Apr 26, 2020

How cold was it in the Battle of the Bulge? It was so cold that an assistant driver from Tennessee told George Bussell that when he got home, if it was the middle of July and he thought about how cold it was, he'd go out and build a fire. The mountainous roads going into Luxembourg and Belgium were so icy that 37 and 44...

Apr 18, 2020

Sam Cropanese and Joe Bernardino were members of the same crew in A Company of the 712th Tank Battalion. They were both wounded at the Falaise Gap in mid-August of 1944. I interviewed Sam in Cape Coral, Florida, in 1993, and Joe in Rochester, New York, in 1994, 50 years after the war. Their story presents a vivid...

Apr 12, 2020

In episode 36 of War As My Father's Tank Battalion Knew It, Bob Rossi, Ed Spahr, Tony D'Arpino and Grayson Lamar offer their perspective on a battle that took place in Habscheid, Germany, a village in the Siegfried Line, on February 8, 1945. Warning: Graphic content.

Apr 6, 2020

Jim Knispel and Bill Whitley joined the 712th Tank Battalion as replacements in France. This interview, at the battalion's 2001 reunion, touches upon some of the significant events in the history of the battalion's A Company. Knispel was wounded when his tank was hit by a panzerfaust in a confrontation with SS troops...