Aaron Elson's Blog, page 7
June 6, 2020
The 4th of July on the 6th of June
The 712th Tank Battalion landed in Normandy on June 28, 1944. Twenty-two days earlier the D-Day invasion took place. In 1994, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of that historic day, I interviewed several D-Day veterans. Lou Putnoky was one of them.
May 30, 2020
Good News Bad News
Bob Levine was an 18 year old infantryman who was wounded, captured, and had a leg amputated by a German doctor in Normandy. Bob's daughter recently posted a photo of Bob and his wife Edith on Facebook with the notation that they both survived Covid-19, and Bob was just been released after two weeks in the hospital. Way to go, Bob! Today's episode is excerpted from my 1999 interview with Bob. For more on Hill 122 check out the nine earlier episodes on the battle.
May 25, 2020
Memorial Day: Pine Valley
Memorial Day, 2020. The 712th Tank Battalion monument in the memorial garden at the Patton Museum at Fort Knox has 100 names. The eighth name, going in alphabetical order, is Quentin Bynum, a tank driver who gave my father a lift to the front in Normandy. Quentin, whose nickname was Pine Valley, was a farmboy from Stonefort, Illinois ...
May 16, 2020
Paris, Illinois
Russell Loop started out in the horse cavalry, became a driver in D Company of the 712th Tank Battalion and was transferred to C Company as a gunner in a medium Sherman tank just prior to the Battle of the Bulge. In this interview, he shares his experiences in 11 months of combat.
May 9, 2020
This episode is personal
My father, Lieutenant Maurice Elson, joined the 712th Tank Battalion in July of 1944. He was wounded in Normandy and again in Germany. He died of a heart attack before I began collecting the stories of his unit, but what I learned of his brief time with the battalion launched an avalanche of stories.
April 26, 2020
How Cold Was It? The Battle of the Bulge
How cold was it in the Battle of the Bulge? It was so cold that an assistant driver from Tennessee told George Bussell that when he got home, if it was the middle of July and he thought about how cold it was, he'd go out and build a fire. The mountainous roads going into Luxembourg and Belgium were so icy that 37 and 44 ton tanks were sliding all over the place. These are a few of the many stories about the Bulge told by veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion.
April 18, 2020
Sam and Joe
Sam Cropanese and Joe Bernardino were members of the same crew in A Company of the 712th Tank Battalion. They were both wounded at the Falaise Gap in mid-August of 1944. I interviewed Sam in Cape Coral, Florida, in 1993, and Joe in Rochester, New York, in 1994, 50 years after the war. Their story presents a vivid picture of life and death in a tank in World War II. Warning: Contains some graphic descriptions.
April 12, 2020
"The Iron Cross and a Three-Day Pass": Habscheid
In episode 36 of War As My Father's Tank Battalion Knew It, Bob Rossi, Ed Spahr, Tony D'Arpino and Grayson Lamar offer their perspective on a battle that took place in Habscheid, Germany, a village in the Siegfried Line, on February 8, 1945. Warning: Graphic content.
April 5, 2020
A couple of tankers talking World War II
Jim Knispel and Bill Whitley joined the 712th Tank Battalion as replacements in France. This interview, at the battalion's 2001 reunion, touches upon some of the significant events in the history of the battalion's A Company. Knispel was wounded when his tank was hit by a panzerfaust in a confrontation with SS troops who were defending the town of Merkers, where vast amounts of treasure were stored in a mine that would be depicted in the movie The Monuments Men.
March 28, 2020
A tank recovery unit driver in World War II
In the712th Tank Battalion's 11 months on the front lines of World War II, there were many significant events: Hill 122, the Falaise Gap, the light tank that ran over a string of mines, the battle with the 106th Panzer Brigade at Mairy, the Saar River crossing at Dillingen, the Battle of the Bulge. Tank recovery unit driver Eugene Sand was involved in all of these and more.
