Unabridged U.S. Army Story of John D. Brown, PFC, WWII

 

Unabridged U.S. Army Story of John D. Brown, PFC, WWII (1940-1945)

by William H. McLaughlin

John D. Brown, c. 1980

Note to Kathy, or anyone interested: Here’s your Dad's Army story. I’ve compiled this from oral history notes I took around our dining room table during an afternoon session with “Brownie” in 1982 and extensive online research to include a wealth of information from the 12^th Armored Division website and recorded stories from numerous other veterans who served in the same unit or nearby units with him. His battalion was in a huge battle with combat hardened German Army units in and around the town of Herrlisheim, France on both the 16^th and 17^th of January 1945. Brownie’s description to me of what happened to him aligns best with events that took place on the 17^th of January. I am also including some small sketch maps that may help you visualize what happened. This story was first written about 2017, and updated in June 2021.

 

INTRODUCTION

I first met John Brown in the summer of 1969. He was to become my father-in-law on November 1^st that year. He was a mild mannered, slender man born on a family farm near Orrville, Ohio on November 19^th, 1907. We got along very well right from the start. I learned that Brownie, as his friends called him, had been captured in France by the German Army during World War II. I was immediately interested in learning the details!

By 1979, I was a tactics instructor at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I knew the value of oral history and mentioned to Brownie that I’d like to sit down with him to discuss his World War II experiences so that they could become a part of our family history. I remember saying to him, “One day your grandchildren/great grandchildren will be old enough to say, ‘So what did Grandpa Brown do in the war?”

We got to follow-up on my request three years later. I asked lots of questions. He gave me lots of answers. He’d been the driver of an M4E8 Sherman tank in the 12^th Armored Division. We both had fun, me writing copious notes and him relating memories of what was in all probability the most exciting and at the same time most frightening time of his entire  life. Together we poured over maps of the United States, England, France and Germany to discover where he had been for training, the route his armored unit had taken as well as where he’d been captured and where he’d been released three months later from being a Prisoner of War (POW).

 

PRE-WAR ARMY EXPERIENCE

My first questions were about when and where he began his military service.  He told me,

“I wanted to see something beyond our family farm and enlisted in the Army in 1940. Due to my familiarity with horses on the farm I was assigned to the horse cavalry and was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas for training. I remember riding my horse through obstacle courses and learning to fire a pistol while mounted. My uniform consisted of a khaki shirt, necktie, riding breeches, knee-high, brown leather riding boots, a Sam Brown belt with holster and a sharp looking, felt campaign hat. Sitting on a horse I felt like a king. Shortly after completing basic training, the first sergeant told me, ‘Brown, the General needs a driver and we’re sending you up for the job.’ It turned out that the General was a good man and I loved my job as his driver.

I was a member of the 2^nd Cavalry Division and was promoted to corporal while driving for the general. Everybody knew that war was coming with Germany and Japan.  My term of service was up in October 1941. I thought about reenlisting because I liked army life, but I decided to get out and return to Ohio. I was 33 years old and I felt it was time to move on with my life and start a family. But that was not to be.  Within months of my discharge I was involuntarily recalled to active duty.”

 

WAR IS DECLARED

Japan’s surprise air attack of the 7^th of December 1941 upon the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor and Army units stationed nearby on the Island of Oahu led directly to America declaring war on Japan the next day, December 8^th, and three days later against the remaining Axis powers (Germany and Italy) on the 11^th of December 1941. The war in Europe had begun when Germany invaded Poland on September 1^st, 1939. It widened when Germany overran France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The United States had endeavored to stay out of the war but now, two years later, it was fully upon us.

 

TRAINING FOR WAR

 “By late 1941 the horse cavalry that I knew was completely out of date.  When I got my recall notice from Uncle Sam in early 1942, I knew that I’d be doing something different, but what? At that moment I wished I had stayed in the army. I am quite sure I’d have remained a general’s driver. My subsequent experience of WW II would have been completely different.”

Try as I may, I don’t recall which general officer Brownie drove for at Fort Riley and my 39 year old notes don’t provide an answer either.  Brownie told me that since there was no more horse cavalry for him to return to, he was instead assigned to a new type of unit in November 1942. This was the 12^th Armored Division (12^th AD) which had just been activated in September 1942 at Camp Campbell, Kentucky. Camp Campbell itself was a brand new Army post with construction beginning in January of 1942. This was part of the huge overall expansion of the Army in preparation to train and field the millions of men needed to fight a world war.

“At Campbell I completed my second basic training and small unit training. I was assigned to “E” Company of the 43^rd Tank Regiment as a tank driver. Later, the Regiment was reorganized as the 43^rd Tank Battalion and I was assigned to “B” Company. This was a logical assignment for me. Tanks were replacing horses and I had already been a driver at Fort Riley.

 As an aside, while we were at Campbell, there was a contest open to all members of the division to come up with a nick name for our division. Many names were suggested but thanks to the suggestion of a young enlisted man, as of the 1^st of February 1943, the 12^th AD became known as ‘The Hellcats.’ My buddies and I were all very proud of our division and the new nick name seemed to fit perfectly. By the end of our training at Campbell the division strength was up to its full complement of 961 officers, 53 warrant officers and 12,030 enlisted men. We had already come a long way from where we began in November 1942. I was proud to be a ‘Hellcat!’

 

In September of 1943 we left Campbell in a vehicular convoy and joined with many other units in a huge field exercise called the Tennessee Maneuvers. Here we learned how to fight and survive in the mud and cold winter conditions of central Tennessee. Our maneuver area stretched from Tullahoma, Tennessee west to the Mississippi River. Later I heard that it was in these Tennessee Maneuvers that General George Patton further developed the tactics that our armored forces would eventually apply against German armored forces in France, Belgium and Germany. Although we were continuously cold and tired, these maneuvers toughened us up for the conditions we would face in combat during the brutally cold European winter weather of 1944-45.

At the conclusion of the Tennessee Maneuvers in late December 1943 we moved on to another new base called Camp Barkeley, in Abilene, Texas. It was at Camp Barkeley that our 43^rd Tank Battalion and the other subordinate units of the 12^th AD first drew our tanks, armored artillery, half-tracks and all the trucks we would need to transport all of our troops and the tons of ammunition, food, fuel and supplies that it takes to keep an armored division moving in combat. Crew served weapons training took place here. This was followed by gunnery, large unit training and more field exercises.  In August 1944, after two years of organization/reorganization and training at Campbell and Barkeley, the 12^th AD was ready to be deployed from stateside to the European Theater of operations. All of us were now well aware of and trained for the monumental task waiting for us in Europe.”

By way of background, several months before the 12^th AD completed training at Camp Barkeley, U.S. and British Commonwealth Armies had taken part in the largest amphibious operation of all time across the beaches of Normandy on the coast of France. The date was the 6^th of June 1944. This was the beginning Operation Overlord. The mission given to the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces (5-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower) was to invade Europe to win the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.

 

DEPLOYMENT OVERSEAS

I remember asking Brownie to tell me what happened to him at the end of his training at Camp Barkeley, Texas. He told me,

“Since I was to be sent overseas with the 43^rd Tank Battalion in September of 1944, my wife Lelia, whom I had married eighteen months earlier in March of 1943, had to pack her bags and take a lonely train ride back home to Ohio. But since we had been expecting this she was ready to go when the time came. Meanwhile we loaded all of our tanks, trucks, jeeps and other equipment onto railroad flatcars. Then my buddies and I boarded a crowded troop train with only our duffle bags and began a long, slow, trip from Texas to Camp Shanks, New York. New York City was our port of embarkation for Europe. Camp Shanks is not there any longer but it was on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, north of New York City. The train ride between Texas and New York turned out to be the easiest part of our trip. On the night of September 19^th, 1944, our five officers and all 112 of us enlisted men from B Company, 43^rd Tank Battalion boarded the troop ship Marine Raven. On the morning of September 20^th, we set sail from New York and began a harrowing 13 day passage across the Atlantic Ocean. The seas were rough all the way. Almost everyone was seasick except me. Our ship landed at Southampton, on the southern coast of England on October 2, 1944. The men joked among themselves that the German Army couldn’t be as bad as what we’d just experienced zigzagging all the way across the Atlantic where most of us, 1) felt deathly ill and 2) lived in fear 24 hours a day of both German submarines and the foul weather. Within several months that thought would come back to haunt all of us.

 

PREPARATION IN ENGLAND

From Southampton, we were loaded onto a train and moved north to Camp Aldermaston on the Salisbury Plain where we stayed in tents for three days.  Next we were loaded onto trucks and moved west to Tidworth Barracks also on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Tidworth was the spring board for training American armored divisions headed to the continent. Tidworth had been a British Army training area for years. We felt very welcome there. The biggest surprise we got at Tidworth was we were issued brand new vehicles and equipment. We never did find out what happened to all of our original equipment that we had carefully rail-loaded out of Camp Barkeley. But we didn’t waste any time in England. Our time was spent preparing ourselves and our new equipment for combat. This included more shots from the medics and cleaning all the cosmoline (thick grease/rust inhibitor/preservative) off our tank guns, artillery pieces, mortars, rifles, and pistols. We then fired all of them to be sure that they were functioning properly. We tank crewmen learned how to maintain the new Ford engines in our factory new M4E8 Sherman tanks. We drew and loaded ammunition, food, fuel and all the standard supplies we could carry down to the last roll of toilet paper.

 

HEADING OFF TO FRANCE

Within a month’s time, we received word that we’d be embarking on a small fleet of LSTs (Landing Ship Tank) for the recently reopened port of Le Havre. Le Havre was about 140 miles to the southeast from our English port of embarkation at Weymouth. Le Havre lay across the always unpredictable English Channel on the west coast of France. I celebrated my 37^th birthday about a week before we left left England. I did feel old compared to many of the younger guys in our outfit. Some of the newest replacements were only 19-20 years old. When we sailed into Le Havre, on the 12^th of November 1944 it was a scene of total devastation.” 

Two months prior to Brownie’s arrival in Le Havre, the German occupied French port city had been assaulted by allied air, land and sea forces beginning on the 5^th of September. Le Havre was totally liberated from German occupation by the 12th of September.  More than 12,000 German soldiers were taken as prisoners of war. Eighteen miles of docks and most of the city center were completely destroyed. But the retaking of the port of Le Havre was vital for allied shipping of men and supplies into Europe to hasten the defeat of Germany.

“Bull dozers had pushed back the rubble clearing single lane roads for us to move away from the port.  The weather was bad as we moved east, but our spirits were lifted by having French people, young and old, cheering for us everywhere we went. Our first division assembly area in France was at Cressy, just outside of the town of Auffay, 50 miles east of Le Havre. All elements of our battalion closed into the assembly area by November 17^th, 1944. I had seen bomb damage in England when we got passes for a day trip to London but the damage I was seeing in France was far greater.

We spent the 18th-28th November performing maintenance and polishing up last minute training we needed before being committed into combat. There were all kinds of rumors about where we’d be going and what units we’d be with. The battalion was finally alerted for movement and ultimate action. On the 29^th of November, our 43^rd Tank Battalion left Cressy and marched 300 miles east across France. We drove relentlessly for three days and two nights stopping only for fuel and short rest periods. As a driver, I didn’t know where we were going. I just followed the directions given to me by my tank commander and the tank in front of me. We finally closed in on Luneville, Lorraine, France on December 1^st, 1944.”

By the 6^th of December the 12^th AD was ordered to move forward, supporting the attack of the 26^th Infantry Division by fire and to relieve the 4^th AD in sector. The 12^th AD completed replacing the 4^th AD by six in the morning on the 8^th of December.  The division’s mission was to breach the Maginot Line (west side of the Rhine River) and to continue to advance to the Siegfried Line (east side of the Rhine River). The Maginot Line was the old French defensive system of bunkers and tank traps designed in the 1930s to keep the German’s out of France. The German Army outflanked it within a day or two in the spring of 1940 making an end run north through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. The Siegfried Line was the German counterpart to the French Maginot Line. The war was on for the Hellcats!

 

GOING INTO COMBAT

43rd Tank Battalion near Herrlisheim, Jan 16th, 17th, 1945

 

Brownie’s unit, the 43^rd Tank Battalion, on the eve of its entry into battle had a full complement of 729 men, 53 medium tanks, 17 Light Tanks, 13 Half Tracks and six 105mm Howitzers each mounted on a medium tank chassis. This was a powerful armored force. They were not battle tested yet but they were well trained, had excellent equipment, and as ready as they could be.

In the early 1980s Brownie didn’t have much to say about his first five weeks in a combat zone (December 7 through January 15^th). I learned later that he had been hospitalized during late December with a bout of ptomaine poisoning. Combat Command A (CCA), the parent unit of his 43^rd Tank Battalion was quite active during the period of 7-12 December. CCA had taken part in combat operations around the French towns of Singling, Rohrbach, Guisling and Bettwiller. Enemy contact was fairly light. On the 15^th of December the 12^th AD became part of the reserve of Lieutenant General Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army. During the month-long period of 15 December  1944 to 15 January 1945, the 43^rd Tank Battalion was repositioned forward several times but saw little real action. This meant that Brownie would have been maintaining his tank as an everyday task and undergoing more training. The 43^rd Tank Battalion seemed destined for a relative reprieve to get ready for what would turn out to be a major role in a division level attack on 16-17 January. The overall 12^th AD battle in this part of France (just west of the Rhine River), took place during the period 8-20 January 1945 and has since become known by veterans of the “Hellcats” as Bloody Herrlishiem.

 

By way of background, Hitler’s last major offensive on the Western Front took place in the densely forested Ardennes region of Belgium, France and Luxemburg between December 16^th 1944 and January 25^th 1945. This battle was known by the allies as The Battle of the Bulge.  The Ardennes area was well north of where the 12^th AD was committed in the Alsace region of France. As early German successes in the Ardennes turned into stalemate and defeat by the end of December, the German high command began to shift forces south with the aim of counterattacking thinly spread U.S. and Free French forces approaching the Rhine River in Alsace. The German objectives for Operation Nordwind, as they called this, their last offensive in the west, included driving a wedge between U.S. and allied forces, recapturing Strasbourg, France, destroying allied manpower in Alsace and setting the conditions for a follow-on offensive operation to disrupt the entire allied advance toward Germany.

Brownie told me what he knew about the military situation as of the 15^th of January 1945.

“On the 5^th of January, 10 days before, the Germans had begun forcing a river-crossing onto the west bank of the Rhine River in front of us. Part of our division (Combat Command B) attacked German forces in the center of their bridgehead during the period of 8-9 January but failed to dislodge them. For the next week the 12^th AD and the Germans glared at each other across frozen, snow covered farm fields while they built up their strength for whatever was to come next. 

I heard a lot about something our officers called, ‘The Three Heims.’ These turned out to be the villages of Drusenheim, Herrlisheim and Gambsheim, three small Alsatian farm villages on the west side of the Rhine River that denoted the extent of the German Bridgehead.” Brownie and I located them on the military maps that I had laid out in front of us.

Here's what we found on our maps.

He continued, “By the 8^th of January 1945, the German bridgehead (area between the Rhine River and the red line above) was about 12 kilometers wide and five kilometers deep. On its north flank the Germans held the town of Drusenheim situated near the Rhine. The southern anchor was Gambsheim, about one kilometer west of the river. Herrlisheim, about four kilometers west of the river, was at the center of the bridgehead. I knew our company officers were receiving offensive operations orders from battalion. As soon as they had our part planned out, our company commander, Captain Dwyer, called our platoon leaders together for an orders briefing on the 15^th of January. Each platoon leader in turn called his tank crewmen together to tell them what was going to happen the next day, the 16^th of January.

Our platoon leader told us, ‘The objective of our attack is Offendorf, the small town just south of Herrlisheim. Once we secure Offendorf, the Germans in Herrlisheim will be cut off. Our attack will be from west to east along this axis of advance.’ As he briefed us, he pointed out the town and our route on his folded field map. He continued, ‘The 17^th Armored Infantry Battalion (AIB) will be on our left and the 66^th AIB on our right.  The key to the success of our attack is for the 66^th AIB to clear this forested area on our right flank called The Steinwald.’ Brownie pointed it out to me on our map. ‘The enemy in the vicinity of Offendorf is reported to be remnants of units manned by soldiers that have been steadily ground down over a long period of time. We’ll be supported by division artillery but because of the foul weather the air force won’t be able to help us at all. The temperature will be about 10 degrees and as you can see there is about 15 inches of snow on the ground. The ground we’ll be attacking across is wide open farm land but it is cut by numerous little streams that are swollen by melting snow and covered with ice. Our job is to roll into town and clear it of all German resistance.’ After hearing this and seeing exactly where our company and my platoon fitted into the scheme of maneuver, I felt pretty good. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but we had a lot of tanks supported on both flanks by infantry.

 

Our attack on the morning of Jan 16, 1945. 

 

We arrived at our attack position in the town of Weyersheim on the west side of the Zorn River at midnight. The battalion on our right flank, the 66^th AIB, began their movement forward at 1 a.m. By 4:45 a.m. they reached their Line of Departure at the Landgraben River for their attack upon The Steinwald. Shortly afterward we heard the sounds of heavy firing in their sector. We didn’t know that they were pinned down right away and couldn’t even get into The Steinwald, let alone clear it. At 10:30 a.m., whitewashed tanks from our battalion began to move east across the snow covered open fields south of Herrlisheim toward Offendorf.  Our lead tanks soon discovered that they were in big trouble. The Steinwald on the right wasn’t cleared yet. Consequently, they were receiving heavy German anti-tank fire from the wooded area in that direction but to make matters worse since the 66^th AIB should be in there, our tanks couldn’t return fire to the south for fear of hitting friendly troops. They also were receiving 88mm anti-tank fire straight ahead from behind a railroad embankment in the direction of Offendorf. Simultaneously they were receiving additional anti-tank fire from Herrlisheim on their left flank. Our tank crews couldn’t see where the fires were coming from because of low hanging ground fog. The fields they were crossing providing no cover or concealment. Several tanks of our battalion were hit and burning. The remaining tanks were told to halt but no permission was given for them to withdraw. The tanks couldn’t go forward and couldn’t go backward. They were sitting ducks. After 12 tanks were knocked out, our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Novosel, finally received permission from higher headquarters (CCA) to withdraw two kilometers to the west.  Our B Company tanks had not gotten into the fight at all on the 16th.

 The next day was to be a different story.

 

Our attack on 2nd day, Jan 17, 1945

We were told just after midnight on the 17^th that we’d be attacking at 7a.m. in the morning. The 66^th AIB with a company of tanks attached from the 23^rd Tank Battalion would once again attack The Steinwald Woods (not shown on sketch above). We, the 43^rd Tank Battalion with our remaining 23 tanks, would follow and support the 17^th AIB attacking east toward Offendorf then swing north into the southern end of Herrlisheim. B/43 (my company) was attached to the 17th AIB. The objective, once again, was to clear Herrlisheim of enemy forces. I learned most of this after the war. All I knew at the time was that we were attacking from Weyersheim across the Zorn River towards Herrlisheim.

By 7:45 a.m. we had reached the southern outskirts of Herrlisheim. We in B Company had orders to follow the 17^th AIB infantry into town from the southwest. Our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Novosel, and the rest of our battalion were to enter town from the southeast. Small French/German farm towns have very narrow streets. Houses come right up to the sidewalks on both sides of the street with barns behind them. As the infantry ahead of us entered town they spread out along several parallel streets and probed into different houses along the way to ensure that they were clear of German troops. Their objective was to occupy houses in the center of town. Our tanks from B Company were ordered to continue directly into the center of town where we could provide protection for the infantry. As we entered Herrlisheim we were forced into a column formation because of the narrow streets. Tanks in a column can move rapidly but it is difficult to bring much firepower to bear on any threat you encounter. We had no infantry moving with our column. Tanks in a built-up area like this without infantry support are very vulnerable to well placed enemy anti-tank fires. When we reached the town’s center we parked our twelve tanks on the east-west Rue de Capitaine Reibel to await further orders. Since we hadn’t encountered any resistance when we drove through the southern part of town we dismounted to check our tanks and grab some chow and a smoke. What we didn’t know at the time was that there was an entire enemy infantry battalion from the 553^rd Volksgrenadier Division in the northern part of town and at least one company of enemy Panther tanks from the 10^h SS Panzer Division laying in wait for us.

Suddenly an unseen enemy tank knocked out the last tank in our halted column with a single shot into the rear engine compartment. The crew was startled but unhurt. Then another enemy tank roared into view with his main gun pointed directly at our lead parked tank.

German Panther tank with gun barrel pointed at our lead tank

They had the drop on us. We were taken by complete surprise! An officer at the rear of our column seeing that we were in no position to resist waved a white flag to preclude the slaughter of our dismounted tankers. A German sergeant in a black uniform armed with a submachine gun immediately stepped out of the shadows and shouted at us in German. We were to throw our weapons on the ground. All sixty of us tankers were immediately rounded up without a shot being fired. Our twelve tanks were quite a prize for the German troops that cornered us. It wasn’t a glorious way to end our participation in the war but for us the shooting was over. Just like that I went from being a heavily armed American soldier to a totally disarmed prisoner of war!

 

EXPERIENCES AS A PRISONER OF WAR

We were quickly marched out of town and down to the banks of the Rhine River east of Herrlisheim. There we were loaded onto a barge with two outboard motors. On the opposite bank we were once again herded into formation and marched several miles to the rear. As I recall we stayed in a school building for a day or two. Officers were separated from enlisted men. As soon as transportation could be arranged we were loaded into old boxcars and began a slow trip northward. We had no idea of where we were going. We had been provided little or no food. The cold weather was numbing. There was no heat in the boxcars and the only sanitation facility was a wooden bucket in the corner. After three or four cold, hard days we arrived at a POW camp near Hanover in northern Germany. The treatment I received wasn’t particularly bad but we wondered if they were trying to starve us to death. The only food we were given was a slice of black bread a day and thin watery soup. Once in awhile we were given a small piece of potato. We were crowded into wooden barracks that only had a single tap for cold water. We were constantly hungry and dirty. To be cold, hungry and dirty all of the time was extremely depressing and dehumanizing. I had a feeling of hopelessness which I am sure is just what our captors wanted.

Days stretched into weeks, February passed, March came. We heard rumors of things going from bad to worse for the Germans. A bit of hope began to resurface among us. Things got so crowded in the POW camp that one day a group of us were marched out of the camp and down a road. We were in bad shape and must have not posed much of a threat to our small German guard force. They were old men who had been pulled back into the army as declining German Army manpower was stretched ever thinner fighting the Russians on the eastern front and the Allies on the western front. We marched rather aimlessly for several weeks. We got almost no food but we noticed that the guards got very little too. One morning in the middle of April we awoke as the sun came up and to our amazement the guards were gone! We had no idea where we were so we stayed put. About three hours later several Canadian Army trucks rolled up to us. A sergeant popped out of the cab with a big grin and shouted, ‘OK, boys, you’re free, jump in. We’re here to take you to the rear.’

Canadian Army trucks

 

We were taken to a processing center where we threw away our ragged, filthy clothing and worn out boots. We showered for the first time in three months and were taken to a medical clearing station for evaluation. Those of us who were very sick were sent to a hospital. My biggest problem was that I had lost a lot of weight. We were fed, given new uniforms and debriefed about our experiences as POWs. Before I knew it we were shipped by train back to Le Havre, loaded onto a troop ship and returned to the good ole’ USA. We were given our choice of R&R locations. I chose Miami, Florida. The Army paid for Lelia to take a train and join me. We had a glorious two weeks. Then it was home to Ohio for both of us. I got to meet and hold my new baby daughter Carol, who had been born on February 22^nd while I was a POW. By early June I was discharged from the Army and fully returned to life as a civilian. I thought back to when I had first enlisted in the army with the hope of seeing something beyond the family farm in Ohio. I had succeeded and lived to tell about it!”

 

EPILOGUE

When Brownie left Texas in September 1944 and Lelia departed for home to Ohio, she was pregnant with their first child. Their first child, Carol, was born on February 22^nd, 1945 while Brownie was a POW. Upon his return home to the U.S.A. and Ohio, he, Lelia and their baby girl moved to Canton, Ohio where he purchased a small, new house designed and built with returning veterans in mind. A little more than two years later, Brownie and Lelia had a second daughter by the name of Kathy born in August 1947. Between the end of the war and retirement in the late 1970s, Brownie owned a gas station, worked in a family business servicing vending machines, worked for the state of Ohio as a toll booth attendant and finally worked as a janitor in a local grade school. If Brownie were here today he’d tell you he had a happy life without regrets. He passed away in 1985 at the age of 77.

 

 

SOURCE MATERIAL

The information included in Brownie’s story above comes from the following sources:

1.       My afternoon-long interview with him around our dining room table in 1982.

2.       An abundance of material found on the 12^th Armored Division website at http://www.12tharmoredmuseum.com/dacc.asp  Material I found particularly useful from the website includes but is not limited to,

a.       A Table of Organization and Equipment for the 12^th Armored Division,

b.      Copies of the “Hellcat News” from 1942-1946,

c.       Excerpts from an abundance of 12^th AD written plans, orders and after action reviews,

d.      Numerous photos and maps,

e.      Written personal stories from veterans, and

f.        Video recordings of oral histories from veterans taken at 12^th AD reunions over the past 20 years.

3.       A book I purchased titled, Crossing The Zorn, edited by Edward Monroe-Jones, January 2010, and comprised of numerous accounts of personal experiences by both American and German, veterans of the battles around Herrlisheim in January 1945.

4.       A small, 32 page booklet, “B” Company, 43^rd Tank Battalion, 12^th Armored Division, September 19, 1944 to June 6, 1945. Its publication would have been overseen by B Company Commander and probably written from logs kept by the company clerk. This booklet was given to me by Brownie sometime prior to his passing away in 1985.

5.       A 12^th Armored Division publication simply titled, Hellcats, 12^th Armored Division, without a date but full of pictures of everybody in the division during the first year of training. Brownie’s picture shows with “E” Company, 43^rd Armored Regiment. He circled his face with blue ink in the picture.