Follow the bouncing spittoons

And more stuff you won't read in big-picture books about WW2

Happy New Year! A funny thing happened the last time I got drunk, which was on New Year’s Eve in the early 1990s. I was sitting at home in then-New Jersey with a bottle of champagne, and drank pretty much the whole damn thing. A few days later, I suffered my first gout attack in the big toe on my right foot. Ooh was that painful. It was time for the annual mini-reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served — every January the retirees and snowbirds among the veterans would gather in Bradenton, Florida for a get-together that was less formal than the regular annual reunion — and I was wearing a special kind of shoe that elevated my right foot. When I arrived at the motel, I thought I might get a little sympathy. However, the first veteran I saw was Les O’Riley, who’d been a company commander in the battalion, and he was on crutches. The good news is that although I’ve had a few gout attacks, I haven’t gotten drunk since and have only allowed myself one or two beers every summer. I would always return from the “minis” with several 90-minute cassettes of recorded interviews and conversations.

In my last Substack, Dad Tells the Truth Once in a While, I included two humorous stories told by Walter Galbraith and an account of an action in which he took part during the Battle of the Bulge. They were drawn from a conversation I had around 1991 or ’92 with Walter and Caesar Tucci. Both were veterans of D Company, the battalion’s company of “light” Stuart tanks. Following is the rest of that conversation.

“Where were you from?” I asked Walter.

“Boston. I was in the 101st Engineers, with my brother and some buddies, and then I got out, because I had two kids, and then the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I got out, and my brother had to go overseas, so I couldn’t let him be in the outfit, so I joined the Army, and I got in the 10th Armored Division, and then the 10th Armored became the 712th Tank Battalion [the 712th was one of two battalions broken out of the 10th Armored to become independent tank battalions], so that’s how I got into it.”

“What happened to your brother?” I asked.

“He got malaria, but outside of that, he was okay. I was glad that I joined, because I wouldn’t feel right, with him being over there. I had two kids, but I couldn’t help it, I just felt I had to go. As a matter of fact, I even tried to get drafted and they wouldn’t draft me. They even brought my wife up, and they said, ‘Do you love your wife?’ And I said, ‘Of course I love my wife.’ Then I said, ‘But I want to go in.’ Then they said, ‘We won’t put you in this draft, but we’ll put you in the next one,’ and I couldn’t wait, so I volunteered.”

“What was it like,” I asked, “inside the light tank?”

“It was hot. That’s why you had that helmet on. If you ever forget, sometimes if you lean your face and just bump it, you’d never take your helmet off again. And I always wore my helmet up this way; I couldn’t stand it over my ears, so I’ve got pictures of me, no matter where I was, I looked like a Viking. But they were fast, and they were cold in the wintertime.”

“What was it like your first day in combat?”

“Oh, God. The first day that we went across [the English Channel], we had just landed and I was talking to a lieutenant. We saw some dead GIs, and then some dead horses and cows; they were all puffed up like a balloon. I was more ascared of the dead Germans than I was of the live ones. You’d see them with their eyes, grotesque looking. So I’m talking to the lieutenant, he’s dead now, Lieutenant Coe, he was my tank commander, and we’re standing talking, and phwee! A bullet went by us. So we both went down. And then one night, the German plane came over; we called it Bedcheck Charlie, and when the tracer would go up, it would be like it was raining upside down. So I’m on my tank — we slept in our tank — and I’m watching these infantry guys. They dug a hole this way and that way, a slit trench, and they put hay down there; I thought they’ve got it made. So they moved out, and when they did, I jumped out of my tank and went down there, and it was so nice, for about two minutes. Our artillery was on the other side of the thing [a hedgerow], and when they let it go, the whole ground just vibrated. I jumped out of that gosh darn trench and went back around on the other side of my tank.”

“Going back to the first day in combat…” I said.

“I remember going into an area, and Lieutenant Bellows [he may have meant Lieutenant Coe, as there is no Bellows listed in the battalion roster] getting out of there to find out where we were, because we never knew anything; all we knew is we’re here. So he got out of the tank, and while he got out of the tank, he left us in a wide open space. I could see for miles. A hedgerow, you couldn’t see from here to there, and all of a sudden we’re in the open, and then the Germans started shelling us. So we stood there for a couple of seconds, with the shells coming over, and I said, ‘Let me get out of here.’ So I said, what the hell platoon I am, ‘Third platoon, move out!’ I grabbed the mike. And we moved out. And down the road we met the lieutenant. He said, ‘What happened?’”

“I said, ‘We were being shelled. We were wide open.’ And then I felt like I was being a coward or something. So we moved into an area, I guess it was the next day, and there was a big ditch, and there was like a little bridge going across, and then we broke into this hedgerow, and went down this way. And when we were there for a while we heard guys calling ‘Medics!’ and guys kept seeing snipers, and all of a sudden, my tank was the lead tank, so the shells start hitting all around our tank. So the lieutenant was gone again. I wasn’t about to leave this time because I felt that if I do this, he’d probably say I’m chicken or something. So the shells come over and the tank would vibrate, and then, I don’t know why I did this, I reached outside the tank and I got my steel helmet, because we had the tank helmet, and on the inside of the helmet is a liner, and we had morphine. So I took it [the helmet, not the morphine], and I raised the breech of my gun to hold it; because the lieutenant was gone there was the open hatch, and I was always afraid of a shell coming in there. So I put the helmet there, and the shells would come over, and all of a sudden this shell came over, and I don’t know whether it exploded on top of the deal there, anyway, I look at my finger and my finger’s bleeding, and my helmet’s on the floor. So I pick my helmet up; there’s a big hole in the helmet, and it’s like spaghetti, where the shrapnel had gone in, [it was] just like spaghetti, just shredded. So I climbed up on top of the tank, and the driver and assistant driver jumped out, and another shell came over and I went flying through the air and I landed on my back on the ground, and I was trying to catch my breath.

“I wasn’t sure I was wounded because I felt this pang, like someone smacked me in the ass. I had o.d.’s [olive drab fatigues] on, and long underwear on, the fatigues on, and then this combat thing on, so there was a lot of stuff. I found out that I couldn’t move my butt, and they were hollering ‘Medics! Medics!’ So they said try to get down the road a little. I was pulling myself this way on the ground, and then the lieutenant came back, and in the meantime the medics came by. So the medic says, ‘Are you wounded?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ All I know is I couldn’t move myself. So he started cutting, and cutting through all those different clothes. I was afraid he was gonna find nothing. So they opened it up and found I was wounded. I had shrapnel in me. But I also had some coins, British coins, and I didn’t know it until later, but it twisted the hell out of the coins. So the shrapnel had hit the coins.

“They said, ‘Get down the road as fast as you can.’ My tank was on fire, by the way. I forgot about that. Our tank caught on fire. So the lieutenant had to get on another tank, and they went out through that hedgerow down a way. While they were gone, I’m dragging myself along to try to get down the road, and then the doctor came. I looked over at the hedgerow, and then the road, and I said, ‘Oh shit. I can’t get over that.’ I was going to go down to where the tanks were. So I looked up, and then more shells came over, and when they did I just [jumped] and I landed on a couple of GIs, and I forget what they said.

“I said, ‘I’m okay. I’ve got to get down the road.’ So I got down the road, and this jeep with places to put stretchers came, and they said, ‘Hey, a guy’s wounded here.’ So they picked me up, and they put me on this thing, and they took off, and then after a while I couldn’t hear any more fireworks.

“The first medics camp I came to was on fire, where a German shell had just hit it, so I said, ‘Oh, shit, what a hell of a place to be,’ but I was only there about ten or fifteen minutes. Then I was on a jeep, and the next thing I know they put me in a duck [a DUKW, or amphibious vessel], and they took me across the Channel. And over there they said, ‘Can you count to ten?’ Well shit, I figured they were telling the truth, because we had guys who couldn’t read or write. So anyway, they put me in a duck, and from there to a hospital ship, and I went to a hospital in England.”

At this point, Caesar Tucci chimed in.

“We had just moved into the hedgerows,” Caesar said, “and we were waiting for our first combat assignment. So Sergeant Heckler, one of the tank commanders, was called to receive some combat orders. He received them, and then he went back to his tank to tell his tank crew about what they had to do. And his tank crew was preparing the tank for combat, so the guns were loaded, the machine guns, the tank cannon made ready. The machine guns were loaded and ready to go, and the bow gunner, I don’t remember his name, the bow gunner for Heckler, I can’t think of his name at this time…”

“He was killed later, too,” Walter said.

“Yeah,” Caesar said. “This all happened at once. The bow gunner [assistant driver] was turning to get on his knees to check the ammunition stowed behind his seat in the bow position. Just as he did that, he reached back and leaned on the back plate and handle and trigger of the bow machine gun. And at that time Sergeant Heckler reached up and grabbed the 37 cannon and started to mount the tank, like it was customary to do. He grabbed the tank and started up. And just as he did that and got up there, the bow gunner accidentally set off a burst of machine gun fire, and caught Sergeant Heckler right across the middle, and he was the first casualty of our company. He was killed before we ever got into action, and was killed by his own man in the tank. [Actually Sergeant Harold Heckler was killed on July 15, 1944, after the battalion had been in combat for 13 days, but several members of D Company recalled it as being the first combat assignment; rather it likely is that Heckler was the first member of the company to be killed. For more about this incident, see my Substack titled The Tragic Death of Harold Heckler.]

“Later on,” Caesar continued, “there was a replacement made. Sergeant McNulty took over his tank, and they’re on a mission, and went up a road, and they hit a mine I think it was [actually the tank was struck by a shell fired by a Mark V Panzer], and the whole tank crew was killed. Sergeant Heckler was our first casualty. That kind of hit hard, this is for real. A great guy, a redhead, Harold Heckler.”

[At this point in the conversation, Walter told the story about the Battle of the Bulge which was detailed in the recent Substack. Then Caesar spoke about the battle of Dillingen, which preceded the Bulge.]

“Around the first of December,” Caesar said, “we went out on the Saar River, the village [city, actually] of Dillingen, and they requested volunteers to man gun positions on the Saar River to kind of make a fake for the Germans, to make them feel that we were coming across in strength at that point. So there was a lot of firing to be built up at that point, and I volunteered to go down there. They said this would be a mission about two or three days, so I went and manned a .50-caliber machine gun at that position.

“On the way down, a sergeant from I think Headquarters Company was in charge. We had .50-caliber machine guns and mortars that we were going to set up inside the houses and various areas on this side of the Saar River to fire across and fire at the forts of the Siegfried Line. So I volunteered for one of those positions, and I went there, so I traveled light. They said it would be two or three days. I didn’t take anything else. Not even shaving equipment. I figured I would shave and clean up when we got back.

“So we go down there, and to get there we had to reach the top of a hill, and then the halftrack had to make a mad dash to go down because it was exposed to direct fire from the Germans on the other side. And it was like going through a gauntlet. We went down there just as fast as we could go and they were firing at us, but we beat it; we got into the town and then we were out of their view. When we were in the town, we were only subjected to mortar fire and machine gun fire.

“We set up our headquarters in a brick apartment building on the opposite side of the street from the river from where we had set out. My partner and I sandbagged the machine gun in a kitchen in a German home on a porcelain kitchen table and had it fixed to shoot out the back window of their kitchen across the river.

“These fire missions would be announced to us on the radio, start a fire mission, we would run across the street, put the back plate on the machine gun; we’d never leave the back plate there because [German] patrols would come through the town. And when they gave us the word to fire, everybody, mortars, .50-calibers, everything, they’d fire across the river, to show a real show of force. That would go on for about four or five minutes, and the gun would get real hot, the barrel would, so when the fire mission stopped, I had to reach out with an asbestos glove, take the barrel off, ram an oil patch through it right away, and then take the back plate off the machine gun and beat it across the street back into the middle portion of that building. Our room was in the middle portion. It was built like a court, like a square, and in the middle of that square were the outhouses, and we were in the middle portion of that.

“So we get back, and as soon as we got back, the Germans would start returning fire with mortar and machine guns. And one of the mortar shells I remember hit the craphouse right in that square, it demolished that outhouse. And we’d stand, I’d stand guard in the hall — it was a long hall — and they told us, watch for German patrols; they come through the town at night. And I’d stand just inside the doorway where they couldn’t see in but I could see out. I’d see the German tracers coming across the river, and they’d be hitting high, because there again, if the trajectory was high, they couldn’t hit very low, but I could watch them way up in the building.

“I was doing that one night when this was happening, when all of a sudden zhooom, a damn mortar hit, you know those outdoor cellar exits, it was beside the door; it hit down there, and the concussion of that damn thing pushed me all the way back ten feet in the door. But that’s all it was, no shrapnel or anything, but the concussion pushed me back there.”

“If you ever wanted to see anything so beautiful, the river was there, and our pink tracers were right across, and you’d see the white phosphorous from the Germans … and they had these lights shining up against the clouds, and all those beautiful lights would just shine up into the clouds…”

“At the time you’re talking about,” Walter said, “if you ever wanted to see anything so beautiful, the river was there, and our pink tracers were right across, and then you’d see the white phosphorous from the Germans, with all the beautiful colors and all. And we’re coming down that road to get to the river, and by the way, they had these lights [searchlights] shining up against the clouds to give it a light effect, and all those beautiful lights would just shine up into the clouds so we could see where we were going.

“So anyway, we’re not allowed to wear our helmet straps, because the concussion would break your neck, so we had to put the damn things around, and your helmet’s going like this on your head. So every time a shell would come over as we were going down the road, we’d fall, we’d hit the ground, and our helmets would come off. It looked like spittoons bouncing all over the road. But the colors were so beautiful, the pink tracer, the red tracer coming back.”

“That shelling that night was rough as I remember,” Caesar said. “It hadn’t been that rough, but what it wound up being is this: We weren’t there for three days. We got relieved from that position on my birthday, the 16th of December. But one time we had a fire mission, and I had to go through all the rigamarole, I got the barrel off, the back plate didn’t make it in time. So the only thing I could figure out then, on one end of the living room of this German home, and they had all ultramodern furniture in there, mahogany tables and everything. So I took a wall [away] from where the shelling was coming from, there was a buffet there, I dove under that buffet and watched the shrapnel come bouncing in through the window while they were shelling. Right after that was all over, I got the hell back across the street.

“When we got out of that, we stayed in that area. Then we celebrated New Year’s Eve there, and this French family baked a lot of sweet cakes and pastries, and they invited us to participate. We were sleeping in the schoolhouse on the floor, and the French family was upstairs in it also, they were living there as refugees. So they invited us, and we had a combination of Calvados and pastries, and boy, there were a lot of sick guys. I never in my life got drunk, but that night I got sicker than a dog, and geez, I got woke by Joe Massar, and he said, ‘Tooch! Tooch! It’s your turn, come on, get up!’ I sat up like a zombie. Oh, my god. What an awful feeling. And I went out to stand guard, my head spinning, sick to my stomach, the longest three hours I ever spent. Oh my god, I felt terrible.

“This is the time that our battalion was ordered to move up to the Bulge area. So everybody packed up and we started up that way. This was the worst trip of my life, honest to god. After that night, I had what they called the GI shits, and what I was wearing, I got my underwear, my o.d.’s, and on top of that I had my combat suit, like a ski suit. So the convoy was slow going up, it was bumper to bumper. They’d stop periodically, and they’d have a few minutes, and every time they stopped I was out the back end of a truck heading for the side of the road, pulling all those clothes off, I had to get rid of my problem. Unfortunately I couldn’t go fast enough and the convoy would start up again and I was chasing after it trying to pull up my pants. It was a circus. Oh, it was an awful trip I had. I said never again would I do any kind of drinking like that. What a diarrhea case I had!”