Memorial Day 2024 (part 1)

I honor the fallen members of my father's tank battalion

Sometimes when I’m feeling a little full of myself, I think about how I know so much of the history of my father’s 712th Tank Battalion, and then I look at a handful of pictures I took of the monument to the 712th in the Memorial Garden of the Patton Museum at Fort Knox and realize how much of its history I actually don’t know, as evidenced by the many of the 99 names etched in bronze that I don’t recognize.

There are 99 names on two plaques, while other plaques give some of the battalion’s history and list its campaigns (five) and decorations

So this Memorial Day, with the help of “A Tank Gunner’s Story,” by the late Louis Gruntz Jr., who wrote about his trip to Europe with his father, I will go through the names on the monument and say a little something about those I recognize while exposing my lack of knowledge about those I don’t.

James A. Bailey. Bailey filled in for a driver who refused to go on the ill-fated mission led by Lieutenant Jim Flowers on Hill 122 on July 10, 1944. He was driving Lieutenant Jack Sheppard’s tank when it became bogged down in a field and was struck by artillery. Bailey got out of the tank but was the only member of the crew to be killed. A colleague remembered Bailey as an excellent mechanic who could take a tank engine apart and rebuild it and there would always be a few parts left over, but the engine worked fine.

Fred W. Becker: I have no information.

Arthur A. Beyer: I don’t remember who told me this and I was about to leave it out, but then I found confirmation that Arthur Beyer was on the battleship West Virginia when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He later enlisted in the Army and was an assistant driver in C Company of the 712th. He was killed on April 24, 1945, barely two weeks before the end of the war in Europe. His death was described in my 1992 interview with C Company veteran Bob Rossi:

I could see [Harold] Kurt, his tank got hit. It had a hole like this over the assistant driver's head. I heard his arms and legs were just about hanging on. [Dale] Streeter was the driver. Beyer was the assistant driver; he was dead. Streeter had shrapnel in his hands. Kurt had shrapnel in his left leg, and it was numb; he couldn't feel if he was stepping on the solenoid to fire the machine gun or the 75. [Lieutenant Max] Gibson wasn't hit, and A.P. wasn't hit, A.P. Lounsberry [Aaron P. Lounsberry was nicknamed A.P.]. We saw Kurt get out of the tank; he was hobbling around, and he went to lay down on the side of the road. Streeter got out of the tank and the extinguisher that he had by him, he was spraying it over Beyer's body, because his body was on fire, from the oil, gasoline, the ammunition.

My earlier attempts to verify that Beyer was on the West Virginia failed, but today at Fold 3 I found his obituary.

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Forrnanek of Toledo received word Sunday that their nephew, Arthur Beyer, 25, who made his home with them here for many years, was killed in action April 24, in Germany. He was a member of the 712th tank division of the U. S. Third army.
He received his education in the Toledo public schools. He enlisted in the United States navy in 1937 at the age of 17 and served on the West Virginia for four years.
His parents died when he was a small child. Surviving are his wife who resides in Fort Worth, Texas; four sisters and one brother, Mrs. Helen Springer, Des Moines; Mrs. Irene Mickey, Daggett, Calif.; Catherine Beyer, Ford. Wash.; Mrs. Edith Whiting, Washington DC; W.B. Beyer, Davenport and his grandmother Mrs. F. C. Beyer of Toledo.

Henry Bockhorn: Oh my god. I’m learning some of this for the first time, so please bear with me. This was another name for which I drew a blank, but I found the following at Find-a-Grave:

Pvt. Henry Bockhorn was a member of D Company of the 712 Tank Battalion, attached to the 90th Infantry Division. He was killed in action near Chaffour-Notre Dame, France. He was originally buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery in St. James France., but his mother, who emigrated from Germany to the United States before Henry was born requested that his body be laid to his final resting place in a family tomb in her home town of Uthlede, Kreis Wesermünde, Hanover, Germany.

Upon seeing that he was in D Company, I consulted the unofficial D Company log about which I’ll have more in a future Substack. From the entry for August 8, 1944.

…Upon approaching Chaffeur-Notre Dame, the three remaining tanks were fired on by S.T. guns [these may have been British sten guns]. This was believed to be a friendly gun that had come into the town with another force. The driver, Tec. 5 Bockhorn, was killed when dismounting from his already disabled and burning tank. … Contact with the friendly troops in town was made and several prisoners had been taken.

Calvin L. Bolden: For this I have to go to the original “Tanks for the Memories” — not mine, but the collection of stories written by Ray Griffin, who assumed command of C Company’s first platoon after the battle for Hill 122.

“A round from a German panzerfaust hit the front of our tank between the driver and the assistant driver. There was no question but that our tank had received a mortal hit. It was time to abandon the tank. I can recall doing sort of a front handspring getting out of the turret by placing my hand on the tank and flipping over to the ground. I ran back to the support tanks of the platoon. I started checking to see who all had made it back. I learned that Jim Gattis, Mal Guidi, and Clarence McLesky had made it. They had already been evacuated to an aid station for some severe wounds. This left Calvin Bolden to be accounted for.
I tried to go back to the tank to check on Calvin. The tank was burning fiercely and the heat was so terrific that I had to give up getting to the tank. I later reported to the aid station because I had injured my leg slightly getting out of the tank.

In the meantime Kopscheid had been captured and the Germans had either surrendered or retreated. It was almost daybreak by this time.

Later in the morning when our tank had quit burning and cooled down a little I went back to check on Calvin. I looked in the assistant driver’s hatch and I didn’t see anything. I concluded that Calvin had gotten out and ran the wrong way and had been captured. This theory didn’t stand up very long. Some of the men of the platoon went to the tank and made a closer search. They found some small remains of Calvin’s body. The intense heat essentially cremated him.

Everett Bonfoey: I have little information. According to HonorStates.org, he was killed on Dec. 15, 1944, and is buried in the American cemetery at St. Avold, France. According to the battalion’s unit history, he was a member of Service Company.

Percy E. Bowers: There’s a personal connection here. Percy was killed on August 6, 1944, along with Arnold Lund, the lieutenant who replaced my father, Lieutenant Maurice Elson, after he was wounded on July 22. “Bowers was in the second platoon if I remember right,” recalled Dess Tibbitts, a fellow A Company tank driver. “The last time I seen Percy was wherever we was at that time he drove by me and he just jokingly said, ‘Well, I won’t see you tonight.’ And he didn’t. He got killed that afternoon.”

“He was killed at Avranches,” said Bob “Big Andy” Anderson, another tank driver who’d been buddies with Bowers since their days in the horse cavalry in 1941. “He was killed in a cemetery. His tank was knocked out. Pretty near all of us was out of ammunition. His tank was knocked out, he got out of his tank and was carrying a white flag, crawling back, and some German shot him, with a white flag, crawling back.”

Quentin Bynum: When my father joined the battalion as a replacement in Normandy, he injured his foot jumping off a tank and was in an aid station when his platoon was sent on a mission without him. The next day he hitched a ride with Quentin “Pine Valley” Bynum, in the assistant driver’s seat, hoping to catch up to his platoon. However, he was wounded either by shell fragments or small arms fire before he had a chance to find the platoon. That was on July 22, 1944, during the battle for Seves Island. Bynum was killed on January 14, 1945, at Bras, Luxembourg, during the Battle of the Bulge

Quentin Bynum’s funeral after his remains were repatriated.

Albert B. Carley: On April 1, 1945, a Service Company convoy of seven trucks was ambushed. Some of the personnel were captured, and were liberated a couple of days later. Wayne Hissong was one of the ones captured.

It was just getting dark, and I was laying there in this ditch, with [Arnold] Marshall, and you could see the German soldiers; they were going through the trucks. They were wanting any food, anything they could get. They just went through the trucks all over, trying to find something to eat. We were laying there in the ditch, and all of a sudden we were spotted, and there were three or four of them that just pointed guns at us. I mean, what can you do? You have to just wonder whether they're gonna pull the trigger. But I think that they knew that the end was pretty close, or I don't know if they would have just up and shot us or what. The trucks were empty, but some of the drivers had a little rack in the back, that they'd keep rations and stuff stored in, and that's what they went after, the Germans. They just jumped up in the trucks and started hunting for cigarettes or whatever they could find to eat. When I was laying there, and the truck was still on my foot, and I happened to remember I had a P-38, and I just threw it. And then the truck rolled off. The next day, they got a light tank from D Company because there were two fellows that got back to the outfit and told them what had happened. So they took the same route that we had taken to see if they could find us. They found where we had been ambushed, and when Hank saw this P-38 he knew that it was the one that I had had. And if they would have went on down the road, about possibly a mile or a mile and a half or so, that was the little burg where they had us. And they also found, one of the boys got killed, and they found him. [Albert] Carley. He got killed. He was from Oklahoma, Enid, Oklahoma. [According to HonorStates.org, Carley was from Iowa.] When they found him, he had gotten a letter out of his pocket that his wife had written, and he was kind of, you know, trying to read that letter, and the letter was still in his hand when they found him

Albert Carley (HonorStates.org).

Giacomo J. Caruso: Other than that he was in B Company and died on February 19, 1945, I am unfamiliar with Caruso. According to HonorStates.org, he is buried in the Luxembourg American Cemetery.

Vincent P. Cerullo: Thanks to the research of Perier historian Christian Levaufre, a monument has been dedicated in honor of Vincent Cerullo and Claudis Jenkins, who died when their light “Stuart” tank ran over a string of mines on July 27, 1944, and flipped completely over. Miraculously, two crew members were rescued, but a pair of infantrymen who were riding on the tank were also killed

Kenneth R. Cohron: Cohron was the gunner in Sergeant Kenneth Titman’s tank, one of three in Lieutenant Jim Flowers’ platoon that went up in flames on July 10, 1944. He was from Stuarts Draft, Virginia.

Charles F. Cragg, Jr.: Another B Company name I’m not familiar with. According to Find-a-Grave Memorial, he was killed on January 9, 1945, in Nothum, Luxembourg, the same day the battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Randolph, was killed.

Ray E. DeLong: A member of the battalion’s Headquarters Company, Ray DeLong was killed on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1944 along with two other members of his company when the jeep ran over a mine.

David H. Dickson, Jr.: Another B Company member I wasn’t familiar with, according to Find-a-Grave Memorial, Dickson was killed on January10, 1945 in Luxembourg. He was 34 years old.

Joseph A. Diorio, Jr.: A member of the battalion’s medical detachment, Diorio was killed in the April 3, 1945 explosion in the village of Heimboldshausen that took the lives of five members of the battalion and injured many others.

Wilson Eckard: Kaye Ackermann, whose father, Rolland Ackermann, was a member of A Company, has “adopted” the grave of Wilson Eckard, who is buried near her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Eckard was one of the five battalion members killed in the explosion at Heimboldshausen. A collection of his photos, decorations and memorabilia can be found at the US Military Forum.

Virgil O. Edmiston: A member of C Company about whom I have no information.

Joseph Ezerskis: Ezerskis was the tank driver in Sergeant Harold Heckler’s crew. After Heckler’s death by friendly fire, Sergeant Everett McNulty became the new tank commander. All four members of the crew were killed on August 12, 1944 when the light tank took a hit from a Mark V Panzer

Clockwise from top left: Harold Heckler, Stanley Jezuit, Joseph Ezerskis, Arthur Roselle.

Paul B. Farrell: Farrell was the driver of the tank commanded by Sergeant Abe Taylor when Lieutenant Jim Flowers’ platoon was ambushed in the battle for Hill 122. According to Tony D’Arpino, Farrell had a premonition of his death and refused to get out of his tank when D’Arpino’s third platoon and Farrell’s first platoon came briefly came together.

Linden A. Fellbaum: Pfc. Linden Fellbaum was the assistant driver in one of two tanks in the second platoon of C Company that were knocked out on July 5, 1944, on only the battalion’s third day in combat. The tank went over a mine, killing Fellbaum. As the second tank went around it, it was hit with a shell from a German 88, killing the driver. The second platoon leader, Lieutenant Henry Du Val, was seriously wounded and didn’t return to combat

Linden Fellbaum

Edward L. Forrest: I don’t know why my father never looked up Ed Forrest’s family when my dad was living with my sister in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Maybe he tried with no success. Ed was from nearby Stockbridge, and he and my dad were both lieutenants and were wounded within a day of each other: my dad on July 22, 1944 and Ed on July 23. My father returned in December and was wounded again; Ed returned to the battalion in November and was killed in the April 3, 1945 explosion in the village of Heimboldshausen, Germany. Ed’s grave in the Margraten Cemetery was adopted by a Dutch school, Carbooncollege, which put up a display in a hallway.

The display about Ed Forrest at Carbooncollege, the Netherlands.

(to be continued)

This is taking longer than I thought and there are many names to go, but I can’t think of a more appropriate way to spend this Memorial Day weekend. I wish to thank John Pellettiere and Mark Zangara for their generous support of my work, and also Donna Albee, Jeffrey Martin, Ron Ammons, my big sister Arleen Weiner, my sister-in-law Jane Joseph and my brother Bob for helping my Substack grow.

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