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

by Louis G. Gruntz

  The 90th Infantry Division had been inactivated after World War I. The new 90th was reactivated in 1942 at Camp Barkeley in Texas. The 90th Infantry Division of World War II wore the olive drab patch with the red inscription that the 90th had worn in World War I. “To inquisitive strangers the 90th patiently explained that in past days the letters stood for Texas and Oklahoma, for the original (WWI) division was made up almost exclusively of men of those two states. Later, however, the division drew its men from every corner of every state in the nation and the T-O came to represent, by common consent ‘Tough ‘Ombres’.”8

  Part of the 90th Division came ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day, the remainder was scheduled for landing the next day. Its entrance into battle was marked by an event which one could say was a bad omen of things to come. The 90th crossed the English Channel on the transport ship, USS Susan B. Anthony. As the ship was moving to its landing position, it struck a mine and sank within two hours. The men of the 90th were beginning to move to the deck and load onto the landing crafts. They were loaded down with all their equipment – rifles, grenades, extra clips, BARs, tripods, mortar bases and tubes, gas masks – when a massive explosion midship knocked out communications and electricity. Soldiers still in the hold of the ship began to panic but the officers took charge and told the men to strip all unnecessary gear to abandon ship. Men discarded helmets, rifles and other equipment; some even took off their boots before scrambling to the deck. All personnel were safely removed from the Susan B. Anthony before she sank. The troops, having been transferred to Higgins landing crafts, went onto Utah Beach, but, many were barefoot, had no helmets, no rifles, no ammunition, and no food. They had to resort to re-supplying themselves with these basic items from the dead and wounded men on the beach and inland areas.

  St Mère Eglise, the town so prominently chronicled in The Longest Day as being liberated by the 82nd Airborne Division, was also briefly occupied by the 90th. Father Murphy’s diary entry for June 8, 1944, reads: “About midnight we hiked though the small village of Ste. Mère Eglise. There was no life visible. Doors of houses hung open; we passed the Church and the Church clock struck the hour of midnight. So we kept on going until we found our place in a field.”9 The 712th Tank Battalion’s first bivouac area after coming ashore, Picauville, is not far from Ste. Mère Eglise. The 712th,10 attached to the 90th Infantry Division, was committed to battle on July 3. After Picauville the 712th moved to Beuzeville La Bastile and then 500 yards south of the Chateau de Franqutot, where it bivouacked before entering battle on July 3, 1944.

  “When we first came into contact with the 90th Division,” explained Jim Cary,11 “they were so amazed when we got the tanks where they were supposed to be on time; this had never happened to them before. They had worked with a different battalion. I thought, ‘Why are they so surprised at this?’ I mean, I would have caught hell if I hadn’t gotten the tanks somewhere on time. We always got there on time.”12 On that first day, July 3rd, the town of St Jores was liberated en route to Hill 122. In the attack on St Jores that day, two tanks were lost to enemy action; Glen Halbert and John Mitchell were killed. Five others, Robert Naughton, Lt Otto Kreig, George Vernetti, Zygmund Kaminski, and Orval Williams, were wounded and evacuated to a field hospital.13 Lee Sullivan was slightly wounded but did not require hospitalization. The first day of combat for the 712th was costly.

  After leaving Picauville and passing by Franqutot, Dad and I stopped in St Jores to visit the church where he and Micaloni had attended Mass the day before Micaloni’s death. St Jores is a small village about 13 miles inland from Utah Beach. Like many of the small towns that dot the French countryside, the church is located in the center of town, the church yard that surrounds the church contains the town cemetery. It being Saturday, the church was empty except for a man who was obviously the town drunk. He was laying against the side of the church and had urinated in his pants.

  The church was unimposing, it was plain and obviously aged. As I looked around at the old stained glass windows, Dad knelt in one of the pews in quiet prayer. Dad seemed oblivious to my presence, in his mind’s eye he was back in 1944 once again kneeling in the church surrounded by American GIs with Micaloni beside him. After several minutes of prayers, we departed and continued our trek along the battle route of the 712th.

  Hill 122

  The fortifications at Forêt de Mont Castre were part of the main German defense known as the Mahlman Line. This defensive position was meant to keep the Americans bottled up on the Cotentin Peninsula. “On the eastern side of the Cotentin peninsula was the city of Carentan; on the western side, the city of La Haye Du Puits, each located on the coast. In the center of the peninsula a large swampy area called Prairies Marecageuses de Georges virtually denied all military traffic through it and divided the peninsula into two sectors.”14 The Mahlman Line stretched from the Atlantic coast of the peninsula to Hill 122 and eastward to the swamp and flooded area east of the town of Le Plessis-Lastelle. B Company had engaged the enemy on the left flank at the ruins of an old castle which was marked on the military maps as Beau Coudray, near the town of Le Plessis-Lastelle.

  The infantry would dig fox holes within which they would spend the night. With the constant shelling by artillery and mortars, the tank crews would park the tanks over the fox holes in order to protect the infantry from the incoming fire. Dad said, “We were stuck in the tank. We stayed in the tank for seven days. We couldn’t get out, the mortars were coming in off the mountain. Leslie Vink was in a tank next to me. I saw him getting out of his tank and I said ‘Where are you going Vink?’ He said, ‘I’m going to take a shit.’ I said, ‘If I were you I’d shit in my pants.’ Just then and there a mortar came flying in and back into the tank he went and I never saw him (outside his tank) anymore (that day).

  “After seven days, I had a beard so long that after I got out, after we pulled back and got away from the firing of the artillery, I went to shave and in those days you had a hand razor. It took me a pack of blades to shave.”

  When Dad finally got out of his tank after those seven days, he had a chance to go to the rear. He said, “The first body I ever saw… when I got onto land was German soldiers in the foxholes. We were out of the tank, and down the road and they had two German soldiers dead in foxholes. One was reaching over with a bottle of Cognac handing to the other one and all of his stomach was blown out, a shell hit him, a mortar, and blew all his stomach out. He was a nice looking fellow too, with red hair. I’ll never forget it, red, red hair.”

  Hill 122 rises above the hedgerow laced fields of Normandy and in 1944 was covered with thick, tangled underbrush and scraggly trees. C Company of the 712th engaged the enemy at Hill 122 and sustained heavy losses. When Dad was training in the US, Jim Flowers was a lieutenant in B Company and Dad knew Jim well. But when the 712th came overseas, Flowers was reassigned to C Company.

  In the fighting for Hill 122, Flowers and his tank platoon were assigned to the First Battalion of the 359th Regiment of the 90th Infantry Division. However, on July 10, Flowers volunteered four of C Company tanks to help out the Third Battalion of the 358th Regiment, also of the 90th. The infantry battalion had been encircled by the Germans near the summit of Hill 122.

  Flowers’ tanks reached the trapped Third Battalion, which was under the command of Col. Jacob Bealke. Although Flowers’ platoon did not meet stiff resistance on its way to the encircled battalion, it did encounter mortar and small arms fire. Rather than have the infantryman withdraw from the hill via the path Flowers’ tank took to reach them, Col. Bealke devised a plan for Flowers to punch a hole through the underbrush and the rear of the German line at a different location and continue the fight to obtain control of Hill 122. The 712th tanks successfully opened a path off of the hill, clearing underbrush and knocking down small trees and reached hedgerow lined fields on the side of the hill opposite the American forces. While attempting to bust through these fields to reach the American side, Flowers’ unit encountered German 88 anti-ta
nk guns.

  Flowers’ tank took a direct hit and the German shell ignited the ammunition in the tank, engulfing it in flames. Flowers pulled the gunner to safety and jumped from the tank only to realize when hitting the ground that his right foot had been shot off.

  He used his belt for a tourniquet and assembled the survivors of the other three tanks that had also been hit. After fighting off German infantry soldiers, Flowers ordered the survivors to withdraw but he, his gunner, and an infantry soldier were too badly wounded to go with the survivors. They stayed on the battlefield and requested that medics be sent with litters to pick them up.

  Before medics could rescue the three Americans, Germans came through the field to their position. Upon seeing them and how badly they were wounded, the Germans ignored them with the exception of one German medic who bandaged their burns.

  The next day, American artillery bombarded the area in preparation for another attack. One of the shells exploded between Flowers and the infantryman. A piece of the shell took off Flowers’ left leg just below the knee. He placed a tourniquet on this leg and bandaged the infantryman with strips of cloth torn from his shirt. Flowers, the gunner, and the infantryman spent another night in the field that was still being shelled with American artillery. American infantry troops reached Flowers the next day but not before the infantryman died from his wounds. Flowers survived and was sent home. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor but was only awarded the Distinguished Service Cross because there were no corroborating witnesses to every segment of his heroic ordeal. Of the 712th’s tanks twenty crew members that ascended Hill 122, nine were killed, several more were wounded and some were captured. The Third Battalion of the 358th Regiment suffered a similar fate. Early on July 10, the Battalion strength was nineteen officers and 563 men; by the end of the day their casualties, dead, wounded and captured, totaled eleven officers and 343 men, leaving only eight officers and 220 men to continue the battle. By the 12th of July, when Flowers was rescued, Hill 122 had been captured, and the Third Battalion now consisted of four officers and 126 men. The actions of the Third Battalion of the 358th and C Company of the 712th on July 10 were considered the major factor in the Americans breaking the Mahlman Line.

  Dad and I visited the base of Hill 122, where a small stone monument with a marble plaque stands as a memorial to nine men from the 712th who were killed in action during that battle.

  Not far from this monument, down the lane adjacent to it, is the spot where Flowers’ tank was knocked out. The fire from its destruction was so hot that the soil underneath it was sterilized. To this day, the area where Flowers’ tank burned is plainly visible from the remainder of the field – vegetation does grow on that spot.

  B Company of the 712th and the 357th Regiment were on the left flank of Hill 122 near Beau Coudray. While Jim Flowers and his platoon from C Company 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.

  Hill 122 Monument. (Author’s collection)

  Hill 122 Monument plaque. (Author’s collection)

  After the capture of Hill 122, Father Murphy entered in his diary, “July 12, 1944 – Wednesday. Moved to Beau Coudray. This is the place we were fighting for. […] The whole town is shot. Many of the enemy dead are along the way.”15

  As Dad and I drove down one of the rolling Normandy roads, it reminded Dad of another event that occurred in 1944. While traveling on a similar road, Dad’s tank came over the crest of a rise in the road and was facing the gun barrel of a Panzer Tank. Knowing that a Sherman Tank had little chance in a one on one frontal confrontation with a Panzer, instinct and adrenalin nevertheless caused them to prepare to fire a shot, but in the instant before firing and while the Panzer was getting its gun into position, an amazing thing happened. “Everyone thought we were finished when all of a sudden it (the Panzer) burst into flame. An American P-47 came flying over, saw the German tank heading toward us, and dropped a bomb on it. The P-47 made another pass over us and we cheered and waved to him in thanks.”

  With casualties mounting, B Company received its first set of replacement troops – twelve soldiers joined the company on July 14.16 On July 18, another seven replacements arrived, including a new lieutenant, Robert Vutech.17

  The Seves River and Périers

  After the 90th and the 712th broke through the Mahlman Line and captured Hill 122 and Le Plessis-Lastelle, the Germans withdrew to the south side of the Seves River. Although called a river, it is no more than a stream that meanders through the fields of Normandy. The relatively flat fields and small hills on either banks of the river are only slightly higher in elevation than the river bed. Despite its bucolic and tranquil appearance today, in 1944 the Seves River and its surrounding terrain provided the Germans a formidable defensive stronghold. The Germans had dug in and fortified the hedgerows on the southern bank of the river.

  Prior to the invasion, the Germans had expanded the natural swampy boundaries of the Prairies Marecageuses de Georges by flooding the low lying areas behind the coastline in order to drown any invading paratroopers and impede any advancement by invading land forces. This pre-invasion flooding of the Normandy countryside had made the terrain swampy on both sides of the Seves River and practically impossible for tanks to traverse.

  On July 22 the 90th resumed its southerly attack toward Périers by attempting to cross the Seves River east of le Plessis-Lastelle, near the town of St Germain sur Seves. The area of the battle became known as Seves Island. Although not technically an island, the battlefield is, high open ground surrounded with the river on one side and the swampy area formed by the flooding on the other side making it appear as an island.

  Seves River. (Author’s collection)

  On that day, Dad was in a tank with Albert Stewart, Wilburn Moody, Harold Slayton, and Lloyd Sparks. He stated, “When we went into this area, St Germain Sur Seves; that’s where I lost the first tank. We attacked and we went through the marshland and my tank sunk up to the belly in the mud, you couldn’t move it. The ground was too soft and we bogged down. And they (Germans) started throwing artillery fire and mortar fire, so we had to jump out of the tank and get back. We had to run through a little fence with a gate on it, and they said be careful coming through that fence, they’ve got that gate zeroed in. So we had to run out one at a time, so if they shelled, it wouldn’t hit everyone at one time.”

  I asked Dad what happened when a situation like that occurred, where did he go? Dad answered, “Wherever you could, you’d try to get back to company headquarters. And that’s where you’d wait until you get your next deal. Evidently, after that they (the service unit) were sent out there with a cable on it and pulled that tank out. Well, when you regroup at night, if anyone had casualties, they’d split us up and put us in another tank. And, they always had replacements coming up, then when the new tanks came in we might be placed in those. Also (the service units) would go get a disabled tank and tow it out.”

  With the Germans dug in and fortified on the southern side of the Seves River, the 90th proceeded with a daylight attack across the open area of Seves Island with disastrous results: one officer and sixty-eight men were killed, five officers and ninety-nine men wounded, and eleven officers and 254 men captured. With the dead and dying strewn across the field, three American chaplains brokered an eight hour truce with the German commanding officer in order to remove the dead and wounded.18

  By all historical accounts, the senior officer corps who commanded the 90th in the early days of battle proved to be weak and ineffective combat leaders.19 After approximately two months of combat, they were eventually replaced because of the high casualties sustained by the 90th in those first few weeks after D-Day.

  American Army tactical training manuals stressed the need for tank-infantry cooperation.20 In Normandy this proved difficult for all infantry and tank units for practi
cal reasons – communications. No one had foreseen the need for air to ground communications, or communications from pilot to tank commander, or even to infantry walking beside the tank to communicate with the tank crew when the hatch was down.21 While these practical difficulties were quickly solved with modification of the tanks communication system, by allowing the infantry to plug in a field communication headset into a communication port at the rear of the tank, there were additional problems existing between the 712th and the 90th.

  While the armored divisions had trained with their attached infantry personnel, the infantry divisions, such as the 90th, and the independent tank battalions that were to support them had no opportunity to train or work together prior to being thrown together in combat. This lack of training was self-evident in July of 1944 when the 90th and the 712th were put into combat together.

  During those initial days of combat, the coordination between the lines of command for the 712th and the 90th were stretched to almost the breaking point. The infantry commanders had no knowledge on the capabilities and proper tactical deployment of tanks in the Normandy terrain.

  During this early period, the senior infantry officers would pull rank on the junior tank officers and ordered the tanks to proceed into situations hazardous to the tank. Following the debacle on Seves Island, the 90th again tried to advance across the Seves River on July 26, as part of the beginning of Operation Cobra and the push to take the town of Périers.

  The shortest distance from Le Plessis-Lastelle to Périers is along the road known as the Old Roman Road. It dates back to the time when the Forêt du Monte Castre was an outpost for the Roman legions. The bridge on the Roman Road across the Seves River had been destroyed by the Germans and like the area around Seves Island further east, the area on either side of the destroyed bridge was open swampy fields. Not to repeat the fiasco of July 22, the commanders of the 90th did not want the infantry advancing across this open swampy area. Several hundred yards east of the destroyed bridge, the river was shallow and there was a natural ford known as Hausley Quarry Ford. Although the open area of the ford was narrower than the expanse near the bridge, it was nevertheless heavily defended by German troops entrenched in the hedgerows on the south side The infantry commanders made the decision to advance across Hausley Quarry Ford with the 712th tanks leading the way.