Memorial Day 2024 Part 11
Lieutenant Tarr's Platoon
This Memorial Day I looked at a pair of photos of the panels containing 99 names on the 712th Tank Battalion monument in the Memorial Garden of the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and wondered if I could say something about those names I recognized and perhaps learn something about those I didn’t. Thanks to the research of Kaye Ackermann, whose father, Rolland Ackermann, was in the 712th; and the late Louis Gruntz Jr., who wrote the book “A Tank Gunner’s Story” about his father’s company in the 712th, and also resources like Find-a-Grave, I’ve learned a lot more than I expected to about those names I didn’t initially recognize. What am I up to now? Oh yes, the letter T (thank you, Bert and Ernie, for the reminder).
George C. Tarr: “I couldn’t write that letter,” Cliff Merrill said. A retired colonel and veteran of three wars (WW2, Korea and Vietnam), the one reunion Merrill never missed was that of the 712th, despite having been wounded on his tenth day in combat and spending most of the war recovering in the States. However, he trained with and was the original company commander of the battalion’s A Company. Second Lieutenant George Tarr, an A Company officer, was killed on July 3, 1944, the battalion’s first day in combat.
“I couldn’t write that letter. I think I let Ellsworth Howard [the battalion’s executive officer] or Vinson [Charlie Vinson, the first sergeant] did, because I knew him well. A nice guy. Methodical. And slow. He’d do anything you told him to, do anything for you.”
When I went to my first reunion of the 712th, all I remembered about my father’s experiences was the name of a fellow lieutenant, Ed Forrest; that he was wounded in Normandy and again in Dillingen, and that he was the replacement for the first lieutenant killed in action. That lieutenant I learned was George Tarr.
“We were going down this hill,” Merrill said. “The Krauts had been shelling 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 wasn’t talking to him then on the radio. He was curious about something, I guess. But he didn’t get down all the way. A shell hit on the deck, knocked him down, and then another shell went close to him. He just had a brand new baby, a little boy.
“In fact,” Merrill said at the 1989 reunion, “Ellsworth Howard and I were talking about George the other day. What we commented about was a train ride from Fort Jackson up to Camp Myles Standish. We had old George all excited about keeping track of the troops. We said, ‘George, go count noses.’
“Howard, his nickname was the Gremlin, he was a real needler that guy, still is, but he was worse then. He’d say, ‘George, get up there and count noses,’ and George said, ‘I did that just about an hour ago,’ and Howard said, ‘Yeah, but you know, we’re going into combat and 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, rather than worrying about his kid, his wife.
“‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll go count noses.’ Well, he got it organized. He got it down by car, the number of soldiers in each car. Lord, I laughed about that. I didn’t interfere, because Ellsworth Howard was the executive officer, let him go ahead and take care of things. I can still hear him, ‘George, go count noses.’”
During the war, correspondence was censored, which presented a problem for someone like Merrill who was hungry for information about his company.
“When I was in the hospital I got several letters from my first sergeant, Charlie Vinson,” Merrill said. “He told me about who was wounded and this and that. The way he got around the censors, the first man in the battalion to be killed was a lieutenant, George Tarr. Charlie would say so-and-so joined Tarr’s platoon. He couldn’t come out and say somebody got killed. They’d cut the letters, or black it out.
“27 January 1944, Somewhere in Luxembourg,” Vinson wrote a few days after one of the battalion’s most consequential battles, in Oberwampach, Luxembourg, where A Company and troops from the 90th Infantry Division fended off nine counterattacks over a two-day period.
“Dear Captain, There is a lot that I would like to tell you about, but it would never get by the censors. We are still with the same division. And the outfit is really getting to be appreciated by the Infantry. Especially since our last big operation. …
“The men in the company are getting quite a few decorations. E.E. Crawford is back in the States on a furlough as is Sgt. Colton. Both men have been decorated twice. Each has the Silver and Bronze Stars. Bahrke has the Silver and Bronze Stars too. Pacione has the Silver Star and the Purple Heart with Cluster. Lt. Braatz, Tibbitts, MacFarland, Johnson, Ringwelski, Craven, Pellettiere, Hagerty, Bob Anderson, Bussell, Justice and Borsenik have the Bronze Star Medals. Cameron has the Silver Star, and three new men whom you don’t know have the Bronze Star also. … There are from 15 to 20 new awards pending for the men in the company. Pilz and Bynum, who are with Lt. Tarr, have been awarded the Bronze Star too.”
Note to self: Find Lieutenant Tarr’s Find-a-Grave page and add that he was awarded the Bronze Star.
I don’t know if Find-a-Grave existed before 1990 but if it did I didn’t know to look there or in many other resources for information. Tarr’s widow was named Dorothy but I wasn’t able to locate her. There was no information about his widow on the Find-a-Grave page, but there was one interesting piece of information. Born in 1912, George was the oldest of three brothers. One of those brothers, Robert, four years younger than George, served in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam and retired as a colonel. He died in 1988.
Abraham I. Taylor: “Let me tell you about Abe now,” Jake Driskill said. Driskill was the C Company maintenance sergeant. “We were in a company area, and they got orders to pull up just before all this happened.” He was referring to the battle for Hill 122 in which Lieutenant Jim Flowers’ first platoon of Company C was ambushed and lost nine men killed and several others wounded or captured. Taylor was the platoon sergeant. There was some juggling of crews on July 10, 1944, prior to the battle, because tank commander Judd Wiley was injured the day before, and one driver, Henry Lochowicz, refused to go on the mission. James Bailey volunteered to take Lochowicz’s place and was among the casualties that day. Lieutenant Flowers placed Taylor in Wiley’s tank and Captain Jack Sheppard, the company commander, volunteered to take Taylor’s place with Taylor’s regular crew, except for Bailey, who was driving.
“Taylor was one of four [C Company] sergeants that went to Fort Benning [from the horse cavalry], and Taylor and I were good friends, had been for all this time, and he came up, stuck his hand out, and said, ‘So long, Dris’ — D-R-I-S — and I said, ‘Well, I’ll shake your hand, but I’ll see you.’
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘I feel like I’m gonna get it sometime, this may be it.’ So he went in there with that in his mind. That this might be the time that he’d get it. I don’t know how a man would, what kind of feeling he’d have to think that ‘I’m gonna get it, that this may be it.’ Of course I wasn’t all that brave, but I never did feel like ‘This is it.’”
Gerald E. Thomas: “B Company of the 712th and the 357th [Infantry] Regiment were on the left flank of Hill 122, near Beau Coudray,” Louis Gruntz’ Jr. wrote in “A Tank Gunner’s Story.” “While Jim Flowers and his platoon from Company C were battling near Hill 122, B Company engaged the Germans and were also sustaining casualties. Sgt. Gerald Thomas was killed. Wilbur Beneway, Edward Petke, Melvin Koehn, Bill Nick, and Leslie Arnold were wounded and evacuated.”
According to Find-a-Grave, Gerald Thomas was from Greeley, Colorado, and was 27 years old.
Ervin Ulrich: Ervin Ulrich was busy preparing a hot meal for A Company’s rear echelon personnel in the late afternoon of April 3, 1945 when he was killed in the explosion at Heimboldshausen, Germany. He is buried in the American cemetery at Margraten, Holland.
The following article appeared in a Montana newspaper:
A message from the war department Tuesday morning advised Mr and Mrs Adolph Ulrich, of Marsh, that their son T5 Ervin Ulrich, 27, was killed in action Tuesday, April 3, on the western front in Germany. It was stated a letter would follow giving more details.
He went overseas January 16, 1944, having been trained as a tank driver, but was soon transferred to the kitchen of his outfit, on account of his knowledge of cookery. It is presumed that he took part in the invasion of Normandy and accompanied the victorious Allied advance through France and into Germany.
Corporal Ulrich was inducted into the army March 23, 1942, training with a cavalry division at Fort Riley KS. Later he was transferred to a tank division at a CA post, receiving his final training at Fort Bennning GA. From this post he embarked for overseas.
Born January 8, 1918, at the ranch home near Marsh, he grew to manhood in that community, attending the nearby public school. He worked with his father on the farm until his induction into the army. He was one of seven children of the family, his brothers and sisters being: Gottlieb, Adolph Jr, Garfield, Elmer, and Marion of Marsh, and Mrs Anna Fisher of Fallon.
Paul Vetrone: From the Philadelphia Inquirer of March 9, 1945:
Private Paul J. Vetrone, a graduate of West Catholic High School for boys, was killed in action Feb. 10 in Germany, his mother, Mrs. Anna Vetrone of 5605 Thomas ave. was notified.
Before he entered the Army in March 1943, he was an employe of the Naval Aircraft factory at the Navy Yard. He suffered fatal wounds while on a patrol mission with the Third Army of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., with which he had served since last July.
He was a veteran of the Normandy breakthrough and the subsequent Third Army thrusts through France and Luxembourg. A brother, Andrew, 27, is a member of an Army engineers unit in Italy.
(To Be Continued)