The Tanker Tapes
The 712th Tank Battalion was activated on Sept. 23, 1943, but many of its original members entered the service in the horse cavalry in 1941.
These are the veterans you'll meet in this unique series of CDs:
George Bussell: One of the most colorful
characters in the 712th Tank Battalion, George Bussell drove an M4A3 Sherman
tank from Normandy to Czechoslovakia. He was awarded the Bronze Star and had
three tanks shot out from under him. Yet his most serious injuries were
sustained in a barroom brawl in Phenix City, Alabama, while training at Fort
Benning. This CD is an hour long.
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"There Goes Smoky": A three-hour, three CD audiobook in itself excerpted from a
2005 interview with then-88 year old Ed "Smoky" Stuever. The son of
hearing-impaired parents, Stuever grew up in the throes of the Depression. His
father lost the farm and Ed went into the Civilian Conservation Corps,
where he helped build the Skokie Lagoon. He was part of a trainload of 500
recruits sent from the Chicago area to the California desert in 1941 to fill out
the ranks of the 11th Cavalry. As a maintenance
sergeant in the 712th Tank Battalion, Stuever spent 11 months in combat, from
Normandy to Czechoslovakia.
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The Death of Shorty: A fourth, hour-long CD excerpted from earlier interviews
with Smoky Stuever in which he describes the events leading up to the death of
his buddy, Marion "Shorty" Kubeczko, in Normandy.
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Dale Albee: The 712th had 14 sergeants who earned battlefield commissions.
Albee, who enlisted in the horse cavalry in 1936, was one of them. This riveting
two-hour, two-CD set offers a rare glimpse of both the highs and lows of combat.
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Jim Flowers and the Battle of Hill 122: Lieutenant James Franklin Flowers, a
30-year-old Texan, led a platoon of four tanks to the rescue of an infantry
battalion that was surrounded at the summit of a hill in Normandy. After
breaking through the enemy defenses and leading the infantry down the hill,
Flowers' four tanks ran into an ambush of well-concealed anti-tank guns. The
shell that penetrated his tank
tore off his right forefoot and sent flames
shooting out the turret. "I like to dramatize this," Flowers said when I
interviewed him in 1992, "by saying I'm now standing in the middle of Hell." But
that hell was just beginning. For the next two days, Flowers and his gunner,
both badly burned and Flowers with a tourniquet on his leg, lay in no man's
land waiting to be rescued. The first day American forces shelled the area, and
Flowers' left foot was blown off. When he was rescued the following morning and
brought to an aid station, the battalion surgeon, who'd heard about him in
advance, expected to see a morose patient, near death. Yet Flowers arrived
almost cheerful. Dr. William McConahey recounted the incident in his classic
book "Battalion Surgeon," and wrote that when he asked Flowers why he was in
such good spirits, Flowers remarked, "Well, Doc, I guess I had the will to
live." And live he did; after three years in the hospital he worked as a
prosthetics adviser for the Veterans Administration; and he and his wife
Jeanette raised four children, three of them born after the war. Flowers was
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in helping turn the tide
of one of the bloodiest battles of the Normandy campaign. This four-hour,
three-CD audiobook is excerpted from a 1992 interview.
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Sam and Joe: Sam Cropanese, assistant driver, and Joe Bernardino, loader, were
crew members of the same tank which was knocked out in the battle of the Falaise
Gap. Interviewed separately, they both talk of some of the same things in a
riveting 45-minute audio CD.
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In all, there are 11 CDs in this collection, or roughly 11 hours of entertaining history. This collection will give you a picture of what life was like in a tank in World War II, and of the universal experience of combat.
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