Aaron Elson's Blog, page 17

Mother Knows Best: A story from The Hospitality Room

Walter "Red" Rose
     The hospitality room at a reunion of my father's tank battalion from World War II  turned me into an oral historian. I entered in the middle of a story Wayne Hissong was telling about the hardest thing he had to do in the whole war: after returning home to the small town of Argos, Indiana, he had to face the mother of a buddy who entered the service with him and was killed. Wayne may not have known it but he struck upon one of the great issues of World War II or any other war: dealing with emotions. Was facing his friend's mother more difficult than driving an ammunition truck for 11 months in combat, or being ambushed, wounded and captured near the end of the war by starving German soldiers looking for food and cigarettes? I never asked him. Years later, though, I would learn that his buddy, a tank driver, was decapitated by an armor piercing shell on the battalion's first day in combat. How do you face a friend's mother knowing you know what happened but there's no way in hell you're going to tell her those details?During the 1990s, as I sat around those circular tables in the hospitality room often with two or three of the veterans and some of their wives, companions or friends, munching on Chex Mix and premium peanut free mixed nuts from Sam's club or homemade zucchini bread from one of the veterans' wives, sipping on soda or beer or nursing something stronger, I would plunk my little Sony Recording Walkman or Radio Shack knockoff in the middle of the table. The result was a unique bit of history, casual conversations that ranged from who was in the hospital and who had a new grandchild to intense accounts of combat in the European Theater of Operations.In junior high school – what would now be called middle school – my class took typing. I got pretty good at it, and as the cassettes piled up I tried my best to transcribe them. Those thousands of pages of transcripts have provided material for my books and blogs, but much of it has never escaped the confines of my hard drive.The 712th had some great storytellers – Wayne, Ed Stuever, Jim Flowers, Forrest Dixon, Dan Diel, Joe Fetsch, Clifford Merrill, Walter Galbraith, Dale Albee, Ellsworth Howard, not to mention some of the wives, like Helen Grottola, Evelyn Knapp, Jeannie Roland – and when they entered the hospitality room it seemed as if the men checked their post traumatic stress at the door and relived the war in the company of those who lived it with them.These are some of the stories from The Hospitality Room.Mother Knows BestWhen the battalion veterans began retiring and either spending the winter in Florida or moving there permanently, the idea of having a casual get-together, in addition to the regular reunion, was tossed around. Sam Adair, a veteran of the Headquarters Company assault gun platoon, organized the first one in the 1980s. Then Jack Roland, also of Headquarters Company, moved to Bradenton after his health forced him to retire from the photography studio he ran in upstate New York. He was elected mayor of Bradenton, and was able to secure a good deal for the battalion at a Days Inn on Route 41. The battalion could supply their own hospitality room, and could take over the kitchen for the Saturday dinner so that Major Clegg "Doc" Caffery, who owned a plantation and a shrimp boat in Louisiana, could cook up a batch of crawfish etouffe.The 1993 mini-reunion, late in January, was the first mini-reunion I attended. This is one of the many stories I recorded, as Walter “Red” Rose of Ahoskie, North Carolina, a corporal in Headquarters Company; Doc Caffery -- who was not a doctor but had been the battalion G3, or operations officer -- and I sat at one of those circular tables."It was right at the very beginning of the war [the battalion's first day of combat was July 3, 1944]," Rose said. "Not all the outfits had been committed, but we sent some tanks out to support the 82nd [Airborne Division]. We lost a couple of tanks. And Dickie [Forrest Dixon] was attached to Service Company."He came in one evening and he says, 'Captain Laing, we've lost two tanks. We've lost contact with them, and if they're knocked out, I've got to requisition two more from ordnance in the morning.'"This is only the beginning. You're learning. He said, 'I've got to get to 'em and see that they're knocked out.'"Laing said, 'Get the jeep, Rose.'"I said, 'Captain Laing, this is not our duty. We're going someplace we don't have no business.'"It was in the evening, and we were going down this old dirt road. I could see the terrain begin to rise. I remember this just like it was yesterday. We come to an area, and there wasn't nobody, no vehicles, no nothing. Everything just as quiet as it is right here. We come to a little crossroad, and there laid some infantry, down in a ditch, with their guns stuck across."Dixon starts to say something to them."'Get the hell out of here, you sonofabitch!' one of them says. 'You're gonna draw fire. Get that damn jeep out of here!' And they began to holler all the way down that line."Dixon said, 'Straight on.' I just went straight on, got about a hundred and fifty feet, and by god looked out, and if you've ever seen rain on a mill pond, that's what it reminded me of. Before I could get out of my jeep, those mortars were falling, bup-bup-bup-bup, and I hit the ditch. The jeep had no emergency brake, and I was out of that thing, it was still going. I hit the ditch and I lay there, and I could feel the shrapnel. Now there was some infantry on ahead of us, because the line, the wires, were laying in the ditch, and I could feel them  jerk when the shrapnel was coming down the banks."Finally it lifted. And when it did, Laing said, 'Get the jeep, Rose'”"I got in that jeep and I put it in gear and we took off. And them infantry was just a cussin' us."We got back and I said, 'Captain Laing, I'll take you anywhere you want to go. But where there's no business of mine, I'm gonna let you do the driving from now on.'"My mother told me, 'Son, if you go looking for trouble, you'll always find trouble.'"We came on back, and that night we're setting there, we couldn't have lights. 'Well,' Dickie says to Laing, 'I've got to go. I don't know whether I'll ever make it back or not, but I've got to find them tanks.' Now, you remember he had an old trenchcoat?"Yes," Caffery said. I remember he had an old trenchcoat. He wore it all the time.""The next morning," Rose said, "now he told this, and I don't think Dixon would lie, he said, 'I got in the ditch, crawling to them tanks,' and he said the Germans seen him, and he said that he had bullet holes across that trenchcoat, by god, I know I've seen it, and he told Captain Laing and us  – now this was in the very beginning of the war, so I can remember a lot of this – he said, 'I was crawling up this ditch, and I looked ahead and there lay a German ahead of me.' And he said, 'I stopped. I guess I laid about thirty minutes. He never moved and I didn't either.' He said, 'I pulled my pistol out and started crawling. Well, I had to go over the top of him. The ditch was shallow. if I stood up I'd get shot.' He said, 'I crawled on up and laid my hand on the top of his head, and it was cold, and I went right over the top, and I went on.'”

(Walter "Red" Rose passed away in 2009 at the age of 86)
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Interview With a Tank Driver (Big Andy, Part 2)

Bob Anderson
(Interview With a Tank Driver, Part 1)
Audio: Track05 Aaron Elson: Was that the very first day?
Bob Anderson: Well, I won’t say the first day, but it was close to the first day. I’d say the first week. The first day, and I don’t know if they ever mentioned it, we hadn’t been in, I’ll say action, I’ll say an hour, when Lieutenant Tarr out of the second platoon and another boy out of Headquarters Company by the name of Phil Schromm, they were the first two men in our outfit who got killed.
Aaron Elson: I’ve heard several stories about how Tarr was killed. See, my father was supposed to replace Tarr.
Bob Anderson: Oh, he came in right early.
Aaron Elson: He reported to Braatz, and Braatz said he was showing him the tank, and he told my father to be careful getting off, and my father jumped off and sprained his foot and went to the medics, and then the tanks went into action without him.
Bob Anderson: See, George Tarr, he was Braatz’s platoon leader, and I can’t help but believe that every time, see, then your sergeant would move up to the Number One. Every time Braatz would get a replacement, just within a week or maybe not that long, something would happen that this lieutenant would get hurt or wounded, so Braatz would have to take over. Finally they offered Braatz a lieutenant rating and he was commissioned in the field.     We had a, well, I call them 90-day wonders, maybe I shouldn’t, these were men that came out of the States, and came over and tried to tell us boys how we should fight and this and that. I had a Lieutenant Bell...

Aaron Elson: I was talking to John McDaniel at the reunion and he was talking about Lieutenant Bell. He said he was an oddball.
Bob Anderson: That’s what I say. I had, here’s a picture of a man right here, he was my assistant driver after he came in and replaced a driver. I don’t know what rank he had in the infantry but he had to do something else. His name was John C. Owens. And he came in and he was trying to tell us how to drive a tank and how to do this and that. He was my assistant driver. It ended up that one day – well, I’ll get to that later on. Then I lost another buddy of mine, this Percy Bowers. He was killed at Avranches.     He was killed in a cemetery. His tank was knocked out. Pretty near all of us was out of ammunition. His tank was knocked out, he got out of his tank and was carrying a white flag, crawling back, and some German shot him, with a white flag, crawling back. That’s where he was killed.
 Audio: Track06
Aaron Elson: Other people in Percy Bowers’ tank were killed also, weren’t they?
Bob Anderson: Well, there were. See, Percy Bowers was in the first platoon. I can’t tell you.
Aaron Elson: And Bell was your platoon leader?
Bob Anderson: Well, first I had Lieutenant [Ed] Forrest.
Aaron Elson: What was he like?
Bob Anderson: He was a very good man. He was just a common, ordinary man. He was with us all the way. I liked him. All the officers we had when we went over, you didn’t have to go around and salute them, even the big shot, [Col. Vladimir] Kedrovsky, after he took over from Randolph [Col. George B. Randolph was killed during the Battle of the Bulge], Colonel Kedrovsky was just an ordinary man. He knew me when we came along, and it was Big Andy this and Big Andy that. When we had our first reunion in Rockford he was there, and him and I sat and talked a long time. Audio: Track07
Aaron Elson: Was Krysko in your tank, Steve Krysko?
Bob Anderson: He was in our outfit. Now, here’s where I got my first Bronze Star, in Dillingen. I was the first tank across. The engineers had laid down our bridge, and we were sitting on the bank waiting to go across, and they came back and they said, “Now, when you go across, go slow.” Well, you know how it is with a 32-ton tank going across water. As I was going across, I was probably three-quarters of the way across or so, two German planes came in and started strafing across the river. And you ought to have seen me go across the river. I didn’t go slow. Anyway, the two tanks behind me got mired down. Our third platoon, we got all five tanks across, but two of them got mired down out in the mud. I took my tank, and we had cables, oh, I might say 15, 20 feet long. I hooked three of them together and dragged them back, and hooked onto the tank back there in the mire, and then I went and got back in my tank, and I got the two tanks pulled back out.
Aaron Elson: Who hooked up the cables?
Bob Anderson: I did. Some of the others didn’t know how to hook up a cable. I hooked the cables together and got these two tanks out that were mired in the mud, and that’s how I got my first Bronze Star. Of course, I pulled my tank, we got in there right up in front of a store and we looted that.     Now this is the picture that they took of me cutting this meat up. They sent a great big one which I’ve got in a frame, they sent that back to my wife. And then Lieutenant [Ray] Griffin, I don’t know how he got hold of that, but he sent that to me. This John C. Owens, he was my assistant driver. It says that I killed a cow with a broken leg, well, it didn’t have no more of a broken leg than you and I when I shot that cow. This Owens, later, we had orders one night to move out, and I’m trying to think who our company commander was. I know Hagerty was my tank commander.

Aaron Elson: Could it have been George Coulton?
Bob Anderson: No, Coulton was a driver. You’re thinking of George Cozzens. Him and I tangled two, three times. He could have been. But anyway they told me – see, I wasn’t going to move out that night. Anyway, this Cozzens told us that we had to move out to a certain place that night, and I said, “No, I’m not going to go. I’m not taking these tanks, my tank, out after dark.” And him and I went round and round and he assured me that there was nothing down this road in front of them pillboxes, that they were all clear. And I can’t think who else was in on it. I know Hagerty was there. He was the platoon leader. No he wasn’t the platoon leader. Because I was still driving the third platoon tank.
Aaron Elson: Do you remember where this was?
Bob Anderson:Oberwampach, that’s where this happened. We got down this road, and the first tank got hit with a bazooka, and the last tank got hit with a bazooka. And then the three in between. I got a bazooka in the gas tank of my tank. We went to evacuate our tank and got out, and this Owens, we had to go up a hill, and we were going up this hill, then the Germans, why they didn’t shoot us when we got out of our tank I’ll never know. Anyway, we got going up this hill and this Owens was hit with shrapnel. And I picked him up on my shoulder and I must have carried him a half, three-quarters of a mile and all he could say is “I’m hit in my head, I’m hit in the head,” and his ass was so full of shrapnel that you’ve never seen anything like it. But I carried him back to the first aid.
Aaron Elson: Was he hit in the head?
Bob Anderson: No, it’s just that he was in such pain. That’s where I got my second Bronze Star. Well, like a darn fool, I went back and grabbed a fire extinguisher and went down and tried to put the fire out in my tank, that’s just how stupid I was. I seen the Germans standing right there, just like they were about from here to that shed up there, away from me. Why they didn’t shoot me I don’t know.
Aaron Elson: Were there many of them?
Bob Anderson: Oh yes, there was a lot of them. Now why did I grab that, that’s just how I felt. This is a true story, this ain’t no bull. Why did I take that and go down there and try to put a fire out with a little fire extinguisher in a 32-ton tank.
Aaron Elson: And the rest of the crew had left?
Bob Anderson: Well, they were standing up on the hill. It’s just that way. That was in the Battle of the Bulge, but then I got my third Bronze Star in Branscheid. So really, the most important thing that I remember after the Battle of the Bulge was when we took this Merkers mine. [A vast hoard of Nazi treasure was hidden in the Merkers salt mine.] I was the first tank in there. I won’t say the infantry wasn’t, but I was the first tank in there, driving the first tank. And as we pulled in there there was a train leaving. And my gunner, Ted Duskin, of course the train was going fast, so we started running alongside or trying to catch it, and Duskin put a shell right in the engine and blew it up. Well, we pulled back to the mine and we sat there until I don’t know how long, not knowing what was in it. We didn’t know for two or three days after how wealthy some of us could have been.     I’ll say this much, Ted Duskin was, I don’t know whether he was a hillbilly, but he didn’t get all the credit he deserved. He was self-conscious. He took care of that gun like, if I don’t have that gun clean and this and that, it’s my life. He was very good about taking care of the gun, and he was a real good worker. I loved Ted Duskin. But he was sort of like, he came out of Virginia, but it was like he came out of the mountains, or the backwoods. Now here it says he was a private. I think he had a corporal rating. Because he was a very good man. But then it went on for a while, and then I was sent home – no, our company headquarters were bombed – I was sent back into maintenance then. And I’d been working up on the line, changing plugs and things like that. I came in one night, it was 10:30 or 11 o’clock, and they came in and they said, “Is Anderson here?”
     I said “What do you want?”
     “Do you want a tech sergeant rating, or do you want to go home?”
     I thought they were joking with me when they said that. I said, “I want to go home.”
     “All right, be ready to leave in 15 minutes.”
     I said, “Bullshit, I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”
     Then in came Kedrovsky. He said, “Well, Anderson, you’re entitled, you’ve got points, and you can go home.”
     Then here comes Cozzens with some messages, for me to do this. Lieutenant [Ken] Fisher comes, “Here’s some money, you take home for me.” Another one, “You take home and send that.”
     Anyway, I came home on a boat and there was a thousand Germans and 13 enlisted men. And this lieutenant, Ray Griffin, I didn’t know him at the time but he was on that boat.
     We got home – well, five days out of York V-E Day came, and of the course the Germans, they all were going to marry American ladies and they were going to go to school.
     I finally got home, and there was a telephone call from a Mrs. Cozzens. So when I landed in New York I called and gave them the messages. Cozzens had me do it. Instead I gave the wrong message to the wrong woman. Here was this lady, she had called my wife in Nebraska, of course I lived in Illinois, but she called my wife in Nebraska and said, “This is Mrs. Cozzens.” She wanted me to call her, gave her name and everything. When I got home we were out to Nebraska, somebody said, “Your cousins called you.” Cousins?
     So anyway, this Mrs. Cozzens called. I called her. She said, “Where’s George?” And all this and that. I told her. But I told her the wrong message. He ended up divorced. Then I learned from other men, I guess he had women all over.

Aaron Elson: Tell me about the third Bronze Star. These are the citations for the Bronze Star. “For heroic service in support of operations against the enemy during the period 9 to 10 December, 1944, in the vicinity of” – that would be Dillingen – “when the tanks of a platoon were mired in the marshy soil on the far side of the river, Technician 4th Grade Anderson, tank driver, with companions, subjected himself to heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire and labored arduously to retrieve the tanks. His untiring efforts and complete devotion to duty were instrumental in saving the tanks and in enabling the platoon to accomplish its mission. His heroic service was in accordance with military tradition.     “First oak leaf cluster. For heroic service in support of operation from 15 to 19 January, 1945, in the vicinity of” – you had said where that was, that was Oberwampach?

Bob Anderson: Yes.
Aaron Elson: “... After helping to take the town, the tank crew of which Technician 4th Grade Anderson was a member repelled seven counterattacks. Technician 4th Grade Anderson in his capacity as driver maneuvered his tank expertly to aid materially in destroying several hostile tanks and killing or wounding numerous enemy. His heroic service was in accordance with military tradition.”     And the second oak leaf cluster. “For heroic service in support of operations on 7 February 1945 in the vicinity of Branscheid, Germany. The tank which Technician 4th Grade Anderson was driving was struck and set ablaze by bazooka fire. Despite heavy enemy fire and the proximity of hostile troops, Technician 4th Grade Anderson obtained an extinguisher and attempted to put out the blaze. Later, upon returning to friendly lines, he helped evacuate a wounded comrade to an aid station. His heroic service was in accordance with military tradition.” Now that sounds like what you were describing as Oberwampach.

Bob Anderson: Yeah, I’m ahead of myself, I was. See, Oberwampach is what you were referring to. And this was later. I was ahead of myself.
Aaron Elson: So Oberwampach is where...
Bob Anderson: I maneuvered the tank. And then the last time...
Aaron Elson: Now tell me about Oberwampach, what you remember.
Bob Anderson: Well, like I say, all I remember is it was severe fighting. I had several chances of being tank commander and all that, getting a staff sergeant rating, but I felt safer down there driving. To me, a driver was more important than a tank commander. Sure, a tank commander gave the orders, but still you had to have a man down there who knew how to maneuver them tanks. And I think going back to all the boys that I know, Bynum, Stahl, [Edmund] Pilz, Bowers, and all the drivers we had, George Bussell out of Indianapolis, Ringwalski, I think we all were a very good bunch of drivers. Other companies would have felt the same way about their drivers.     But now, you go back to this time up in the Ardennes when this Quentin Bynum, better known as Pine Valley, when he got killed. If they would have – they had a new lieutenant.

Aaron Elson: His name was Lippincott.
Bob Anderson: That’s right. You know more of these details...
Aaron Elson: Hagerty told me.
Bob Anderson: This Lippincott, we heard it all over the intercom – they were in this forest, and the Germans were laying artillery, and the shrapnel was coming down and hitting the tank. And this Lippincott said “Abandon tank.”     And Bynum said, “No, Lieutenant, that’s just shrapnel. Just sit still.”
     “I said abandon tank.”
     And they all abandoned tank but one man, his name was Shaginobe or something like that, he was an Indian [Frank Shagonabe]. And he stayed in the tank, and he’s the only live boy out of that crew [actually, Shagonabe, Bynum and Lieutenant Wallace Lippincott were killed, while two crew members, Hilton Chiasson and Roy La Pish, survived]. I don’t know why Bynum obeyed – but this Lippincott, if he would have listened to an older man, they all might have been alive today. As it was, about two or three days later, they asked me if I’d go back and identify Bynum.

Aaron Elson: How badly was he disfigured?
Bob Anderson: I would just say you could recognize the man. He was full of shrapnel, and laying in the snow. Of course he had his clothes on. A few years ago I went down and saw some of his folks, and his mother – I don’t know why I didn’t go down there when we first came out – his mother didn’t believe in burying him underground, he’s buried on top of the ground [in a mausoleum]. She had him brought back. Now I went up to Chetack, Wisconsin, to see Bowers’ folks. They didn’t have him brought back. When I was back in Germany, it must have been about 17 years ago, I did go to Bowers’ grave. Audio: Track08
Aaron Elson: I’ve seen a photograph of it. Let me ask you, do you recall the fight that broke out in the middle of the night?
Bob Anderson: I know what you’re talking about, when Sergeant Martin got his arm blew off?
Aaron Elson: No, no. I want to hear about that. That was a different one. That was Mainz. Let’s do that. That was at Mainz.
Bob Anderson: Right. I just got off guard that night. Back in them days, the lieutenant, no matter who he was, when you’re up on the line, stood a guard. I’d just gotten off guard, I was in my tank. The 773rd T.D.s [tank destroyers] were off to our right, across the road in another, well, we called them a yard, but anyway there was a fence and all. This Sergeant Martin, Lloyd Martin, he wouldn’t go in the barn and sleep. He stayed in his tank. And he kept the breech open.     I had just got off guard, I hadn’t even got in bed yet, in my sleeping bag or whatever it was, and we heard this shooting out in the yard. And I took my tommy gun and I came down the stairsteps shooting all the way. I got out in the yard, I got over to my tank, got into it, and I maneuvered it around in such a way that my gunner got in with me...

Aaron Elson: That was Duskin?
Bob Anderson:Duskin. And we did fire. Whether we hit any tanks coming in or any Germans I can’t say, because the T.D.s were firing this way and we were firing that way. It’s a wonder we didn’t hit one another. But when it was clear, said and done, we went over to the tank, and they had thrown a potato masher up in the gun, in the 76 of Martin’s tank, and he had his breech open, and some way or other, he had his hand right in front of that, it blew his hand off just about up to here. I never did hear from him or anything like that, but he was a boy from California, and when we were in the horse cavalry together we had a dog we called Big Red. It was a red dog, I won’t say a spaniel, it was a bigger dog than that. He kept that dog and he took it with us to the 10th Armored, and he took it on the Tennessee maneuvers with him, and I don’t know when he gave the dog up, but he made friends with that dog and had the dog all the time. But that was the time when he got his hand blew off. If he hadn’t had the breech open on his gun, I’ll say that he wouldn’t have lost his arm.
Aaron Elson: Was that standard procedure to leave the breech open?
Bob Anderson: No. I suppose they had been cleaning the gun before we quit that night, but you see, the Germans, their tanks were awful quiet running, and the infantry was a good 80 rods or so ahead of us dug in for the night. How it was that – there were three or four German tanks came in – how them tanks got by that infantry line, I don’t know, because they surprised us. There was a counterattack at night, I would say somewhere around 1 or 2 o’clock.     Then there was one time when, the worst one I ever, that was bad but the worst deal I ever had, that I was really mad, and that was when we’d been up on the front lines and we came back into bivouac, were into a rest area that night, my tanks were empty on gas, and didn’t have a round of ammunition, and we, I’m trying think of this man from Service Company, I thought it started with an S, because Dixon and I were just talking about him the other day, he was a truck driver. Well, anyway, he hauled our gas, and he pulled up to me, and he said, “How many gallons today, Big Andy?”
     And I said, “A hundred and seventy five.”
     Well, he dumped it off on the ground. And the next guy pulled up and he says, “How many rounds of ammunition?”
     And Duskin told him, I can’t tell you just how many went in the tank, he told him he wanted a full supply. So I started in. I had 15 gallons of gas dumped in the tank, and Duskin was starting to clean the gun. The tank commanders and the rest of them had pulled the hatches down and they were making coffee. They weren’t helping. And in drove three tanks, German tanks, and they just wiped our kitchen crew right out. You know, the kitchen crew was up ahead. I jumped in the tank and we took off and ran. And my tank commander and I had quite a few words after that. And he admitted that he was – of course that always put me against drinking coffee. Of course, I never drink coffee myself. But what the heck is that guy doing? But anyway, that was one experience I had.

Aaron Elson: Was that at the Falaise Gap?
Bob Anderson: I can’t tell you where it was at. But that was one thing that stuck in my mind for a long time, it still does. I’m not gonna mention any names. I know, I kind of hold that against that sonofa ... I think if we’d have had a round or two of ammunition in the tank or something we could have maybe knocked a German tank out or saved maybe a few men up in the headquarters company. But I wish I could think of that man’s name, he drove a truck. Aaron Elson: Tell me about the attack that broke out in the middle of the night.
Bob Anderson: I don’t remember, I can’t...
Aaron Elson: That’s the one in the history book, with the map. There’s a drawing of it. I know some A Company tanks were involved. At Mairy. Neal Vaughn told me about it. Bell was the platoon leader at the time.
Bob Anderson: To be honest with you, I can’t remember that. I just don’t remember that. 90th Division C.P. No, I couldn’t tell you anything about that.
Aaron Elson: Do you remember the Falaise Gap?
Bob Anderson: That was, I remember the Falaise Gap, was that down there when that railroad car loaded with black powder?
Aaron Elson: That was at the end of the war. The Falaise Gap was just after Avranches.
Bob Anderson: I remember the Falaise Gap. I can’t remember anything about that.
Aaron Elson: Was Sam Cropanese in your platoon? Audio: Track09
Bob Anderson: I remember him. He was in a different platoon. I do remember the town of Metz. That’s when we first got Cozzens. And he got in the tank retriever, and he had a boy who’s gone now, Joe, gosh, I’m getting so I can’t even remember names, Joe Medich, we called him Moose Medich, Cozzens had him drive up through town, and Braatz got on the C.B., he says, “Where are you, Cozzens?” And he said “I’m way up here,” or something. Braatz says, “Turn that goddamn tank around and get the hell back, you’re way in front of the lines. It’s a wonder you ain’t shot.” But Cozzens, thinking he knew everything, he just got in that tank and had Medich take him up through there and they didn’t even have a gun on the tank, that was a tank retriever, and I remember that was when we first got Cozzens. He was an oddball. He was crazy as the dickens.     Have you talked to Braatz?

Audio: Track10
Aaron Elson: Years ago, before I really started this.
Bob Anderson: Have you ever talked to Howard Olsen? Hagerty and Johnson would be able to help you a lot.
Aaron Elson: Yes, they did, tremendously. Tell me about the cold during the Bulge.
Bob Anderson: Oh, gosh, I know it was cold, and a lot of snow and that. I would say it was weather like we have right in here, summer it’s hot, winter it was times when it got down to ten below, twenty below zero. Now when we moved from Dillingen up through Luxembourg, I know it was cold because I took and cut a sock up and just made a slit for my eyes to see and I covered my head. That was quite an experience there. I didn’t have an assistant tank driver and I was getting sleepy and one time I hit an icy spot in the road, and I sat on the edge of a cliff, just about like that, and the tank rocking, and going over, and just a laughing, and Hagerty, he said, “What’s the matter?” And I said, “Well, we’re just about ready to go over the cliff.” A guy came up behind me and hooked his tank on and pulled me back. And then there was another time I ran General Patton off the road. I stopped. He said, “You did the right thing, Soldier. You had the road. Get them tanks up there.” And then another time I hit an icy spot and damn near went through a building, and then we pulled the tank back and we helped other tanks. That was cold that night and the road was icy and it was snowing.
Aaron Elson: You traveled all night?
Bob Anderson: We traveled all night. I think we left around 9, 10 o’clock at night and I think we had to be up [near] Bastogne around 6 o’clock in the morning. It was an all-night affair and you didn’t drive with lights, you drove in the blind. It was quite a trip.
Aaron Elson: How steep was that cliff you almost went over?
Bob Anderson: That I don’t know. We were just sitting there like that. It could have been just a ditch or it could have been a mountain. See, Luxembourg is quite hilly, and I don’t know that, I just remember that I sat on the edge and the tank was rocking, whether the tank was far enough out that if you had put a 50-pound weight on the gun it would have gone over I couldn’t say. Like I say, I was so cold and sleepy, and I didn’t have an assistant driver to take over and drive for a while.
Aaron Elson: What happened to the assistant driver?
Bob Anderson: I don’t remember, well, now wait a while. It seemed to me the assistant driver I started out with was moved up into my tank, his name was Williamson, and he was the loader on the gun then. See, they started changing men around after certain ones got injured. Say that you had a good gunner, and maybe a tank commander got wounded, they’d take this gunner and make him a tank commander. They’d take the assistant driver and maybe make him a driver. I don’t know just how things got moving around. But like I say, I started out with Fowler, and then I had E.E. Crawford. And then I had Lieutenant Bell, and then I had Hagerty. Sergeant Fowler, and then it was E.E. Crawford, and then Bell, and then Hagerty. Those were the four main tank commanders I had. Of course Hagerty got commissioned in the field so I moved from the third tank up to the first tank, but generally I was in the third tank in the platoon. Audio: Track11
Aaron Elson: Some people have said that the platoon sergeant rode in the fourth tank, that there were three tanks in the first section.
Bob Anderson: That’s true, have I been telling you...
Aaron Elson: You would have been in the fourth tank.
Bob Anderson: You’re right. There were three tanks, one, two and three were in the first section. And the four and five tank were supposed to cover the first three tanks according to the book as they moved up.
Aaron Elson: You said the book was thrown out.
Bob Anderson: Well, that’s what you learned, the way you were supposed to fight the war. You know, after you get over there and get to seeing things, you look after yourself and look after somebody else. Well, just like I say, these three tanks were supposed to advance and then these two tanks here advance, well heck, you know, you used your common sense. You used your own judgment.
Aaron Elson: What do you recall about direct confrontations with tiger tanks, or the German tanks?
Bob Anderson: Well, I’ll say this, when we first went into action we had what we called a 75-millimeter gun, and we might just as well have had a BB-gun. You actually could shoot that 75-millimeter gun against a German tank and see the projectile just jump off. Then finally we got what we called a 76, and that did penetrate. And then a little later on they finally gave us a 90-millimeter. But the only way, when we first went into action, is when we hit a German tank, you either hit their tracks – we found this out – you either shoot for their tracks, or right around the edge of the turret there’s a ring, do that. I think, too, that the first time we were in action and our projectile hit a German tank, I would say 25 percent of the time the Germans were as scared as we were, just jumped out of the tank thinking their guns were hit. Because really, I know, and the rest of the people, them 75s weren’t worth a damn against the German tanks as far as piercing, the armor-piercing. But after we got the 76 and then the 90-millimeter, then we had a chance. And I’ll give the Germans a lot of credit, their tanks were diesel, where ours were gas, and a German tank was much more quieter creeping up on us. Also, they would turn a lot shorter. We’d have to take a, well, I’ll say just an acre of ground where they could turn around on a dime. The Germans were way ahead of us at the start of the war, if they knew it. But we had artillery and we had the superior air power, and we had a heck of a good infantry, and that’s what did it. As far as the tanks, I don’t know why they sent our tanks into Normandy, with the 75s after we had been in Africa fighting. Patton should have known that them 75 guns were no good against the German tanks. Now why that wasn’t down there, because Rommel, they had enough tanks fighting down there, maybe they didn’t have 75s, maybe they had good tanks in Africa. Audio: Track12
Aaron Elson: Tell me again about this photograph. This was a cow that...
Bob Anderson: Well, I just went out and shot a cow, because I’d been on a farm and I’d butchered and this and that. We wanted some steak.
Aaron Elson: What would you normally eat when you were out in the field?
Bob Anderson:Generally we had what we called C rations, that was a can of, oh, Spam and crackers and that. And the first thing we did when we got into any homes or any town or somewhere, why you’d grab the eggs. I had a lot of cases of eggs I lost on the front. They had the eggs, the French people and the Germans would have the eggs hid under the beds. You’d get the eggs.
Aaron Elson: What do you mean by a lot of cases of eggs that you lost?
Bob Anderson: Well, I’d find – not just me but all of us would find, what we did, was on the front of these tanks we’d put a plank, and then we’d put things up there, and we had eggs or something, and if you ever got back in a place like this you could fry eggs. Then in the chimneys of a lot of places you’d find hams hanging up in there. And then of course a lot of people would catch chickens and kill them and cook them up. Generally when you were up on the line all you got to eat was C rations, but then when you got back for a 10-day rest you’d do most anything. Then there was one time a bunch of us guys was having fun, we’d throw these hand grenades in the creek, of course they’d go off under water and we’d get fish, clean the fish. Then we got crazy enough we was taking and unscrewing the cap and knock all the powder out, and then we’d pull the pin and toss them over to somebody. Well, they wouldn’t go off. Well, I did that to one kid whose name was Bynum, I says, “Here, Quentin Bynum,” well, I didn’t have all the powder off so the thing exploded. It didn’t have strength enough but that made us quit doing that stuff. He could have got hit in the face or something.     Then another thing, when we were back in bivouac area, they’d set up a shower out in the field, and they’d come in with a big tanker truck of water and they’d set these showers up, and then you’d go into a place and you’re in the field, and you lay your other clothes there, and take a shower. And them Frenchmen would come in, especially the women, and grab your clothes and away they’d run. And then another great thing, what really got me, is maybe we’d be sitting out there and you’d dig a slit trench, and women and girls and men and everything would come up and shake your hand when you’re sitting on one. You know, it’s just different, comical things like that that you remember.
     Like I say, I never got a, I came out of it very fortunate, and there were some good memories and that.

Aaron Elson: Ruby Goldstein talked about taking the tank and digging up potatoes. Did you ever do anything like that?
Bob Anderson: No, I know what he could do, you probably could go down a potato row like this and then pull a lever and the thing would just go like that and the potatoes would come up. See, when we went from Swindon down to Southampton there in England, this Colonel Whiteside Miller who later lost his rank, he was an oddball for being a colonel, but we’d go around corners in towns, and when you went around it you’d just tear up the curbing and everything. It cost the United States a lot of money for that run. We had to blame Miller for it. If he’d have said you have 15 hours to get down to Southampton instead of five or six hours, they wouldn’t have drove and they wouldn’t have been there, I think out of thirty-some tanks, I think six or seven tanks is all that made that run. The rest of them broke down. Some tore the tracks off, some did this and that. Oh, I’m telling you, that Whiteside Miller, he was something else.
Aaron Elson: Tell me about him.
Bob Anderson: Oh, I just knew him by his name. To me, he would have been a poor leader in combat. After that, then they relieved him, we got Colonel Randolph, and he was all right. And after Colonel Randolph got killed, Colonel Kedrovsky took over. I really knew Colonel Kedrovsky better than anybody, he was a really good man.
Aaron Elson: What was he like? What can you remember about him?
Bob Anderson: Well, I can’t remember anything, he was just a good soldier.When he came back to the United States, he worked at Sears and Roebuck stores, and he changed his name from Colonel Kedrovsky to Kaye. He had a funny accent to his voice enough. But like I say, I really liked that man, and I’ve got to say that he was a good leader. And he stood behind his men. He didn’t criticize some man or run him down when he did something. Well, Dixon and I were talking about, he would come up and ask for advice, even enlisted men. “Now, soldier, what would we do here?” or something like that, and he’d go back and think about it. I didn’t get to knowing Randolph that well.
Aaron Elson: What was the longest stretch that you ever spent inside a tank without getting out?
Bob Anderson: Oh heavens, I wouldn’t have any idea.
Aaron Elson: Did you ever spend more than a day?
Bob Anderson: Oh, yes. Well, now you’re saying getting out. There was times you’d get out and take a piss, something like that. But no, you’d spend a day and maybe that night sleeping on line, you’d sleep in the tank, but you’re talking about getting out and walking around and that. Oh, I’d say maybe two days or three days, but still you’d get out enough. Now Hagerty, he had a lot of, I don’t know what his trouble was and he’d have a lot of accidents and they’d have to bring him up clean shorts, you know, like that, whether he was too scared to get out of the tank, but he was a good man and that.
Aaron Elson: He told me a story that once you got out of the tank to take a piss, and everybody else got out, and all of a sudden shooting broke out and you had to pile back into the tank.
Bob Anderson: Yeah, shooting started, and I’d say, yeah, there’d be a lot of times when you wouldn’t be done with the job, and this and that. I wonder what his favorite saying was, it was something like, “Send me up some clean underwear,” or something like that. The biggest joke really with Hagerty is, he smoked, and every Lent he’d quit smoking, then after Lent he’d start smoking. And then he’d say, “God, if I could only quit that. I just wish I could quit smoking.” I said, “Well, Bob, you just did for six or seven weeks.”     “Yeah, but that was Lent,” he said. That was a big joke to me. Bob was a good man. I liked him, and like I say, I got along fine with everybody in the service and I had a good time, and still I wouldn’t want to go through it again.
     I had a lot more aftereffects after I got home.

Aaron Elson:Describe those.
Bob Anderson: Well, we lived a mile down the road here. I farmed for thirty years. And when I first came home, there’d be nights say that I worked in the field late, I’d be scared to go out to the barn to milk the cows because I knew there was Germans out there waiting. So I’d drive up this road right here, I knew there was a German tank, and my wife will bear that, there’d be nights I’d lay in bed and just freeze like that, she’d wake me up, and I’d be, W-w-What’s the matter? “There’s Germans there.” I had more aftereffects, and scareder, than I did when I was over there. But I was scared, and every time after you were back on break, you’d pray that you would never have to go back up to the line. And anybody, I always said this, anybody that was in combat who wasn’t scared, they’re either a damn liar or they never was in combat. That’s my opinion, my version of combat. If you weren’t scared, you weren’t in combat.
Aaron Elson: Several people have said that. Tony D’Arpino said “There’s scared and there’s yellow, and they’re completely different.”
Bob Anderson: Well, the yellowness is like I described Fowler, and Fowler admitted it, and he was a soldier because he admitted it and got out of there, because what if you’d have gone up there and you didn’t have a damn round, that’s what got me, if you didn’t have a round of ammunition in your breech to fire, what protection did we have?
Aaron Elson: Did you ever see a doctor or get counseling about the aftereffects?
Bob Anderson: No. The only thing that I didn’t do when I got out of the service, I think when I got home, is today I’m wearing hearing aids. If I take these off I’m stone deaf. Well, when

I first got out, after a few years, I went to Iowa City, to a veterans’ hospital, and they operated on my ear free of charge, but they said if I would have filled out a petition when I first got out and got my discharge, I’d have gotten free hearing aids every year. That’s the only thing that I say that I did wrong. Of course, when I got back out of the service, when I landed in New York, and got back to Fort Sheridan, “How many points do you have, Soldier?” A hundred and thirty-five, I think it was, or 132. “What do you want, a discharge or a 30-day furlough?” Well, all that was on my mind was a discharge then. If I’d have taken my 30-day furlough I’d have got paid, then I’d have went back in there and stayed there ten or fifteen days more and get through that. But all I thought of was my discharge, so I got out on May 15, 1945, and I was out of the service. A lot of boys later, they took their 30-day furlough and then they came back. That was another thing that’s over the river, but I could have made some money there.

- - -Order "Big Andy" from Amazon.com

  

Interview With a Tank Driver

An Oral History "Mini Book"
   Ever since I published my first book, "Tanks for the Memories," I've been experimenting with the presentation of oral history. I've got 600 hours of interviews on audiotape, and probably a few thousand pages of transcripts -- my interview with Dale Albee alone filled 104 pages, single-spaced.   As I've experimented with audio and print books, the publishing landscape has changed. Whereas publishing a print book once required a press run of at least 1,000 copies to make it cost-effective, print-on-demand has lowered that requirement to a press run of one copy, although batches of five or ten copies save on the postage.   "Big Andy" is the first in a series of Oral History "Mini Books" in which I present the transcript of an interview. In some cases an audio CD will be available to accompany the booklet, although I have not yet edited the audio for Bob Anderson.   Big Andy was a tank driver in the 712th Tank Battalion. He earned three Bronze Stars. I interviewed him in 1993 at his home in Prophetstown, Illinois.   "Don't put the whole interview up on the Internet," a friend said the other day. "Nobody will buy the book."   I don't believe that, so I'm posting about half the interview and will post the rest in my next entry while I work on similar "Mini Books," as well as a longer collection of interviews.   Actually, I do believe that a little. I'm sure when I posted the full text of my first four books on my web site at tankbooks.com I might have sold more copies if I only posted a chapter or two. But then people like George Bussell's niece, googling her uncle's name, might never have found his story. Bussell had an older sister, who became estranged from her stepmother after her mother died and their father remarried. His niece never met George and he had since passed away. After reading his interview, she thanked me for "introducing" her to her late uncle.   Bussell, like Big Andy, and Tony D'Arpino, who's featured in my book "A Mile in Their Shoes," was a tank driver. As you'll see from this interview, tank drivers were a special breed of warrior.
Bob AndersonProphetstown, IllinoisOct. 24, 1993
 Aaron Elson: This is Bob Anderson, also known as Big Andy.
 Bob Anderson: I was also known by a lot of other names. Big Stupe. I’ll tell you about that later.
Aaron Elson: When did you go into the Army?
 Bob Anderson: I went in February 21st, 1941, into the 11th Cavalry.
Aaron Elson: You go back to the cavalry?
 Bob Anderson: Oh, yes. I was a horse shoer in the cavalry. I’ll show you some pictures back here. My daughter and grandson made a plaque. I went in in ’41. I never took basic training because I got in there, and they put a sign on the bulletin board, “Who wants to join the stable gang?” And I was a farmer before I went in. I really wanted to be in the coast artillery. When they asked me at Fort Sheridan what branch of service you’d like, I told them the coast artillery, and I ended up in the horse cavalry. That’s how things went back in them days.     I went down there and I was in the stable gang for about, oh, I’m gonna say a couple of weeks or so, and then they wanted to know who wanted to be a horse shoer. And a boy from Chetack, Wisconsin, by the name of Percy Bowers and myself signed up for horse shoeing. Well, instead of going to school we just picked it up right there. Then there was a flip of a coin for who was to be what they called the first horse shoer. It didn’t make any difference, we both made shoes – but he was the first horse shoer and I was the second horse shoer.
     We got a rating in those days of what we called first-third. That was one stripe down and four turned up. And we were getting paid more than what a buck sergeant was. Of course, we went in at $18 a month, but after we got our rating, we were getting $38 a month, where a sergeant was only getting $36 a month. Then when I came home for my granddad’s funeral in October of ’41, “Man, look at what a rating he has.” Hell, I’m nothing but a Pfc.
     I was in the 11th Horse Cavalry. Then the 11th Horse Cavalry and the Third Horse Battalion formed the 10th Armored Division.

Aaron Elson: Clear me up on this, because Forrest Dixon just told me. He said the 11th Cavalry was supposed to go to Australia or to the Philippines. Were you supposed to go to Australia?
Bob Anderson: That’s when – see, we were at Campo, California, on the Mexican border, and I didn’t know it until later, but when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor they blew boots and saddles and we went down on the Mexican border and sat.
Aaron Elson: Explain to me what it means to blow boots and saddles.
Bob Anderson: Well, that’s just a different way of, they didn’t yell, they had a bugler, and in the morning he’d blow reveille. And then they’d blow mess call. And there were different calls on the bugle that went out on the air. When they blew boots and saddles, that meant for everybody to run and get ready and go down and saddle your horses, and get ready to ride away.
Aaron Elson: That was immediately? Did you know about Pearl Harbor then, or you just heard boots and saddles?
Bob Anderson: Oh, no. We didn’t know. In fact, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, there was a boy named Bud Perkins and myself, and a boy from Wisconsin, Greeley, we had our clothes in the car all ready to come home on a furlough. And before we even got out of camp they blew boots and saddles, and we were confined to camp.
Aaron Elson: Do you remember what kind of car it was?
Bob Anderson: It was a 1939 Ford. I have some pictures of it somewhere. We were going to come home on furlough, but we didn’t even get out of camp. Then all the men, and the first horse shoer, they all went down and they had to sleep out and bivouac. Lucky for me, I was the second horse shoer. “You stay back in camp and take care of the stable and feed the horses and take care of them,” so I didn’t have to go down there and sleep on the ground and all that.
Aaron Elson: Because you lost that coin toss?
Bob Anderson: Well, it’s just because I was a very lucky man that I got to stay back in camp. There were about four or five guys got to stay back, and we took care of the horses that were left there. You had 150 men in the troop, and there would be about 180 horses, so there were 30 horses left back there. And then of course at that time we had some sick horses. So I was one of the fortunate ones that didn’t have to go down there. But later I did learn, after this, that there was a boat sitting out in the harbor at San Diego that the 11th Cavalry was supposed to go on with their horses and everything and get on this boat, and be in the war, and I wonder how far we’d have gotten fighting the war with the horses in those days. But as luck would have it, in May of ’42, well, I’d have to get my book, there was a black unit came in and took over our horses and the white boys were sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, and the 3rd Horse Cavalry, which was stationed up around Washington, D.C., came to Fort Benning and we all formed the 10th Armored Division.
Aaron Elson: Going back to the cavalry, Forrest Dixon said there was something about a yellow fever vaccination, where a lot of men came down with jaundice.
Bob Anderson: I came down with spinal meningitis. I had yellow jaundice before, when I was in high school. The only thing I remember about it was when I had this spinal meningitis, they quarantined the camp for a few days. But anyway, I was sent up to a naval base.
Aaron Elson: One other question about the cavalry. Was there a horse named Old Buck? Does that ring a bell?
Bob Anderson: There were several horses. We had different names for different things. We had Johnson Bar. Yes, I suppose there was.
Aaron Elson: Ed Stuever said there was a horse there that rode in the campaign against Pancho Villa, and it was out to pasture and given special treatment.
Bob Anderson: It could have been. I can’t tell you anything like that. There were special horses the lieutenants had, or I wouldn’t say the lieutenants, the officers had their horses and we had to treat them like, well, let’s say gold or silver, a little bit better, and they rode with saddles, where we had the old McCulloch saddle they got to ride with the English saddle. And then they had their dogrobbers who took care of their stuff, where we had to take care of our own. But I really enjoyed the cavalry. One thing I will say about the outfit I was in, we grew up as a group of men that stayed together. I can list several of us that stayed together and went through the 10th Armored, and went to the 712th Tank Battalion, we fought together and we came home together. And there’s a lot of boys that did that. Earl Apgar lives up here in Rockford. Jule Braatz lives up here in Beaver Dam. And there were several boys out of Chicago I can name, and we all stayed together after we got out. We became brothers, like you said this Quentin Bynum, shucks, him and I we fought and had one heck of a good time. This Percy Bowers from Chetack, Wisconsin, who was killed overseas, we were the best of buddies. I will say I went all the way through the service, I got three Bronze Stars, had tanks knocked out. With my luck I never got a Purple Heart. That kind of, it just gets you, now.     After we left the horse cavalry we formed the 10th Armored Division. From the 10th Armored Division we went onto the Tennessee maneuvers. Then we came back to Fort Benning and we were busted away from the 10th Armored Division to the 712th Tank Battalion. From there we went to Camp Gordon, Georgia.

Aaron Elson: At what point did you become a driver?
Bob Anderson: You want a good story there. When I was a horse shoer back in the cavalry, we had a stable sergeant whose name was Seeney. We were way down here, probably a half a mile from the barracks, and the only way you could get a pass to go into town was to be in uniform. Well, the stable gang, they got to eat breakfast at 5 in the morning, 11 o’clock at noon, and 5 o’clock in the evening. And then an hour later the company came. Well, this was one Saturday noon, we came up and ate dinner. And I went into the orderly room to get a pass to go to town, this Percy Bowers and I wanted to come to town and buy a car. Well, Sergeant Chin was in charge of quarters, and him and I was razzin’, going at each other. Chin says, “You know you’ve got to be in uniform.”     I says, “Sergeant Chin, how can I get down there and get in uniform and come back up and get a pass before the rest of the company comes in and gets their passes?”
     We were just having a lot of fun. Well, in walked – when we first went in Sergeant Gaines was our first sergeant, he was a heck of a good man. After Pearl Harbor he left and went to OCS school and became a captain in the MPs. A Sergeant Moseley took over who had been back at Fort Riley, Kansas, an officers’ school, and got to be first sergeant. Well, Moseley walked in the orderly room while Chin and I was at it, and he just says, “You know the orders around here.” You know, being he was the top soldier. And I hauled off and hit him one. So the next day it was Pfc. Third Class Specialist Robert E. Anderson was busted to a grade of Pfc. returned to duty. In other words, I was kicked out of the stable and sent back there.

Aaron Elson: You hit him?
Bob Anderson: Yeah, I hit him. I was mad. So about a week later he was shipped out and  Sergeant Seeney, who was the stable sergeant, was next in rank, he got to be first sergeant, so I got to go back down to the stable. We were known as Seeney’s boys. Seeney went with us to the 10th Armored Division, and everybody who was down in the stable gang, they got to be tank drivers. So that’s how we did. Bowers, Bynum, [Lano] O’Conner, [Dess] Tibbetts, all of us got to be tank drivers. Of course, a tank driver, they didn’t have to stand guard duty or do KP, they had to take care of the tanks. So we were known as Seeney’s boys.
Aaron Elson: Your rank as a tank driver was a corporal?
Bob Anderson: No, my rank, see, I drove what they call the three, I was in the third platoon and drove the third tank. So the one that was in each platoon that drove the No. 1 tank, they drove the lieutenant. I drove the staff sergeant’s tank, so I was in the third platoon driving the third tank. So each driver there got what they call a T-4 rating. The other drivers were a T-5 or a corporal rating. There were two sergeant drivers and two corporal drivers.
Aaron Elson: The platoon leader was a lieutenant. The platoon sergeant...
Bob Anderson: Was a staff sergeant.
Aaron Elson: Okay, was in the fourth tank?
Bob Anderson: Yes. They were supposed to, if you go into combat – when we went into combat you threw the book away. Three tanks were supposed to go up, and then these two tanks were supposed to advance, and then ... but when we went into action we threw the book away. I’ll get to that story a little later. But anyway, after we went to Camp Gordon, we got sent up to Myles Standish, that’s where we shipped out for England. Then when we were in England, we did a lot of training, and there was a boy by the name [L.E.] Stahl, he was a sergeant tank driver like I was. We were welding on the tanks one night and got the dickens for doing that because we were lighting the sky, you know how a welder will light it up. We were working on our tanks one night. The Germans weren’t flying over but if they had been flying over they’d have seen us. Well, we got there, and then we stayed there for quite a while, and then we went down to the port of Southampton and went across to Omaha Beach. And I had this sergeant by the name Charles Fowler from California, and he was a soldier in the States. A well-built man and that. But when he got into action, he was scared. And he admitted it. Finally, he’d tell me not to start the tank. Gunner don’t load your gun. This and that. Finally, I went to the company commander and told him what was going on. Fowler was busted to a grade of a private or a Pfc, I don’t know which, and shipped back to the States. But he admitted he was scared, which was a good thing, you know, he was more dangerous to his men being scared.
Aaron Elson: Ruby Goldstein told me there was something where Fowler said there were branches in the turret.
Bob Anderson: Well, you didn’t know what. Reuben Goldstein was in the same platoon, and he was in the tank back of us. In fact, his driver was Ringwalski from Minnesota. He was in the tank behind us, and him and this Charlie Bahrke got the first award issued in our outfit. Charlie Bahrke was the gunner and Goldstein was the tank commander and they each got a Silver Star. The way they did it is, I don’t know, did they tell you about a hedgerow?
Aaron Elson: He described a hedgerow, but he never said he got the Silver Star for that.
Bob Anderson: Oh yeah, he got, anyway, when you come up over these here hedgerows –  we didn’t know it, we did after the first one – but anyway, we was coming through this field and we come up over a hedgerow like that and we just dropped. Probably about, oh, I’d say six, eight feet deep. And here he was sitting right in here. And then I had to maneuver and all of us drivers had to maneuver our tanks, jockey them around to get headed down the road.
Aaron Elson:Goldstein’s tank had fallen over the hedgerow?
Bob Anderson: Yes. But Goldstein got jockeyed around, and they went down the road a short distance, and they was hit with an anti-tank gun. The crew evacuated the tank, and then Goldstein and Bahrk crawled back with the protection of the tank, and we’ve got a hatch in the bottom of the tank, they crawled back up in there, and got the anti-tank gun that was down at the end of the road. And that’s how they got the Silver Star.
(to be continued) "Big Andy" will soon be available at amazon.com in both print and Kindle editions

 

England to America

                      England to America

The following is the short story "England to America," by Margaret Prescott Montague, with an inscription to Dave Braman by Rev. Laine:
(in the left hand side, "Library of Edward L. Forrest")
On the first page:
   To David E. Braman,
   Dear Dave,
          This classic little story of the First War of 1917-1918, was a great favorite with Eddie. I gave it to him in 1929, and he read it many times. You and I can appreciate the truth, the grace and the poignancy of this narrative, since like Chev Sherwood, Eddie passed over, fighting gallantly for his country. Little did he think as he read it, that the years to come would call him to the same manly sacrifice. You were his beloved friend, keep this cherished book of his, in proud remembrance.            From, Edmund Randolph Laine, June 21 - 1946. Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

                      England to America                              By                  Margaret Prescott Montague
                    with an introduction by                        John Drinkwater
Doubleday, Page & Co. 1920, Garden City, N.Y.copyright 1920 by Doubleday, Page & Co. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.
Copyright, 1919, by the Atlantic Montly Company.

                       Introductory Note


The impertinence of introducing a work of art, while it is notorious, is one to which few writers have the courage not to commit themselves at invitation. The literary quality of Miss Montague's story does not need any sponsor, yet it is a privilege to be the first of my countrymen to give thanks for so charming a tribute. Considered as an abstract proposition, I am not quite sure that Miss Montague's analysis of English character is at all points exact, but since she is an artist she happily makes this question of no consequence. For the test of all narrative art seems to me, in whatever form it may be cast, is not whether a generalized idea, drawn from the particular narrative tallies with our own conclusions. It is, rather, whether the characters in the narrative have their own reality, and so convince us of their own actions. If, for example, someone with his finger on Shakespeare's play should say to me that Macbeth in such circumstances would not have done so and so, my answer would be that in fact Macbeth did so and there is an end of it. In its own tender and fragile setting Miss Montague's story convinces me in this way. Whether an English family would have acted thus is not to the point; all we know is as we read the tale that the Sherwood family did behave just so because Miss Montague tells us this with the persuasive authority of her art. And as an Englishman one is proud that an American writer should conceive English character in such a way. If she flatters us a little, we all like to be flattered and we are none the worse for it. Here is the disinterested flattery of a friend, and every word said today to the furtherance of friendship between America and England is one for which the world cannot well be too grateful. Miss Montague's story is a short one, and if it is to be approached by an introduction, this should be shorter still; I close mine with a word of thanks for the artist's work well done, and for her very gracious courtesy.    -- John Drinkwater.
                   England to America

                            I
"Lord, but English people arefunny!"This was the perplexed mental ejaculation that young Lieutenant Skipworth Cary, of Virginia, found his thoughts constantly reiterating during his stay in Devonshire. Had he been, he wondered, a confiding fool to accept so trustingly Chev Sherwood's suggestion that he spend a part of his leave, at least, at Bishopscombe, where Chev's people lived? But why should he have anticipated any difficulty here, in this very corner of England which had bred his own ancestors, when he had always hit it off so splendidly with his English comrades at the Front? Here, however, though they were all awfully kind -- at least, he was sure they meant to be kind -- something was always bringing him up short: something that he could not lay hold of but which made him feel like a blind man groping in a strange place, or worse, like a bull in a china shop. He was prepared enough to find differences in the American and English points of view. But this thing that baffled him did not seemto have to do with that' it was something deeper, something very definite, he was sure  -- and yet, what was it? The worst of it was that he had a curious feeling as if they were all -- that is, Lady Sherwood and Gerald; not Sir Charles so much -- protecting him from himself -- keeping him from making breaks, as he phrased it. That hurt and annoyed him, and piqued his vanity. Was he a social blunderere, and weren't a Virginia gentleman's manners to be trusted in England without leading-strings?

He had been at the Front for several months with the Royal Flying Corps, and when his leave came, his Flight Commander, Captain Cheviot Sherwood, discovering that he meant to spend it in England where he hardly knew a soul, had said that his people down in Devonshire would be jolly glad to have him stop with them; and Skipworth Cary, knowing that if the circumstances had been reversed his people down in Virginia would indeed have been jolly glad to entertain Captain Sherwood, had accepted unhesitatingly. The invitation had been seconded by a letter from Lady Sherwood -- Chev's mother -- and after a few days' sight-seeing in London he had come down to Bishopscombe, very eager to know his friend's family, feeling as he did about Chev himself. "He's the finest man that ever went up in the air," he had written home; and to his own family's disgust, his letters had been far more full of Chev Sherwood than they had been of Skipworth Cary.And now here he was, and he almost wished himself away -- wished almost that he was back again at the Front, carrying on under Chev. There, at least, you knew what you were up against. The job might be hard enough, but it wasn't baffling and queer, with hidden undercurrents that you couldn't chart. It seemed to him that this baffling feeling of constraint had rushed to meet him on the very threshold of the drawing room, when he had made his first appearance.As he entered, he had a sudden sensation that they had been awaiting him in a strained expectancy, and that, as he appeared, they adjusted unseen masks and began to play-act at something. "But English people don't play-act very well," he commented to himself, reviewing the scene afterward.Lady Sherwood had come forward and greeted him in a manner which would have been pleasant enough if he had not, with quick sensitiveness, felt it to be forced. But perhaps that was English stiffness.Then she had turned to her husband, who was standing staring into the fireplace, although, as it was June, there was no fire there to stare at."Charles," she said, "here is Lieutenant Cary"; and her voice had a certain note in it which at home Cary and his sister Nancy were in the habit of designating "mother-making-dad-mind-his-manners."At her words the old man -- and Cary was startled to see how old and broken he was -- turned round and held out his hand. "How d'you do?" he said, jerkily; "how d'you do?" and then turned abruptly back again to the fireplace."Hello! What's up! The old boy doesn't like me!" was Cary's quick, startled comment to himself.He was so surprised by the look the other bent upon him that he involuntarily glanced across to a long mirror to see if there was anything wrong with his uniform. But no, that appeared to be all right. It was himself, then -- or his country; perhaps the old sport didn't fall for Americans."And here is Gerald," Lady Sherwood went on in her low, remote voice, which somehow made the Virginian feel very far away.

It was with genuine pleasure, though with some surprise, that he turned to greet Gerald Sherwood, Chev's younger brother, who had been, tradition in the corps said, as gallant and daring a flyer as Chev himself, until he got his in the face five months ago."I'm mighty glad to meet you," he said, eagerly, in his pleasant, muffled Southern voice, grasping the hand the other stretched out, and looking with deep respect at the scarred face and sightless eyes.Gerald laughed a little, but it was a pleasant laugh, and his hand-clasp was friendly."That's real American, isn't it?" he said. "I ought to have remembered and said it first. Sorry."Skipworth laughed, too. "Well," he conceded, "we generally are glad to meet people in my country, and we don't care who says it first. But," he added, "I didn't think I'd have the luck to find you here."He remembered that Chev had regretted that he probably wouldn't see Gerald, as the latter was at St. Dunstan's, where they were reeducating the blinded soldiers.The other hesitated a moment, and then said, rather awkwardly, "Oh, I'm just home for a little while; I only got here this morning, in fact."Skipworth noted the hesitation. Did the old people get panicky at the thought of enttertaining a wild man from Virginia, and send an S O S for Gerald, he wondered."We are so glad you could come to us," Lady Sherwood said, rather hastily, just then. And again he could not fail to note that she was prompting her husband.The latter reluctantly turned round, and said, "Yes, yes, quite so. Welcome to Bishopscombe, my boy," as if his wife had pulled a string, and he responded mechanically, without quite knowing what he said. Then, as his eyes rested a moment on his guest, he looked as if he would like to bolt out of the room. He controlled himself, however, and, jerking round again to the fireplace, went on murmuring, "Yes, yes, yes," vaguely -- just like the dormouse at the Mad Tea-Party, who went to sleep, saying "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle," Cary could not help thinking to himself.But, after all, it wasn't really funny, it was pathetic. Gosh, how doddering the poor old boy was! Skipworth wondered, with a sudden twist at his heart, if the war was playing the deuce with his home people, too. Was his own father going to pieces like this, and had his mother's gay vivacity fallen into that still remoteness of Lady Sherwood's? But of course not! The Carys hadn't suffered as the poor Sherwoods had, with their youngest son, Curtin, killed early in the war, and now Gerald knocked out so tragically. Lord, he thought, how they must all bank on Chev! And of course they would want to hear at once about him. "I left Chev as fit as anything, and he sent all sorts of messages," he reported, thinking it more discreet to deliver Chev's messages thus vaguely than to repeat his actual care-free remark, which had been, "Oh, tell 'em I'm jolly as a tick."

But evidently there was something wrong with the words as they were, for instantly he was aware of that curious sense of withdrawal on their part. Hastily reviewing them, he decided that they had sounded too familiar from a stranger and a younger man like himself. He supposed he ought not to have spoken of Chev by his first name. Gee, what sticklers they were! Wouldn't his family -- dad and mother and Nancy -- have fairly lapped up any messages from him, even if they had been delivered a bit awkwardly? However, he added, as a concession to their point of view, "But of course you'll have had later news of Captain Sherwood."To which, after a pause, Lady Sherwood responded, "Oh, yes," in that remote and colourless voice which might have meant anything or nothing.At this point dinner was announced.Lady Sherwood drew her husband away from the empty fireplace, and Gerald slipped his arm through the Virginian's, saying pleasantly, "I'm learning to carry on fairly well at St. Dunstan's, but I confess I still like to have a pilot."To look at the tall young fellow beside him, whose scarred face was so reminiscent of Chev's untouched good looks, who had known all the immense freedom of the air, but who was now learning to carry on in the dark, moved Skipworth Cary to generous homage."You know my saying I'm glad to meet you isn't just American," he said, half shyly, but warmly. "It's plain English, and the straight truth. I've wanted to meet you awfully. The oldsters are always holding up your glorious exploits to us newcomers. Withers never gets tired telling about that fight of yours with the four enemy planes. And besides," he rushed on, eagerly, "I'm glad to have a chance to tell Chev's brother -- Captain Sherwood's brother, I mean -- what I think of him. Only, as a matter of fact, I can't," he broke off with a laugh, "I can't put it exactly into words, but I tell you I'd follow that man straight into hell and out the other side -- or go there alone if he told me to. He is the finest chap that ever flew."And then he felt as if a cold douche had been flung in his face, for after a moment's pause the other returned, "That's awfully good of you," in a voice so distant and formal that the Virginian could have kicked himself. What an ass he was to be so darned enthusiastic with an Englishman! He supposed it was bad form to show any pleasure over praise of a member of your family. Lord, if Chev ever got the V.C., he reckoned it would be awful to speak of it. Still, you would have thought Gerald might have stood for a little praise of him. But then, glancing sideways at his companion, he surprised on his face a look so strange and suffering that it came to him almost violently what it must be never to fly again; to be on the threshold of life, with endless days of blackness ahead. Good God! How cruel he had been to flaunt Chev in his face! In remorseful and hasty reparation he stumbled on, "But the old fellows are always having great discussions as to which was the best -- you or your brother. Withers always maintains you were.""Withers lies, then!" the other retorted. "I never touched Chev -- never came within a mile of him, and never could have."

They reached the dinner table with that, and young Cary found himself bewildered and uncomfortable. If Gerald hadn't liked praise of Chev, he had liked praise of himself even less, it seemed.Dinner was not a success. The Virginian found that, if there was to be conversation, the burden of carrying it on was upon him, and gosh! they don't mind silences in this man's island, do they? he commented desperately to himself, thinking how different it was from America. Why, there they acted as if silence was an egg that had just been laid, and everyone had to cackle at once to cover it up. But here the talk constantly fell to the ground, and nobody but himself seemed concerned to pick it up. His attempt to praise Chev had not been successful, and he could understand their not wanting to hear about flying and the war before Gerald.So at last, in desperation, he wandered off into descriptions of America, finding to his relief, that he had struck the right note at last. They were glad to hear about the States, and Lady Sherwood inquired politely if the Indians still gave them much trouble; and when he assured her that in Virginia, except for the Pocahontas tribe, they were all pretty well subdued, she accepted his statement with complete innocency. And he was so delighted to find at last a subject to which they were evidently cordial, that he was quite carried away, and wound up by inviting them all to visit his family in Richmond as soon as the war was over.Gerald accepted at once, with enthusiasm; Lady Sherwood made polite murmurs, smiling at him in quite a warm and almost, indeed, maternal manner. Even Sir Charles, who had been staring at the food on his plate as if he did not quite know what to make of it, came to the surface long enough to mumble, "Yes, yes, very good idea. Countries must carry on together -- What?"But that was the only hit of the whole evening, and when the Virginian retired to his room, as he made an excuse to do early, he was so confused and depressed that he fell into an acute attack of homesickness.

Heavens, he thought, as he tumbled into bed, just suppose, now, this was little old Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A., instead of being Bishopscombe, Avery Cross near Wick, and all the rest of it! And at that, he grinned to himself, England wasn't such an all-fired big country that you'd think they'd have to ticket themselves with addresses a yard long for fear they'd get lost -- now, would you? Well, anyway, suppose it was Richmond, and his train just pulling into the Byrd Street Station. He stretched out luxuriously, and let his mind picture the whole familiar scene. The wind was blowing right, so there was the mellow, homely smell of tobacco in the streets, and plenty of people all along the way to hail him with outstretched hands and shouts of "Hey, Skip Cary, when did you get back?"  "Welcome home, my boy!"   "Well,will you look what the cat dragged in!" And so he came to hyis own front door-step, and walking straight in, surprised the whole family at breakfast; and yes -- doggone it! if it wasn't Sunday, and they having waffles! And after that his obliging fancy bore him up Franklin Street, through Monroe Park, and so to Miss Sally Berkeley's door. He was sound asleep before he reached it, but in his dreams, light as a little bird, she came flying down the broad stairway to meet him, and --But when he waked next morning, he did not find himself in Virginia, but in Devonshire, where, to his unbounded embarrassment, a white housemaid was putting up his curtains and whispering something about his bath. And though he pretended profound slumber, he was well aware that people do not turn brick-red in their sleep. And the problem of what was the matter with the Sherwood family was still before him.
                           II
"They're playing a game," he told himself after a few days. "That is, Lady Sherwood and Gerald are -- poor old Sir Charles can't make much of a stab at it. The game is to make me think they are awfully glad to have me when in reality there's something about me, or something I do, that gets them on the raw."He almost decided to make some excuse and get away; but, after all, that was not easy. In English novels, he remembered, they always had a wire calling them to London; but darn it all! the Sherwoods knew mighty well there wasn't any one in London who cared a hoot about him.The thing that got his goat most, he told himself, was that they apparently didn't like his friendship with Chev. Anyway, they didn't seem to want him to talk about him; and whenever he tried to express his warm appreciation for all that the older man had done for him, he was instantly aware of a wall of reserve on their part, a holding of themselves aloof from him. That puzzled and hurt him, and put him on his dignity. He concluded that they thought it was cheeky of a youngster like him to think that a man like Chev could be his friend; and if that was the way they felt, he reckoned he'd jolly well better shut up about it. But whatever it was that they didn't like about him, they most certainly did want him to have a good time. He and his pleasure appeared to be for the time being their chief consideration. And after the first day or so he began indeed to enjoy himself extremely. For one thing, he came to love the atmosphere of the old place and of the surrounding country, which he and Gerald explored together. He liked to think that ancestors of his own had been inheritors of these green lanes and pleasant mellow stretches. Then, too, after the first few days, he could not help seeing that they really began to like him, which of course was reassuring, and tapped his own warm friendliness, which was always ready enough to be released. And besides, he got by accident what he took to be a hint as to the trouble. He was passing the half-open door of Lady Sherwood's morning room when he heard Sir Charles's' voice break out, "Good God, Elizabeth, I don't see how you stand it! When I see him so straight and fine-looking, and so untouched, beside our poor lad, and think -- and think --"

Skipworth hurried out of earshot, but now he understood that look of aversion in the old man's eyes which had so startled him at first. Of course, the poor old boy might easily hate the sight of him beside Gerald. With Gerald himself he really got along famously. He was a most delightful companion, full of anecdotes and history of the countryside, every foot of which he had apparently explored in the old days with Dhev and the younger brother, Curtin. Yet even with Gerald, Cary sometimes felt that aloofness and reserve, and that older protective air that they all showed him. Take, for instance, that afternoon when they were lolling together on the grass in the park. The Virginian, running on in his usual eager manner, had plunted without thinking into an account of a particularly daring bit of flying on Chev's part, when suddenly he realized that Gerald had rolled over on the grass and buried his face in his arms, and interrupted himself, awkwardly. "But, of course," he said, "he must have written home about it himself.""No, or if he did, I didn't hear of it. Go on," Gerald said in a muffled voice.A great rush of compassion and remorse overwhelmed the Virginian, and he burst out penitently, "What a brute I am! I'm always forgetting and running on about flying, when I know it must hurt like the very devil!"The other drew a difficult breath. "Yes," he admitted, "what you say does hurt in a way -- in a way you can't understand. But all the same I like to hear you. Go on about Chev."So Skipworth went on and finished his account, winding up, "I don't believe there's another man in the service who could have pulled it off -- but I tell you your brother's one in a million.""Good God, don't I know it!" the other burst out. "We were all three the jolliest pals together," he got out presently in a choked voice; "Chev and the young un and I; and now --"He did not finish, but Cary guessed his meaning. Now the young un, Curtin, was dead, and Gerald himself knocked out. But, heavens! the Virginian thought, did Gerald think Chev would go back on him now on account of his blindness? Well, you could everlastingly bet he wouldn't!"Chev think the world and all of you!" he cried in eager defence of his friend's loyalty. "Lots of times when we're all awfully jolly together he makes some excuse and goes off by himself; and Withers told me it was because he was so frightfully cut up about you. Withers said he told him once that he'd a lot rather have got it himself -- so you can everlastingly bank on him!"Gerald gave a terrible little gasp. "I -- I knew he'd feel like that," he got out. "We've always cared such a lot for each other." And then he pressed his face harder than ever into the grass, and his long body quivered all over. But not for long. In a moment he took fierce hold on himself, muttering, "Well, one must carry one, whatever happens," and apologized disjointedly. "What a fearful fool you must think me! And -- and this isn't very pippy for you, old chap." Presently, after that, he sat up, and said, brushing it all aside, "We're facing the old moat, aren't we? There's an interesting bit of tradition about it that I must tell you."

And there you were, Cary thought: no matter how much Gerald might be suffering from his misfortune, he must carry on just the same, and see that his visitor had a pleasant time. It made the Virginian feel like an outsider and very young, as if her were not old enough for them to show him their real feelings.Another thing that he noticed was that they did not seem to want him to meet people. They never took him anywhere to call, and if visitors came to the house, they showed an almost panicky desire to get him out of the way. That again hurt his pride. What in heaven's name was the matter with him, anyway!

                           III
However, on the last afternoon of his stay at Bishopscombe, he told himself with a rather rueful grin that his manners must have improved a little, for they took him to tea at the rectory.He was particularly glad to go there because, from certain jokes of Withers's, who had known the Sherwoods since boyhood, he gathered that Chev and the rector's daughter were engaged. And just as he would have liked Chev to meet Sally Berkeley, so he wanted to meet Miss Sybil Gaylord.He had little hope of having a tete-a-tete with her, but as it fell out he did. They were all in the rectory garden together, Gerald and the rector a little behind Miss Gaylord and himself, as they strolled down a long walk with high hedges bordering it. On the other side of the hedge Lady Sherwood and her hostess still sat at the tea-table, and then it was that Cary heard Mrs. Gaylord say distinctly: "I'm afraid the strain has been too much for you -- you should have let us have him."To which Lady Sherwood returned quickly, "Oh, no, that would have been impossible with --""Come -- come this way -- I must show you the view from the arbour," Miss Gaylord broke in breathlessly; and laying a hand on his arm, she turned him abruptly into a side path.Glancing down at her, the Southerner could not but note the panic and distress in her fair face. It was so obvious that the overheard words referred to him, and he was so bewildered by the whole situation, that he burst out impulsively, "I say, what isthe matter with me? Why do they find me so hard to put up with? Is it something I do -- or don't they like Americans? Honestly, I wish you'd tell me."She stood still at that, looking at him, her blue eyes full of distress and concern."Oh, I am so sorry!" she cried. "They would be so sorry to have you think anything like that.""But what is it?" he persisted. "Don't they like Americans?""Oh, no, it isn't that -- Oh, quite the contrary!" she returned, eagerly."Then it's something about me they don't like?""Oh, no, no! Least of all, that -- don't think that!" she begged."But what am I to think then?""Don't think anything just yet," she pleaded. "Wait a little, and you will understand."

She was so evidently distressed that he could not press her further, and fearing she might think him unappreciative, he said, "Well, whatever it is, it hasn't prevented me from having a ripping good time. They've seen to that, and just done everything for my pleasure."She looked up quickly, and to his relief he saw that for once he had said the right thing."You have enjoyed it, then?" she questioned, eagerly."Most awfully," he assured her, warmly. "I shall always remember what a happy leave they gave me."She gave a little sigh of satisfaction. "I am so glad," she said. "They wanted you to have a good time -- that was what we all wanted."He looked at her gratefully, thinking how sweet she was in her fair English beauty, and how good to care that he should have enjoyed his leave. How different she was, too, from Sally Berkeley -- why, she would have made two of his little girl! And how quiet! Sally Berkeley, with her quick, glancing vivacity, would have been all around her and off again like a humming-bird before she could have uttered two words. And yet he was sure that they would have been friends, just as he and Chev were. Perhaps they all would be, after the war. And then he began to talk about Chev, being sure that, had the circumstances been reversed, Sally Berkeley would have wanted news of him. Instantly he was aware of a tense listening stillness on her part. That pleased him. Well, she did care for the old fellow all right, he thought; and though she made no response, averting her face, and plucking nervously at the leaves of the hedge as they passed slowly along, he went on pouring out his eager admiration for his friend.At last they came to a seat in an arbour from which one looked out upon a green, beneficent landscape. It was an intimate, secluded little spot -- and oh, if Sally Berkeley were only there to sit beside him! And as he thought of this, it came to him whimsically that in all probability Miss Gaylord must be longing for Chev, just as he was for Sally.Dropping down on the bench beside her, he leaned over, and said with a friendly, almost brotherly, grin of understanding, "I reckon you're wishing Captain Sherwood was sitting here instead of Lieutenant Cary."The minute the impulsive words were out of his mouth he knew he had blundered, been awkward, and inexcusably intimate. She gave a little choked gasp, and her blue eyes stared up at him, wide and startled. Good heavens, what a break he had made! No wonder the Sherwoods couldn't trust him in company! There seemed no apology that he could offer in words, but at least, he thought, he would show her that he would not have intruded on her secret without being willing to share his with her. With awkward haste he put his hand into his breadt-pocket and dragged forth the picture of Sally Berkeley that he always carried there."This is the little girl I'm thinking about," he said, turning very red, yet boyishly determined to make amends, and also proudly confident of Sally Berkeley's charms. "I'd like mighty well for you two to know one another."

She took the picture in silence, and for a long moment stared down at the soft little face, so fearless, so confident and gay, that smiled appealingly back at her. Then she did something astonishing, something which seemed to him wholly un-English, and yet he thought it the sweetest thing he had ever seen. Cupping her strong hands about the picture with a quick protectiveness, she suddenly raised it to her lips, and kissed it lightly. "Oh, little girl!" she cried, "I hope you will be very happy!"The little involuntary act, so tender, so siterly and spontaneous, touched the Virginian extremely."Thanks, awfully," he said, unsteadily. "She'll think a lot of that, just as I do -- and I know she'd wish you the same."She made no reply to that, and as she handed the picture back to him he saw that her hands were trembling, and he had a sudden conviction that, if she had been Sally Berkeley, her eyes would have been full of tears. As she was Sybil Gaylord, however, there were no tears there, only a look that he never forgot. The look of one much older, protective, maternal almost, and as if she were gazing back at Sally Berkeley and himself from a long way ahead on the road of life. He supposed it was the way most English people felt nowadays. He had surprised it so often on all their faces that he could not help speaking of it."You all think we Americans are awfully young and raw, don't you?" he questioned."Oh, no, not that," she deprecated. "Young perhaps for these days, yes -- but it is more that you -- that your country is so -- so unsuffered. And we don't want you to suffer!" she added, quickly.Yes, that was it! He understood now, and, heavens, how fine it was! Old England was wounded deep -- deep. What she suffered herself she was too proud to show; but out of it she wrought a great maternal care for the newcomer. Yes, it was fine -- he hoped his country would understand.Miss Gaylord rose. "There are Gerald and father looking for you," she said, "and I must go now." She held out her hand. "Thank you for letting me see her picture, and for everything you said about Captain Sherwood -- for everything, remember -- I want you to remember."With a light pressure of her fingers she was gone, slipping away through the shrubbery, and he did not see her again.

                           IV
So he came to his last morning at Bishopscombe; and as he dressed, he wished it could have been different; that he were not still conscious of that baffling wall of reserve between himself and Chev's people, for whom, despite all, he had come to have a real affection.In the breakfast room he found them all assembled, and his last meal there seemed to him as constrained and difficult as any that had preceded it. It was over finally, however, and in a few minutes he would be leaving."I can never thank you enough for the splendid time I've had here," he said as he rose. "I'll be seeing Chev to-morrow, and I'll tell him all about everything."

Then he stopped dead. With a smothered exclamation old Sir Charles had stumbled to his feet, knocking over his chair, and hurried blindly out of the room; and Gerald said, "Mother!"in a choked appeal.As if it were a signal between them, Lady Sherwood pushed her chair back a little from the table, her long, delicate fingers dropped together loosely in her lap; she gave a faint sigh as if a restraining mantle slipped from her shoulders, and looking up at the youth before her, her fine pale face lighted with a kind of glory, she said, "No, dear lad, no. You can never tell Chev, for he is gone.""Gone!" he cried."Yes," she nodded back at him, just above a whisper; and now her face quivered, and the tears began to rush down her cheeks."Not dead!" he cried. "Not Chev -- not that! O my God, Gerald, not that!""Yes," Gerald said. "They got him two days after you left."It was so overwhelming, so unexpected and shocking, above all so terrible, that the friend he had so greatly loved and admired was gone out of his life forever, that young Cary stumbled back into his seat, and crumpling over, buried his face in his hands, making great uncouth gasps as he strove to choke back his grief.Gerald groped hastily around the table and flung an arm about his shoulders."Steady on, dear fellow, steady," he said, though his own voice broke."When did you hear?" Cary got out at last."We got the official notice just the day before you came -- and Withers has written us particulars since.""And you let me come in spite of it! And stay on, when every word I said about him must have -- have fairly crucified each one of you! Oh, forgive me! Forgive me!" he cried, distractedly. He saw it all now; he understood at last. It was not on Gerald's account that they could not talk of flying and of Chev, it was because -- because their hearts were broken over Chev himself. "Oh, forgive me!" he gasped again."Dear lad, there is nothing to forgive," Lady Sherwood returned. "How could we help loving your generous praise of our poor darling? We loved it, and you for it; we wanted to hear it, but we were afraid. We were afraid we might break down, and that you would find out."The tears were still running down her cheeks. She did not brush them away now; she seemed glad to have them there at last.Sinking down on his knees, he caught her hands. "Why did you let me do such a horrible thing?" he cried. "Couldn't you have trusted me to understand? Couldn't you see I loved him just as you did -- No, no!" he broke down, humbly. "Of course I couldn't love him as his own people did. But you must have seen how I felt about him -- how I admired him, and would have followed him anywhere -- and of course if I had known, I should have gone away at once."

"Ah, but that was just what we were afraid of," she said, quickly. "We were afraid you would go away and have a lonely leave somewhere. And in these days a boy's leave is so precious a thing that nothing must spoil it -- nothing," she reiterated; and her tears fell upon his hands like a benediction. "But we didn't do it very well, I'm afraid," she went on, presently, with gentle contrition. "You were too quick and understanding: you guessed there was something wrong. We were sorry not to mannage better," she apologized."Oh, you wonderful, wonderful people!" he gasped. "Doing everything for my happiness, when all the time -- all the time--"His voice went out sharply, as his mind flashed back to scene after scene: to Gerald's long body lying quivering on the grass; to Sybil Gaylord wishing Sally Berkeley happiness out of her own tragedy; and to the high look on Lady Sherwood's face. They seemed to him themselves, and yet more than themselves -- shinking bits in the mosaic of a great nation. Disjointedly there passed through his mind familiar words -- "these are they who have washed their garments -- having come out of great tribulation." No wonder they seemed older."We -- we couldn't have done it in America," he said, humbly.He had a desperate desire to get away to himself; to hide his face in his arms, and give vent to the tears that were stifling him; to weep for his lost friend, and for this great, heart-breaking heroism of theirs."But why did you do it?" he persisted. "Was it because I was his friend?""Oh, it was much more than that," Gerald said, quickly. "It was a matter of the two countries. Of course, we jolly well knew you didn't belong to us, and didn't want to, but for the life of us we couldn't help a sort of feeling that you did. And when America was in at last, and you fellows began to come, you seemed like our very own come back after many years, and" he added, a throb in his voice, "we were most awfully glad to see you -- we wanted a chance to show you how England felt."Skipworth Cary rose to his feet. The tears for his friend were still wet upon his lashes. Stooping, he took Lady Sherwood's hands in his and raised them to his lips. "As long as I live I shall never forget," he said. "And others of us have seen it, too, in other ways -- be sure America will never forget, either."She looked up at his untouched youth out of her beautiful sad eyes, the exalted light still shining through her tears. "Yes," she said, "you see it was -- I don't know exactly how to put it -- but it was England to America."
                         THE END

A Korean War story

The Mathew Caruso Memorial Chapel being refurbished at Camp Pendleton    After growing up in New York and working for 20 years in New Jersey,
who knew I would one day be living in New Britain, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford?
   I certainly didn't know that when the Rev. Connell J. Maguire called and said he was a friend of Kay Brainard Hutchins, who told him I might advise him on how to get a book he wrote published.
   Kay was a member of what was then the Kassel Mission Memorial Association, and is now the Kassel Mission Historical Society. Her brother, Newell Brainard, a co-pilot on the ill-fated Kassel Mission of Sept. 27, 1944, survived the initial battle but was murdered on the ground. Kay herself was a Red Cross girl during the war. I interviewed her in 1999.
   Kay and Father Joe, who was retired from the Navy after 32 years as a chaplain, during which time he served in Vietnam, were in a writing workshop together. Before he became a priest, Joe had aspirations of becoming a playwright -- the playwright Brian Friel, who wrote "Dancing at Lughnasa," hailed from the same small town of Glenties in Ireland that Joe was from -- but the members of the group were so enchanted by the vignettes he would read that they encouraged him to write more so-called "shorts."
   Before Father Joe passed away last year at the age of 94, I published three of his books. In the second, he related a story from his time in chaplain school.

Father McMillan taught us in Chaplain School in 1952. He was a buddy of Father Connie Griffin, and recounted for us this story about his friend.

Chaplain Griffin was with the Marines in the Korean War. His clerk was a young enlisted Marine, probably of Corporal rank, named Caruso. Father Griffin learned that his battalion was going up to the front. He also knew that Caruso’s wife was expecting back home. He had Caruso transferred from his staff so that Caruso would stay behind. Before the Battalion moved up, he ran into Caruso, who broke down and cried because, as he saw it, Father Griffin had fired him. So the chaplain relented and they moved up together.
Chinese “volunteers” had entered the fray and Marine casualties were heavy. They were pounded by artillery day and night. During a bombardment, Caruso touched the container of Holy Communion Griffin carried and said, “He is with us.”
They were not there long when one day Caruso saw an enemy set up a machine gun close by. “Father look out!” he shouted. He shielded Father Griffin with his body. Immediately, he was stitched with machine gun holes across his body, dead on the spot. Father Griffin’s jaw was shot off.
After Father Griffin returned to the U.S. he heard that the Caruso baby was born. I do not know whether he was physically or emotionally blocked from going to baptize the child, but Caruso’s wife brought the child to him because that was what her husband would have wanted

   I do not know whether the Caruso baby was a boy or a girl. He or she should be over 50 now, somewhere in New England if the grown child stayed near his parents' neighborhood. This I do know. People coddled and cuddled in luxurious living, selfishly indulging in sexual infidelity, claim the title of nobility. Their claim pales before the lineage of that Caruso child, offspring of a truly noble father.
 
- - -
   I put this story up on my now defunct Chi Chi Press web site. One day Father Joe received an email from Larry Caruso, a nephew of Mathew Caruso, the chaplain's assistant. Larry said Matt's brother lived in Hartford. Larry said he'd never met his cousin, Daniel Caruso, who lives in California.
   Later this week I'm having lunch with John Caruso, who was Mathew Caruso's brother, and still lives near Hartford.
   Today President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier who braved a "blizzard of bullets" to save wounded comrades in Afghanistan. Mathew Caruso, who was 20 years old, was awarded the Silver Star posthumously for throwing himself on top of Father Connie Griffin, who was administering the last rites to a dying Marine in a clearly marked ambulance at the Chosin Reservoir.
   Father Griffin apparently lobbied to get the Medal of Honor for Matt Caruso, but somewhere along the line the cause was dropped. I hope it will be pursued again. At any rate, I hope to have more of this story soon. Caruso's Silver Star citation follows:

The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Silver Star (Posthumously) to Sergeant Mathew Caruso (MCSN: 661958), United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity while serving as assistant to the Chaplain of the Seventh Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces in Korea on 6 December 1950. When the convoy in which he was traveling with the Chaplain was ambushed by a large hostile force employing intense and accurate automatic weapons and small arms fire, Sergeant Caruso quickly pushed his companion to the floor of the ambulance and shielded him from the enemy with his own body. Mortally wounded while protecting the Chaplain, Sergeant Caruso by his outstanding courage, self-sacrificing actions and daring initiative served to inspire all who observed him and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country. Born: Tarrytown, New York. Home Town: Hartford, Connecticut. Death: KIA: December 6, 1950.

- - - 


 
 
 

Semper Four: An Oral History

 

  Today I published a collection of four interviews with Marine Corps veterans as an ebook, available for Kindle only. Audio of the interviews is available in my eBay store. A print version of the book will be available soon. This is the introduction and a portion of the first interview.

Introduction This is neither a comprehensive picture of the Marines in World War II nor even a portrait of one particular battle. My father served in a tank battalion in the European Theater of Operations. In 1994 I self-published  a collection of stories told to me by veterans of his battalion. I turned to the still-young Internet to promote the book, and in 1997 I launched the World War II Oral History Web Site @ tankbooks.com.Because it was rich in World War II “content,” my web site took on a life of its own. The son of a 1st Infantry Division veteran asked if I’d like to interview his father, who was in the first wave on Omaha Beach. Lyn Barenbrugge sent me some stories she’d helped her father-in-law, a veteran of the 10th Armored Division, put down on paper. Margie Hoffman contributed some stories about her childhood in England during the Blitz.In 1992 I met Bob Levine, a former prisoner of war, who encouraged me to interview American ex-POWs. Then in 1994, with the 50th anniversary of D-Day approaching, I interviewed several local D-Day veterans. And in 1999, while on a trip to Germany to visit the town where a buddy of my father was killed, I met the German historian Walter Hassenpflug, who got me interested in the Kassel Mission, a tragic air battle.Being just one person with a full time job on the side, I chose to focus on these four areas: my father’s tank battalion, former prisoners of war, D-Day veterans, and survivors of the Kassel Mission.Every so often I would get an email saying, in effect, “Where are the Marines?” “What about the Pacific?”Then I got lucky. In 1998 Kurt Pfaff, director of the Eldred, Pa., World War II Museum, invited me out to interview local veterans on Memorial Day. There I met my first two Marines – Jerome Auman, who served as an MP in Samoa and later witnessed one of World War II’s iconic moments, when, “by the grace of God and a few Marines, MacArthur returned to the Philippines”; and Bill Scheiterle, who was a lieutenant during the invasion of Peleliu.In 2002, at a Memorial Day barbecue, I met Nick Paciullo, a neighbor. Nick was a veteran of the 4th Marine Division and was wounded twice on Iwo Jima. And in 2007, I received an email from Diann Hamant asking how she could find somebody to interview her father, who’d spent a year on the island of Tinian and saw the Enola Gay before it took off on its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I asked Diann where her father lived and she said Cincinnati. The 712th Tank Battalion was having its annual reunion in Cincinnati that year, so I suggested that Diann bring her father by the hotel and I’d be happy to interview him. She did, and I had my fourth Marine.There are far more comprehensive books about what it was like to be a Marine in World War II. But I will say one thing: Each of the four Marines in this book has a remarkable story to tell.
Nick Paciullo
4th Marine Division
Iwo Jima
Hackensack, N.J., Sept. 4, 2002
 Aaron Elson: Did you grow up in New Jersey?
Nick Paciullo: No, on Long Island. Queens.
Aaron Elson: Was your father an immigrant?
Nick Paciullo: Yes. He came to this country when he was nine years old. And my mother was born practically here.
Gladys Paciullo: On the way over?
Nick Paciullo: Yes.
Aaron Elson: Really? She was born on the ship?
Nick Paciullo: Yeah. Isn’t that something?
Aaron Elson: So she met your father over here, naturally.
Nick Paciullo: Yes, and what went between them, that I can’t tell you. I wasn’t born yet.
Aaron Elson: Did you have brothers and sisters?
Nick Paciullo: Yes. I had one brother and three sisters. Actually, 11, my mother had miscarriages in between. My sister Rose is a twin, but she died at childbirth.
Aaron Elson: You had a twin who died at childbirth?
Nick Paciullo: Yes. We didn’t know about it. We were all too young. We heard about this later on.
Aaron Elson: What did you feel when you heard about it?
Nick Paciullo: It felt funny. It was brought up like in a conversation. And we didn’t even realize it. But those days, I guess it wasn’t an outspoken thing, they kept everything to themselves. And I had a pretty good life with my father. I worked with him.
Aaron Elson: What did he do?
Nick Paciullo: He was an ice and coal man. He had his own business for many years, and I woke up the horse in the morning. While my father was having his breakfast I used to have breakfast with my horse and his name was Nickie, the same as mine. And then I used to get all the stuff ready, polish the reins and all that because everything had to be nice and clean. Then I came home and he went back to work. I went to school, and he did his route and came back and he had lunch ready for us.
Aaron Elson: Where did you go to school?
Nick Paciullo: PS 155 in South Ozone Park.
Aaron Elson: And high school?
Nick Paciullo: John Adams. I was there four years but I did not graduate. I joined the service instead of graduating. I was only 17 years old when I enlisted.
Aaron Elson: You were only 17?
Nick Paciullo: Nineteen forty-two.
Aaron Elson: Did you have to lie about your age?
Nick Paciullo: No. I fought with my mother because I wanted to join when I was 16. There was a man that lived like the next block but behind us, he was a sergeant in the Marine Corps. And, you know, talking to a Marine and I loved the Marines, and I wanted to join the Marines.
He says, “You join the Marines, and I will fix it up, after boot training you’ll spend the rest of the war at 90 Broadway.”
I says, “Are you kidding? I don’t want that. I want to go overseas and fight the Japanese.”
And that was the beginning of it. Then I went to boot training. I joined in ’42 but they didn’t take me in until January of ’43.
Aaron Elson: When did you turn 18?
Nick Paciullo: April the 13th the following year, in 1943.
Aaron Elson: So you went to boot camp in January of ’43?
Nick Paciullo: Right. And graduated there and I was attached to the 3rd Marine Division. One day in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, “Line up!”
We all lined up.
“Split in half. This side and this side, every other man.” This was the 3rd Marine Division, and we started the 4th Marine Division, and I grew up with the 4thMarine Division.
Aaron Elson: So you were in from the very beginning of the 4th Division?
Nick Paciullo: Yes, I’m the original.
Aaron Elson: And what was your rank?
Nick Paciullo: I was a private, Pfc, corporal, private, Pfc, corporal ... I was a little bad in the service. I was with two gentlemen – two Marines I should say – from Chicago, Pudlow and McDowell. They were two crazy guys and I joined them too. They were in my squad, and we had a lot of fun. We were always in trouble. But we got away with it.
Aaron Elson: Now you and Nat [Nat Rubin, a veteran of the Merchant Marine], were reminiscing about Swabbies and the Shore Patrol. Is that who you got into trouble with?
Nick Paciullo: Yeah, a little bit in San Diego.
Aaron Elson: Tell me what kind of trouble you would get into, if you can with your wife here.
Nick Paciullo: No, it wasn’t dirty or anything else like that. I’ll give you an incident, what happened one night. The three of us – in fact, there were about five or six of us, walking, and we see this big door open. A big office. We walked in. We’re talking the pencils, and I took a chair with rollers on it, and I put one of the guys on the chair and we were rolling him around in San Diego. All of a sudden I’m pushing and I can’t go nowhere. They had my duty belt. It was an MP Marine, oh God, where’d these guys get this stuff? And we had a court martial. And we got away with it, because we didn’t rob anything, all we took was pencils and that one chair, and we were having a good time.
The following week, we went from Camp Lejeune to California. And then just before we get to California, they were having the zoot suiters terrorizing in California.
Aaron Elson: Zoot suiters?
Nick Paciullo: Yes, the Mexicans, that’s what they were called.
Aaron Elson: Terrorizing?
Nick Paciullo: Yes. And when we got to California in what, Union Station, is that in California? “Everybody put on duty belts, rifles and bayonets.”
What the hell is going on?
At the time we didn’t know what was going on, and we were ready to clean out the streets. And then something must have happened, and instead of fighting the Mexicans they took us to Camp Pendleton.
Aaron Elson: There were riots?
Nick Paciullo: Rioting, and they were doing a lot of crazy things. Zoot suiters. And then Camp Pendleton, and we spent a couple of months there. And in ’43, we hit the Marshall Islands. The first time a fresh Marine division ever hit an island from the States to the enemy.
Aaron Elson: What were your thoughts crossing the ocean?
Nick Paciullo: I didn’t have much thought. I didn’t think of getting killed, shot or anything. We all talked and had a good time, we didn’t say “You’re gonna die” or anything like that.  ... (thumbing through a book on the 4thMarine Division) ... this is my buddy.
Aaron Elson: Richard D. Anderson?
Nick Paciullo: Yeah. That story.
Aaron Elson: (reading) “... gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 4thMarine Division during action against enemy Japanese forces on Roi Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Mariana Islands, Feb. 1, 1944. Entering a shell crater occupied by three other Marines, Private First Class Anderson” – were you one of the Marines?
Nick Paciullo: Yes.
Aaron Elson: “...Private First Class Anderson was preparing to throw a grenade at an enemy position and it slipped from his hands and rolled toward the men at the bottom of the hole. With insufficient time to retrieve the armed weapon and throw it Private First Class Anderson fearlessly chose to sacrifice himself and save his companions by hurling his body upon the grenade and taking the full impact of the explosion. His personal valor and exceptional spirit of loyalty in the face of almost certain death were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”
Nick Paciullo: By the way, our last reunion, a couple of buddies of mine, they live in Washington State, Anderson lived in Washington State, and he was buried at Kwajalein. And they took his body and brought it back to Washington State where his family is.
Aaron Elson: Was he in your platoon?
Nick Paciullo: My squad, yes. And he was the fourth guy that we used to go out with. Very nice guy. Pudlow was killed on Iwo, and McDowell lost his leg on Saipan. I almost lost my eye on Kwajalein, right after that. --- Order "Semper Four: An Oral History" for Kindle    

A juxtaposition of events

   A few weeks ago through Facebook Cleo Coleman's granddaughter asked if I had the interview I did with Cleo and her uncle Doug on CD, as she would love to hear Cleo's voice again (he passed away in 2006). I searched my computer, and even picked it up, turned it over and shook it a few times, but no audio fell out. Since I did the interview in 1996 and used a transcript for my third book, "A Mile in Their Shoes," I figured the audio is on the hard drive that I rescued from my old computer. Unfortunately, that hard drive is more corrupted than Whitey Bulger and his FBI handlers put together.
   Not one to be easily deterred, I promised Cleo's granddaughter I would re-digitize the original tape, which usually means searching through about 30 cases of 15 cassettes and cursing my lack of organizational ability, except I knew Cleo was in B Company and because I only interviewed a handful of B Company veterans from the 712th, I'd put them all in one case, unlike my A and C Company interviews, which are scattered throughout the three bookshelves which call themselves my archive.
   Around the same time, as I attempt to increase my presence in the Amazon on-demand and Kindle catalogues, I began transcribing one of the four interviews I did with Marine veterans of World War II. Two of the four were already transcribed, and I figured if I transcribed the other two and carefully edited all four, I could put them together in a book and call it "Semper Four."
   And then an odd thing happened. In listening to my interview with Cleo -- in addition to the interview with Cleo and his son I also re-digitized a kind of informal 1994 interview I did with Cleo poolside at the Drawbridge Estates Inn in Fort Mitchell, Ky. -- I heard a passage that was, on an emotional level, eerily similar to an incident described by Bob Hamant that took place on the other side of the world, and which, I daresay, was repeated countless times in countless variations throughout the Second World War.
   Cleo was describing the death of Stanley Muhich, a sergeant in his platoon. Muhich had a bit of a short temper, and this was toward the end of the war, during the battle for Mainz, so it was probably in March of 1945. A round jammed in the barrel of the tank's 75-millimeter cannon, and the only way to free it was to stand in front of the tank and push a long wooden pole with a bell shaped thing called a rammer staff down the barrel. Instead of maneuvering the tank into a relatively safe area, like behind a building or beside a copse of woods, Sergeant Muhich jumped out of the tank, began the process of freeing the round, and was killed by a sniper.
   Sometime that evening, an infantryman marched two young Germans, one of whom may have been the sniper, past the tank. A fellow tanker who'd been a buddy of Muhich's since their days in the horse cavalry in 1941, through three years of training and almost a year of combat, took the two prisoners and shot them both. Coleman recalled that after doing this, the tanker was visibly shaken and his face was white as a sheet.
   Cleo named the tanker who did this but I won't disclose it here, as it's not something the person's descendants should maybe ought to find if they google his name.
   At about the same time as I was digitizing the Coleman interviews, I was transcribing the audio of my interview with Bob Hamant, conducted in 2000 in Cincinnati. Bob was a Marine on the island of Tinian, and I made that interview into a separate two-CD audiobook simply titled "A Marine on Tinian," and then included it in the four-interview audiobook called "Four Marines," the name of which I'm also going to change to "Semper Four."
   Early in the interview, Bob described witnessing the famous "Marianas Turkey Shoot" from on board ship off Saipan. He witnessed an incident close to his ship in which a Japanese plane shot down an American P-38, and the pilot bailed out. As he helplessly headed toward the sea, the Japanese pilot came down to his level and machine gunned him to death in his parachute. Then "about 15" American fighter planes converged on the one Japanese fighter, shot it down, and multiple times raked the sea with their machine guns.
   One of these events occurred in the European Theater of Operations, one in the Pacific, and yet it seemed as if there was a purpose in my processing them at about the same time, as if it were a hint that I should make a blog entry out of them. And so I did!

Dog stories

 "I had a dog on the island..."
-- Bob Hamant, from "A Marine on Tinian" From left, Dr. William McConahey, Jim Flowers, and
Claude Lovett. Lovett rescued Flowers in Normandy,
and Dr. McConahey treated him in a field hospital.     I met Lt. Jim Flowers, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism in Normandy, at the very first reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served, in 1987. A few years later, after interviewing Flowers at length as well as several survivors of his platoon, I wrote "They Were All Young Kids."   At the 1992 reunion of the 90th Infantry Division -- Flowers rarely missed a reunion of the "Tough Ombres" because he believed it was the division, rather than his own battalion, that recommended him for the Medal of Honor, which was then reduced to the DSC, the nation's second highest military honor -- I met both Claude Lovett, the infantry lieutenant who rescued Flowers, and Dr. William McConahey, a battalion surgeon in the 90th.   McConahey wrote a memoir shortly after the war, while the events were fresh in his mind, titled "Battalion Surgeon." In his chapter about Normandy he described meeting Flowers. He also told a dog story. Following is an excerpt from his book: 

Reprinted with permission  from “Battalion Surgeon,” privately published, copyright 1966, by William M. McConahey.

   "During these battles I treated hundreds of wounded soldiers and I saw many incredible things. Here I might mention three of the cases that stand out in my mind.   "The first concerned a young tank officer, a second lieutenant. When his tank had been knocked out by an 88 during the fighting for Hill 122, one of his feet had been virtually torn off. He had pulled himself out of his disabled tank, and a passing aid man had stopped the bleeding and bandaged the wound. Then an enemy counterattack threw back the Americans, so for two days the wounded man lay out there in No Man’s Land. During the seesaw fighting back and forth many shells fell near him, and one large piece of steel shattered his other foot. The young fellow pulled off his belt and applied a tourniquet to the leg.    "Later, when one of my litter squads found him and brought him in and I heard the story, I expected to see a moribund patient, but such was not the case. He was calm, cheerful and not in shock. In fact, he was in excellent general condition, although both feet hung in tatters and would have to be amputated.   "When I remarked to him that he was in surprisingly good condition, he smiled and said, 'Well, Doc, I just had the will to live!'   "In the second case a 19-year-old boy was wounded on patrol one night. He was the leading scout of a small patrol which ran into some heavy enemy machine-gun fire, and he fell with a compound fracture of the femur (thigh bone). He knew no one could find him in the darkness, so he crawled a half-mile back to his own lines. Don’t ask me how he crawled on a broken femur, but he did, and he was not in shock when he arrived at the aid station some time later. He said he needed no morphine, but I gave him some before I splinted his leg.   “'Is the chaplain here?' he asked.  "Then, as Captain Ralph Glenn, the Protestant chaplain with our battalion, stepped forward, the boy said, 'Chaplain, I know that God spared my life out there tonight. Won’t you please read from the Bible to me?'   "So, as I worked, Chaplain Glenn read to the lad.   "The third is a dog story. One evening a soldier was shot in the shoulder, so he started to walk back to the rear to the aid station, but he became lost in the darkness. Finally he crawled into an abandoned foxhole to wait for morning. A short time later he heard a noise and was ready to shoot, when he saw that the noise was made by a little dog. The friendly mongrel jumped into the foxhole and curled up beside the boy, where he stayed all night long.   "The next morning, after daylight, the soldier started off again in what he thought was the right direction, but the little dog tugged at his legs and made quite a scene, apparently trying to get the boy to go in the opposite direction. This the boy finally did. As it turned out, the dog led him back to the American lines. Had he kept on in the direction he had selected, he would have walked into the German lines, to death or some wretched prison camp.   "After we had dressed the soldier’s wounded shoulder and laid him on a stretcher, the little dog jumped up on the boy’s abdomen, lay down and would not leave. Since the soldier had formed a strong attachment for his benefactor and did not want to leave him, we loaded the stretcher – soldier, dog and all – into the ambulance and sent them on their way to the hospital." - - -    I received an email from Diane Hamant in 2000 asking how she could find someone to interview her father, who served in the Marines in World War II. Bob Hamant lived in Cincinnati (still does), and the 712th Tank Battalion was having its annual reunion in Cincinnati, so I suggested that she bring him by the hotel, and I'd interview him.   That interview became my audiobook "A Marine on Tinian," and here 13 years later I'm just getting around to transcribing the interview.   In Iraq and Afghanistan, and also in World War II and subsequent wars, dogs saved a lot of lives. Most of these were highly trained guard dogs or bomb sniffing dogs. The dog in Dr. McConahey's story was just an ordinary pooch, but it saved a soldier's life, as did the ordinary dog in Bob Hamant's story, which follows: Bob Hamant: I had a dog on the island. She was just great. One of the Jap dogs had pups and I got one of them. She hated Japs. She just hated them. A buddy of mine's up doing guard duty, and he's up in one of the gun pits up there for a .50 caliber was stuck way up in the air, so if they opened up with them they'd be over the top of the camp. And he had the dog with him. And he said he's sitting up there, it was pretty calm, we had no trouble whatsoever for a long while. And he said "I was about half asleep," he says, "petting the dog. All of a sudden the dog jumped up and started growling and I turned around," he said, "there was a Jap standing there." He had climbed that thing. He said, "When I stood up, he took off," went down that thing, he says "I didn't even, my gun's laying over on the side," he's just relaxed, but if it wouldn't have been for that the Jap easily could have killed him, so he says "Your dog saved my life."So I took the dog home with me. I smuggled her aboard ship. Then the captain found out that there’s dogs aboard ship. He says, “Everybody’s got a dog, bring him over to the port side of the ship.” Well, the sailors didn’t like this captain. They said, “Don’t take your dog over there. He’s got a corpsman over there, give him a shot, he’s gonna throw him over the side.”So I took my dog downstairs, they had a prison down there, so I asked one of the guys down there if he’d watch her because they’re not gonna look in there. I left her down there for a day. Then the sailors, I don’t think any dogs showed up, but he wanted them. So the sailors came around and they said the captain’s got a cat that he just adores. So they stood outside, they said “If the dogs go the cat goes, the dogs go the cat goes.” Then there were different orders. So we put her back in the back gun turret and there was a guard back there because there was a guard dog, so all the dogs had to stay back there, hell, they got better food than we did. But he didn’t want his cat to go, and he knew we’d get him.   I brought her back in to California, and got on the train and they had just issued us winter clothing, all we had was summer clothing, it’s Christmas time when we were coming home. So the conductor said, “Wait a minute, what have you got there?” Oh, hell. I turn around, the dog’s tail’s sticking up through the split in the back of the coat. He says, “Tuck that tail in.” So I tucked it in and went aboard. We got her home all right, with not too much more trouble. Aaron Elson: What kind of dog was it? 

 
  Bob Hamant: A little dog, black, and it had a funny tail, it went up and it looked like he had a flag on the end of its tail. And she turned out to be a real good dog, and we got her home and found out she was pregnant so she had pups. She had never seen women before, and she bit everybody except my mother and my girlfriend, which is now my wife. Didn’t bite either one of them but the rest of the women that came by, my aunts and all, they all got a bite on the leg, because it took a long time to get her used to women. Diane Hamant: Do you want to tell him about the MP on the train? Bob Hamant: Yes, some MPs came through, and everybody on this train is going home, they’re drinking. And most of the guys on the train are sailors. So they were all playing with the dog, and two MPs came by who thought they were somebody, and they said, “Where’s that dog now? He’s got to go off the train.” So one of the sailors ran up, he said “Take him up to the next car. Don’t worry about it. Just keep him in the next car.” So about ten or fifteen minutes later, why, he says, “Okay, you can come on back now.”   I said “What happened to the MPs?”   He said, “Oh, they decided to get off the train.” That’s what they said. They threw them off the train. Well, there was a word for it but I won’t put it on the record, but that’s what they called them anyway. They didn’t need to, the war’s over I mean, what the hell’s he’s still trying to be a GI. So they left, and I didn’t have any trouble whatsoever after that. That’s my dog story. - - -  Dear reader, Since I've voluntarily cut back to working part time so that I can catch up on digitizing and transcribing all the interviews I've done, as well as write new book and create new audiobooks, finances are a little tight, to say the least. If you like this blog and have read some of my books, which are very reasonably priced for Kindle, I hope you'll consider donating a small amount to my "Last Hurrah" crowdfunding campaign. The rewards are great, equivalent to what you might pay if you ordered one of my audiobooks through eBay or amazon. But even a $3 or $5 donation, a comment in the comment section, a share, a tweet, will help to increase the campaign's visibility and introduce my work to a wider audience. Sincerely, Aaron The Last Hurrah 

July 4: What Happens to Combat Veterans

Clarence Rosen, C Company, 712th Tank Battalion
   Today being July 4th, I thought it would be appropriate to post this written account by Clarence Rosen of Ogilvie, Minnesota. I never met Clarence, but Otha Martin, a tank commander from Macalester, Oklahoma, said he was one of the top gunners in the battalion. Rosen wrote this before he passed away in 1960. His sister, Viola Oelrich, sent this to me.   If you find that this and other entries in my blog, web site (tankbooks.com) and books help you understand World War II a little better, I hope you'll help support my work by making a small donation to my "Last Hurrah" crowd funding campaign. Most of the donations offer up a reward which makes the experience similar to buying an audiobook or book of mine on eBay or amazon, and even the smallest donation, comment, share or tweet from the campaign site helps to boost its visibility and thus introduce my work to a whole new audience. What Happens to Combat Veterans By Clarence Rosen
    Let’s say you were there! You are moving along cautiously, your eyes straining to detect movement that may indicate an enemy ambush.   You are the tank commander standing in the turret of an M4A4 American tank. The supporting infantry are walking close behind in cover of the tanks. You come to a curve or bend in the road, you caution your driver to slow, you direct your gunner to traverse the gun turret to cover the bend in the road, and there is your objective. A river, a bridge, not a shot fired and you are only two yards from completing your mission. You were briefed by your platoon commander, before starting, that reports from intelligence had it that over 100 Heinie fanatics were to fight to the finish to hold a village, named Susisce, in Czechoslovakia. You again order your driver to move but to   approach the bridge cautiously. You spot movement through your binoculars, and as you brace and prepare yourself for battle, to your surprise you discover that they are not Germans, but your allies, the Russians. After handshakes and comments and trying the hand sign language, you radio your commander that the mission is complete, and you learn that this is the last combat mission (in the ETO) you have to accomplish. The War is over. The hasty, bloody, smeary messy war is over after almost a year in combat.
   So you come home, the old familiar faces are there, but they are empty. There is no expression in them. They don’t know – they haven’t been there. They can never know nor can you ever tell them, because they can never understand.
   So you’re home – you try to pick up the threads but your hands are palsied, and your brain is numb. Somehow in spite of all your trying, the only real thing is noise and thunder and death and hell.
   It is quiet now – but soon your numbed mind has you outside into flame and crashing death, you drift back to the time on the Normandy beach, the day you were committed to battle, the terrible roar of enemy artillery shells exploding, the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire, the cries of dying soldiers, laying there with guts some with lungs blown out. The smell of dead Germans and Americans and cattle that were grazing about in line of the battle now dead and bloated. And the days you were spearheading when enemy antitank guns sent armor piercing steel through your armored tanks killing the crewmen, wounding the others and in an instant the whole machine burst into flames and you drag yourself out half dazed, then they open up on you at close range with machine guns and rifle fire. You dive head first into a ditch where they pin you down where you have to lay and hear the blood-chilling cries of your wounded buddy burning to death, whose cries are stopped when the ammunition magazine inside the tank blows and now mortar shells are bursting close, and the heat drives you back, in spite of the danger, but somehow you manage to get back to your own lines, to again in a few hours replace and reorganize another tank crew and back to resuming battle. There is no stopping. Numbed and dazed like walking in your sleep, you must keep going.
   Now you can thrust an arm into a flame and it comes back seared and blackened. Later come the scars. Contact with boiling water leaves tortured reddened flesh, blisters, and again scars.
   These things you can see and comprehend. You understand them because you have had some experiences with burns; therefore to you a burned person is an object of understanding and compassion.
   But have you ever been shot at even once in your life? Have you been shot at day after day, week after week, month after month for up to a year?
   Have you ever in your life, when driving past a cornfield such as in Iowa or throughout the corn belt, stopped and gazed in wonderment at long wide endless rows of corn? Or have you ever walked out on a high mountain bluff and stared down at the breathtaking depth below?
   While on a tour of duty in France, I learned from a source, the sepulcher of one of my buddies killed at my side in action, and as I was passing close by, I stopped to pay my last respects. As I entered and walked through the gate, there were large letterheads stating that no photography was to be permitted inside. This was a temporary military cemetery, and there, larger than any cornfield that I have ever seen, were row upon row, acre after acre, of white crosses, all in neat, well-kept mounds. As I searched for a certain section, I could not help in my bewilderment to snap photos nor had I up to this time fully realized all the supreme sacrifices that had been made in such a short time and that the cost of liberty and freedom can never be totaled in dollars and cents.

- - -

Return to Normandy

Dave and Boots Tolan in 1996   I received a phone call recently from a member of the Daughters of WW2, a Dallas-based organization that had sponsored a trip to Normandy for several World War II veterans, one of whom, David Tolan, was a member of the 712th Tank Battalion.   Upon their return, the Dallas affiliate of CBS recorded interviews with some of the veterans. Dave's interview can be seen by clicking the following link.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/video/9049073-profiles-of-courage-david-tolan/

   After the interview, the woman from the group told me, David came by and wanted to talk. The trip had revived many memories of events that happened almost 70 years before.
   At first I didn't recall David, as I heard his last name as Collins (must have been that Texas accent), but then when I realized it was Tolan, which I had misspelled as Toland, I remembered I'd met him at one reunion and possibly another. He attended the 1996 "mini-reunion" of the battalion in Bradenton, Fla., and I think he came back the following year.
   In 1996, when I learned he was a veteran of C Company, from whose members I'd heard many stories, I wanted to get his point of view on some of the incidents, so I conducted an all too brief interview with him.
   Following is an edited transcript of that interview, with some parenthetical names and remarks.

   Dave Tolan: I went to Paris in November [of 1944], I remember that. The reason I remember is because it was the first bath I’d had, I mean, Up Front with Mauldin, so if you can imagine, the Grand Hotel in Paris, and here come these guys that are covered with mud, and these old dirty bedrolls, and they put them down in front of the desk, and all these people were standing around, and very formal. The contrast must have really been something.

   So I go to my room, and my French wasn’t very good. Then I heard they had trouble getting coal. Well, I’m going to take a bath, that was the first thing, I’ve got my own bathtub. So I turn the water on, and I don’t know which is hot and which is cold, and the one I thought was hot was coming out cold, they don’t have any coal, I’ll take a cold bath. So I take the cold bath, and when I’m all through doing as my mother taught me, I’m cleaning out the tub, and I’m rinsing it with this cold water that all of a sudden turned hot. I fill up the tub again, and I take another bath.
   Aaron Elson: Who did you go into Paris with?
   Dave Tolan: There were only three of us from the 712th, and I didn’t know the others, they were from different companies. Then we joined some guys from the 90th Division. But Paris had only been liberated like three weeks. Does that tie in with November?
   Aaron Elson: What did you do to earn a trip to Paris?
   Dave Tolan: We drew straws. We were up all night putting connectors on the tank, Patton wanted those duck things on there, so that you would get better float, and we were up all night. When they finished, I guess C Company got an opportunity, and they said, we’ll draw straws to see who goes to Paris. And I won.
   Aaron Elson: Oh, the other guys must have been pissed.

   Dave Tolan: No they weren’t. You know, get me this and get me that. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I went to Paris, I never even saw the Eiffel Tower. I never got out of the first three blocks.

   Aaron Elson: One of them wasn’t George Bussell [from A Company], was he?
   Dave Tolan: Oh, I don’t know.
   Aaron Elson: He said he went into Paris with $500 on a three-day pass and came back with 50 cents.
   Dave Tolan: He had a better time than I did. Oh, I was just enjoying the relaxing.
   Aaron Elson: You went from July to November without a bath?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. When we first started, when clothes got dirtied you threw them away, and you got new. Boy, you know I used to think about all those coveralls I threw away, afterwards, “Boy, I wish I’d kept those.” There were times you’d wash just out of the helmet. We did everything in that helmet. We also made good coffee.
   Aaron Elson: How would you make coffee?
   Dave Tolan: Pour in the grounds, pour in the water, and you just put it over the fire. And just hang the helmet over the fire. It was when I came back from that that I was in [Sgt. Jack] Green’s tank. I wasn’t when I left, but when I came back. They were looters. Boy, you’d pull into a town and they were off looting.
   Aaron Elson: Was one of them named Aaron Brown?
   Dave Tolan: Yes, Aaron Brown, I remember him.
   Aaron Elson: Souvenir Brown was his nickname.
   Dave Tolan: Souvenir Brown, yeah, I can remember him. But they were bringing this stuff back, and I’d throw it off the other side, and nobody asked about where is this or that, they didn’t know what they were doing. It was ridiculous.
   Aaron Elson: What kind of stuff would they bring back?
   Dave Tolan: Oh, junk. I don’t know. Satchels of stuff. The town wasn’t even taken, these guys were out running around, looting.
   Aaron Elson: So that was in November that you came back from Paris?
   Dave Tolan: See, it all kind of comes together. I can’t even remember when, after Green we brought in this Lieutenant Monroe. They pulled us back for a couple of days, and he joined us. I was to be his gunner, and he comes up to me, he says, “Before we leave, you better check the gyro stabilizer.” And I said, “If you want to do that, you’d better go back to the beach at Normandy because that’s where we left it.”   “Oh,” he said.

   Aaron Elson: Monroe didn’t last long, did he?
   Dave Tolan: No. I was with them for a little while. I can’t remember why I left them, and that’s when I went to [Sgt. Max] Gibson’s platoon, with Young. Ewell Young. I know they tried to get him to come to a couple of reunions, and he wanted no part of it. The reunion was right in his hometown. Some guys, Thompson was the same way. He wanted no part of it.
   Aaron Elson: Gibson at that point was still a sergeant or he was a lieutenant?
   Dave Tolan: He was acting as a lieutenant, and somewhere in there they gave him a commission. He he was acting quite a while. But it was right after that that this Monroe, there was something wrong with the gun on one of the tanks or something, as I understand it, and he got out of the tank and went over to see what was the matter, and that’s when he got killed. And I thought, geez, I hope I didn’t do anything to that gun. Because I used to clean it out, every time we pulled back I would re-sight, re-clean, I’d find myself a twig about a thousand feet away and see if I could hit it with a three-inch shell. You know, you put the crosshairs on there, you set it right up with that thing. Then of course you fire and everybody would come running out, what was that? But then, I’m trying to think, the last part with Young. But those other battles, those are the ones that I get all mixed up.
   Aaron Elson: You were with them when they crossed the Saar River into Dillingen?
   Dave Tolan: Oh, yes. The tank in front of us was going across on a ferry, they wouldn’t build a bridge, so we had this ferry. And the water is racing down there and this tank in front of us gets on the ferry and he gets halfway across, and the darn boat conks out. And down the river goes the tank. Oh gosh. And they managed to get the boat started. We had ammunition all over the back deck of the tank, and so we’re next. I said, uh-oh. I’m coming up to that turret if we start going down the river. Well, anyway, we got across all right. That was part of the Siegfried Line there, and we backed up the tanks against this bank, and the guy says, “They can see you from over there,” because it’s night, now. “You’d better stay in the tank.” So we spent the whole night in the tank, and this shell came in and hit, it didn’t miss that ammunition by two feet. It went right into the bank, right behind the tank. Of course we’re all beat up, tired. “What was that?” But when you got up in the morning, there’s the hole, right there in the wall. We were just lucky they didn’t keep on that azimuth.   And we went down there, and [Sgt. Burl] Rudd had to go up into the line, he and another tank were up there. I don’t want any part of that.

   Aaron Elson: So at this point you’re in Rudd’s platoon?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah.
   Aaron Elson: Now was Jack Green in that platoon also?
   Dave Tolan: Jack, yeah, he had the No. 5.
   Aaron Elson: He had to destroy a tank there, didn’t he? Somebody said he accidentally put a can of water instead of a can of gas in the gas tank. But your platoon had to leave one tank behind when you went back across the river?
   Dave Tolan: They may have, I don’t remember.
   Aaron Elson: I think Jack Green stayed behind and destroyed it because they couldn’t get it to start.
   Dave Tolan: When we crossed the Rhine we only had eight tanks.
   Aaron Elson: That probably was when the two platoons combined [after a battle in Pfaffenheck, Germany, when two tanks were lost, with the end of the war in sight, the second and third platoons were merged into one. Each platoon would have had five tanks at full strength]?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah.
   Aaron Elson: That was yours and Snuffy’s [Lt. Francis “Snuffy” Fuller, who got his nickname, according to veteran Otha Martin, when a member of his platoon “done imbibed him some” and told Lt. Fuller, who was a bit older than most of the men in the platoon, that he “looked like Snuffy Smith in the comics”.]
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. Gibson and Snuffy, that was the night that they went down to the CP. He said the Germans came in and they hid upstairs, and he says, they’re lying in the room, and he said there’s a German over there in the doorway talking to another one, and they’re lying here on the floor, and then he says, and Snuffy started to fart. [A day after crossing the Rhine River, Lts. Fuller and Gibson found themselves in a building taken over by Germans, who took the 90th Division officers there prisoner. Fuller and Gibson hid out overnight in an attic room.]
   Aaron Elson: Gibson said that?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. Then he said, when they left the door, why then, they went up in the attic, they got up top of this water cooler and spent the night up on top of that water cooler, and in the morning, he said, the Germans were gone. That was kind of a wild night.
   Aaron Elson: Now, tell me about Putnam.
   Dave Tolan: Yeah, [Fred] Putnam. He’s the one that killed [Edwin Jarusz].
   Aaron Elson: Were you with them when that happened?
  Dave Tolan: Yeah, we had just joined them, and he was cleaning the gun ...
   Aaron Elson: It was a grease gun?
   Dave Tolan: Grease gun, and it, the end, all you had to do was just hit that thing into something, that bolt would come back and it would start firing. That killed more Americans than I think Germans, that grease gun.
   Paul Wanamacher [the Battalion Association president]: It was a very simplified weapon.
   Dave Tolan: Yes, it was.
   Aaron Elson: How would it misfire?
   Paul Wanamacher: All you’d do is have the door out. The door was the safety. You know what they look like? They’re about this long and have a tube. And on the top of it was a latch that was probably about that wide, and you just lifted it up. And when you lifted it up, it then allowed the bolt to go back and fire. When you closed it, there was a little protrusion on the inside of the latch which locked the bolt, and it couldn’t go back and forth, so it couldn’t fire. But if that latch was open and somebody hit the trigger, oh, that was it.
   Dave Tolan: That thing zzzips right out.
   Paul Wanamacher: And they were .45 slugs.
A World War 2 "grease gun"   Dave Tolan: It wasn’t as fast as a burp gun. I never heard of a burp gun hitting a guy once. If it hit you once it hit you 15 times.
   Paul Wanamacher: Yeah, that’s the Schmeisser.
   Aaron Elson: So you had just joined them in Normandy, and that’s when that happened?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. I didn’t even know the fellow that...
   Aaron Elson: His name was Jarusz. [Lt. James] Gifford said that he tried to calm the crew down, that they were very...
   Dave Tolan: Oh, they were very upset, everybody was, the whole outfit, the company was upset. But he’s the guy that when they moved [Sgt. William] Montoya from No. 2 behind [Lt. Leo] Hellman back to No. 5, because Hellman kept sending Rudd out and Rudd wanted a better tank to go with him, he didn’t want the weakest crew. So they moved us back there and they moved 5 up, and Putnam was sitting where I would have been sitting, and that shell went right through him. That’s when Tambaro got out, and he was just covered [with blood and flesh], I saw Tambaro running across that field and I said, “Tambaro’s been hit.” But it wasn’t him at all, it was Putnam [T-4 Ralph Tambaro was the driver, who would have been sitting next to Putnam in the tank].

   Aaron Elson: Who did you say that to?
   Dave Tolan: The guys, we were in our tank. Everybody, we were lined up, 1,2,3,4,5, right across the ridge there. That’s when Hellman jumped out and says “Fire at any range” and took off. And the next one was the one that got hit. We were up there, and we’re firing 400 yards straight down and we’re hitting that tank right where the turret meets the hull and that shell’s bouncing up in the air, that’s awful discouraging. I mean, you hit that thing square, and the shell just bounces up in the air. It’s time to take another tack on this. Go somewhere else.
   Aaron Elson: Was that the tank that hit...
   Dave Tolan: Oh, there were tanks all over. And then we got around, and I remember, we pulled around and started up this road, and I’m down inside, because I’m throwing these shells up, so I’m not seeing everything other than what I could see through the periscope...
   Aaron Elson: You were the loader at the time?
   Dave Tolan: No, I was the assistant driver at the time. I think McDonough was the loader, and Raymond Vuksich, he was the gunner, and Montoya was the tank commander. But I remember looking out, and they hit this one tank in the back, and it blew up. And I remember seeing this guy way, I mean up over the trees flying through the air, and landed way down there somewhere. Because I guess the suction right at the hatch when that thing blew, just like a rifle, shot him right out of there.
   Aaron Elson: This was an American tank?
   Dave Tolan: No, this was a German tank. We got one in the rear. We got another one down in the sponson where the tracks were. Then we got four halftracks full of infantry came over, and we got those. That’s just from our tank, I don’t know what the other guys got...
   Aaron Elson: When you say you got those, did the infantry get out, or were they still inside them when you...
   Dave Tolan: Oh, I don’t know. The 90th was all around, and they took care of all the...We just kill them, we don’t handle them. We knock ’em out, they handle them. I mean, what do we got ’em there for?
   Aaron Elson: Now, how did that night start? You were under the tank?
   Dave Tolan: I was under the tank, having my nice full night’s sleep that I earned.
   Aaron Elson: How did that work, with the guard duty?
   Dave Tolan: It depended where we stayed. Every night we thought it was pretty easy, why, one guy got to sleep all night, and the others were on four, off four. This was my night to sleep and we’re backing in this pine woods, with those nice pine branches down there, I’m gonna sleep like a baby. And that’s when these guys come through in the middle of the night.
   Paul Wanamacher: Where was this?
  Dave Tolan: This was that battle that he’s got outlined there.

   Paul Wanamacher: What, Mairy?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. He didn’t know that there was an airplane in there too, one of those observation airplanes came down and landed and they backed that thing in. Those two guys, they got in a jeep and took off. They left the airplane there.
   Aaron Elson: What was it that woke you up?
   Dave Tolan: I heard ’em, talk, they were spread out across the field.
   Aaron Elson: You heard them talking German?
   Dave Tolan: They weren’t talking English. That was my first clue, that there’s something wrong. They’re not coming to wake me up for guard.  
  Aaron Elson: So there you are sleeping under the tank, you heard them talking German. What did you do?
   Dave Tolan: When they backed the tank in, they bent these trees down, and I couldn’t get out the back. I had to go out the front. So these Germans were out in the front and I didn’t want to go out the front. I waited until they got by and then I slipped out the front. But my biggest worry was they were going to start this thing up, whether I was in it or not, they were gonna take off, and I’m underneath it. So I got out, I got in, the rest is history, I guess.
   Aaron Elson: So you got in the tank, and then did they start it up, or when did the firing break out?

   Dave Tolan: When they went through, that’s when we pulled out on this road and we ran into all the, we pulled up on this hill, that’s when all the other jazz went ...
   Aaron Elson: Now Putnam, was he a bow gunner?
   Dave Tolan: He was an assistant driver.
   Aaron Elson: Oh, he was an assistant driver [actually, the assistant driver was also called the bow gunner]. So he was in the same seat you would have been.
   Dave Tolan: We just happened to move the tanks a couple of days before. It wasn’t very long.
   Aaron Elson: And what were the circumstances of the switching of the tanks?
   Dave Tolan: That was, well, Hellman, every time they had a duty to run, they sent Rudd out. He wouldn’t take his part of the platoon, he’d send Rudd and some other tank. And Rudd says, “If I’m gonna do all the work, then I want a better tank to go with.” Montoya had a better tank, so they pulled him out. I don’t even remember, Tambaro would, because he was in that tank.
  Aaron Elson: What happened in the Falaise Gap? Was it in the Falaise Gap that Hellman left the tank?
   Dave Tolan: Well, everybody left that tank. That was when he left [Rex] Smallwood laying there in the ditch, he said he was dead, when he wasn’t dead. But we were in a tank right behind him, and  that tank got hit five times. Five times they hit that thing, and they split the barrel of that 75 right down. You couldn’t see that till the next morning when you came back, that tank was orange when we came back the next morning, it was that hot. That’s when we came back the next morning, and Smallwood was still alive in the ditch.
   Aaron Elson: [Don] Knapp said that he found Smallwood and he was still...
   Dave Tolan: Yeah, when he was still alive, he’d been there all night. If they had brought him back he would have lived.
   Aaron Elson: Smallwood was the driver? No, [T-4 Sidney] Henderson was the driver.
   Dave Tolan: Henderson was the driver. He’s the one we never found.
   Aaron Elson: And he was the driver of that tank, of Hellman’s tank?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah.
   Aaron Elson: And Smallwood was what?

   Dave Tolan: Smallwood was either a loader or assistant driver. He was not the gunner. But those guys all, boy, you just watched and the fire was up higher than the tree, and you see these guys jumping out of this tank...
   Aaron Elson: Did they jump out after the first hit?
   Dave Tolan: Oh, during. They just kept hitting that.
   Aaron Elson: What kind of gun was it that hit them, was it a tank?
   Dave Tolan: Couldn’t see. They were very clever, they put that little fire on one side of the woods and let the smoke blow across the road, and you went through that real carefully, and it cleared up. Then they had another one. They were behind the second one. On both sides of the road, I assume, from what we saw being hauled up down through the valley there that it was some sort of antitank, drawn gun, horses or jeeps or whatever. They sure had a lot of horses down in there. And they just pulled up in the front, you’d fire into that woods and it would blow up. And then the second day, it looked like the Oklahoma rush. I mean, they all started at once, right across the field, they took off. And we’re sitting there, we can’t fire fast enough. And the British of course on the other side. After we went through all that, I remember we finally went down in there and got over to the British, they said, “Where ya been, Yank?” I told them we’d been sitting on the beach for two months. “Where ya been, Yank?” I was at sea.
   Aaron Elson: This happened before or after the thing with Smallwood?
   Dave Tolan: After. That was the whole deal, we were coming up to the valley, and it was just getting dark about that time. The next morning we came and we saw the vehicles taking off. As we were coming down the road. And of course we came out in the valley and there they were. We sat out there in the open for two days firing, and then finally somebody comes from the rear and says, “You shouldn’t have any tanks out here. Put them back in the woods.” As soon as we put them back in the woods they started shooting at us. And we were sitting out there for two days. That’s when they brought the mess sergeant, that the cooks hated, everybody hated him, and he came up to see, because they told him that nobody was firing; well, when he came up they started firing at him, and he got wounded. And then they go back to the cooks and they told them he was wounded, and they said, “Serious?”   “No, but enough to send him to England.”
   “Hooray!” Everybody was cheering. I can’t remember his name. One of those cooks, I took a plaque back for one of those cooks. They had a plaque to present to the next of kin. The guy I guess was never married or whatever, so I took it to his sister down in Texas. He was one of them, and I’m trying to remember his name. I can’t do like [Ray] Griffin did, Griffin knew names, places, dates. He spent a lot of effort in that.

   Aaron Elson: When they combined the two platoons, Snuffy’s and Gibson’s, you were in Gibson’s platoon at the time?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah, I think so. No, I was in Snuffy’s platoon.
   Aaron Elson: The one with the Chinese guy, Koon Moy, he was in that?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah, he was in there. In fact, he was in our room in Amberg after...
   Aaron Elson: Was he? He was burned, I thought. He was badly burned.
   Dave Tolan: This Chinese guy was, a short guy. He was telling us how to swear in Chinese. And I don’t know whose tank he was in, he wasn’t in our deal, but when the war ended and the company moved into the barracks, he was one of the guys, that’s my first recollection of him. And he was there for that summer.
   Aaron Elson: Had he been injured in a tank, had he been burned?
   Dave Tolan: I had no idea. If he did, it didn’t show.
   Aaron Elson: So were you with Gibson when the column of tanks got hit by a lot of panzerfausts going through a town, and I think Streeter, Dale Streeter, was he a driver?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah, Streeter was a driver. That was right near the end of the war, because I remember Lombardi had just come back from this rotation deal, and they told us what we were gonna, which I thought was too smart, anyway, but we started right down going about ten, fifteen miles an hour, they were apparently trying to get someplace by a certain time or whatever. So they had one tank going this way and the next one going this way, and they just fired all the way down, out through the woods, and then the lead tank got hit with that panzerfaust, 40 tons going down, they stopped it cold. All the ten-in-one rations and all this crap goes up in the air. Stopped it cold. And then they started firing into the woods and then some guy comes out and surrenders, I remember Lombardi taking him up through the middle, and I was just about to say they ought to shoot that a---, before I got the words out he shot him, right there.
   Aaron Elson: Who did?
   Dave Tolan: Lombardi.
   Aaron Elson: Really?
   Dave Tolan: Yeah. Right there. Well, he killed one of our, well, he killed his loader. That was that kid that was in, he’d only been in the Army six weeks. How the hell’d they get him over that fast? Well, he’d worked at the arsenal in Maryland, what is that big arsenal there? And he had worked on machine guns and he knew weapons, so they probably just skipped right over basic training and sent him out, and he came in as a replacement. And he was only with us about a week when this happened. And he was the only one in the tank that was hurt, and it killed him.
   Aaron Elson: Lombardi had just come back?
   Dave Tolan: Well, Lombardi had the third platoon, but he didn’t have it because Gibson had it then. But apparently, he was with the entourage in the front, it could have been Sheppard [Capt. Jack Shepard, the company commander] and Lombardi. And then, I never saw Lombardi again after that.
   Aaron Elson: And when was it, you said, they were firing panzerfausts from the trees?
   Dave Tolan: Oh, that was going towards Koblenz, when we did that deal up there. Those guys were all doped up. Any turkey gonna climb up a tree and start shooting with a bazooka, he doesn’t have too much going for him. Oh yeah, they were down, and they had these antiaircraft guns, and you’d hear them howling, yelling, they’d fire this thing up in the air and you’d see all these tracers going all over, well, they must be hitting it pretty hard. Then they’d come down and fire at you, it was kind of wild. And that was where we came up, and Gibson saw the first one, because I remember that he was up ahead of us, and he stopped, and he backed the tank up and he took a grenade and threw it in this hole, which had a guy in it. So then we started looking around, and that’s when we went over and we sprayed this hole, and this German was coming up, I mean this tank, he’s only ten feet away, and he’s coming up out of that hole with this panzerfaust, and I could see him as clear today as I did then, and I had no choice, I just moved my foot over and I fired a three-inch gun right down in that hole. Because it was seconds, I couldn’t take a chance on that coaxial.   Then we went to the next hole and sprayed it, and a guy came up like that, he came up immediately. But those guys were nuts. Really.

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