A Tank Gunner's Story: Gunner Gruntz of the 712th Tank Battalion

by Louis G. Gruntz

  During this trip Mom and Dad met Henri and Janet Levaufre in Périers, France. The 712th Tank Battalion had been attached to the 90th Infantry and both had fought in Périers during the war. Henri was only thirteen years old in 1944 and after the troops had left his town, he and his younger brother explored the battlefields around the town. As an adult, Henri had to again explore these fields in connection with his job in the power industry. He discovered many artifacts and began collecting them. He also became curious about the military engagements that had taken place all around his locale. He soon became an authoritative historian on these battles and the 90th Infantry Division that had fought in them. Henri and Janet have visited the United States frequently in the intervening years and during each visit they would come to New Orleans and spend a few days in the Gruntz household.

  In 1984, my youngest child, Becky was born. That year also marked the 40th anniversary of D-Day. During the late 1980s, and especially after meeting Henri, Dad’s shell began to crack and he was receptive to requests to discuss his wartime experiences. He became active in the American Legion and shared war stories with other veterans. Unfortunately, with everything going on in my life, I was not able to pursue the questions I had asked Dad as a child. Dad was ready to talk but I was not able to listen.

  In 1985, the 712th Tank Battalion Association returned to New Orleans for another reunion. Clegg “Doc” Caffery of Franklin, Louisiana served as the host. My duties as an Assistant Parish Attorney prevented me from attending any of the formal functions, but I briefly attended an informal gathering of Dad’s close friends at Mom and Dad’s home after the reunion had ended. The number of Dad’s friends who were present are too numerous to remember, but I recall Caffery being there, along with Lt-Col. Edward S. Hamilton (ret.) of the 357th Regiment of the 90th Infantry Division and Henri Levaufre and his wife Janet. Once again, an opportunity to question Dad about his war years slipped past me.

  In 1994, my marriage of twenty-five years was ending in divorce. I attempted to avoid the emotional upheaval that divorce brings by pursing hobbies such as researching my family’s genealogy.

  My fascination in history, which began in my childhood, continued. My childhood questions of what, if any, role any of my ancestors may have played in historical events were rekindled. Were any of my ancestors, knights in shining armor, did the Gruntz family have a coat of arms, did anyone in my ancestral lineage participate in either the Revolutionary War or the Civil War? I took a course in genealogy at a community college and began tracing my Gruntz family ancestry back to the 1600s. In searching for interesting facts, details and tidbits about my ancestors, however, I had overlooked the most interesting ancestor of all, my father, who was a combatant in the largest conflict in the history of the world.

  That year also happened to be the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. In an effort to lift my spirits, Dad invited me on a trip to Europe to retrace his battle route and tell me about his experiences during the war on the sites where they occurred. Thus, the time had come at last when my boyhood questions regarding Dad’s military service would be answered; Dad was ready to talk and I was ready, willing and able to listen.

  Above and below: The journey begins.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Flight – Journey to the Past

  One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

  Robert Lynd (1892-1970)

  June 6, 1944, was a day that changed the world. From the time the Nazis swept across the European Continent in 1939, the people in the occupied countries waited, hoped, and prayed for the day the Allies would come. D-Day was that day. The joy of liberation from the Nazis had not been dimmed by the passage of time and to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their liberation the French government planned memorial events throughout the year. On June 6, 1994, numerous ceremonies were planned at each of the five invasion landing beaches. Heads of State from the various Allied countries were invited; 45,000 American veterans were invited to the ceremonies at Omaha Beach alone. With all this hoopla, Dad was not interested in going to Europe in June with all of the crowds. Our trip was scheduled for October, 1994.

  Neither was Dad interested in taking a tour, instead we booked our own flights to Paris and rented a car. Mom stayed at home, and was enthusiastic that Dad and I were traveling alone. I was forty-seven and Dad was seventy-five. This was the first time in our lives that we were going on a vacation together, just the two of us.

  In preparation for our trip, one night several weeks before out departure, Dad retrieved the box of war memorabilia from the closet. I had remembered that box from my youth and it had been many years since I had seen it and perused its contents. Dad was looking for his copy of the History of B Company, of the 712th Tank Battalion, which listed not only the names and locations of the various battles but also the various villages where the B Company Headquarters (HQ) were established during the progress of the war. From this and Dad’s memory of the events, we set our own itinerary and schedule.

  Mom, Dad and I also looked through some of the photographs, particularly those taken while Dad was in training in 1943, when Mom had the opportunity to be with him. They both recounted times and places whose significance escaped me at that time but I would come to appreciate later.

  The day of our departure arrived, our transatlantic flight lifted off in the evening light. We were flying from twilight into the dark night sky by the time we had reached the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere over Newfoundland. As we began crossing over Atlantic Ocean, Dad had remembered back sixty-seven years, when he was eight years old. He had a small crystal radio set; he listened to the news reports on that radio of Lindburgh’s historic first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Now, here we were, on a jumbo jet, making that same journey. Dad’s recollection of that fact was my prompt to begin asking questions about his boyhood.

  I asked Dad to tell me about his father, whom I never knew. I wanted to know what Dad’s life was like as a boy, and to fill many of the blanks I had in our family’s history. As he began his narrative, and throughout the next two weeks of our travel, he recalled the events of the 75 years of his life as if they had happened yesterday.

  Dad was born on May 10, 1919, the second of three children and the only son of Louis Henry Gruntz and Mary Ellen Dwyer. My grandfather was a first generation American of Alsatian and German descent, my grandmother was a redheaded colleen, born in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans. Both the Gruntz family and the Dwyer family had a strong work ethic, a trait that my Dad had all of his life. He also inherited the stubbornness of his Gruntz Germanic ancestry, the quick temper and sharp tongue of his Dwyer Irish heritage.

  In the early 1900s, the area of New Orleans known as the Irish Channel was divided into two distinct ethnic neighborhoods – the residents of Irish descent in one and the German-speaking immigrants and their descendants in the other. Although both of these groups were predominately Roman Catholic, each had their own church. St Mary’s Assumption Catholic Church on Josephine Street ministered to the German speaking community. Around the corner on Constance Street, St Alphonsus Church ministered to the Irish Catholics. Both of my ancestral families had deep rooted religious beliefs and their respective Catholic churches were the focal points of their lives. The melting pot of foreign immigrants that was New Orleans in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the proximity of these churches and neighborhoods explains my family’s mixed heritage.

  It seems our family had very little originality in naming the male members in my lineage. Dad’s paternal grandfather, also named Louis Gruntz, owned a tract of land in the rural environs of New Orleans known as Metairie where he operated a dairy farm. Dad’s grandmother, Emma Ohr Gruntz, was the sister of the renowned potter of that era, George Ohr, the Mad Potter of Biloxi. She did not care for the country life and the family also maintained a home in the city.

  Dad’s father was an artist who earned a living as a sign painter. In 1921, when Dad
was two years old, the younger Gruntz Family moved to rural Metairie, near the site of Dad’s grandfather’s old dairy farm. It was in Metairie that Dad and his older sister Alma and younger sister Emily lived until adulthood. As a young boy, Dad had fun exploring and hunting for small animals in the wooded areas near his home with the other boys that lived nearby.

  Dad’s idyllic childhood, however, was cut short. In 1925, when Dad was six years old, my grandfather was committed to a mental institution after suffering a severe mental breakdown. I had a general knowledge of this aspect of our family history but it wasn’t until I asked Dad about his childhood during our flight that I learned a great deal more. He and I spoke at length about his childhood and his memory of his father.

  Treatment for the mentally ill was abysmally poor during that era. In those days the principal state mental health facility was located in Jackson, Louisiana, about 110 miles from New Orleans. Dad had few opportunities to see his father after my grandfather’s hospitalization; automobile travel in America and particularly Louisiana during the 1920s was challenging to say the least. One newspaper article of that day described both situations:

  The highway system was a series of muddy lanes with antique ferries and narrow bridges with high toll charges. […] Families north of New Orleans were forced to pay an $8 toll to cross Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans and return.

  State institutions constituted a disgrace. The insane were strapped, put into stocks and beaten.1

  Dad vividly remembered the few visits he had with his father. Dad’s uncle, William Dwyer Jr., brought him, his mother and two sisters to visit his father at the mental hospital. He remembered an all-day drive over hot and dusty gravel roads in the backseat of a Model A Ford to get to the hospital in Jackson.

  Dad looked forward to this visit for some time, and when they arrived they were kept waiting in the visiting area. When his father eventually came out, Dad was taken aback by my grandfather’s appearance. My grandfather’s clothes were disheveled and he was unshaven and sporting a beard stubble of several days. He was not the alert and energetic father that Dad had remembered. Although he was happy to see his family, my grandfather was sluggish and apparently under medication.

  On the way home from the hospital, Dad tearfully wished he could personally care for his father; he desperately wanted to be old enough to remove him from that wretched place and bring him back home to New Orleans. But such was not to be, my grandfather never returned home and he died in the mental hospital after several years of confinement. I could tell by the crackle in Dad’s voice, in relating this story, how this experience deeply affected him. I realized how much he had missed having a father as he was growing up, and how lucky I was to have Dad during my youth.

  With the loss of my grandfather’s income, my grandmother, Mary Dwyer Gruntz, was forced to obtain employment to raise Dad and his two sisters. In order to save on household expenses, my grandmother joined households with her parents, William and Delia Dwyer. They all lived as one family in Metairie. Grandma Dwyer cared for the children while Dad’s mother was at work.

  While living with his grandmother, Dad experienced his first taste of battle. Dad attended Ella Dolhonde Elementary School, about two blocks from his home. There was no school lunch program at that time; the children who lived near school went home for lunch, others brought their lunch to school. Dad went home every day and Grandma Dwyer fixed lunch for him and his two sisters. One day, on his way home for lunch, two bullies jumped Dad and administered a pretty fair beating. Dad ran home crying. As an adult, Dad stood 5 foot 4 inches tall; naturally, as a boy he was small in stature, which prompted the larger bullies to think he was easy prey.

  Grandma Dwyer was a tough first generation Irish American. She fixed Dad’s lunch, but, as Dad was leaving to return to school, she scolded him for running away from the bullies. She told Dad to go back and take care of those two hooligans; if he didn’t, she was going to give him a whipping when he came home from school that afternoon.

  Armed with that warning, Dad located the two bullies. He attacked the most aggressive of the two first. As soon as he did, the other kid ran away. Dad meted out the appropriate retribution on the first bully and when he was finished, he searched for the second one. A short while later he found the second bully and the schoolyard justice was complete. Dad learned his first important tactic of warfare that afternoon – divide and conquer.

  The combined Gruntz-Dwyer households experienced another misfortune after only a few years, Grandma Dwyer died in 1928. That family loss, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, caused the Gruntz family struggles to continue. My grandmother found employment as a nurse’s aide in Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans. Her elderly father, William Dwyer Sr., cared for her children while she was at work. Although there was little money, the back and side yards of their home were sufficient to provide a family garden and to raise a few chickens which kept enough food on the table during those tough economic times. Grandpa Dwyer, a retired carpenter, also did a few odd jobs to supplant the family funds.

  As Dad continued the stories of his boyhood, I was learning that he had been a bit of rapscallion. As a boy, he had a tendency to get into mischief, sometimes with injurious consequences. Laughingly, Dad told me that one day, while playing with friends, he called another kid a derogatory name. The other kid got angry and, “He then chased me into the street and I got hit by a Model T Ford.” On another occasion Dad was a bit rambunctious while playing in a tree. He lost his grip, fell out of the tree and broke his arm. Since that day, he has had a fear of heights.

  Dad’s neighborhood in Metairie was bordered on the north by Lake Pontchartrain and on the south by the Mississippi River. Being not far from the Mississippi River, most of the boys in the area would hike to the river during the summer months. Dad, as well as the other boys, were forbidden to go swimming in the Mississippi River because the dangerous currents caused many drownings. Despite this, on several occasions, Dad went swimming in the Mississippi River. Swimming in Lake Pontchartrain was a little safer, but it was a longer walk. Dad recounted. “We walked to the lake to go swimming and usually brought our lunch along with a bottle of milk. But with the summer heat, by the time we reached the lake, the milk was sour.” Hence the choice for choosing the river as a swimming hole.

  Many times on their journey to the Mississippi River, the route brought the boys near the Colonial Country Club, and on several occasions they sought jobs as caddies. Dad would earn 65 cents for caddying a round of golf.

  In 1934, when Dad was fifteen years old, tragedy once again befell the household. On Saturday, September 8, my grandmother left home around 6:00 a.m. for her job as a nurse’s aide at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Shortly after her shift began, she was summoned to the emergency room to assist with a gunshot victim. Upon entering the treatment area, she was horrified to learn that the victim was her sister, Alma. The shock only deepened as she began to learn the details of the happenings of that morning.

  Dad’s Aunt Alma and her husband, Willie, had a marital dispute earlier in the week and Alma and her three children spent several days at my grandmother’s home. Shortly after my grandmother left for work that morning, Willie came to the Gruntz household to talk to Alma and attempt a reconciliation.

  Alma arose and prepared a pot of coffee and the husband and wife talked for several minutes. After a few moments, Willie pulled a pistol out of his pocket, shot Alma and then turned the gun on himself. He died instantly. Grandpa Dwyer hurried to the kitchen to investigate the disturbance and discovered his gravely wounded daughter and his son-in-law dead on the floor. Grandpa Dwyer ran out of the house and hailed a passing motorist and brought Alma, who was wounded in the neck, to the hospital. The wound, however, was mortal and she died in the operating room.

  Alma and Willie’s three small children – ages nine, seven, and four – who were in the adjoining bedroom during the entire horrific event were now fatherless and motherless.
Grandpa Dwyer refused to allow his three young grandchildren to be placed in an orphanage – he obtained legal custody and along with my grandmother took them into their home. Mary Dwyer Gruntz raised her niece and two nephews as her own children. The cousins, William ‘Brother’, Shirley Mae, and Alvin became younger brothers and sister to Dad and his two sisters.

  Cpl Gruntz’s grandfather and mother, William Dwyer and Mary Dwyer Gruntz. (Author’s collection)

  The tragic events of that day turned out to be a pivotal point in Dad’s life. With my grandmother having a household of eight people, Dad’s adolescence was abruptly ended. He quit school and become an additional bread winner to supplement the family’s meager income during the height of the Great Depression.

  Dad’s first steady job was that of a newsboy selling newspapers at the Jefferson Racetrack. Selling the morning newspaper required an early rise and shine. While walking through the racetrack’s stable area, the barns would be pitch black. As he went through and yelled “Newspaper!”, one by one, the trainers and horse handlers would light a lantern and come out and buy a paper. The winner of the previous day’s race, whose name was in the headlines would usually pay Dad one dollar for the paper and tell Dad to keep the change as a tip. Dad said he usually made fourteen dollars per week as a newsboy. Although these earnings seem paltry by today’s standards, Dad’s earnings as a newsboy exceeded the income of many grown men who had fallen upon hard times during the Depression.2

  Each morning, on the way to the racetrack with his stack of newspapers, Dad had to pass a gas station, owned by Mr Stanley. Mr Stanley lived on Severn Avenue near Dad’s house and knew Dad from the neighborhood. One morning, about 3 a.m., as Dad was passing the station, everything was wide open. The station had been burglarized. Dad ran to Mr Stanley’s house to awaken him and tell him of the robbery. This act by Dad did not go unrewarded.