Once Upon a Tank in the Battle of the Bulge
In 1992, four crew members relive that fateful Jan. 10, 1945
At the 1992 Harrisburg, Pa., reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion, I sat down with four veterans whose tank was knocked out on Jan. 10, 1945, eighty years ago today.
Bob Rossi: What do you want, our names, what roles we played?
Aaron Elson: Names, ranks and serial numbers [this was meant as a joke, but was taken literally]
Jim Gifford: James Gifford, what do you want...
Aaron Elson: You were a lieutenant?
Jim Gifford: I was a lieutenant at the time, first lieutenant, 712th Tank Battalion.
Aaron Elson: And when you left the service?
Jim Gifford: I left the service as a captain in the 9th Armored Group. Serial number 010-1891 ...
Aaron Elson: I don't need your serial number.
Jim Gifford: I thought you...
Bob Rossi: Okay. Robert Rossi. I was a loader in Lieutenant Gifford's tank, and ...
Aaron Elson: Your rank?
Bob Rossi: I was a private first class.
Ed Spahr: Ed Spahr. I think I would better be classed as a utility man of all of C Company because I served in every platoon. I think I spent more time on the front than a lot of others did because if that platoon wasn't there, I was.
Tony D'Arpino: Tony D'Arpino. I was a driver, first tank, third platoon, and towards the end I was a tank commander for a very short period when the end was in sight.
Aaron Elson: Where did you come together as a unit?
Bob Rossi: Just prior to the Battle of the Bulge, Jim was brought in as our new tank commander.
Tony D'Arpino: Platoon leader.
Bob Rossi: What did I say? Tank commander. He was our tank commander and platoon leader.
Aaron Elson: So you were in the first tank?
Bob Rossi: In the Number 1 tank. And we were in, we wound up in the town of Kirschnaumen, in Belgium [France, actually].
Tony D'Arpino: I don't remember the name of the town.
Bob Rossi: And I can recall it so vividly how we wondered where Lieutenant Gifford was all day, and when he came up into the ... in a hayloft, and he came up the ladder, it was a footladder, he says “Come on, I want to show you something.” He had draped the tank in white sheets, because they weren’t whitewashing the tanks at that time.
Ed Spahr: There was snow on the ground.
Bob Rossi: Yeah, there was snow all over the ground. He scrounged these white sheets from all over. He draped our tank so we’d have camouflage. And that same night he had gotten a package from home and I can remember he had some canned chicken. He shared his package with all of us. And talking about home and everything, and he said to us, “You know, I’d rather lose an arm or a leg than lose my eyesight.” He says, “There’s too much to see in this world.” And the next day when he got hit, he got hit in the eye. And it was a hairy situation because we had gone into a pocket to flush out the Germans, and as fate had it, our left track was knocked off...
Tony D'Arpino: Wasn't that the time we just took one section of the tanks, the first and second tank?
Bob Rossi: We only had two tanks, us and Warren’s tank. [Sergeant Jim Warren.]
Tony D’Arpino: I remember we were almost ready to eat supper.
Bob Rossi: There was concentrated machine gun fire. Lieutenant Gifford got hit in the right eye. It lodged in his cheek. And I thought he was gonna jump out because he was panicking and he says, “I don’t want to jump out. I want to motion to Warren to come forward to help us.” With that he said to me, “Rossi, how bad am I hit?” And I lied. I said “You don't look bad, Lieutenant.” But he looked like somebody hit him in the face with a sledgehammer.
Tony D’Arpino: I remember something else about that, too. He was great for having a camera around your neck all the time, right?
Bob Rossi: I'm gonna get to that.
Tony D'Arpino: That’s what I remember well. He wanted his picture taken.
Bob Rossi: He says to me, “Fire the smoke mortar.” Now this is the joke. In my excitement I forgot to knock the cap out.
Ed Spahr: Out of the top?
Bob Rossi: When I fired the first mortar it went up, and it went down like this [straight down]. And then I fired some subsequent mortars to give a smoke screen, and as we were abandoning tank, Lieutenant Gifford was firing his .45 and pulling Spahr out by one of his arms. Spahr’s leg was locked. [It would come out later that Spahr was trying to retrieve his musette bag, which contained all the “souvenirs” he collected during six months of combat.]
Ed Spahr: I had a little bit of blood coming out. Something had hit me in the arm. I went along with him back to the aid station.
Bob Rossi: He was the assistant driver. His machine gun was firing by itself it was so hot. And I said “Twist the belt! Twist the belt!” So he could stop the bullets from feeding into the machine gun. And [Stanley] Klapkowski, who was our gunner, he and I were running, and we were running in zigzag. We could see the snow being kicked up around us. And with that, we got out of the line of fire. There was a recon truck that came toward us, and as we were running, Lieutenant Gifford said, “Fire that .50 and protect these boys!” And the guy yelled out, “It's our last box!” He says, “Fire it anyway you sonofabitch!” And that’s when they started [firing] the .50 to give us cover. As we got out of the line of fire, he handed his .45 to me, he says, “Hold this for me till I get back.” And with that, he says “Take my picture.”
I said, “Lieutenant, I can't take your picture...”
Ed Spahr: I took it. I got hit, right there [pointing to the fleshy part of his upper arm]. That’s the only way I could have got hit, with my arms up.
Bob Rossi: And there he was, having his picture taken, he had gotten a Bronze Star that morning, had the ribbon, face all puffed up, blood all over his combat jacket, he says “Take my picture.”
Aaron Elson: Did you know how bad you were hit?
Jim Gifford: No. I couldn’t see out of my right eye, but I didn’t know how bad it was. It’s a funny thing; I didn’t feel any pain when the bullet went in.
Tony D’Arpino: I can remember plain as day one thing about that day, that night, or that evening, whatever you want to call it. We were about ready to eat our meal, and they said there was a small pocket was holding the infantry down. They wanted the tanks to clean it out. You took two tanks, right? And it was just supposed to be a small pocket. And it turned out to be a little more than that, I guess.
Bob Rossi: Eventually Warren did come forward on Lieutenant Gifford’s orders, he set our tank on fire
Tony D’Arpino: We ruined the radio. We put the thermite grenade in the ...
Bob Rossi: We set our tank on fire, so the Germans couldn’t turn the gun around and fire on the town.
Jim Gifford: Because they were stealing the tanks.
Tony D'Arpino: We had thrown a track but the gun was still good.
Jim Gifford: So we immobilized it by hitting it in the back.
Tony D'Arpino: We had the best working escape hatch of anybody in the platoon. I used to oil that thing up good so that when you touched the lever it would really fall out.
Aaron Elson: Why was that?
Tony D'Arpino: If you had to get out, sometimes that was the only way to escape. If you’re inside the tank and the hatches are down and the gun is traversed over your hatch, you can’t open it to get out. You have to go out the other way. I can remember always telling Klapkowski — he was the gunner in the tanks that I was in most of the time — and I always told him, “You sonofabitch, if we ever get knocked out, make sure that gun’s in the center, because if I can’t get out because you’ve got the gun traversed over my hatch,” I says, “I’ll haunt you. I’ll come and pull the sheets off your bed.”
Aaron Elson: Did that ever happen that the gun was in the wrong position?
Jim Gifford: Oh yeah. I’m sure there's a few guys who aren’t here today because of that gun.
Tony D’Arpino: That used to be my biggest worry.
Aaron Elson: Did you get a new tank after that?
Bob Rossi: We subsequently got a new tank after that, and Sergeant Holmes became our acting platoon leader. And when Lieutenant Gifford was wounded and we were knocked out that was January 10, 1945, in Berle, Belgium.
Jim Gifford: Luxembourg.
Bob Rossi: When Lieutenant Gifford was evacuated we waited maybe several weeks for a replacement tank, and that’s when we got this new tank, and Sergeant Holmes became our acting platoon leader. He was the platoon sergeant. And on February 8, 1945, we were knocked out again, at Habscheid, Germany. We were in a wooded area. They called us during the night.
Tony D’Arpino: On high ground.
Bob Rossi: And it seemed like the Germans were just waiting there for us.
Tony D’Arpino: They had it all zeroed in. They had three lines of machine gun fire. They had some just grazing the ground like, and some waist high, and some...
Bob Rossi: When light came, it seemed like everything opened up at one time. They knew we were there, from the woods, and they had mortars, artillery, machine gun fire.
Tony D’Arpino: Tank destroyers were knocked out.
Bob Rossi: And all of a sudden, Sergeant Holmes collapsed in the turret. I yelled “Holmes! Holmes! Are you hit?” And Spahr says to me, “Sure he’s hit.” And with that, we picked him up and put him behind the gun. Shrapnel had gone through his steel helmet, and he was hit in several places. The towel that was around his neck, a bath towel, was sopping wet with blood. Later, after this happened, I noticed I had blood all over my left sleeve. And with that, I asked D’Arpino, “Give me the first aid kit.” And with that, he can’t open it. The darn thing was rusted shut. So with a chisel we opened up the first aid kit, and I bandaged Sergeant Holmes as best as I could. And as he’s laying on the floor, he called up Sergeant Gibson. He says “Gib, I’m hit.” He says “I'm getting out of here.” And Gibson called back, he says, “We’re all getting out of here.” And with that, Gibson started up the hill, and this is when we found out that the Germans had the hill zeroed in. As Gibson stopped, they fired two rounds in front of him and missed him. He took off. We came up the hill and Bang! we got hit — the 88 went through our engine compartment and landed between [Jim] Sessions, he was the assistant driver, it landed between his legs.
Tony D’Arpino: He was a recruit. First time out.
Bob Rossi: I think it was the day before or the day after his 18th or 19th birthday.
Tony D’Arpino: I was driving and I knew there was another tank behind me to get out. I tried pulling over to the right to give him room to get around me, and of course nothing was working. Sessions, the assistant driver, was new, and he grabbed the fire extinguisher. And I says “Jump you crazy bastard, jump!” Matter of fact I didn't unplug the radio or nothing, I just got out.
Ed Spahr: He never did attempt to get out till I got ahold of him. I jumped back up on the tank and I grabbed him.
Bob Rossi: We only had one hatch to get out of in the turret. One tank was already knocked out in the woods. Their bogey wheels were knocked off, so we put two guys from that crew into our tank, so there were five of us in the turret. When we got hit, I was the last guy to get out. I was on my hands and knees waiting for them to get out, and I no sooner got out of the turret than the ammo started to blow.
Tony D’Arpino: You know what surprised me about that? It’s taking a lot [of time] to tell this story but it all happened within seconds; when that thing hit and I saw that red thing laying aside of Sessions’ foot, right alongside the transmission — the transmission was between the driver and the assistant driver — the thing was laying right by his left foot. This all happened within seconds, right? And I immediately unplugged my helmet radio. I just put my hands outside trying to pry myself up and that tank was just as hot as a stove.
Ed Spahr: I remember getting hit, too. When they hit us it just felt like it drove the tank ten feet forward, didn't it?
Bob Rossi: I automatically turned around when we were hit. I turned around to pull the extinguisher because we had an inside extinguisher. It didn't do any good because the fire was so tremendous with all that gasoline. And just before I think I got out of the tank, that’s when the other tank came just about on our left rear, and they got hit. But they weren't as lucky as us in the sense that [Grayson] LaMar, who was the driver, he was burned pretty bad. I can remember when he took that stocking mask off his face he took the skin right off his face. And Whiteheart, who’s now dead, the type of tank they had, they had ammo stacked in back of the assistant driver. It shifted and hit him right in the back. Van Landingham was the tank commander. Part of his heel was torn off from the shrapnel.
Tony D’Arpino: Remember when we got all the way down; we crawled all the way down that hill, got down to the bottom, and Van Landingham was missing, right? He’s still back up there. So, I don't know who the other guy was and myself, we grabbed a stretcher; we went back up, crawled back up. They were shooting right over our head. I thought that, out of all the, I had three tanks knocked out from under me, and out of all of them I thought that was it. I had it. When we crawled up there with a stretcher to get Van Landingham, right, we finally get to him and he’s moaning and groaning, I'm looking for blood, I don't see nothin’. He’s got the combat boots on. I look, nothing. And he goes “Ohhhh, ohhhh,” he’s like in real shock, right? Now he must have been hit someplace; I don't know where. I couldn’t see any blood. We finally got him on that stretcher, and we’re trying to crawl on our hands and knees with the stretcher to get him down, over the crest so they couldn’t see us. They had that place zeroed in. And we’d go a few feet and then “Sssshhhoooom!” We drop the stretcher. Every time the stretcher [here Tony smacks the table] hit the solid ground, Van Landingham, "OOoooohhh," he would groan. Anyway, God willing, we got him down to the bottom, and I don’t know who that man is today, I’ve thought about this a million times, somebody saw me and whoever else had that stretcher, it was an officer, not in our company, it was an officer who was down there, and he took our names. He thought we should get the Silver Star for what we had done. And then I was told later on that this man was called back to England, he had to be a witness in a court martial.
Ed Spahr: Do you remember when we got up there in that bunker? There was a captain in the infantry, remember? I'll never forget that night. The snipers were...
Bob Rossi: You know what’s ironic? We were running from pillbox to pillbox to get out of the line of fire after this all happened. And the infantry was dug in in foxholes. They said “Don't run on the road, it's mined. Don’t run in the gully, it’s mined.” We finally got to this one pillbox, and this, I think he was a major or a lieutenant colonel, he wanted American wounded put outside because he complained that they were in the way of him conducting business. We were PO’d at that. I was so mad at the time, I was only a kid, but I was so mad I felt like shooting the German prisoners who were there because they did this to us.
Ed Spahr: This captain said to this guy reporting to him, he said, “Get up there and get that sonofabitch.” That infantry boy was sitting there, he handed him his M-1 and he said “Here, you get him.”
Tony D’Arpino: That night, it was dark when the infantry moved us up there, up the hill.
Bob Rossi: It was raining.
Tony D’Arpino: We argued about it. You don’t move the tanks at night because Jesus, they make too much noise, you’ll get artillery fire. He says, “I'm giving you an order,” the infantry officer, right?
Bob Rossi: So Holmes says to me, “Rossi, get out,” and he hands me his tank commander’s watch with the luminous hands. He says, “Lead the tank.” And I’m running in front in the rain, holding it up as I’m running so D'Arpino can see the watch in the dark. And when we got knocked out the next morning, I said to myself, “Thank god my clothes were soaking wet.” I think that’s what saved me from getting burned to death in the tank.
Jim Gifford: Lucky she didn’t explode.
Ed Spahr: We lost four tanks that day.
Bob Rossi: Three out of the four.
Tony D’Arpino: And I don’t know how many tank destroyers that were attached to us.
Bob Rossi: Two tank destroyers, and we lost three out of four tanks.
Ed Spahr: Gibson was the only tank that got out.
Bob Rossi: And we lost about a company of infantry. I mean we took a beating.
Tony D'Arpino: I know when that armor piercing shell came through the engine compartment, I knew there was other tanks behind me, so I tried pulling the right lever, getting off the road as much as I could so the others could come around me. I heard somebody say “Gun the sonofabitch! Gun it! Gun it! Gun it!”
Bob Rossi: That was Gibson.
Tony D’Arpino: So I knew they were behind me and I tried pulling the right lever but nothing ...
Ed Spahr: He was the only one that got out.
Tony D'Arpino: When daybreak came and I looked around, I says “Hoooly shit!” You could see for miles. I mean we were really exposed. You couldn't see that at night.
Bob Rossi: It was bad, but then later on we kidded, “That German gun crew must have all got the Iron Cross and a three-day pass.”
For more great stories told by veterans of the 712th Tank Battalion, read “Tanks for the Memories,” available at Amazon in print and for Kindle.