Major Clegg “Doc” Caffery among the Dragon’s Teeth of the Siegfried Line. Photo credit: The Caffery Collection at the University of Louisiana.
This is the content of the subfolder “interview transcripts > 712th Tank Battalion on my computer.
Y’all are familiar with folders on a computer. The screen shot above is the contents of the subfolder “interview transcripts > 712th Tank Battalion on mine. Each file is the transcript of, in most cases, a 90-minute cassette. I transcribed many of these tapes more than two decades ago when time seemed a less valuable commodity. The result is both a blessing and a curse, as I haven’t looked at some of these transcripts in, literally, decades, and they sometimes contain answers to a question I’ve given up looking for.
You see those subfolders in the upper left hand corner? Some have a few files, some have a bunch, although nowhere near as many as in the subfolder above. Incidentally, if you’re familiar with my work and even if you’re not, if you see a name in the picture that intrigues you or you’d like to know more about because I talked about that person in an earlier Substack or in one of my books, send me a message and I’ll work it into a Substack.
The second subfolder in the upper left of the first photo is titled “Bradenton mini-reunions.” Today I’m going to review a transcript from the 712th Tank Battalion’s “mini-reunion” in Bradenton, Florida, in January of 1995. Heck, that’s 30 years ago, and it would have been about the time my first book, “Tanks for the Memories,” came out. The war was such an important part of the veterans’ lives — the bonds that were formed began for many in the horse cavalry in 1941 and lasted through debarcation from Marseille in 1945 — that in addition to a large battalion reunion every September, some members organized a mini-reunion in Bradenton, Florida every January for those who retired there or were “snowbirds,” but while it was a smaller, more intimate gathering, some of the veterans came from all over the country. I’ll correct as many spellings as I can but can’t vouch for those I can’t, and I’ll add some commentary along the way.
The hospitality room at a 712th Tank Battalion “mini-reunion”
This transcript begins in mid-conversation because, well, because that’s where I hit the record button and don’t ask me to try and remember what led up to it. It looks like what I missed was pretty interesting, too. Apparently they were discussing the Dachau war crimes trials, where Colonel Cliff Merrill, the original A Company commander in the 712th Tank Battalion, served on a tribunal after recovering from wounds he sustained in Normandy.
Hospitality Room
712th Tank Battalion Florida Mini-Reunion, Bradenton
Jan. 26, 1995
Side 1
This first section is a conversation among Tony D’Arpino, a tank driver in Company C; Cliff Merrill ; and Walter “Red” Rose, who drove a jeep in Service Company.
Tony D’Arpino: You’d get these people up there and they...they claimed they were just following orders...
Cliff Merrill: To murder somebody?
Tony D’Arpino: Cold-blooded.
Cliff Merrill: We got kind of callous -- don’t put this in your book now...
Aaron Elson: I won’t. [and I didn’t, but here it is now]
Cliff Merrill: We would...One guy sat beside of me in the court. We had little slips of paper, you know, to vote on, guilty or not guilty, and then the sentence. Long before the trial would start he’d say “guilty.” On the other slip he’d say “Hang him.”
I said, “Now look, Bertram, you can’t do that.”
“Well,” he said, “they wouldn’t be here unless they’re guilty.” That was true with most of them. But you had to listen to all that garbage, and I got tired of listening to it, so I got another job. I got a job as provost marshal. [a provost marshal, Cliff explained, is the military equivalent of a police chief]
Aaron Elson: The provost marshal at Dachau?
Cliff Merrill: I had all the prisons. All of them. All the war criminals. All the prisoners of war. That’s why I got in touch so much with Skorzeny. [Otto Skorzeny was a legendary German commando who rescued Mussolini in a daring raid, and led a failed plan to capture Eisenhower.] I’d see him about every day. I’d go down and see the cellblock. He’d always come up where I could talk to him. At first he tried to impress me how physically fit he was. I said, “I’ll open that goddamn gate, boy, and we’ll just have a little contest.” I said, “But keep one thing in mind. I’m getting all the chow and I’m in good shape. You’re not. You don’t get any exercise. You don’t get the food.” I said, “I’ll take you on.” We had an understanding. After the trial I congratulated him. I was glad to see they didn’t convict him. It was uncalled for, really. They didn’t have any proof, No. 1. Sure, his people did things, but it wasn’t any different from what our people were doing. They didn’t kill anybody in cold blood; they didn’t prove anything like that. It was dog eat dog anyway. I wasn’t on the court that tried him, but I followed it real close.
Otto Skorzeny
Aaron Elson: But what his people had done was dressed up in American uniforms?
Cliff Merrill: In some cases, yes. But not all of them. In some cases, their mission was to disrupt, and they’d change the road signs; that was one of the biggest things they did. Screwed us up like anything. Change the goddarn road signs, you didn’t know which way you were going. His mission, really, was to get Eisenhower, to go through to get Eisenhower. We foiled that, hell, once we got wind of it, and were on the alert for that. Of course while he was doing it I was gone [he was still in the hospital in the States] ... that part of it.
Aaron Elson: So after he tried to impress you with how physically fit he was, then what? I guess he was fluent in English?
Cliff Merrill: Oh yeah. He spoke good English, and I could speak some German. Enough so I could get by. From there I went on and took all these courses in German. The equivalent of five years in German.
Aaron Elson: In college?
Cliff Merrill: After the war. We talked German, that’s all we talked. I attended class at night.
Aaron Elson: This was in the States?
Cliff Merrill: Well, I had English when I was at Frankfurt. [A career Army officer, Cliff served for 32 years and fought in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam.] I was taking two courses then, in English -- advanced English -- and German. Then the next course I took was foreign relations. But I liked the German. I liked the professor. He had been a prisoner of war at Colorado Springs. I said, “How’d you like it?”
He said, “Well, if I could, I’d go back there today even if it was behind barbed wire.” Can you imagine that?
Aaron Elson: Did he ever talk about his experiences in the German army?
Cliff Merrill: No. In fact, I never got around to querying him about it. I don’t know what his role was, whether he was a real fighting man or administrative. He was a sharp guy. He’d bring up one word to talk about in class, we’d talk about that one word for fifteen minutes, the origin of it, and he was familiar with, the Greeks have a name for it. But he said the Greeks didn’t know everything, a lot of it derived from the Latin language. Some English from Saxony. He knew the history of all languages. Smart guy.
Cliff Merrill
Aaron Elson: Did you go to West Point?
Cliff Merrill: No. OCS [Officer Candidate School]. First class.
Aaron Elson: At Benning?
Cliff Merrill: Fort Knox. Armored OCS. Then I went to, see, I was in different armored outfits before I was in the 712th. It was the Third Battalion of the 11th Armored Regiment [of the 10 Armored Division] when I joined it, and I was in Company G. Company G became Company A [of the 712th, which was one of two battalions broken out of the 10th Armored and made into independent tank battalions].
Aaron Elson: Now, Company G, before that, was that in the horse cavalry?
Cliff Merrill: Yes.
Aaron Elson: But you weren’t with them in the horse cavalry.
Cliff Merrill: No. I was commissioned cavalry, but no horses. They were in the process then of getting rid of the horses. Of course the terminology was, well, they got rid of the horses but they didn’t get rid of the horses’ asses. You know how it is. Somebody always comes up with something.
Aaron Elson: Who was Chamberlain? Was he the battalion commander at some point, before [Whitside] Miller?
Cliff Merrill: Yes. Actually, Chamberlain was on the staff of the OCS class when I went through. Good guy. He caught us shooting crap one night. It was about 1 o’clock in the morning. I guess we were making a lot of noise in the wooden barracks at Fort Knox, and the officer of the day came and caught us. Well, he made a big deal out of it, he was a prick anyway, so there was this one guy, Colonel Calais. Colonel Calais had his, I think his left hand, there were three fingers cut off. From a tank. He had his hand down on the edge of the turret when a tree hit it, or the tank went into a tree, and he had this finger left. When he talked to you, he pointed with that one finger. I had to report to him. Three of them. Chamberlain, Calais and Colonel Morrill.
Chamberlain was the first one to talk. He says, “And what were you doing?”
I said, “Well, I was trying to make a hard ten.”
He said, “Did you make it?”
I said, “Yes, Sir.”
He said, “Good.”
I said, “I got two for one on my bet.”
I believe that got me by the whole god damn thing.
Aaron Elson: Did you enlist?
Cliff Merrill: Yeah. 1936.
Aaron Elson: How old were you?
Cliff Merrill: Twenty-two.
Aaron Elson: What was it that got you to enlist? Was it economic?
Cliff Merrill: I was hungry.
Red Rose: Have you been over there, to the Battle of the Bulge area, yet?
Aaron Elson: No.
Red Rose: You should go. That’s really interesting. I went in January, and I went to Bitburg. Bitburg is where whatchamacallit had his headquarters, the German general, Von Teufel. We went from there, then we went up, my cousin was with the 106th Infantry Division that got annihilated, and they captured him that day [the 106th was overrun at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge]. I found out where his regiment was at, and then we started from there, and we went back, and kind of followed Peiper’s, Colonel Peiper’s trail, all the way to Malmedy [Jochen Peiper was the officer responsible for the massacre at Malmedy], and from Malmedy we went down to Trois Ponts. I read an article where he came under the railroad bridge and there it is today, and the rivers, Trois Ponts means the forks of the rivers, with all these little trails. They turned him back at a bridge there. It’s very interesting. I read the history of it quite a bit, and went back and followed it. And you can be going along those little roads, and right there will be a little monument, five or six American infantrymen assassinated or killed right here by Peiper. And he just left a trail. And it’s beautiful country, good god it’s beautiful. The hotel we stayed, this time we were over there in Clervaux, the hotel was closed. But the Claravallis Hotel is where the colonel from the 28th Division was captured, and this guy told us, this room here is where he went out the back window. The Germans came in the front, he didn’t know they were coming in they came in that quick.
Walter “Red” Rose
Cliff Merrill: Oh, Red? Did you see the notice on Whitside passing away?
Red Rose: No.
Cliff Merrill: He’s dead.
Red Rose: Golly, how old was he?
Cliff Merrill: I don’t know.
Red Rose: Did he just die recently?
Cliff Merrill: Well, this was...I called Caffery on it [Clegg “Doc” Caffery was a major in Headquarters Company]. Whitside, I don’t know of any other Whitside Miller, do you?
Red Rose: No.
Cliff Merrill: Whitside, he was a lieutenant colonel.
Red Rose: He was the one that got relieved.
Cliff Merrill: Yeah. They busted him down, but they put him back up to lieutenant colonel.
Red Rose: Did you know, one of his, his grandfather or his father fought with the American Army, the soldiers, at Wounded Knee? [Miller’s grandfather, Samuel Marmaduke Whitside, was a major at the Wounded Knee massacre. Whitside’s father, Archie Miller, was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Philippine Moro Campaign.]
Cliff Merrill: There’s a Camp Whitside at Fort Riley named after him. [After Whitside Miller’s grandfather, that is, who became a brigadier general and founded Fort Huachuca in Arizona]
Red Rose: He was one of the bigwigs at Wounded Knee.
Aaron Elson: I’ll be damned. How did you find this out?
Red Rose: Well, somewhere I read something about him, I don’t know where, but they said he was the grandson of the Whitside that was in the Battle of Wounded Knee. It might have been a West Point book I was reading.
Cliff Merrill: That also was the reason why there was so much flak when...
Red Rose: Oh, hell, he was ... he had power. Didn’t he date Patton’s daughter, something or other?
Cliff Merrill: Yeah.
Red Rose: He was a friend of Patton’s.
* * *
This next section of the transcript is an impromptu interview with Clegg “Doc” Caffery, one of the battalion’s more prominent veterans. One of the first things I heard about Doc was that his grandfather rode down the Cumberland River with Andrew Jackson. I say “impromptu” because it was spur of the moment and usually took place at one of the reunions, as opposed to a more formal interview in a home or restaurant.
Doc Caffery: Let me take it from ... I’ll take it from Randolph Field. I went to flight training in the Army Air Force. I went through the advance training, or secondary training, at Randolph Field. And all of a sudden I decided that I didn’t really care to fly. And I told my instructor. He says, “Caffery, you’re doing all right, why don’t you stay in?”
And I told my instructor I just don’t like to fly. He said, “Well, if it were me, and I had to give up my wife or give up flying, I would give up my wife, and run away.”
And I thought to myself, I don’t want any part of this if that’s what it takes (chuckling). So I was sent back to Benning, and I was taking care of the people going through parachute training school, and I was playing tennis every afternoon at the officers’ club, and I got to know General Newgarden. So I asked him, one day I said, “General, can I” ... he was a colonel at that time ... “would you mind if I transferred to your 10th Armored Division?”
He said, “Caffery, I’d be glad to have you.”
So I transferred to the 10th Armored Division. And when the 712th was cadred out of the 10th Armored, I was in the headquarters of the battalion, and they brought me up to Headquarters Company, and I was cadred out into the 712th. Again, early on I had a company in the 10th Armored, but I was cadred out by Tom Chamberlain, who was the battalion commander. There were so many people sent out to the single organization, the 712th, and Tom Chamberlain was my commanding officer, so he cadred me out to this organization.
Aaron Elson: Now Chamberlain, did he go with the 712th?
Doc Caffery: No.
Aaron Elson: He stayed with the 10th Armored?
Doc Caffery: Yes. [Amazing the things you can learn from Google. Thomas Chamberlain earned three Silver Stars with the 10th Armored Division.]
Aaron Elson: What happened to Newgarden? He was killed in a plane crash?
Doc Caffery: Yeah. [Major General Paul Newgarden died in a plane crash on July 14, 1944. I would learn more about him in my interview with Dr. Jack Prior of the 10th Armored Division.] General Newgarden was an excellent man, and you see, that’s sometimes, that’s what you get in a certain position. I was lucky in that position. I was at the right place at the right time and got cadred out to the 712th, and considered myself very lucky. So I went into headquarters of the 712th. We had Baxter Davis there, and Whitside Miller was there. It wasn’t the most delightful place I’ve been in. You are familiar with Whitside, and know what happened to him, and I think the luckiest thing, when I went to England with an advance party, a warrant officer and a second lieutenant went with me as an advance party to Swindon. So I went to England, we got the barracks in shape, and Whitside was there. I mean, he came in, he was the commanding officer. Whitside had problems. I don’t think he was a very stable man; he was very unstable, I think. Very erratic. Forrest Dixon is the one who, did Forrest Dixon talk to you? He was the one who helped get Colonel Whitside Miller removed. Do you know the incident?
Aaron Elson: I believe so. Where he made Baxter Davis run...
Doc Caffery: No, Dixon wasn’t, he was the supply officer; he went back to Corps, and he made the statement to someone back there that Whitside made Baxter Davis doubletime in front of the battalion, something like that. And it got back to Middleton. General Middleton was my PMS&T
Aaron Elson: What’s a PMS?
Doc Caffery: Professor of Military Science and Tactics at LSU. So he asked Dixon, and Dixon told General Middleton who was in the battalion, so he said he knew me. So he sent a man down to take depositions from everyone, which we gave. They brought Colonel Whitside back, and we were told to make statements, so we made statements, and Whitside came in and got these statements and interviewed the people who made them. He interviewed me, and asked whether or not I could change the statement, or would I change it. I said, “Colonel, those are my feelings,” or “that is my feeling, and I just can’t do it. That’s how I feel about it.” He was relieved and sent back to the States. Do you know what happened to him then?
Aaron Elson: No.
Doc Caffery: He was reduced to captain. But he was unstable.
Colonel Jack Sheppard on Whitside Miller:
0:00
-3:08
-------
Clegg Caffery, left, and Jack Sheppard
Doc Caffery: Is that thing still going?
Aaron Elson: Yes.
Doc Caffery: Let me tell you off of the record, but for your information, being in the headquarters like I was, my job was to go around, when we got into combat, to go around as well as I could and to support, to see the companies, so I helped out as much as I could, going from company to company. Did I send you some of my incidents?
Aaron Elson: No.
Doc Caffery: I’m gonna send them to you. There were four or five incidents that stood out, so I wrote them up. I’ll send them to you. Again, now let me say this. Colonel Randolph gave me a number of things to do. To bird dog, as it was. And I think I did, though, whatever he asked me to do in very good order, very good style or whatever. I thought whatever he gave me to do I did very well. In my judgment.
Aaron Elson: You went to LSU?
Doc Caffery: Yes.
Aaron Elson: Now somebody said you were quite the athlete.
Doc Caffery: Yeah? I’ll take credit for that. I played on the LSU tennis team. That’s why I got to know General Newgarden, because he was a tennis player. I played tennis all my life, but the last few years.
Aaron Elson: Had you won any competitions, or were you ranked?
Doc Caffery: When I was at Benning, I played tennis, and there was a tennis player, a tennis professional General Newgarden got in to be the tennis pro at Benning, and this guy asked me, he said, “Hey, Doc, after the service, let’s me and you go to South America, we’ll team up and join the South American tennis tour.” (chuckling) I thought that was kind of a nice thing for somebody to ask. But I didn’t. Walter Senior was his name. But that never materialized.
[Forrest] Dixon and I, we did our damnedest to do anything we could to do various things. When [Colonel George] Randolph asked me to, when we crossed the Saar River, I was in charge of a bunch of tanks; I mean I bird dogged them, so to speak. All the companies that were across the Saar River in the Dillingen area. And when we withdrew back across the Saar, shortly thereafter Randolph was killed going up to Bastogne.
Colonel Randolph was killed in Nothum, Luxembourg, on January 9, 1945. Photo originally appeared in Stars & Stripes and later in the Saturday Evening Post.
Aaron Elson: That must have been terrible.
Doc Caffery: Oh, it was just like cutting off a man’s right arm. He was a great manlike god, everybody worshiped the guy, and we would do anything. If he said go do this or do that, we jumped. But he was, that’s how he got killed, he was up there walking with two doughboys. He shouldn’t have been up there walking with doughboys. That was the saddest words I heard over there. Randolph kitten. [Kitten was the radio code word for killed.]
Aaron Elson: You heard that on the radio?
Doc Caffery: Yeah, sure.
Aaron Elson: You heard the actual words?
Doc Caffery: Yeah, Randolph kitten.
Aaron Elson: Where were you when you heard that, were you back with [then-Major Vladimir] Kedrovsky, or were you up ...
Doc Caffery: I was...oh gee whiz, I was going towards...as I recollect we were going towards Bastogne. It was a debilitating or whatever, you couldn’t believe it, I didn’t want to believe it. Well, these old memories that fade in, you think about it for a while, they come back. I hope you get a lot. You’re doing a good job.
Aaron Elson: I’m doing my best.
Doc Caffery: Following the trials and tribulations of the 712th.
Aaron Elson: I think nobody else is doing anything like this.
Doc Caffery: I don’t think so.
Aaron Elson: In ten years, or twenty years, to have the opportunity to have as complete a picture from the perspective of all this time... [Heck, it’s thirty years already!]
Doc Caffery: Another thing. I didn’t go home with the battalion. It came about like this. We were in Swindon [he may have meant Amberg, where the battalion was stationed after VE-Day], and we were doing nothing so I said there was a school in Paris on French culture, so I asked Kedrovsky, I said I’m not doing anything, let me go to the school, it’s only gonna be probably for about a month. And as soon as I packed up and went to Paris, the battalion got orders to come home, and I didn’t go home with the battalion. That was very distressing for me.
Aaron Elson: You were not married then?
Doc Caffery: No. I don’t know about the rest of the guys, but at this point in time, my memory is failing. It’s, I guess it happens with age, your brain is a little foggy, and you can’t get things, they don’t come up on a computer very clearly.
Aaron Elson: It happens to me.
Doc Caffery: Yeah, but you, I think everybody, you know, I’ve noticed that around these guys, I’ve noticed them being a little bit vague, I think that’s the word. I think that’s, let’s see, I’m 80, I’m 79 now, I think at that time in life your mind kind of gets fogged in. I believe, anyway. But it’s been a wonderful life, for me. I’ve had some, you know, being around a bunch of guys like this that you went through so much together, well it’s all family, you know. I think like that.
Aaron Elson: It’s more to me than my own family is family.
Doc Caffery: Doing your work, you have a reason to feel that way. Okay, I’m going to send you these, I think there’s six or seven episodes that are very worthwhile.
Aaron Elson: Did you play baseball too?
Doc Caffery: No, no. I also, I’ll tell you what I did do. I played badminton. Badminton was my — I went to the Southern meet in badminton. Badminton, it ebbs and flows, it’s down now. I don’t think there’s any badminton being played that I know of. It’s such a fast game. But tennis and badminton were my two good sports. And I love to fish. Right now I have a couple of boats. I’ve got an old shrimp boat, an old wooden shrimp boat that’s 40 feet long and I have a shrimp net and I go out on it, and I have a crew of three people. We’ll go out for a day or two, two nights maybe, and come back with several hundred pounds of shrimp.
Are you in the process now of getting a sequel together?
Aaron Elson: Yes.
Doc Caffery: That would be wonderful. I want you to know that we appreciate you doing this. It’s, I think it may be a little self-rewarding, too.
Aaron Elson: Very. It’s not financially rewarding yet, but I believe it will be. I think someday I’ll be the equivalent of Henri. [The Normandy historian Henri Levaufre of Perier]
Doc Caffery: I think so, because you know everything that Henri knows. And Henri is such a good guy. I think that I’ve been an asset to the battalion in many ways. One of my first episodes that I wrote about was General Patton. You see all the tanks were assigned to the regiments and we had a headquarters tank section, headquarters 105s, and at Avranches, he came in Avranches to Headquarters Company ...
(This is where Side 1 ends. I could continue with an equally lengthy Side 2 which begins with Doc Caffery talking about General Patton, but there is a boatload of other Substacks, no, an ocean liner load, make that a Carnival Cruise Line Queen of the Seas load of other fascinating Substacks to choose from with all that’s going on in the world, even in my old hometown of New York City, so I’ll save Side 2 for the next issue.
Clegg “Doc” Caffery and Forrest Dixon on Patton:
0:00
-3:07
What you could do, though, if you’ve read this far, is hit the like button, share it on Facebook or Substack, make a comment and help this newsletter gain traction in the Substackverse.
