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

by Louis G. Gruntz

  A German convoy was traveling on a road which ran parallel to the river several hundred yards from the bridge.

  There was a German truck right here (in the cross roads) loaded with soldiers and he (Vutech’s gunner) blew it up; and (on that corner) there was a house, a lady came out right after that, after it stopped burning. She came out with a broom made out of like branches from a tree and she started sweeping the sidewalk to get the debris off the sidewalk. We set up an outpost (on the German side of the bridge).

  Mayenne Bridge A. (Author’s collection)

  Dad did not have the advantage of a panoramic view the infantry had of the unfolding events in taking the bridge. His view was constrained by his gunner’s periscope which focused his attention on the targets and firing accuracy of the tank in front of him.

  Major Ed Hamilton15 of the 357th, details the infantry’s perspective of the events as follows:

  The preparation commenced on time and very shortly succeeded in hitting the ammunition caisson of an 88-mm gun, which resulted in a terrific explosion and a pall of smoke blanketing a portion of the street leading to the bridge. I immediately told (Lieutenant) Stevens to go across and I would call off the artillery and mortar preparation. The leading tank was beckoned to wheel and it and the leading engineer squad headed for the bridge. All of us who saw this realized that we were witnessing a classical example of coordination.

  Stevens, with his fortitude and guts, led his men across in a hail of machine gun and small-arms fire. As the engineers and tanks headed for the bridge, two engineers were hit with what at first appeared to be a rifle grenade (later determined to be a 20-mm shell) and momentarily seemed to disappear. One of the men, Pvt. James McCracken, was killed and the other’s leg was blown off just below the knee. This did not deter this fine squad in its mission. It proceeded to clear the bridge and the first tank rolled across belching cannon fire.

  As the leading tank moved up the street across the bridge, it blasted a Kraut gun and its crew, located on a side street […] More credit should be given […], (to) the tank commander. He unhesitatingly drove across the bridge and on up the hill through the town without infantry support.16

  Mayenne Bridge C. (Author’s collection)

  The army engineer, Private James McCracken, who was killed on the bridge has been remembered by the citizens of Mayenne. The bridge is affixed with a plaque stating “pour sauver ce pont James Mac Cracken du 315e Bon USA se sacrifia le 5 Aout 1944” which translated means that McCracken died saving the bridge on August 5, 1944.

  After capturing the bridge at Mayenne the rest of the 712th Tank Battalion came across the bridge and bivouacked on the southeast side of town. The fact that the bridge had been captured intact and crossed by the Americans came as a surprise to some of Germans that night. Col. George B. Barth, the commanding officer of the 357th Regiment, stated:

  By the time the river crossing had been made and Mason (another 357th officer) was on high ground behind the town, the 1st Bn. had the complete town, and Gen. Weaver ordered a halt for the night with all-around defense. […] As we were unloading our captured German CP truck, another German truck drove up and stopped. Out of it came 15 bewildered Krauts who were planning to put up at this same place – they had no idea Americans were anywhere around. All night there was bedlam in the town of Mayenne. The Germans apparently had no idea where we were, and stray vehicles kept barging into town. Our CP platoon knocked out four and captured a number of prisoners right in front of our CP. Similarly blocking groups on other roads piled up quite a score – nothing got through.17

  The next morning Tanks from A Company of the 712th thwarted a German counterattack.

  Once in Mayenne, Gen. Weaver studied his map and speculated on a way to Le Mans that would offer the least resistance. Weaver decided to split his force along two parallel routes. One of those routes would take the tanks of the 712th through the small town of Sainte-Suzanne. Gen. Weaver’s decision would be a fateful one for the crew members in Dad’s tank.

  Dad and I spent the night at the Grand Hotel in Mayenne, located next to the river at the northwest entrance to the bridge. The hotelier, Richard Van Marle, spoke fluent English and told us that the hotel had been in operation during the war. When Dad related the fact that he had been in Mayenne during the war, Van Marle became very interested in hearing details from an American veteran that helped liberate his town. He provided us a corner room on the second floor corner overlooking the bridge. I spent a long time that night peering out of the window at the bridge my father helped capture fifty years earlier.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Purple Heart – 7 August 1944

  So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors but also remember your descendants.

  Tacitus (AD 54-117)

  On August 7, 1782, Gen. George Washington issued an order establishing a military decoration for bravery in action; that decoration became known as the Purple Heart because of its design, purple cloth in the shape of a heart. A man who received the Purple Heart, regardless of his rank, would be granted privileges normally reserved to officers and any recipient of the award would be allowed to pass by guards and sentinels with the same courtesy enlisted men paid to officers. This is the treatment Gen. George Washington envisioned for the recipients when he established the award. Prior to Washington’s order, acts of bravery during the Revolutionary War were rewarded by a promotion in rank; this practice was stymied after the Continental Congress informed him that it could not afford to pay the officers he promoted. Therefore, Washington established the Honorary Badge of Distinction/Badge of Military Merit for military merit specifically to honor lower-ranking soldiers. The philosophy of the European military establishment in the eighteenth century reserved military honors for officers and members of the nobility, thus, medals and decorations were unpopular in Colonial America because they were associated with Europe’s upper classes.

  On the 200th Anniversary of George Washington’s birth, February 22, 1932, the War Department revived the Purple Heart military award by Order of the President. This revived Purple Heart is a combat decoration awarded to members of the armed forces of the US who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy and posthumously to the next of kin in the name of those who are killed in action. August 7 of each year is designated Purple Heart Day.

  The 712th Battle Route – Northern France Campaign. (The History of the 712th Tank Battalion)

  Sainte-Suzanne

  On August 7, 1944, the one hundred sixty-second anniversary of the establishment of the Purple Heart, four members of B Company of the 712th Tank Battalion earned this badge of honor in the small French town of Sainte-Suzanne.

  East Road into Sainte-Suzanne. (Author’s collection)

  Sainte-Suzanne, located approximately 20 miles southeast of Mayenne, is a medieval town that sits on the top of a cliff overlooking the French countryside to its east and south. The terrain on the northern and western side of the town is low rolling hills. The American attack on Sainte-Suzanne came from the western and northern entrances into the town. The northern entrance to town, where Dad’s tank advanced in 1944, has a fork in the road with a walled cemetery positioned in the middle of the fork. The road on the left of the fork leads directly to the old center part of town and the town church; this road dips in elevation a few feet below the elevation of the cemetery. The road on the right, although the same elevation of the cemetery, leads to the western edge of town.

  Sgt Warren Willinger was tank commander, Dad was the gunner, Lloyd Sparks was the driver, Dee Johnson was the assistant driver, and a replacement private, William Land, who joined the Company on July 14 was the loader. Dad’s tank had taken over the lead position in the advance when the other tank in the squad got stuck in the mud off the main road into town.

  In war, the farther forward you are, the more you know about the immediate situation but the less you know about the overall situation; the farther rear you are, just the opposite is true.1
As Dad explained, that truism was in effect on that day:

  We were at the top of the hill coming this way. We thought they were firing artillery at us, so what we did was we fired a shot at the steeple of the church and knocked half of the steeple off (to knock out any enemy artillery spotter).

  Up until then the infantry was walking close to the tank; as the tank proceeded, the infantry stayed behind under cover.

  Then we proceeded with the tank up this road here and we took the road on the left next to the wall of the cemetery. We were firing at Germans running across the street in Sainte-Suzanne (running from right to left perpendicular to the direction the tank was traveling). When we were firing we got radioed from the officer in charge in the back and said we were firing on friendly troops and we stopped firing. We got up to the wall – a few yards up that road to that cemetery way and we stopped.

  We saw the Germans still running across the road going in toward the church, toward the center of town. We started firing again. They called back again and said you are firing on your own troops. So I told Willinger, ‘You tell them if we are firing on our own troops then they had German uniforms on.’ So we ceased firing. Willinger was sticking his head out (of the turret). He was afraid someone was in the cemetery and he grabbed a hand grenade. […] He may have seen something in that graveyard. When we (stopped firing) the bazooka came out the cemetery and hit the tank.

  The German soldier behind the stone wall in the cemetery was armed with a Panzerfaust and, at that close range, he hit the tank turret.

  The turret top was up and it (the shell) hit the top of the turret and it melted and all the steel went all through the tank. Willinger was standing up (behind me) and he got hit in the head and it came over his shoulder and hit me in the back. He fell down. He fell on me, not on top of me, and fell down to the (bottom of the tank). A ball of fire went through the tank, the tank lit up you almost went blind with the light. I jumped out and I told everybody, “Get out, let’s get out.” We couldn’t proceed any further and were afraid it (the tank) was going to blow up. Willinger was dead.

  As the molten slag produced by the rocket’s impact splattered around inside the tank, it set the tank ablaze and also welded the gun breech closed. Dad began exiting through the top hatch, the driver, Lloyd Sparks, opened the tank’s main power switch then crawled onto the back deck and operated the fire extinguishing mechanism on the tank.

  I asked Dad if they had attempted to get Willinger out of the tank. He said.

  There was nothing we could do, we had to get away from the tank. He had a hand grenade in his hand and the pin was pulled. (He died instantly and he had a death grip on the grenade.) If we tried to grab him the grenade might have fallen out. And it would have blown up and killed everyone.

  Also, we didn’t know what the Germans were going to do. We ran back this road about two hundred yards to this hedge here. It was all open fields in there. Behind those hedges the American infantry was laying down. (There was a young lieutenant and he looked scared.) And I said to the lieutenant, “What the hell are you doing back here?” He said, “We are pinned down.” I said, “God Damn it, you’re pinned down my ass, we just got our tank knocked out and a man got killed in it because you’re back here. I just came back this road and never had a shot fired at me. How the hell did I get back that road and nobody fired a shot at me?” He said, “Don’t get mad at me, don’t get mad at me it’s not my fault.” He might of been scared because he thought I was going to shoot him. That’s when I got back to the jeep and they said, “What happened up there?” And I said, “You sons of a bitches know a tank can’t take a town without infantry.” That was the end of it.

  When Dad exited the tank he realized he was wounded, but thought the other surviving tank crew members made it out of the tank as well. Sparks helped the assistant driver, Dee Johnson, get out of his front hatch and helped him back to the hedgerow where the 90th infantry had taken cover.

  When Sparks was running behind me down the road after jumping out of the tank. He said he saw so much blood on my back, he thought for sure I was going to die, that I was going to bleed to death.

  When they reached the hedgerow, Sparks left Dee Johnson with the infantry and returned for the seriously wounded loader, William Land, who was still in the tank. The enemy fire, complained of by the infantry lieutenant, was silent, as Dad, Sparks, and Johnson retreated from the smoldering tank, thus leading Dad to believe it was non-existent. That enemy fire, however, resumed and began menacing Sparks as he ran back to the tank. Despite the machine gun fire directed at him, Sparks pulled William Land from the smoking turret and carried him back to the aid station. Dad said that Land’s wounds were so serious that he believed he never returned to combat and shortly thereafter was shipped home to the States to recuperate.

  After recovering Land, Dad explained how Sparks again returned to the tank started the engine, “But Sparky went back (into no man’s land) and got the tank and backed it up (to where the 90th had dug in).”

  In addition to recovering the tank and moving it off the road to allow the other tanks to proceed with the advance on Sainte-Suzanne, Sparks’ run through no-man’s land also lured the Germans into resuming fire and exposing their hidden machine gun position, which the American forces soon silenced.

  “That’s when he got the Silver Star for that.” Lloyd Sparks was the only one in the tank who was not wounded, he was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action. The medal was personally pinned on Sparks by the 90th Division Commander, Gen. James Van Fleet.2

  After the tank was retrieved from no-man’s land, Willinger’s body was removed from the tank and carried back to the rear wrapped in a blanket.

  Dad continued, “I was bleeding, they took me in the back and the medics cut my jacket and put sulfur powder on me and helped me out a little, and told me to cross over through here (the field) and to go in where Headquarters was. And about an hour or so, an ambulance picked me up and brought me to a field hospital.”

  Dad later admitted that it was a mistake for the tank to proceed into town without infantry support. It was a mistake that cost Willinger his life. Dad remained puzzled for many years regarding the orders they received to stop firing. The officers back in the Headquarters of B Company kept telling him that he was firing upon American troops, but he could plainly see German uniforms. After fifty years, however, the mystery was unraveled as we read about the incidents on that morning in Sainte-Suzanne in the accounts from the 90th Infantry.

  In the morning we pushed on to aid the first battalion, which had been having serious trouble up ahead around Sainte-Suzanne. They had gone into and on past the town, but had been attacked from the rear by about five hundred fanatical, screaming paratroopers. They had fought a wild pitched battle in the darkness all night. In the streets of Sainte-Suzanne, American and German soldiers had fired each other from point-blank range. The battalion command post in the cellar of one of the buildings had been isolated and attacked by the enemy, so that everyone from the colonel on down fought madly to bear off the foe.3

  Col. Barth had radioed Major Ed Hamilton, who was ahead of Barth’s command post in Sainte-Suzanne, to double back and handle the Germans who had re-entered Sainte-Suzanne from the south. Before Hamilton’s forces could recapture the town, Dad’s tank was approaching from the north The German troops Dad had been firing upon were immediately around the building containing the cellar into which Col. Barth sought refuge until relief came. The shells were apparently hitting this building containing Barth and, thus, Dad was ordered to stop the shelling.

  As the rescue of Col. Barth was unfolding, Dad was brought by ambulance to the field hospital further to the rear of the American lines.

  The field hospital was a big green tent. It had no floor and all of the beds (and other equipment) was just sitting on the ground underneath the tent.

  I had about fifty small pieces of shrapnel all over my back. They wanted to give me morphine at the scene. But I told the
m no. I did not want to get hooked on drugs and become a drug addict. The doctor came in and examined it and said that he thought he could pull them out without giving me anesthesia. I said OK. I was laying on my stomach and he was pulling out the pieces in my back and a nurse came in. While he was pulling one of the larger pieces out, I said “Ouch.” The nurse said, “You mean this man does not have anesthesia?” She had to leave the tent, (she couldn’t bear to watch it).

  They put some kind of paste on my back and I had to lay on my stomach for a couple of days. Later some of the wounds got infected and they had to retreat those area and put small bandages there. After that I had a general recovery.

  Dad spent about two weeks recuperating in the field hospital.

  I subsequently asked my mother, how did she learn about Dad being wounded. Mom recounted that day.

  I had moved back to my parents and was living with them. I was still sleeping because I worked the night before. When Maw-Maw [Gertrude Casteix, my maternal grandmother] opened the door, the (Western Union) girl said “Telegram!” and (seeing the telegram was from the War Department) said “I can’t call my daughter (without preparing her for the news).” She (the Western Union girl) said, “You have to.” Maw Maw said again “I can’t.” So the girl said, “I’d lose my job if they knew I was telling you this but your son-in-law is alive but he’s not seriously hurt. But you do have to call your daughter.”

  My grandmother woke up my mother and she signed for the telegram and cried and cried.

  Mom received the telegram two weeks after Dad was wounded. Ironically, this was about the same time Dad had completed his hospital recuperation and was released to be returned to his unit. It was the first word she received that Dad was wounded.