret hatch, and began firing at a German in a floppy overcoat who was running toward his tank. "I buggered him up real bad," Martin would say at a battalion reunion in the early 1990s. "I don't know if he intended to throw a grenade or what."

   There was a brief firefight, but the Germans, who had no antitank guns -- a situation which would be greatly different 24 hours later in the neighboring village of Pfaffenheck -- retreated back into the woods. The Germans were from the 6th SS Mountain Division North, which spent much of the war fighting the Russians in Finland until the Finns signed an armistice with the Russians and ordered the Germans to leave the country. In order to do so they had to march 1,600 kilometers to the north, and then travel by ship to Denmark. Because they weren't proceeding fast enough on the march, the Finns, beside whom they'd been fighting for three years, attacked them from the rear and strafed them from the air, in order to prove to the Russians that they were serious about making the Germans leave. According to one of the veterans of the 11th Mountain Regiment, who would write a book about his experiences under a pseudonym, a battalion commander named Gunther Degen took his Finnish medals and left them nailed to a tree as the regiment proceeded north.

   According to Wikipedia, the division was supposed to take part in the Battle of the Bulge but didn't arrive in Denmark until Dec. 20, 1944, four days after the Bulge began. The division instead was sent to the Vosges mountains, where it took part in Operation Northwind, which broke out on New Year's Eve and is sometimes called the "other Battle of the Bulge."

   The division worked its way north, suffering significant attrition along the way, until it arrived in the vicinity of the cities of Trier and Koblenz and was told to buy time for other German units to escape across the Rhine. This is where it encountered the 90th Infantry Division and with it, the 712th Tank Battalion.

   After the second platoon helped the infantry secure the village of Udenhausen, it came under sporadic shelling, which caused the shingles to fall from the roofs of some of the houses. Jack Mantell, the recruit who'd been with the platoon for two weeks, was struck in the forehead by a falling shingle, but declined to go to an aid station for treatment, despite the sound advice of his more seasoned buddy Loop, who'd taken Mantell under his wing, to go back to the aid station and tell them that his head was killing him. Mantell and Loop had made one of those grim pacts so frequent in times of war: If Mantell were killed, Loop would visit his wife and child and tell them how he died, and if Loop were to be killed, Mantell would visit his parents and tell them how he died.

   Meanwhile, about two kilometers down the blacktop road, things were not going well for either side in the battle. A tank destroyer of the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion took a direct hit as it passed between two buildings in Pfaffenheck and burst into flames, killing all five of its crew members. Company K of the 358th Infantry Regiment was absorbing heavy casualties, while on the outskirts of town, the 11th Regiment of the 6th SS Mountain Division North was making a last stand at what would come to be known in the division's annals as the Schiebegeich Farm. It was there that Gunther Degen, the 28-year-old battalion commander who left his Finnish medals on a tree and who was a recipient of the Knight's Cross, was killed.

(Next: "Goering's Gifts")



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Pfaffenheck

Billy Wolfe

March 16, 1945. In less than two months the war in Europe would be over. Nine days earlier the famed bridge at Remagen was captured, and the Allies were crossing the Rhine and pouring into the heart of Germany.

The 90th Infantry Division and its attached 712th Tank Battalion were in the Rhine-Moselle Triangle just south of Coblenz. They had crossed the Moselle at Hatzenport under "artificial moonlight" -- giant searchlights bouncing off the clouds -- and were preparing to cross the Rhine at Mainz.

Waiting for them in the villages of Pfaffenheck and Udenhausen -- which, in a letter written decades later Sergeant Burl Rudd would call Edenhausen in referring to Billy Wolfe, who grew up in Edenburg, Va. -- elements of the German 6th SS Mountain Division North were digging in as best they could, setting up defenses in the houses, forest and fields for the attack they knew would be coming.

Pfaffenheck, Edenhausen and the surrounding area are picturesque, an area noted for the hunting in its forest. Even the principal road going through it has a picturesque name, the Hunzruck Hohenstrasse.

Estimates of the size of the German force vary wildly, from a few hundred men to six thousand. The German division spent two years fighting the Russians in Finland and then, when the Finns and Russians signed an armistice the Finns were under pressure to evict the German Lapland army. After marching 1,000 miles and leaving from the north of Finland, the 6th traveled by ship to the south of France, where they were deployed in Operation Northwind, a German counterattack in the Vosges Mountains that is sometimes referred to as the "other Battle of the Bulge." After fighting there, they were sent north to try and stop the unstoppable, and prevent the Allies from crossing the Rhine.

"If I were to be blind after today," Billy Wolfe wrote in a high school essay, "I would want to go off by myself in the mountain, climb to the highest cliff, and look out across the valley at the towns, farms and farmhouses."

It was an interesting assignment, because there was as much to see and love about the Shenandoah Valley, where Billy grew up thinning corn for spending money and picking up Indian arrowheads and Civil War bullets in the fields and among the black walnut trees, in an area as picturesque in its own way as that surrounding the Hunzruck Hohenstrasse where he would find himself with the Second Platoon of the 712th Tank Battalion's Company C, only a couple of years later.


"I would want to picture each native tree in my mind, the rough bark and the shapely green leaves," Billy wrote in the tenth- or eleventh-grade essay. In order to get to the one-room schoolhouse in nearby Palmyra, he often rowed across the north fork of the Shenandoah River and took a shortcut through the woods.

"I would want to see the squirrels running and leaping from one walnut tree to another, and the birds flying. I would like to see the deer run and jump swiftly and gracefully and leap across the fences, and lie in a tree that leans across the water and watch bass laying under the rocks and dart out after a fly.

"I would go through the house from one room to the other picturing each piece of furniture, every corner and everything, in my mind.

"I would like to see all my sisters, brother and parents together as we were, and picture each as they look for future reference.

"I would want to see all my friends and relatives so I would know what the person looked like when I would talk to them after being blind.

"I would want to go fishing and hunting and do the things I know I couldn't do after being blind."

Today is the 66th anniversary of the battle at Pfaffenheck, which Lieutenant Francis "Snuffy" Fuller said in a letter to Hubert Wolfe, written later in 1945, was his worst day in combat. Fuller, a Reserve officer from Buffalo, New York, who joined the battalion as a replacement in September, was a few years older than most of the men in his platoon.

Although I never met many of them, the second platoon of Company C had more than its share of rough and tumble, hard drinking characters. One of them, Wes Haines, "done imbibed him some" one day, according to Otha Martin, a tank commander in the platoon, and remarked that Fuller looked like Snuffy Smith in the comics, and the nickname stuck.

Snuffy Smith



Snuffy Fuller

Over the course of the many years that I recorded the stories of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served, I even became a part of some of the stories its veterans liked to relate, even though I never was in the military and never saw a day of combat in my life.

One story, for instance, that Paul Wannemacher, the battalion association president, likes to tell, is about the time I was listening to Jim Flowers relate the events on Hill 122. It was a story I'd heard him tell many times. Jim spoke with a slow, almost syrupy Texas drawl, and often he would pause or stretch out a couple of syllables while he searched his memory for a detail. Once, as he was trying to recollect a piece of the story he likely had told a thousand times, I corrected him on a minor detail, having heard him tell it many times. I thought I was doing him a favor. Jim locked me with a stare from under his bushy eyebrows and said, angrily, "Who's telling this story, me or you?"

But Paul's favorite story that he likes to tell about me is when I was talking with Otha Martin in the hospitality room at one of the battalion's "mini-reunions" which were held in Bradenton, Fla., every January. The Wolfe twins were at the very first reunion I attended, which was their first reunion as well, as a result of which while I was learning about the death of George Tarr, who was the lieutenant my father replaced, they meeting Lieutenant Fuller and other members of the platoon who served with their brother, and the veterans of C Company were reconstructing the battle at Pfaffenheck, in which Billy Wolfe was killed.

I forget who told me that Otha Martin, a burly rancher from Oklahoma who worked as a guard at Macalester State Prison after the war, had been at Pfaffenheck, but about twenty minutes into the conversation I asked him, "Do you remember Pfaffenheck?"

Paul Wannemacher was standing nearby and loves to recount Otha's reaction: He suddenly stopped and got a dead serious look on his face, and he said, or rather announced, "Pfaffenheck." Then he said, slowly and deliberately, "March 16th, 1945. I was there." And he proceeded to name each of the five crew members in all of the five tanks that took part in the battle that day. Subsequent research proved him to be off on only a couple of the names, despite the passage of more than 45 years.

Four members of the second platoon were killed in Pfaffenheck: Billy Wolfe, Jack Mantell, Russell Harris and Lloyd Hayward.
(More on the battle at Pfaffenheck will be in my next entry)