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

by Louis G. Gruntz

  On July 13, Jack Benny brought a USO show to the area and entertained the troops of the 90th and the 712th. Along with Benny, movie star, Ingrid Bergman, and others entertained the troops in an open field. Gen. Earnest got a huge round of applause when he rejected the chairs that had been set up for him and sat down on the grass like all of the troops in attendance.

  Jack Benny with Joe Roush. (Company B photograph)

  Ingrid Bergman. (Company B photograph)

  The USO entertains the 90th and the 712th. (Company B photograph)

  Fall In – You’re still in the Army. (Company B photograph)

  Barracks at Camp Randolph. (Company B photograph)

  Military Road to Camp Randolph. (Author’s collection)

  Cpl Gruntz at Main Gate to Camp Randolph. (Author’s collection)

  Inside Camp Randolph. (Author’s collection)

  Bob Kellner, Joe Roush, Eugene Baum, and Woody Mercer with liberated haberdashery. (Company B photograph)

  HQ Company friends with Nazi souvenirs. (Company B photograph)

  The Park Theater. (Company B photograph)

  The 712th Downbeats: Cpl John Doherty, pianist; Cpl L. J. Buzzeo, clarinet; T/5 Wes Hitchcock, drummer; T/4 Roland Frenett, guitarist; Pfc. Myron Johnson, trombonist; Clem Crumm, bass fiddle.

  Joe Roush, Circus Ringmaster. (Company B photograph)

  Felix the Strongman. (Company B photograph)

  Originally a barn within the camp was converted into a makeshift movie theater. Near the camp there was a theater, the Park Theater. Constructed in 1938, it was refurbished and was converted exclusively for the GIs, to replace the makeshift barn theater. The first screening was in mid-July. It was also equipped with a stage to conduct live performances.

  Joe Roush was in his glory at Camp Randolph; he was placed in charge of entertainment, he organized vaudeville shows, circus performances and a minstrel show. Joe had been in combat until he was wounded during the action at Falaise Gap. After recovery he had returned to B Company as a cook. The 712th was also entertained by their own, the musicians in the battalion formed a band, the 712th Downbeats.

  When Dad and I visited Amberg in 1994, most of the buildings that comprised Camp Randolph were boarded and the entire facility was fenced to prevent entry. The site was under renovation and today houses a community technical college for the Amberg area.

  Munich

  Following our stop in Amberg, Dad and I traveled to Munich. The 712th did not go through Munich during the war, but Dad went there after V-E Day. During the summer of 1945, while he was stationed in Amberg, just north of Munich, Dad and another soldier from HQ Company, Edmund Keady, were assigned the duty of bringing one of the officers from the battalion to the airport in Munich. For safety reasons, American GIs never traveled the German countryside alone even after the hostilities ended. Since the officer was leaving on a flight, he had two escorts in order that there be two soldiers in the jeep on the return to Amberg.

  Keady had a brother in the Army who was stationed in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a resort area south of Munich. In addition to getting a chance to see the sights in Munich while bringing the officer to the airport, Keady and Dad were also given permission to go to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to visit Keady’s brother.

  When I looked through Dad’s war photos as a boy, I remember him showing me a photograph of him standing outside of the beer garden in Munich where Hitler made his first political speech. In the summer of 1945 that beer garden had been converted into a Red Cross Canteen for American servicemen stationed in Munich.13

  Dad in front of Bürgerbräukeller. (Author’s collection)

  Ludwigstrasse. (Author’s collection)

  During our visit in 1994, Dad did not recall its location, however, we did tour several other spots in Munich that Dad had visited and photographed in 1945. We spent the afternoon in Marienplatz, the square in front of Munich’s Town Hall. The town square is named after the column of the Virgin Mary at its center. The facade of the Town Hall houses the Glockenspiel, a mechanical carillon and clock with near life-sized figures performing a dance and jousting match three times a day.

  We also walked to Ludwigstraße, a large boulevard upon which the German Armies from the time of King Ludwig I in the first half of the nineteenth century paraded in military formation.

  After seeing all the medieval architecture in Munich, my first reaction was that Munich survived the war unscathed. But Dad quickly pointed out that such was not the case. His photographs taken during his visit in 1945 show extensive destruction. Dad and I toured a museum near the center of town, one room was devoted to photographs taken after the war; these photographs showed the damages sustained by the museum and the restoration efforts that took place after the war.

  Concentration Camps

  At Flossenbürg, men of the 90th learned that propaganda and truth are sometimes the same. It was here that they saw with their own eyes a vivid example of the cruelties of which the enemy was capable. Flossenbürg, one of the most infamous concentration camps in all Germany, was first encountered by the 90th. Bodies of former inmates were stacked grotesquely like cords of wood. The ovens used for disposing of the bodies were on display. More than 1,100 inmates living under indescribably hard conditions, were liberated by troops of the 90th, to whom the nature of the enemy was now revealed fully and graphically.14

  The Flossenbürg concentration camp was a German prison constructed in 1938, in the Oberpflaz region of Bavaria. The camp’s site was selected so that the prisoners could be used as free labor to quarry the granite found in the nearby hills.

  Prisoners were forced to work in the Flossenbürg camp quarry and in armaments-related production. Malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion from hard labor was rampant among the prisoners being held. Combined with the brutality of the guards, this treatment was the cause of thousands of prisoner deaths.

  German military officers involved in the failed 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler were confined at Flossenbürg. In early April of 1945, as American forces, including the 90th Infantry Division and the 712th, were approaching the camp, the SS executed these military officers.15 The SS then began the forced evacuation of 22,000 prisoners, leaving behind only those too sick to walk. On the death march to Dachau the SS guards shot any prisoner too sick to keep up. Before they reached Dachau, more than 7,000 prisoners had been shot or had collapsed and died. The 90th Infantry Division and the 712th liberated Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945.

  Dad said that other troops in the 712th had liberated Flossenbürg. He had heard of the sights but he did not personally go into the concentration camp.

  The Dachau concentration camp, the camp where the poor souls of Flossenbürg were forced to march was closer to the itinerary Dad and I had planned in 1994. Therefore, the morning we left Munich, we traveled a short distance to Dachau.

  Dachau is a small quaint town located about 10 mile northwest of Munich. Ironically, the infamous concentration camp that bears its name is located just outside of the town limits, within the territory of the adjoining village of Prittlbach. Yet, because of the evil, barbarity and terror of the Nazi regime which occurred within the concentration camp, the name Dachau will forever be synonymous with those transgressions against humanity.

  Fence and guard tower at Dachau. (Author’s collection)

  The former concentration camp at Dachau is now preserved as a memorial to the tens of thousands of people, of various nationalities, who suffered and died there at the hands of the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The exhibits and museum located there give testimony of darkest depths of man’s inhumanity to man.

  It was the first of the concentration camps, opened by the Nazis on the grounds and facilities of a munition factory during World War I. The original intent was for Dachau to serve as a work camp, and although it was not operated as an extermination facility like Auschwitz, tens of thousands died within its walls. In the closing months of the war, the Nazis tried to eliminate evidence of the atrocities
that occurred; in the four months preceding the liberation of the camp by the American Army, over 13,000 prisoners died.

  During its twelve years in operation, the main area consisted of row after row of barracks which housed the inmates. These barracks no longer exist except for the outline of their foundations. However, two of the barracks have been recreated in order to show today’s visitors the horrific cramped conditions in which the prisoners lived.

  The brick and stone buildings which served as the gas chamber, the crematoriums, and the prison where the Nazis conducted torture still exist. The main gate, through which the inmates were marched in, contains the cruelly misleading words Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free). The German headquarters building now houses the museum, which contains photographs and films of what occurred within Dachau.

  Creamatorium at Dachau. (Author’s collection)

  The most disturbing aspect of the brutality was the medical experiments performed on the prisoners. There was a photograph of a man who was taken up in a plane at high altitudes and his skull was cut open in order to observe the affects high altitude had on the human brain; the experiment ended in the man’s death. Other experiments involved taking prisoners at high altitudes without oxygen masks. The object of the experiment was to determine the effect of lack of oxygen on the human body. The information was used to design equipment for German aviators for high altitude flights. The time it took for these prisoners to die was recorded as part of the experiment. Prisoners were also submerged in freezing water to determine how long a person could survive before dying of hypothermia.

  The crimes committed by the Nazis was not limited exclusively to the Jews. Others that the Nazis considered undesirable were thrown into the concentration camps. I was very surprised to learn that over 2,500 Catholic priests were confined in the Dachau Concentration Camp. The first German priest incarcerated at Dachau was Father Franz Seitz,

  In a booklet describing the atrocities of Dachau, Dr Johannes Neuhäusler describes Father Seitz’s induction into the camp:

  Scarcely had he arrived at the camp when the SS-man pulled a rosary from the priest’s pocket and mockingly placed it on his head so that the cross hung over his forehead. Thus he led him up and down the camp, kicking him and striking him with clenched fists, and screaming wildly: “The first pig from the Old Reich has arrived!” Seitz had a picture of Pius XII in his breviary. The SS-man held the picture under the nose of several prisoners and called out: “The Roman head priest will be locked up in Dachau with all the other prisoners after the war. Then the Catholic swindle will be finished forever.” A picture of Our Lady gave this miserable Nazi an opportunity to crack vulgar jokes about the maternity of Mary, blasphemies which no pen dare to repeat.16

  When the 90th Division entered Bavaria, Father Murphy wrote, “we are in Bavaria now, all the people are Catholic. All hate the SS as being “Gottlose” (Godless).”17

  The vast majority of the photographs and news film from that era was black and white. This black and white photography, more than anything, portrayed the foreboding feelings of hopelessness, despair and horrid existence of those poor unfortunate souls.

  The morning of our visit was bright and clear, it was a colorful autumn day. But once inside the dreary gray walls, it was as if all color had disappeared. It seemed as if there was a perpetual gray cloud overshadowing the concentration camp and that it would forever be devoid of color and the connotation of joy or happiness that vibrant colors suggest. It was virtually impossible to perceive those bleak surroundings as anything but gray and colorless. From all corners of the camp, the gruesome remnants of its operational days maintain the feeling of horror that seems to permeate every object within its walls.

  After the Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated in 1945, the Americans occupied it and converted it and the adjoining SS camp into a prisoner of war facility to intern up to 30,000 officers from Nazi party organizations and the German army. The post-war military tribunals for war crimes, as depicted in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, were not restricted to the city of Nuremberg. Nazi personnel from various concentration camps were also prosecuted in a series of trials conducted by the US Army at Dachau.

  Capt. Clifford Merrill, the commanding officer of A Company when the battalion landed at Utah Beach, had been seriously wounded after only several weeks of battle in Normandy and was sent home to recuperate. Following his recovery, he returned to Europe during the occupation and was a member of the tribunal at the Dachau war crimes trials. Capt. Merrill also served as provost marshal at the prison compound established at the former concentration camp compound. Capt. Merrill made the Army his career; he served in both Korea and Vietnam, where he was again wounded. He and his wife were among the group that came to Mom and Dad’s home following the 712th reunion in 1985.

  After our somber tour of Dachau, Dad and I headed back toward France. We arrived in a village on the outskirts of Saarbrücken, Germany at just about dusk and decided to find a hotel and spend the night. After renting a room, we noticed a small sign on the street outside of the inn give directions to a Katholische Kirche nearby. By this time we had become a little adroit at deciphering German and realized that there was a Catholic Church nearby. Since it was Saturday evening, we also noticed that we had enough time to attend the weekend vigil Mass.

  I imagine that this part of the town did not get many American tourists; when the altar boy passed by with the collection basket, we were low on German currency so Dad and I put American currency into the basket. That little boys eyes got as big as saucers when he saw American money.

  After Mass, Dad said that it was a small town similar to this during the war where he attended Mass one Sunday. It was right about the time they had moved into Germany and at that time, the 90th and the 712th were leapfrogging with the armored divisions in the move across the country. The 90th and the 712th would advance and then stop and let the armored division move through. It was during one of these stops that the opportunity arose for the GIs to go to Mass that Sunday. Dad explained:

  When we got into Germany, in about the first or second town, it was a Sunday morning and we wanted to go to church. And so we went to church. The American soldiers sat on one side of the church and the German people sat on the other side of the church. I was sitting next to an army buddy of mine (Sgt Gunther Jahnke) and he spoke German. They wouldn’t even look at the Americans, they were scared to death of us; they looked straight ahead in church. And so the parish priest announced something to the German congregation in German, and when he finished speaking they looked around and smiled at all the soldiers. When that happened, I asked Jahnke, “Jahnke, what did he say?” Jahnke said, he told them, “These men are soldiers of God, you don’t have to be afraid of them.”

  Toward the end of the war, and afterwards, many Germans claimed that they had no idea that the concentration camps existed. The Catholic population in this town, however, knew well how brutal the SS troops and the Gestapo were to the German civilian population. The priest that celebrated Mass that Sunday morning in early 1945 obviously also knew about the atrocities being committed by the Nazis to not only Jew in the concentration camps but Catholics as well. The townspeople’s fear and mistrust of all military personnel were obvious and the sincere testimonial by that German priest was welcomed by both the German civilians and the American GIs at that Sunday Mass.

  CHAPTER 13

  Alsace and Ancestors

  To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.

  Chinese Proverb

  As Dad and I headed back to Paris, we made a slight detour in eastern France into Alsace in search of ancestors. Since my grandfather died when my Dad was a boy, the only family history Dad knew was that our Gruntz ancestors emigrated to America in the late 1800s from Alsace. Dad’s grandfather was a boy of about seven years of age when he arrived in New Orleans with his father, stepmother and brothers and sisters.

  My genealogy research in the
months prior to our trip proved to be beneficial. I had discovered the birthplace of my great-great grandfather. He was born in the little French village of Franken, located in the Department of Haut Rhin (southern Alsace) not far from the location where the French, German, and Swiss borders meet.

  We spent the night in Colmar, the capital of Haut Rhin. There are no telephone books in France like we were accustomed to back home, but the hotel clerk was very helpful in doing a computer search and generating a list of about forty Gruntz families that still resided in that area that is known as the Sundgau region of Alsace.

  The next morning, Dad and I visited the government archives in Colmar and to our surprise we were able to obtain a copy of the record of the birth of our ancestor, Louis Gruntz, who was born on November 27, 1825, nearly a century before Dad. At this point, we also gained information on one more generation back, his parents’ names were Ludwig Gruntz and Catherine Schmitt. With my passion for genealogy, I could have spent a week in Colmar doing extensive research, but we were on a time schedule and after a couple of hours, Dad and I were back in the car on our way to the village of Franken.

  Franken is a small farming village with relatively few homes, we knocked on a few doors but no one answered except for one home, but the lady in that house spoke no English. To the best of our knowledge there were no longer any Gruntz families in this village. We visited the village church and the surrounding cemetery but did not find any Gruntz tombstones. I took a picture of an ancient tomb marker dating back to the 1600s, because of its age and condition. I discovered later when we were back home that this ancient tombstone belonged to the Baümlin family, from which we are descended through a maternal line that married into the Gruntz family.1