Memorial Day 2024, Part 8
Behind the names on a Tank Battalion monument
In May of 1995 I went to Chicago to interview Andy Schifler and Hilding Freeberg. Later that year I interviewed Dale Albee in Prospect, Oregon. As is often the case, if the timing had been reversed I might have thought to ask more questions or to place more emphasis on something that came out.
This Memorial Day I began going down the list of names on the monument to the 712th Tank Battalion, with which my father served, in the Memorial Garden of the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky. I wanted to see if I could say something about the names I recognized, and learn anything about the names I didn’t. I’ve had some help from Kaye Ackermann, whose father was in the battalion and who has become a premier researcher who has helped many families from the battalion and the 90th Infantry Division, to which the 712th was attached, learn about their veteran’s experiences; and the late Louis Gruntz, who wrote a book, “A Tank Gunner’s Story,” about his father’s company in the 712th.
This is the eighth installment of that Memorial Day Substack. Please browse through my earlier posts if you’d like to read some of the earlier descriptions.
Arthur Roselle: While I was interviewing Andy Schifler, the telephone rang. The caller was George Mauzer, another veteran from Schifler’s company of “light” Stuart tanks. I didn’t have time to interview Mauzer, but I spoke to him briefly on the phone, during which time he got choked up at the mention of Sergeant Everett McNulty, who was killed along with the rest of his crew at Alencon, France on August 16, 1945. McNulty was so badly burned, Mauzer said, that he begged somebody to shoot him.
I never did interview Mauzer. This is from my interview with Dale Albee, who was a sergeant and later a lieutenant, in D Company:
Aaron Elson: I only talked to Mauzer on the phone, George Mauzer...
Dale Albee: Yeah, little Mauzer.
Aaron Elson: When we were talking on the phone, he said that McNulty begged him to shoot him, or begged somebody to shoot him, that he was burned so badly. Did you ever hear that?
Dale Albee: I didn't, but it's very possible, because, you know, a person burned like that, you can smell it, the stink and everything like that. I would say, I'll bet a dollar that he did because McNulty was burned so bad it was pitiful. Just no doubt at all. Freeberg was real friendly with Roselle, because I have a picture of Roselle with his little baby and his wife, and then a picture of Freeberg holding his baby because Freeberg couldn't get home to see his baby born, but he was holding Roselle’s. Roselle was another one that was just so quiet and nice. But we thought that Roselle, and for a while we thought McNulty had been saved. But they both died. They were burned so bad, because you know that flame, by golly, all that gas coming right up, and the only way it could come was right up through the turret.
Aaron Elson: Forty feet in the air?
Dale Albee: Yes.
In my archive I have some copies of photos from Hilding Freeberg’s album, but unfortunately that photo is not among them.
George Savio: Tank driver George Savio of East Boston, Massachusetts, was killed on July 5, 1944, the battalion’s third day of combat, in Normandy. He was 21 or 22 years old.
William Schmidt: Sergeant William Schmidt was the first member of the 712th Tank Battalion to be killed in action. According to some accounts, he was killed by a sniper while standing in the turret on July 3, 1944. He would never get to see his kid brother Joe play football for the Detroit Lions. Joe Schmidt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
Henry Schneider: Henry “Hank” Schneider was, according to some of his buddies from their days in the horse cavalry, a ladies man. He got married while in the cavalry, and according to tank driver Dess Tibbetts, made a pass at another woman in a movie theater with his wife sitting next to him. He never got to see the son who was born while he was overseas. The son came to one reunion but I realized too late that because his last name was Kay, I thought he was related to Colonel Vladimir Kedrovsky, who changed his last name to Kaye after the war because people with Russian names were being discriminated against at Sears, where he was an executive, and I never got to speak with Schneider’s son. Dess said Schneider’s wife, who remarried, never told the son that Hank was his father.
In my 1995 interview with Tibbitts, he described an incident in Normandy in which he asked me to turn off the tape. We had been talking about Lieutenant Chancy Miller, who died in Tibbitts’ arms.
Dess Tibbitts: I took it. These things didn't bother me. Now Hank Schneider couldn't take it. Somewheres there in France, right off the bat, we shot into a building and they killed this girl; they shot her up pretty bad, and Hank seen her and just cried ... You ain't got your recorder on, have you?
Aaron Elson: I do.
Dess Tibbitts: Shut it off [he describes how the crew told Hank that the girl had survived, and that calmed him down].
Schneider went on to become one of 14 sergeants in the battalion to receive a battlefield commission [a promotion during combat to lieutenant], He was killed by a sniper, according to some accounts, on the day he received his commission.
From the after action report for A Company on March 20, 1945, a few days after the battalion crossed the Moselle River for the second time:
Second platoon ran into some SS men and had a hard fight. Lt. Schneider killed by enemy sniper while in his tank turret.
O.J. Brock, a recent replacement, was the assistant driver in Schneider’s tank that day.
Aaron Elson: Who was the first soldier you saw killed?
O.J. Brock: The first one that I witnessed in my tank, I was the assistant driver, and we'd had a rendezvous in this town. I don't remember the village, it was a small, rural community, and Hank Schneider, we called him Hank, a lieutenant, he got a battlefield commission, he had the maps and things, and they were making plans for the next few days. We were attached to a regiment of the 90th Infantry Division. We didn't have any infantry people with us at that time, but as we approached this objective, as I said a small community, some churches and small storefronts, and I remember Peter Charapko, he was in the third or fourth tank, and I was in the lieutenant's tank, and he had told Hank, he said, "Hank, we've got snipers all around. You'd better button your hatch." I guess Charapko would talk to Hank on the radio and he said, "Get your head down." I remember that because I had earphones on. Well, it wasn't five minutes later that Hank was hit in the head with a sniper's bullet, and he fell down through the top of the tank. We radioed back, and the gunner said turn around, and told us where the aid station was, and Hank was dead immediately, shot through the head.
We stayed back in headquarters for probably a couple of days. We had to clean the tank out, all the blood and stuff. But that was certainly a shocking experience. I didn't know the people too well, but still it's certainly a heart-wrenching experience to lose some of your friends and comrades.
Philip L. Schromm: While the battalion was stationed at the appropriately named Camp Randolph in Amberg, Germany after the end of the war in Europe, it published a weekly newsletter called “Tank Tracks.” The headline on the lead story in the edition of Monday, July 16, 1945, reads: “Schromm Field To Be Dedicated.”
At a formal dedication ceremony to be held next Thursday evening July 19, the 712th Tank Battalion will honor the memory of the late Sgt. Philip L. Shcromm by naming the battalion athletic field Schromm Field.
Sgt. Philip L. Schromm was inducted into the U.S. armed forces in 1941 at the Presidio, Monterrey, Calif. After a brief stay at this post, he was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, where he received his basic training in the horse cavalry. He then shipped to Camp Lockett, Calif., a new camp constructed to garrison the 11th Cavalry Regiment, with the plan to revamp the then existing horse cavalry into mechanized units.
Sgt. Schromm was one of the men selected as part of the cadre to go to Fort Benning, Georgia, to form the nucleus of the newly activated 10th Armored Division in July, 1942. Here he became the guiding hand to the newly inducted members of the company. Despite the hours which he devoted to teaching and instructing of the new inductees, he never lost sight of the fact that a clean, healthy mind and body went to make the highest caliber of soldier and to this end he pursued a vigorous athletic program in and outside duty hours. His love for football, baseball, softball, swimming and track found him at all sports events as a participant or a team rooter.
Phil Schromm was perhaps the greatest lover of the outdoor life that this battalion ever knew. We are so indebted to him for the solution to the thousand and one small problems which confronted us during the helter skelter days we spent getting ready for shipMent overseas and again upon our embarkment in England. Across the channel to the beach of Normandy and into our first bivouac near the front, Sgt. Schromm displayed the same leadership and coolness that he was so typical of.
Then our attack alert and last minute briefing in the early dawn of July 3, 1944 found many of us with that muscle tightening and brain throbbing feeling which comes to almost every soldier just before he has his first taste of battle. A day of endless hours and garbled reports which constantly sift back from the fighting and then the numbing shock that Sgt. Schromm had paid the supreme sacrifice in the performance of his duty at a front line observation post acting as liaison between the infantry and his battalion headquarters. The ache in our hearts which can only be healed by time is renewed daily with the mention of his name but we have become reconciled to the fact that Phil Schromm is still a member of this battalion and will remain so for all time. In the years to come when our thoughts wander back to men we have known we shall be proud to say that Sgt. Philip L. Schromm was a friend and a soldier.
Phil Schromm was born on August 23, 1916 in San Mateo, California. He was 27 years old.
(to be continued)