The armored fist : the 712th Tank Battalion in the Second World War

263 Pages·2013·2.53 MB·English

by  Elson

Fonthill Media Limited
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First published in 2013
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
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Copyright © Aaron Elson, 2013
ISBN 978-1-78155-091-5 (PRINT)
ISBN 978-1-78155-377-0 (e-BOOK)
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Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Preface: Joe Blow from Breeze
1. Heimboldshausen
2. Boots and Saddles
3. Colonel Whitside
4. Nine Ways to Sunday
5. Peanut Butter and Crackers
6. Hill 122
7. The Death of Shorty
8. Flipped Like Pancakes
9. The Second Lieutenant
10. A Cow in a Tree
11. Task Force Weaver
12. The Deadly Pea Shooter
13. They Shoot Horses (The Falaise Gap)
14. Mairy
15. Gypsies and Blueberry Pie
16. ‘So Long, and If I Never See You Again, Goodbye’
17. Marshall T. Warfield
18. ‘Kill All the Sons of Bitches’
19. Maizières lès Metz
20. Time to Do the Dishes
21. ‘I Think I’ve Been Shot’
22. ‘Hands on Place, Hips’
23. The First Moselle Crossing
24. Gross Hemmersdorf
25. Dillingen
26. ‘I Am in Company C and in Germany Now’
27. The Finger of Fate
28. Into the Bulge
29. George Kitten
30. ‘Take My Picture’
31. Doncols
32. The Two Deaths of Pine Valley Bynum
33. At All Costs: Oberwampach
34. The Gypsy’s Prophecy
35. The Iron Cross and a Three-day Pass
36. Pfaffenheck
37. Thirteen Days in April
38. Nazi Gold
39. Joe the Englishman
40. Flossenburg
41.‘Boys, This is It’
Picture Section
About the Author
In 1987, Aaron Elson attended a reunion of the tank battalion with which his
father served in the Second World War. He was so moved by the stories the
veterans shared among themselves, yet often did not tell to their families, that he
returned two reunions later with a tape recorder. He has been recording the
stories of America’s Second World War veterans ever since. Elson has written
five books of oral history and his work has been used as source material in more
than two dozen books and several documentaries. These include The Color of
War and Patton 360, both of which appeared on the History Channel. When he
is not interviewing Second World War veterans, he works as a copy and layout
editor at the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press and lives in New Britain,
Connecticut, US.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the encouragement of some of
the best storytellers on earth, the veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion. I only
wish that more of them were still around to receive some of the acclaim they so
richly deserve. Thanks especially to Paul and Annie Wannemacher and Louis
Gruntz Jr whose father was a veteran of B Company. My editor, Susan English,
has kept my prose from wandering too far astray ever since I began collecting
the stories of America’s Second World War veterans. Thanks also to the folks,
or should I say blokes, at Fonthill Media, Jay Slater, Alan Sutton, David
Wightman and Julie for her input on the title. And to Mike Schroeder and my
new city of New Britain, Connecticut, for providing me with the kind of
supportive environment that made it possible for me to complete this work.
Introduction
The 90th ‘Texas-Oklahoma’ Infantry Division landed on Utah Beach on 6-8
June 1944. Although its symbol was a ‘T’ connected to an ‘O’ and its nickname
was the ‘Tough Ombres,’ the division did not fare well in the bitter hedgerow
fighting of its first month in combat.
The 712th Tank Battalion landed in Normandy on 28-29 June 1944. An
independent battalion, its three line companies, one company of light tanks and
assault gun platoon, were initially divided between the 90th and the 82nd
Airborne Division. On 3 July, its first day in combat, the battalion lost nearly
half of its sixty-seven tanks, either knocked out, tipped over, bogged down or
with mechanical trouble. July saw the 90th Division suffer such heavy casualties
in two battles, known as the Foret de Mont Castre and Seves Island, that,
according to the late John Colby in War From the Ground Up, it was in danger
of becoming a ‘lost division’ with its remaining troops assigned as replacements.
After a brief stint with the 8th Infantry Division, the tanks of the 712th were
assigned almost exclusively to the 90th, but at first the battle-hardened veterans
wanted little to do with tanks as they drew fire from the enemy.
And then something happened. It might have been on Hill 122, the high
point of the week-long fight for Mont Castre when on 10 July, a platoon of 712th
tanks rescued a battalion of infantry that was surrounded by elite German
paratroopers. It might have been because squads of infantry discovered that
tanks came in handy when they were pinned down by machine gun fire.
Whatever it was, the tankers and infantrymen began working together as a team.
Although it would suffer the third highest rate of casualties in the European
theatre of operations, the 90th Division, with its attached 712th Tank Battalion
and 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, gained the respect of an enemy it fought
from Normandy to Czechoslovakia, through Northern France, the Battle of the
Bulge, the Siegfried Line and the heart of Germany. Shortly before the end of
the war in Europe, the 11th Panzer Division asked if it could surrender to the
90th ‘Armored’ Division.
The Armored Fist: The 712th Tank Battalion in the Second World War is
not so much about the 90th Division. There are many great books about the
division and Colby’s War From the Ground Up is considered by collectors to be
among the finest unit histories ever written. You can find the titles of many
individual memoirs, some of them posted in their entirety, at the official 90th
Division website. This is a book about the 712th Tank Battalion, the unit with
which my father served. It is not a comprehensive history of the battalion, nor is
it a ‘big picture’ book. But I got to know and understand my father a lot better
after he passed away by meeting the men he served with – even though most of
them did not know him – than I did when he was alive. The experiences these
veterans shared – the fear, courage, hunger, camaraderie, anger, reactions to
man’s inhumanity to man – are deeply individual and at the same time universal.