I vividly remember when he came home from the war,the big party they had for him and all even though I was only six at the time. We spent three or four hours or so talking about the war...I mostly listened to his stories and he seemed to want to talk about it.
Joe was a member of the 712th Tank Battalion attached to the 90th Infantry coming ashore at Utah Beach on D+23 in his M5A1 Stuart tank and fighting all the way into Czechoslovakia in May of '45. He was a PFC when he came ashore but was a MSGT at the end...he said it was due to attrition and a little research by me found that the 712th had the third highest casualty rate in the ETO.
During the Bulge the 712th was part of Patton's move to relieve Bastogne and Joe says it was bitter cold and that a Stuart tank isn't the warmest thing to be in,but it was better than being out in the weather 'cause there was too much s**t flying around. He says he was really lucky because he was "only" wounded once and rested at the Aid Station for a few days until the hole in his arm quit bleeding so much.
He still has the two pistols he brought home saying that at one point he had thirteen of them but was only allowed to bring two home.He says he made a fortune selling all the Lugers and P-38's to REMF's.He kept a Mauser in 7.65mm and what looks like a nickel-plated Browning Hi-Power. Further research on my part shows it to be M1935 Polish made pistol under license from FNH.The nickel plating indicates that it came from a Waffen SS officer...but Joe didn't elaborate on that...maybe next time.
I'm going to visit him again next month and will ask him more about that and anything else he wants to talk about. He lives here in Florida too because he too has an aversion to the cold...and hedgerows too!
So she would always take care of him whenever he came in for dinner. His wife had died many years ago. She got to know this man quite well and would take me over to his house on Sundays. Sundays were when all his friends would come over and they'd talk about the war. My mother would make coffee and cornbread. All these fellows were widowers.
I was allowed to sit in the kitchen and listen but instructed never to interrupt. I'd sit there bug eyed listening to these stories but they have mostly faded from my mind. At one point she got permission to leave a tape recorder running out of view to capture their history. Sadly, all those hours of all those men vanished in a fire years back.
Those men are all gone now. I often wonder what they would think of this country now.