"Captain Merrill, he wasn't afraid of nothin!"

"He was like old Blood and Guts!" Sam Cropanese recalled.

Clifford Merrill

If Clifford Merrill hadn’t been wounded on July 13, 1944, he would have been my father’s commanding officer, as my dad was assigned to Company A of the 712th Tank Battalion as a replacement on or around July 26. Merrill spent ten days in combat and the remainder of the battalion’s campaign in a hospital in the States and didn’t return until the war in Europe was over. He served on a tribunal at the Dachau war crimes trials and later as a provost marshal in the prison compound. He later was a provost marshal — the equivalent of a police chief — in the Korean War, and was wounded again while serving with the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam. He retired as a colonel after “32 years, seven months and a few days.”

At the 1996 “mini” battalion reunion in Bradenton, Florida, I asked Cliff how, despite being an armored officer, his picture was on the cover of the Infantry Journal (his wife, Jan, had told me to ask him about this.)

“World War I, I forget the guy’s name, shit, I thought I had his name on the tip of my tongue, Office of War Information, Elmer Davis, that was during 1941, ‘40, ‘42, around that time,” Cliff said. “There was a guy who came to Fort Knox, and we had diesel tanks; they were only light tanks, and he wanted to drive a tank. So I taught him how. We were out a lot — anytime I’d go out there with troops, why, he’d come along. I’d go along with him and let him drive.

“He was a Christian Science guy, strong religious that way. In fact, we were going one day, tall grass, and he was going fast. I was trying to slow him down. About that time, all controls in those tanks was with your feet. You put your foot on the head and press down. Well, I put my foot on his head to stop, slow him down. He jerked his head out of the way, and hit this goddarn big stump. I put my teeth right through, this scar here.”

“Your teeth went all the way through?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Cliff said. “And of course I started cussing.”

“He said, ‘Now, now. That won’t help a bit.’

“I said, ‘It makes me feel a hell of a lot better.’ I tell you, I forget his name. Anyway, he took pictures. He had all these pictures, in fact, many pictures of tanks. That picture along with a mass of tanks was put out to sell war bonds. He was instrumental in getting Elmer Davis, and Elmer Davis is the one who got it put on the Infantry Journal.

“Later, after I had been wounded and come back, I still had a body cast on; I visited — I had four sisters who were working at Pratt & Whitney in Hartford, and one of my sisters said, ‘I want to show you your picture.’ And here’s this huge picture of me with a tommy gun, and behind me is massed all these tanks. That’s right there, when you walk right in. And then that security officer was a rugged looking guy, but in those days I was chesty as could be. He looked at me and said, ‘God, what a chest.’

“I said, ‘That’s me up there.’

“He said, ‘I know. Your sisters told me enough about you.’

“That was quite a deal. But that’s how it came about. When I was a Fort Knox, somebody called me and said, ‘Do you know your picture is on the Infantry Journal?' He said, ‘I thought you were a cavalry officer.’

“I said, ‘I am? What happened?’ I was commissioned cavalry.

“He said, ‘Go over and see.’

“So I called him after. I said, ‘I know what happened. They couldn’t find a good enough looking infantry officer.’

“Those were the days.”

When I included an edited transcript of my 1992 interview with Cliff in my book “A Mile in Their Shoes,” I thought he had said some controversial things, and I braced myself for pushback which still hasn’t come. And he spoke of an incident he called “Bloody Sunday” in which prisoners of war being sent back to Russia by train committed mass suicide. This apparently took place while he was a provost marshal at Dachau after the war crimes trials there, and while I wondered if the figures he gave were exaggerated, that was hardly the case according to a remarkable documentary I found on Youtube about Operation Keelhaul. (The video is 24 minutes, and I’d suggest waiting until you come to Cliff’s description before watching it.)

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“Six by six by six.” This was Ruby Goldstein, in my interview with Ruby and Tony D’Arpino, describing the type of disciplinarian Captain Merrill was during training, most likely at Fort Benning or Camp Gordon. He would order the soldier who committed an infraction to dig a six foot by six foot hole, six feet deep. He would then toss a cigarette butt into the hole and order the soldier to fill it in.

Clifford Merrill

Bradenton, Fla., Feb. 1, 1992

Aaron Elson: You were from Maine?

Clifford Merrill: Yes. Springfield, Maine, just a little town 70 miles northeast from Bangor. It’s 24 miles from the Canadian border on the eastern side of Maine. I grew up there and went to school there. High school, that’s as far as I went. I finished off my schooling in the Army at night; a rough deal.

Aaron Elson: After the war, or before?

Clifford Merrill: Well, it was after World War II.

Aaron Elson: Did you enlist?

Clifford Merrill: I enlisted in ‘36. And retired in ‘69. I had 32 years in all. Seven months. And a few days.

Aaron Elson: When were you assigned to the 712th?

Clifford Merrill: In 1943, in the spring; as I recall it was in the latter part of May in 1943. Prior to that I had been at Fort Knox, Kentucky, instructing. I had a vehicle section there which consisted of tanks and trucks, teaching newly arrived trainees. I was teaching them how to drive tanks and trucks. It was quite an operation. We had a lot of people; they rotated companies through, 800 men at a time. I think it was four weeks to get that part of their training.

Then I was assigned to the 10th Armored Division at Fort Benning, and ended up with what then was G Company in the 3rd Battalion, and later that became, when they reorganized, G Company became A Company and I was a platoon leader at that time.

Then we had the Tennessee maneuvers, went on maneuvers, and while I was there I had an appendicitis attack and had to go to the hospital, and they took my appendix out and when I came back, why, I was assigned as a company commander. The company commander had transferred out.

And following that, we moved to, let’s see, we moved first to Camp Gordon and did more training, preparing for combat; a certain degree of training, more advanced training. Then we moved from there to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, which was more or less of a staging area, final preparation. See, that had to be the late part of ‘43, because in February we moved to Jackson and we did our final firing and what they call Army ground tests. We had moving tank firing and firing with cannons, everything else. They had a good range there; you could do that. Unlimited distance. After that, we moved to Camp Myles Standish outside of Boston; that was a final prep prior to getting on board ship to go across. We went across and landed at Gouroch, Scotland, and then we stayed in — my company was detached from the rest of the battalion — at that time we were, gosh, I guess about 40 or 50 miles from the rest of the battalion at a place called Stow on the Wold. We had other names for it, I forget now. When we were in England, there were all kinds of names like that, like Maughton in the Marsh, that was named Maughton in the Muck. Similar. There we had more firing training, training firing tank guns. Then we drew our tanks.

Aaron Elson: Were there any casualties in the training?

Clifford Merrill: No, just weeding out. We were over strength. The only casualties were those I didn’t want. We weeded them out. I had, for example, at Fort Jackson I had ten officers and I was only authorized four. So I weeded out a few of them, got rid of six of them.

We took our final tests there, our final shooting tests in England. We had moved from Stow on the Wold down to Chiseldon barracks in Swindon, England, and joined the rest of the battalion. There was our final tests, then all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, they said “Pack up and go.” The Army is noted for that. No advance notice, they didn’t want anything leaking out. We were ready anyway. But there was still a lot of confusion.

Aaron Elson: How did you cross the channel?

Clifford Merrill: In an LST, Landing Ship Tank they call it. We went across the channel; as I recall the first tank off went off the ramp and just in the water, that much of the turret was sticking out.

Aaron Elson: Did it get onto the beach?

Clifford Merrill: We hooked onto it and dragged it on.

Aaron Elson: Was this after D-Day, how many days?

Clifford Merrill: Oh, I don’t know.

Aaron Elson: But it was some time after?

Clifford Merrill: Yes, but there was a lot of stuff going on.

Aaron Elson: Was the beach secure, or was it still under fire?

Clifford Merrill: Well, once in a while you’d get something coming in. Of course, at night everything was blacked out; you couldn’t do much at night. My company was assigned to the 82nd Airborne, and I advanced through, connected up with the 82nd Airborne Division. The rest of the battalion went to the 90th Division, and I worked with the 82nd until the 8th day of July, this is ‘44. The 8th day of July the 82nd was replaced by the 8th Infantry Division, and boy, we had to break those people in; it was tough. They’d shoot you as quick as they would the Germans. They were scared. I was, too, what the heck. They didn’t advance very much. In fact they lost ground.

I had one platoon leader that was extremely good, a chap named Ed Forrest. I talked to Ed and the artillery commander of the 8th Division, so we decided we’d stir things up a bit. So I had Ed’s platoon advance, but in the meantime we took a radio, we swapped radios, up in the plane, the spotter plane, so they could tell us something, and they could speak to Ed in his tank. He had a little small receiving set, and he made an advance I guess about two and a half miles. Knocked out a couple tanks. Goldstein was in that platoon. One place they come around, the story was told to me now, at that point I wasn’t there; they came around this turn in the road with the tank, one of their tanks, and here’s a bunch of Krauts; they had a hogshead of cider. They hit the hogshead of cider, and the Krauts.

And they had little tanks controlled...

Aaron Elson: When you say a hogshead of cider, what is that?

Clifford Merrill: Oh, that’s about 20 barrels of cider contained in one huge casket. I don’t know what else they call it beside hogshead; that’s what I learned in Maine. Hundreds of gallons of cider. Too bad to spill all that cider. But Normandy had lots of cider. And Calvados.

Ed made a good advance then; other places they’d get tied down ... of course my job, I was back and forth across that front all the time. Hell, I never got sleep. I’d go to sleep standing up.

Aaron Elson: Did you travel in a jeep or in a tank?

Clifford Merrill: Jeep, mostly. I’d have a tank following me, but I wouldn’t ride in a tank, because I couldn’t see. If I rode in a jeep I could see well enough. And then the final day when I got hit, I went up to one of the leading battalions that was supposed to have been out engaged; well, anyway, they’d lost an assistant division commander, got killed the night before, trying to lead a platoon. Imagine, a brigadier general leading a platoon. Went out where he shouldn’t have been, he got hit, heck, the Germans laid down such fire the other members of that platoon, nobody could bring him out, he bled to death. So the next day I went up in that area, and the first people I came across was this battalion commander digging a hole. I said, “What the hell are you doing?” I’m standing up.

He says, “We’re being fired on.”

I said, “They’re not hitting me.” You could hear bullets, but that was everywhere you’d hear them. If they hit a tree 30 feet over your head you’d hear the snap. I didn’t pay any attention to those. So I said, “I don’t see any Krauts around. Let’s see what’s going on.” So I left him and I went along the front line hedgerow, and everybody’s hiding down behind the hedgerow and I said, “What goes?”

Well, the Germans are right over there in front of the next hedgerow. He said “There’s a machine gun on this side.” And there was a captain there, I asked him, he explained where the machine gun was. I said, “Well, I’m going to look at it.”

I had a tank there that had a 105 gun on it. So I went up this little trail. I was armed with a tommy gun. I carried this tommy gun all the time. I had gone up there, and I couldn’t see anything. I got down, kind of crawled along, and I looked up, and here this damn Kraut was looking right at me. To this day I don’t think he saw me; he had no look of surprise or nothing. He didn’t do anything, but instinctively I brought that tommy gun up; of course I ripped him up. Then I heard the machine gun, and I could see bushes move where the muzzle blast was moving the bushes, and then I said, well, I found the machine gun, I guess I’ll get the hell out of here. I started back, and they dropped either mortar or grenades, I’m not sure, and the first one caught me right in the back. Knocked me down. As I was laying down another one went off and got my right leg. I had a broken back and two inches knocked out of the small bone in this right leg. And after a while somebody came up and put a patch on me. I made believe I was out. It was a German medic. They put a patch on me, I waited, and they left. My tommy gun was laying in the leaves; they hadn’t seen it. I had a pistol inside the shirt in a shoulder holster; they didn’t find that, but they put a patch on my back. They figured I wasn’t going to go anywhere, and then they jabbered awhile and then they left, and I picked up my tommy gun. Hell, I could walk, hobbled; I didn’t walk very good, but I didn’t realize I had broken leg. And my back didn’t hurt, but I knew it was sticky; it felt wet. But I walked back, a couple hundred yards, back to the front line, then the medics took over. But I saw the tank commander of the tank that followed me up there and I told him what to do. I heard him shooting after that; I don’t know what happened. I gave him my tommy gun, too, I said, “Take it into Berlin.” [Morse Johnson: I had the 105 cannon, and that was the tank that I had when Captain Merrill said “Take it to Berlin.”]

Aaron Elson: Now that was what date?

Clifford Merrill: It was the 13th of July. That was all the combat for me. Yeah, they shipped me back, and I spent a year in the hospital.

Aaron Elson: Now was that about Hill 122, is that where that occurred?

Clifford Merrill: No, well, we were beyond Hill 122. We had Hill 95, then Hill 122, we kind of circled around it a little bit. But at that point I believe we were beyond, we’d already eliminated Hill 122.

Aaron Elson: How did they designate the numbers?

Clifford Merrill: That’s elevation. You figure, hills, they weren’t very high hills. But in some of those hills they were looking down on you, and some places I think they were throwing the empty shell cases on us. But we’d already, we went through La Haye du Puits; we went in there three different times, and we couldn’t, that’s when Hill 122 came into play, the big effect on us anyway, and they drove us out two times. The third time we made it. That’s where I, I went down and liberated some Calvados from a liquor store that had been blown up. I had it in the back of the jeep and I thought it would break if somebody hit us, and I’d get glass in me, so the best thing to do is just hide that, so I did. I put it in a hole and covered it up with some brush and dirt and figured I’d go back to it, and that’s what, if I go back to that area I’m going to look for it. Some Frenchman has probably found it.

Aaron Elson: So you were in the hospital for a year. Then you went back to...

Clifford Merrill: I went back to Fort Knox. Then later they sent me back to, I didn’t like Fort Knox. They were supposed to be training people; they didn’t know what they were doing. And I told them so. And the guy who was in personnel was a guy named Heggy; he’d been in OCS [Officers Candidate School] with me. And I went in to see him. I said, “Heggy, I want to leave. I want to get somewhere. I want to go to Germany.” You’d hear all kinds of rumors about what you could get for a carton of cigarettes in Germany; I said, “I guess I’d better go.”

He says, “Okay. I’ll put you on orders but I’m gonna put myself on orders, too.” He and I both went over, in the same shipment.

Aaron Elson: So then you went to Dachau?

Clifford Merrill: Then eventually I ended up in Dachau.

Aaron Elson: What did they do, they set up a...

Clifford Merrill: We had war criminals, and we had about 30,000 prisoners of war there. Then we had hard-core war criminals, about 2,000 of those. They were in more or less a big cell block; it was called a bunker but it was a cell block. And we had some lesser war criminals, some lesser crimes; they didn’t really pay much attention to them. But the ones we had in the cell block were really hard core; they’d been guards in charge of things at Dachau and other concentration camps, murdered a lot of people, killed lots of people. The prisoners of war were not too bad; in fact, one thing that happened to those prisoners, we had prisoners of war from Russia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine and places like that, they didn’t want to go back. Russia wanted them back.

Aaron Elson: They were Russian or they were German?

Clifford Merrill: They were Russian.

Aaron Elson: But they had fought for the Germans?

Clifford Merrill: The only Russians were really those from around the Moscow area, what is the Russia of today. Very few of them were from there, but from Ukraine, and Belorussia, places like that.

Aaron Elson: And they had fought for the Germans?

Clifford Merrill: No, they just, the Germans, they’d give up; they didn’t fight for them but they’d worked for them. Russia wanted them back. We found out they didn’t want to go. And when we shipped them out, we had them in railroad cars. Not box cars, regular passenger cars. Boy, they killed themselves, with some of the worst means you ever saw. Break a hole in the window and put their head in and cut their throat. Kill each other, simultaneously, with knives. Bloody Sunday.

Aaron Elson: How many people ...

Clifford Merrill: They had a trainload. The first trainload I think we had around eight, nine hundred.

Aaron Elson: That killed themselves?

Clifford Merrill: Yeah. It was a mess.

Aaron Elson: And the ones that went back were sent to Siberia?

Clifford Merrill: They didn’t even reach there. Going back, at a certain point, why, the Russians took over. And even then, they took them off the cars and they stayed in the rain overnight, cold, miserable. You know they’re not going to survive like that. They were just as brutal with their people as some of the concentration camp guards were to their prisoners.

Aaron Elson: This was about what month?

Clifford Merrill: Oh, let’s see...

Aaron Elson: The Bloody Sunday, do you know the date of that?

Clifford Merrill: Pretty close, that should have been, November...December...probably the first part of January ‘46. I may be off on the date.

Aaron Elson: How did these trials differ from the Nuremburg trials?

Clifford Merrill: Same thing. It was the same idea. Same philosophy. Court members, see, we had six members of the court, and they’d have defense counsel, as many as we could get for them. They were well-defended. But they were accused of different crimes, witnesses, all kinds of witnesses would testify against them for murdering pilots and things like that. With the concentration camp trials, Dachau trials, why, there were guards and those in charge who had killed prisoners. A lot of hanging went on afterwards.

Aaron Elson: What was your position during this? You were on the tribunal?

Clifford Merrill: I was a member of the court.

Aaron Elson: How many other members were there?

Clifford Merrill: I think we had six court members. It varied. Sometimes we had five, sometimes seven.

Aaron Elson: Were there any individuals that stand out in your memory as being especially dramatic? Did any stand out as especially sad, or did it just become repetitious?

Clifford Merrill: Most of it was repetitious, and most of it they’d cry and say they had to do it because they were ordered to do it, do things. In one case, we had a young ex-soldier, German soldier. He had, he was, I don’t know how you’d, he looked like he was about a halfwit. He had been accused of kicking this pilot. But you got all kinds of things like that. We were skeptical when we’d view these things. In this case I was glad we were. He couldn’t kill, he was just showing off. He went along and pushed the guy with his foot. We got other witnesses, we found other witnesses. He didn’t kick him, he had pushed him. So we had a little discussion. We don’t want to continue this, let him go. He was grateful. He didn’t want his neck stretched. But other cases, it was pitiful in a way; they had kids, their wives would come there, carry on. But Lord, they’d done these things. They’d actually killed people, a lot of them had.

And then we tried this guy Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was the German paratrooper, a good soldier, who had planned and executed the order, carried out the order to rescue Mussolini.

Aaron Elson: How did he do that?

Clifford Merrill: Well, he went in by glider. They snatched old Mussolini out of there. The nationalists I guess they called themselves had got Mussolini, and he got Mussolini and he got him out of there and rescued him. Or he would have had an earlier death than he did.

Then another case was Colonel Peiper, German officer, and another officer, and I forget his name, but the two of them were chief members of the group that executed a bunch of American soldiers, I think they were engineers, at Malmedy, in Belgium. That’s near St. Vith. It was termed the Malmedy massacre. Trucks came in suddenly, curtains pulled back off the rear of the trucks, and here’s machine guns and they started shooting at this group of GI prisoners. Some of course feigned death and lay there, and eventually got back to tell the story. The Germans didn’t hang around, they figured they’d killed all of them, apparently anyway. So when we had that trial, one of the guys was turned loose and the other was sentenced to hang.

Aaron Elson: There were two people on trial for that?

Clifford Merrill: Two major people. I think there were some lesser people who came in on the trial, too. Hell, the trigger men were not that important; the people that directed it are what we wanted.

Aaron Elson: And what were their ranks?

Clifford Merrill: Of these two? Both were full colonels, I think. I don’t think they were generals.

Aaron Elson: What did they say in their defense?

Clifford Merrill: Oh, I don’t remember that now. In that case, I really don’t because we were so danged, we were tickled to have them and glad we convicted them. Really. Those I didn’t, nothing mattered but that we get the rope around their neck, as far as I was concerned.

Aaron Elson: Now you said one was acquitted and the other one was...

Clifford Merrill: Yeah.

Aaron Elson: Do you remember why, or what the circumstances were?

Clifford Merrill: I don’t remember the circumstances, no. But I do know, I congratulated old Skorzeny myself on getting out of that, because our sympathies were with him. He wasn’t in on that stuff. Sure, his troops went in, some of his troops were trained, English speaking and all that, Battle of the Bulge or prior to the Battle of the Bulge, to infiltrate. What the heck is wrong with that? They were fighting just like we were. We were doing the same thing.

Aaron Elson: We were?

Clifford Merrill: Why, sure. All we could. I didn’t see anything that would give you a cause to treat him as a war criminal. And as it came it out in the trial it was proven, he was nothing but a good soldier.

Aaron Elson: You had said something in relation to him about a plot to kill Eisenhower?

Clifford Merrill: Well, that was a rumor more than anything else. He was trying to capture Eisenhower. That was his plan, not to kill him. But to capture him, and I tell you, they had this all planned with Von Runstedt, to make that drive through, and he’ll just be ahead and get in in the confusion and capture Eisenhower. Where was Eisenhower at the time, Antwerp? I think in that area. But that was part of their intention. It was easy in some cases; they thought they could carry it out all the way. But they didn’t have the backup to maintain that push they’d started. That’s where they fell down

Cliff and Jan Merrill

.Jan Merrill: He was on the Horace Heidt show. His picture was on US Bond [posters], it was on every billboard across the United States. And how much money...

Cliff Merrill: Well, we raised a lot. We sold a lot of bonds.

Aaron Elson: Tell me a little bit about Ed Forrest. You knew him well?

Cliff Merrill: Oh yeah. Ed had been, he worked in a bank, and to look at Ed you’d think immediately, if you said bank you’d say, yeah, that’s a typical bank teller. He was quiet. Quiet courage. Never raised his voice. Got along remarkably well with his men. Goldstein was one of his men. I thought Ed was the best we had; of course I didn’t tell anybody, I didn’t even tell him. But he impressed me as being the best. Always giving, never asking for himself. I think he was hit by one lonesome plane up there, dropped a bomb, and got him. Near the final days. That hurt me more than anything), because, being wounded and reading all the papers and getting letters, a lot of letters from my first sergeant, I’ve kept them all, I’ve still got them. He told me all about who was wounded and this and that. The way he got around the censors, the first man to be killed was a lieutenant, George Tarr. He’d say so-and-so joined Tarr’s platoon. He couldn’t come out and say somebody got killed. He couldn’t mail that information home. They’d cut the stuff out, or black it out, but they usually cut the letters.

You know, my driver, tank driver, Bynum was his last name, he came from Pine Valley, Arkansas [Illinois]

Aaron Elson: Bynum was the driver in the tank when my father got wounded. I don’t know if Bynum ever told you this story, but my father...

Cliff Merrill: Well, I didn’t see Bynum after that.

Aaron Elson: My dad got wounded right around the time you did. My dad was Lieutenant Tarr’s replacement, and he sprained his ankle and his tanks — he was in charge of a platoon, but the platoon went into action without him, and he caught a lift...

Cliff Merrill: He hadn’t been assigned to the company, not while I was there.

Aaron Elson: Afterward then. But he caught a lift to the front with Bynum. You know who told me this story, Charlie Vinson [actually it was Jule Braatz]. Charlie Vinson told me that Bynum had relayed this story to him. That my father was in a tank going, as a passenger, he wanted to see what was going on. And he insisted on getting out of the tank, they were being fired on or shelled, he got out of the tank, and he was hit with mortar fire and wounded. That was it.

Cliff Merrill: I’ll tell you, that’s how George Tarr got killed. He got out of the tank. Boy. He was just down a little ways from me. God. The first one of our men to die was George Tarr. It was awful difficult to write those letters.

Aaron Elson: Oh yes. And then Bynum himself was killed also.

Cliff Merrill: Pine Valley. Wasn’t he from Arkansas?

Aaron Elson: Illinois.

Cliff Merrill: Illinois, was he? Pine Valley. His nickname was Pine Valley. That’s why I didn’t know his first name. Pine Valley Bynum.

Aaron Elson: I think his first name was Quentin. I didn’t know him, I just remember him from the company list.

Cliff Merrill: He was a hell of a good man. I didn’t have anything but good men.

Aaron Elson: He was a tank driver. Was he your driver?

Cliff Merrill: Yeah. No. Moose Medich was my driver. Pine Valley was, I think he was a platoon leader’s driver, though. Moose Medich was my driver. We never did, Jan never met him; she met several of them, those who survived. Moose Medich was a hell of a good man, but I don’t know what ever happened to him. I don’t think he was killed in combat; I think he has passed away since then. Goldstein would know.

Aaron Elson: When George Tarr was killed, what were the circumstances?

Cliff Merrill: Well, we were just going in; this was our first engagement. I’m not sure of the date. But we were going down this hill. The Krauts had been shelling in this area periodically, interdiction fire I guess you’d call it. And then something happened, George got down off his tank for some reason, I don’t know why. I didn’t ask him; I wasn’t talking to him then over the radio. He was curious about something I guess. But he didn’t get down all the way. A shell hit when he was on the deck and knocked him down, and then another shell went close to him. Just had a brand new baby. Little boy. And of course, I couldn’t write that letter. I think I let Howard [Ellsworth Howard, the company executive officer] take care of it; I wasn’t sure, maybe Vinson did, because I knew him well, heck. Nice guy. Methodical. Kind of slow. But he’d do anything you told him. Do anything for you. In fact, Ellsworth Howard and I were talking about George the other day. We commented about a train ride from Fort Jackson up to Myles Standish, and we had old George all excited about keeping track of the troops. We said, “George, go count noses.” Howard, have you met him? His nickname was the Gremlin. He’s a real needler that guy, still is, but he was worse then. And he’d say, “George. Get up there and count noses.” And George said, “Well, I did that just about an hour ago.”

He said, “Yeah, but you know, we’re going to combat, you never know when one of these guys might just take it into his head and jump off this train.” We wanted to get him doing something. We didn’t want him worrying about his kid, his wife, you know.

“Okay.” He’d go out mumbling, and count noses. But he got it organized, he got it down by car, how many in each car. Oh, Lord, I laughed about that. I didn’t interfere. Because Ellsworth Howard was the executive officer, let him go ahead, he’d take care of things for me. I can still hear him, “George, go count noses.”

This stuff bothers you, you know. And the reaction is later, not then. You don’t have time to think about it, but later I had nightmares, I’m telling you. God, I’ve killed this Kraut a hundred times, for example. Each time he’d come a little closer.

Aaron Elson: You know, when I did this at the last reunion, I talked with a fellow named Ed Spahr.

Cliff Merrill: Who?

Aaron Elson: Ed Spahr, he was a replacement. And he told me a story, I’ve got it written down, about how at Dillingen, they had a tank as an outpost, the town was secure. And he’s crossing a field, and he heard something like fingers snapping. And a sniper was shooting at him. The third time he realized it, it went right past his nose. He saw a trench, jumped in a trench, and he was carrying a tommy gun with a 15-round clip instead of a 30-round clip because it saved space in the tank, that’s what he said. Dives into a trench, and he lost his bearings, so he’s walking around, and he turns a corner, and he saw a German soldier. Sitting there. He unloaded the gun, instinctively, saw dust flying out of the jacket. The soldier had been dead for two or three days probably. He said he was so embarrassed, he almost never told anybody, shooting the hell out of a dead soldier. But that’s what you do, I guess, I don’t know, I’ve never been in that situation, but I can’t imagine being in a situation...

Cliff Merrill: It’s got to be a shock to see somebody like that anyway.

Aaron Elson: What sort of, if you can talk about it, how did it come in nightmares, or what sort of feelings did it...

Cliff Merrill: I don’t know how they come on really, but all of a sudden, I still get them. It’s a good thing we have a queen-sized bed and I’m over on one side, way over, and she’s over on the other, and if I start slugging, why, I miss her. I haven’t hit her yet.

Jan Merrill: This one in Vietnam is the one that he keeps shooting. I think that’s the one he shoots the most.

Cliff Merrill: You do have them, there’s no question. I don’t know why.

Aaron Elson: I guess it’s not unusual.

Cliff Merrill: You sweat. Oh, Lord. You’d be surprised how much they shake you up. Then you don’t get any sleep. I don’t sleep much. If I go to bed at 10 o’clock, at 1:30 I’m awake. I might get another hour’s sleep. Not much more than that after.

Aaron Elson: How old are you now?

Cliff Merrill: Seventy-seven. Almost 78.

Aaron Elson: Did you ever counsel younger soldiers, who had gone through the same thing? Did you ever talk to them about it?

Cliff Merrill: I haven’t; the only counseling, you see, I called it guidance. The troops I had under me, that’s the only ones I’d give guidance to. And I always told them, I said, “Now, I have to give you a little guidance, but don’t forget, that guidance takes several forms. Sometimes it’s just a tap on the shoulder and sometimes it’s a direct kick right in the ass.” So, that’s guidance. I tried to make a joke out of stuff like that. That’s how I got along. I wasn’t dead serious about a lot of things. For example, that’s what General Seaman, the commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division, I told him, I said, “Hell, I’ll get the job done because I’m pretty mean.”

He said, “You’re not mean. You just look mean.”

I said, “Well, I’ll get the job done.”

(Looks like I only got the job half-done. I’ve reached the email length limit, and will have to save Korea, Vietnam and Mrs. Bradley’s dog for the next issue!)