Clifford Merrill was the first of four A Company commanders. After recovering from wounds suffered in Normandy, he sat on a tribunal at the Dachau War Crimes trials, helped run a prison compound in the Korean War, and was wounded leading a convoy in Vietnam. To quote A Company veteran Sam Cropanese, "He wasn't afraid of nothin ..read more

In 1994 I was a guest at the annual "Nuts" dinner of the General Anthony McAuliffe New York-New Jersey Chapter of the 101st Airborne Division Association. Before the dinner, I sat at a table in the lounge with five of the veterans, Bill Druback, Frank Miller, Len Goodgal, John Miller and Mickey Cohen. One of them said, "He wants to hear about Bastogne." Due to the background noise which can be distracting, I'm including in the show notes a transcript of the full conversation. The transcript is included in my book "A Mile in Their Shoes: Conversations With Veterans of World War II," and an audi ..read more

John Sweren of Mesa, Arizona, was a tail gunner on a B-26 in World War II, and a former prisoner of war. In 2005, he attended a ceremony in the Normandy village of Fierville-Bray for the dedication of a memorial to Hitch Hiker, his plane, which was shot down over the village with the loss of three of its crew members while three survived. John's story is a roller coaster of emotions. His memories are both unique -- as every flier had a different set of experiences and connections with family and friends -- and universal in the themes that run through his story: the loss of friends, the respite ..read more

   When I launched War As My Father's Tank Battalion Knew It, I intended it to be mostly about tanks. But the title is misleading, and I'm the person who came up with it. About half of my work comprises  interviews and conversations with veterans and families of my father's 712th Tank Battalion. , and I thought, well, there are a lot of people who are interested in tanks. But there are also people who are interested in D-Day, and prisoners of war, and Marines, and air battles, and Gold Star families, and World War II in general, and those interviews comprise the other half of my ..read more

This episode of the War As My Father's Tank Battalion Knew It podcast is not about my father's 712th Tank Battalion. Rather, it is about Joseph Stalin. Ten years ago I met Ludwik Kowalski, a retired college professor who grew up in Russia and emigrated to the United States. His story is both powerful and timely in light of recent events ..read more

Arnold Brown enlisted in the Army as a private in 1936 and despite having only an eighth grade education became a rifle company commander in the 90th Infantry Division. My father's 712th Tank Battalion was attached to the 90th for most of the war in Europe. Myfatherstankbattalion.com ; Aaronelson.com ..read more

A few years ago I began experimenting with themed audio CDs, where I would take stories from interviews with different veterans that had the same theme: Stories about jumping out of airplanes, about food on the front, about growing up in the Great Depression, about meeting General Patton, about romance and religion and strange events. In this episode of Myfatherstankbattalion, I present some excerpts from the double audio CD "Booze and War ..read more

Dale Albee enlisted in the Army in 1938, became a sergeant in the horse cavalry, earned a battlefield commission as a tanker, and led a platoon of light tanks through the Battle of the Bulge, the Siegfried Line, across Germany, and into Czechoslovakia ..read more

Dale Albee enlisted in the horse cavalry in 1938, earned a battlefield commission in my father's tank battalion, and led a platoon of M3 Stuart light tanks from the time he was promoted until the battalion reached Czechoslovakia at the end of the war in Europe ..read more

In this episode of Myfatherstankbattalion, maintenance officer Forrest Dixon talks about battlefield commissions,  guns, cameras, Hitler Youth, the Bridge at Remagen, Mein Kampf, a broken beer mug, the salt mine that would later be depicted in The Monuments Men, the Flossenburg concentration camp, and spark plugs. For information about previous episodes, please visit myfatherstankbattalion.com ..read more