It's official: I'm chopped liver

Guess who's missing in action from Goodreads' best books about tanks list

So the other day I discovered a list of the “61 best books about tanks” on Goodreads and I thought, gee, lee’s see where Tanks for the Memories is.

Number one was “The Human Story of Tanks at War,” by Robert Kershaw. Robert Kershaw.

Number 2 was “Tank: The Definitive Visual History of Armored Vehicles,” by David Willey. There were about five books on the list that were simply named “Tank.”

There were definitely some books that deserved to be higher than mine: two by Steven Zaloga, one of the world’s foremost authorities on them steel behemoths. And Spearhead, which was a bestseller. A few books about Kursk, an oblast that has been in a news a bit lately; and “Brothers in Arms,” by Kareem-Abdul-Jabbar, about the African-American 761st Tank Battalion.

Then there was The Tanks of Tammuz, by Shabtai Teveth, as well as several other iterations of Israeli battles. Ringing in at No. 17 was: “Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use--Includes How to Make Ferrocement Water Tanks” by Art Ludwig. No doubt ferrocement coffee cups are going to be the next big thing.

But “Tanks for the Memories”? Aquifer Pete’s sake, it didn’t even make the list. Hey Goodreads, what am I, chopped liver? After some reflection, though, I decided the reason my book, the signature tome of my oeuvre, failed to make the Goodreads list: It must have been published on paper made from trees that fell in the forest when no one was listening.

For the multitudes who are therefore unfamiliar with my first book about my father’s tank battalion — which is in an expanded third edition — here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Hill 122.

Jim Rothschadl

We had backed off the line, and there was a rumor going around that another tank battalion was going to take our place. We pulled our tanks into a little field, and our kitchen trucks were there.

I remember driving into the field, standing up in the turret. Flowers was outside already, talking with somebody in a jeep.

Sergeant Speier, he was the mess sergeant, he knew I liked pork chops. He used to call me “Pork Chop.” So all of a sudden I heard, “Hey Pork Chop, you hungry?”

I said, “You’re goddamn right!”

And he tossed me up a gallon can of marmalade and a loaf of bread.

We were parked alongside the hedgerow, and somebody came up and said, “You can’t stand outside. You’ve got to get underneath the tank,” because mortar fire might come in.

There was about two feet under the tank, so we crawled under there, and took the gallon can of marmalade – we were so damn hungry – and the loaf of bread. There were four of us, Ed Dzienis, our loader; Gerald Kiballa, the assistant driver; Horace Gary, the driver, and myself. We took a Bowie knife, and we cut open this can of marmalade. And we broke the bread, it wasn’t sliced, so we took chunks off, and we scooped out the marmalade with our hands. We ate the whole gallon.

So we’re laying there, and Sergeant Speier came over and said, “It’ll take about an hour. I’ve got a hot meal for you.” We hadn’t had a hot meal since we left England. About that time, a jeep comes racing into this little field with an officer.

One of our tanks was parked about a hundred feet from our tank, and I noticed a commotion over there. Several people were gathered around it, and people were waving arms. So I walked over to see what was going on.

And here this guy was, he refused to drive. I couldn’t believe it. “I’m not gonna go,” he was saying. “I’m just not gonna go. The hell with you, I’m not gonna go.” And they put him in a jeep, and away they went. We had been told that the rules of war, if you disobey an order on the front, you don’t have to be court-martialed, they could shoot you right there. They didn’t do that. They took him away.

Sergeant Bailey was the communications sergeant, although he knew how to drive a tank, and damned if he didn’t volunteer to drive that tank.

Louis Gerrard

My crew at the time was Earl Holman, Abe Taylor was the tank commander, I was the gunner, G.B. Kennedy was the bow gunner, and then we had a driver, his name was Lochowitz.

I told Flowers, when I was in Louisville [at the 1988 reunion] – that’s the first time I’d seen Flowers since the day we got hit – I told him Lochowitz wouldn't drive the tank, so Bailey said, “Get out. I’ll drive the tank.”

Jack Sheppard

I said to Flowers, “There’s only three men in the tank. You need a driver and you need a commander, so Bailey will take over as driver and I’ll take over as commander, but you are the platoon leader, I’m just another tank in your platoon.” He said, “Okay. You follow behind Taylor.” They pulled out in front of me and we pulled along behind them.

Flowers fired the machine gun a few times, and all of a sudden we were with this battalion of infantry.

Then we were given orders that we’re going to attack across the road. The road went along a big open field with a hedgerow at the far end. Flowers and K Company of the 358th Infantry were going to take that hedgerow. Famous last words.

Jim Flowers

I led the tanks on into the woods and ran the Germans in front of me until I started seeing some of our own infantry, and I asked them where their battalion commander was. It turned out that this was the 3rd Battalion of the 358th Infantry, and their battalion commander was a man named Jacob Bealke from Sullivan, Missouri, a reserve officer.

When I found Colonel Bealke, he was glad to see me. To say the least, he was glad to see me.

We planned how to get him off of that hill and out of those woods. Some of that brush, it was kind of like a thicket, you couldn’t see through it much less walk through it, and they had been catching hell.

They had managed to capture eight of the Germans that I had run down that way, and from them we found out that this is part of the 15th Regiment of the 5th SS Parachute Infantry Division. These were fairly clean kids. Most of them looked like they might have been in their early to mid-twenties. They had had a bath and a shave recently, and had had something to eat, they had clean uniforms, the whole nine yards. We probably looked like a scurvy bunch of bums by then.

Bealke and I made a plan on how to get out of there. I’d take my tanks and knock this underbrush and thicket down so his infantry could get out. That’s one of the reasons they were trapped in there. I’ll knock some paths through this stuff so y’all can walk behind me to get out.

At first, the infantry was walking in front of me, but that didn’t last long. We hadn’t gone but a short distance and they fell back in line with my tanks. And that didn’t last but a few yards. They just couldn’t get through that stuff, and there was a heavy concentration of German soldiers.

Our plan was to get down the side of the hill, which in some places was pretty steep, and out of the woods onto this hard-surface road, then go on out into the fields on the other side of the road and try to get him up on the line with Pond’s battalion.

Everything worked out according to plan, except for one thing: The infantry got bogged down.

We got down to the hardtop road, and now I don’t know where the infantry is. I had no idea that the Germans were decimating Bealke’s infantry now.

As I come out of the woods and onto that hardtop road, I look both ways and don’t see a damn thing. Everything looks fine, so I go across the ditch and the hedgerow on the other side, and out into a field.

In front of me was a swampy area. I got on the radio and told the other tanks to look out for that as they came across the road. Don’t run into that marshy area and get stuck.

I went around on the right side of this marsh, and as Sheppard came across, Bailey ran him out in it and got stuck.

Taylor, who was in Wiley’s tank, and Kenneth Titman, who was in the No. 5 tank, went around on the left side and went on. Then Sheppard got on the radio and said, “Jim, I’m stuck back here.”

I thought, “Damn!”

“What do you want me to do now?”

“When I have an opportunity, I’ll get somebody back there to pull you out of that marsh.”

I went on, and out in this field there’s bushes, weeds and stuff. And there’s a hedgerow up there. I don’t remember if there’s any trees. The thing I do remember is that the artillery and mortar fire from the German side was falling in on us kind of like hail or raindrops, there was a lot of it.

I’d run quite a distance across the second field in after I crossed the road. Taylor’s tank and Titman’s tank are off on my left, nothing on my right. After I’d run quite a distance out into that second field, I recall seeing a blinding flash of light and hearing this big bell ringing.

What had happened, the Germans had fired an armor-piercing shot from an anti-tank gun and I saw the muzzle flash. The ringing was that the shell had bounced off of my turret.

I immediately had Gary stop and back up. I’m sure that I’m in  a fire lane that they’ve cut.

At the same time, I’m on the radio telling the other tanks to look out for that anti-tank gun and giving them the approximate location of it. Let’s be careful. So after Gary backed up, I had him pull to the right and then go forward. Hopefully I’m out of this guy’s fire line. I’m sure not going to slow down to find out.

As we do that, we hadn’t pulled up too far until, I don’t know whether it was an armor-piercing shot, it might have been a bazooka, I don’t know what it was but it came through the right sponson, where a bunch of ammunition is stored, and ignited the propelling charge in this 75-millimeter ammunition and clipped off my right forefoot, and I suppose that whatever it was probably went out the other side.

Instantaneously, the tank is a ball of fire.

I like to dramatize this a little bit by saying that I’m now standing in the middle of Hell.

I get on the intercom and tell the crew, “Let’s get out of here!” And I reach down and grab Rothschadl, my gunner, who’s sitting in a seat down in front of me. I grab Rothschadl by the shoulders and yank him out of that seat, and start to push him up to get him out of the turret. At this point I don’t know that I’ve been hit.

After I pushed Rothschadl out on top, I turned around to climb out myself, and as I stepped up on that ring around where the top and the bottom of the turret are bolted together, I didn’t have anything to step with. That’s when I realized that something is happening.

I fell down to the bottom of the turret basket, and to this day I don’t know whether I fell or whether it was Dzienis climbing up my back to get out. It’s immaterial anyhow.

Jeanette Flowers

You told him to abandon tank.

Jim Flowers

Yes, but don’t drag me down in this barbecue pit!

I pulled myself and crawled out onto the turret and jumped down on the ground, and looked down, and that’s when I saw I didn’t have much of a right foot left.

Fortunately, when I climbed out of the tank, I guess it was a reflex, I grabbed my tommy gun and hung it over my arm, and when I hit the ground, I’m armed. There was a hedgerow in front of me, and the Germans on the other side started shooting at us.

When they knocked out my tank, they got all four of my ranks, right then and there.

Jim Rothschadl

We were told in training, “Don’t freeze.” I guess a few guys did. They got so petrified or frightened they just froze. But I kept saying to myself, “Don’t freeze. Watch.” So I didn’t freeze. But I was damn scared.

The turret had a toggle in it that was electrical, but it also had a little  wheel so you could traverse the gun manually. When my tank got hit, the little wheel was right in front of me, and it knocked four of my teeth out.

The Germans were dug in on this hill, hundreds of them. They were close together, with lots of foxholes. And some were on top, working the machine guns.

I was firing the .30-caliber machine gun. I was a little heavy on the trigger. We were told to fire short bursts or the barrel would melt. Dzienis had a pair of big asbestos mittens, and he would screw the barrel off and put on another one. The barrel got so hot that it bent a little bit and the bullets were falling in front of the tank. Meanwhile, they were firing at us with small arms and rifle grenades. The grenades were magnesium. They would weld themselves onto the tank, and almost go all the way through. They would aim at the turret circle. If one hit there you couldn’t turn the turret.

Then the first big shell hit. It lifted the tank about two feet off the ground.

Flowers was looking for the gun. He told me to traverse from the middle to the right. I quit firing the .30 and switched to the 75.

Horace Gary, he was the driver, started swearing, “God damn it! Let’s get out of this sonofabitch, we’re sitting ducks!” And Flowers told me to traverse to the right. I was trying to pick out something but I couldn’t, through the periscope. I did see a heat wave, where the blast was from, and I fired one round in there.

A few seconds later, the second shell hit. There was this humongous explosion, and racket, and heat.

The turret was open. It immediately caught fire. And the shell went right on through. Those German 88s could hit the front of a tank and come right out the back. They had double the velocity of our 75s.

I remember I was burning. I was trying to get up from my little seat. I thought just for a moment about unplugging the radio. But the tank was flaming inside. I got out by myself as far as my armpits. Then I fell back in.

Flowers helped me out. I kind of revived and got some air, and I got out of the turret as far as my belly. Then Flowers let himself off because there wasn’t enough room for the two of us. I saw him fall backwards onto the ground.

When I finally got out I let myself fall head-first onto the ground. My clothes were burning. I had my senses. We had been told in training that you’ve got to get the fire out. So I started to roll. Lo and behold, all of a sudden, plunk! I fell down into a hole. It was four or five feet deep, and there was a lot of loose dirt. I plunked down in there, and covered myself with this dirt. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.