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

by Louis G. Gruntz

  “All the guys from up north, when we were at Fort Benning complained about the heat. They said the Indians didn’t want that land that’s why they gave it to the Southerners. When we got to Boston, I told them, ‘You said when we were in Georgia that the Indians didn’t want it. Well they sure in hell didn’t want this mess you have up here.’” Those Yankees weren’t too fond of Dad’s reverse needling.

  England

  On February 27, the troops were loaded on the SS Exchequer and the ship sailed at dawn the next day. Once at sea, the ship joined a convoy for the Atlantic crossing. Dad described the trip to England. “The voyage took nine days. I was one of the only few that did not get sea sick. I didn’t drink too much liquids. They (the seasick) were all four high (in bunks) puking and shitting – slipping all over the boat. I got out and went on deck most of the time. Then you’d go down to the galley to eat and you’d smell that food, it smelt so bad you’d get out of there.”

  Lt-Col. Samuel Whitside Miller. (Turner Publishing Co.)

  The History of the 712th Tank Battalion described the voyage as having “many unreconstructed landlubbers” who were a “happy bunch that welcomed land on 8 March as the Battalion debarked at Gouroch, Scotland to the skirl of bagpipes…” The Battalion spent the next three months engaged in further training in England.

  The 712th Tank Battalion along with several other US military units were stationed at Camp Chiseldon, an old British World War I army base just south of the village of Chiseldon near Swindon, England. The old World War I camp, like many other camps all over England, was greatly expanded to house the great influx of American soldiers arriving for the invasion of Europe. Chiseldon is north of the city of Southampton, the port from which the 712th and numerous other American units would embark in 1944 on their voyage across the English Channel to their destinies on the European continent.

  Dad described his days in England. “We landed up in Scotland and we had to take the train down to Chiseldon. I was amazed to see women working on the railroad tracks with pick axes. In Chiseldon they put us up in Quonset huts and every now and then we would get an air raid and we had to run outside and jump in a trench, the buzz bombs (V-1 Rockets) were coming over.”

  The V-1 bombings of London were being reported in the newspapers back in the United States. These random bombings were causing not only massive property damage but were inflicting casualties on the English civilian population. Mom was so worried about Dad that she wrote and begged him not to go into London for fear that he would be accidentally killed in one of these bombing raids.

  “I went to Wales. Slayton and I took a train and went to Cardiff, Wales. We went sightseeing and stayed one night and left the next day. (On the way to Cardiff) we got on the wrong train and it took us to a coal mine at the end of the line. They had a turnaround and headed back. That’s the first time I saw the digging for coal right off the top of the ground.”

  Before the invasion, daily army life continued; Dad mentioned an incident when he needed dental work. “I was still in England. That’s when I went to the dentist, a captain, and he made me a bridge. And he said, ‘Come back tomorrow they’ll be ready.’ I went back the next day. He said ‘OK we got ’em.’ And I put them in and I couldn’t stand them they hurt me so bad. I said, ‘Captain, these don’t fit.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, take them. They are going to last as long as you’re going to last where you are going.’ And as I went outside, I mumbled, ‘You no good son of a bitch,’ and all the other nice words I learned in the army. I still have that partial plate in that box upstairs in the closet.”

  Lt-Col. S. Whitside Miller, at the age of thirty-seven, had assumed command of the 712th Tank Battalion on New Year’s Eve, 1943, a little over a month before the 712th had shipped out to England. Whitside Miller, named Samuel Whitside Miller11 after his maternal grandfather, Brig.-Gen. Samuel Marmaduke Whitside, was a descendant of President William Henry Harrison, and the son of 1st Lieutenant Archie Miller of the 6th Cavalry, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service during the Philippine Moro Campaign in 1909.

  Whitside Miller’s father was killed in a plane crash when Whitside was thirteen years old. Whitside then attended a series of military schools before obtaining an appointment to West Point. After graduation in 1929, he expressed his desire to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. “It has long been my cherished ambition to become as great a cavalryman as my father and grandfather, so that they would have been justly proud of me had they lived.” His desire to be a cavalryman was fulfilled and he held the rank of captain in the 11th Cavalry when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

  When the 11th Cavalry was transferred to the 11th Armored Regiment of the 10th Armored Division at Fort Benning, Miller was promoted to the rank of Lt-Col. and placed in command of the 2nd Battalion.12

  Military leaders make decisions quickly, always focusing on completing the mission successfully, and show respect for their subordinates and other military officers. They are judged by their ability to make decisions on their own and bear ultimate moral responsibility for those decisions. Despite his military pedigree, Lt-Col. Miller did not display these requisite skills to instill confidence as a combat commander to the subordinate officers and men of the 712th.

  Whitside was an inadequate, obsessive compulsive neurotic replete with facial tics, and picking at his fingernails.

  Unfortunately, his behavior disorder was almost disastrous for the battalion. He imposed unrealistic training goals, unrealistic physical training standards, and inappropriate reprimands.

  He had no sense of delegation of duties. He personally rechecked all requisitions, reports, including dental and immunization records and spectacle prescriptions.13

  He repeatedly chastised and reprimanded subordinate officers in front of enlisted men. In one instance a soldier came into the officer’s mess to advise Miller that he had a telephone call. The colonel spent ten minutes chewing out the soldier for interrupting his meal. When he finished berating the messenger and went to answer the phone the caller had hung up. This led to another reprimand.

  When Capt. Forrest Dixon sought counsel of another colonel because Miller had threatened him with court-martial for not installing blackout lights on tanks (a practical impossibility), the colonel brought Dixon to Gen. Middleton’s Headquarters. The staff officer hearing Dixon’s complaint stated, “You know, I wouldn’t pay any attention to what you’re telling me if yesterday we didn’t get a petition signed by a bunch of men from the 712th Tank Battalion…”

  Fearful of the terrible consequences that would have unfolded if Miller had been left in charge to command the battalion in combat, several of the officers in the battalion sent letters to the commanding general complaining of Miller’s idiosyncrasies.

  Gen. Middleton investigated the complaints and presented Miller with the letters written by the men to give Miller the opportunity to talk to his men and see if they would change their minds. The subordinate officers and men that had complained to Gen. Middleton held to their convictions and shortly thereafter Miller was transferred. Eventually Miller was attached to the 29th Infantry Division as a G-3 staff officer.

  Lt-Col. George B. Randolph was named commander of the 712th on the eve of combat as the battalion was readying to cross the English Channel – he assumed command on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Randolph had served in the Officers Reserve Corps since 1926 and had been a high school math and science teacher in Birmingham, Alabama in civilian life. During the war he was the Chief of Tactics at the Fort Knox OCS (Office Candidate School) and then served in two Armored Divisions, the 3rd and the 6th, before coming to the 712th. He was forty-one years of age.

  When he first arrived at the battalion he proceeded to the field kitchen where the men were preparing to eat. When the officers from HQ arrived and got in the mess line, he pulled them all to the side and told them that no officer should eat until everyone of his enlisted men were fed. Thus, in short order, he proved to the m
en of the 712th what kind of leader he was and won the respect and admiration of all who were under his command.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Sherman Tank

  The best armor is staying out of gunshot.

  Italian proverb

  There was nothing in the war movies of my youth that suggested that the American war machines in World War II were anything but invincible. One of the few facts Dad mentioned to me as a boy was that he was in a Sherman Tank during the war. I recall no portrayal of any deficiencies in American tank weaponry, consequently, my youthful inquisitiveness did not extend to question him on the intricacies of this military hardware. I never even bothered to ask why American tanks were called Sherman tanks.

  The utilization of the tank by both sides caused it to be described as the decisive weapon in land warfare in World War II.1 During the course of the war, the German Army had its Panzer tank series (Panzer II, III, and IV) culminating in its huge Panther Tank (Panzer V) and Tiger Tank (Panzer VI). In 1942 and 1943, as Dad was entering the service and was training at Fort Benning, the adoption of American tank warfare doctrines and the development of a tank with which to implement that doctrine fell under the direction and approval of the Army Ground Forces (AGF) and Gen. Lesley McNair. As author Steven Zaloga noted, “[it] came heavily to reflect on the opinions and biases of McNair, an artilleryman with prodigious administrative skills but no combat experience.”2 The principle tank selected by the US Army was the M-4 Sherman Tank.3

  The American Poet, Edwin Markham, once said “choices are the hinges of destiny”. As Dad and the other tank crews of the US Army completed final preparations before the Normandy invasion, few, if any, realized that the destinies that awaited them on the battlefields of Europe were hinged upon the choices made by Gen. McNair in 1942 and 1943. The Sherman tanks designed and built during those years and then stockpiled in England were being distributed to the tank units during the weeks and months before the invasion.

  M4 Sherman Tank.

  World War II was not the first conflict that employed tanks. The armored vehicle known as a “Tank” was introduced onto the modern battlefield by the British in World War I to break the stalemate that had developed in trench warfare. Early versions consisted of a cylindrical metal unit that looked like a water tank atop caterpillar tractor tracks. In order to maintain secrecy for this new weapon, non-essential personnel were told that a movable water tank was being fabricated. The name remained long after the military subterfuge was forgotten.

  The use of armor on the battlefield dates back to antiquity beginning with protective garments and shields made of hides, leather, and bone, then evolving to protective gear made of bronze or steel. Armor was also used to protect war animals, such as war horses and war elephants, from battle wounds. Precursors of the twentieth century tank were the Egyptian chariots, the Roman legions’ testudo, the medieval knights in armor and the horse cavalry which was the predominant military force from the middle ages through the nineteenth century.

  Throughout the history of armor devices, there has always been a compromise between speed and mobility, striking power, and armored protection. Throughout history, mankind has had to reach a proportional balance between these three factors in the development of armored weaponry. Both the Allies and the Axis powers were faced with this proportional balance in the development of their respective tanks in World War II.

  After the introduction of tanks into World War I by the British, the United States Army also developed a small tank corps when it entered the war; however, the American tank force was dismantled after World War I ended.

  Germany started World War II with its invasion of Poland in September of 1939. Within weeks, the Nazis controlled almost all of western Europe. The Germans called their new military tactic the Blitzkrieg (“Lightning War”).4 Germany was able to defeat its neighbors by concentrating its attack on one part of the enemy sector with fast-moving Panzer tanks and motorized infantry and artillery all supported by dive-bombers.5 The Soviet Union was not drawn into the war at that time due to a non-aggression pact entered into between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin one month prior to the invasion of Poland. After the rapid collapse of France and the other western European countries, Great Britain became the only major country at war with Germany at the beginning of 1940.

  As part of the Lend Lease Program, the United States moved quickly with the design and production of tanks for the British Army in order to counteract the German armored divisions facing British forces. Through use of these early tanks in combat by the British Army, some improvements and changes in American tanks were made when deficiencies in design were recognized. But the United States clearly lagged behind Germany in the technology of tank warfare.

  The United States identified its various models of armored vehicles merely by alpha numeric designation. The British, however, affixed names to their weapons, and these early American tanks were named after famous American Civil War cavalry generals. The M-3 series of armored vehicles were the first utilized by the British in combat in 1941. The M-3 (and M-5) light tanks were named Stuarts, after Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. The M-2 and M-3 medium tanks were named after Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. When the M-4 tanks went into full production in late 1942, they were immediately deployed to the British in Africa. The British named the M-4 tanks after Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. The name “Sherman” stuck and even the Americans referred to these tanks by name rather than M-4.6

  Ignoring his non-aggression agreement with Stalin, Hitler launched an invasion against the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Even though Russian tanks outnumbered German tanks two to one at the front and six to one overall, the Russian tanks were obsolete and generally in disrepair. As a result, Germany enjoyed the advantage during the first stages of the conflict. The Russians quickly recovered from these setbacks and introduced their medium T-34 and KV-l heavy tanks into the fighting, which were able to neutralize the German advantage. The Germans then discovered their tanks were not invincible. This led to the bigger and heavier tanks being designed by the Germans and swiftly introduced into battle.7

  Meanwhile, in accordance with US Army doctrine that the tank would function as an infantry support weapon, the Sherman tank was specifically designed to favor speed, mobility and mechanical reliability over firepower and protection. McNair felt that tanks had no business jousting with other tanks, and that this task should be left to his pet service, the Tank Destroyers (TDs). Sherman Tanks were regarded as infantry support weapons, in the case of those belonging to independent tank battalions, or as tools for rapid ‘cavalry’ exploitation of breakthroughs, in the case of armored divisions. McNair believed that any breakthroughs would be accomplished by the infantry divisions with local support from the independent tank battalions. Once a gap was made in an enemy line, the plan was then for armored divisions to pour through and wreak havoc in the enemy rear, destroying reinforcements, disrupting the command structure and forcing the enemy infantry to flee or be destroyed. This American approach was in distinct contrast to German doctrine, which viewed the Panzer divisions as a vital mass of mobile firepower, central to the securing of the breakout against both armored and unarmored opposition, as well as to the rapid exploitation of success. McNair may have been the architect of the American doctrine, but it was widely supported by the Army general staff, including Gen. George Marshall.8

  “The basic fallacy of this American doctrine was the inability of the tank destroyers to deal completely with enemy tanks. […] Tank destroyers were essentially under-armored tanks with slightly bigger guns […] they were open-topped and were very vulnerable to overhead airbursts, mortar fire and even dedicated infantry attack. They were adequate weapons for ambush or fire support.” But McNair’s reliance on the TDs as the exclusive answer to German tanks was misplaced.9

  The Sherman held its own or was better than Germany’s Panzer III and early model Panzer IV, encountered in North Africa and Sicily in 1942 and 1943. The Sherman’s armor had been
designed to resist the 37-mm PAK 36, the truck drawn anti-tank gun used by German infantry at the start of the war. The Germans, however, started to replace the PAK 36 in 1940 after the fall of France. By the time of the Normandy campaign in 1944, the Sherman was badly outclassed by German medium and heavy tanks of that day, the Panther and the Tiger, as well as the improved models of the Panzer IV.9 The armor of a Sherman could be penetrated at most ordinary combat ranges by any of the tanks and self-propelled guns commonly in German service in 1944. More protection through heavier armor plating was neither implemented nor even seriously considered because the chassis of the Sherman, then in mass production, could not accept the additional weight without sacrificing mechanical reliability.

  The meager resources for tank research and development in the US Army forced hard choices that often degraded the ultimate combat capabilities of the tank. The Sherman’s low-velocity 75-millimeter gun was chosen because the Army’s artillery branch wanted a cheap, reliable weapon for fire support. Lloyd Sparks, one of Dad’s 712th tank mates, described firing the short-barreled 75-millimeter guns. “The muzzle velocity was so slow that projectiles in flight were visible from a position standing directly behind the tank.”

  In another cost-cutting move, many Shermans were equipped with a radial engine originally designed for aircraft. On the battlefield, this engine produced a loud backfire when starting, instantly drawing enemy fire.10

  Other design deficiencies of the Sherman were the storage compartments for ammunition. The ammunition bins within the crew compartment were located along the outer shell of the tank. When enemy shells penetrated the tank, more often than not, it also exploded this stored ammunition. The resulting fire and explosion had a disastrous effects on the crew and, in many cases, the tank was completely destroyed.