A Brief History of the 751st Tank Battalion
The
751st Tank Battalion was activated at Fort Benning, Georgia, on June 1,
1941. It was then moved to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where the battalion
was training when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1941. In early 1942, the battalion moved from Fort Knox to Camp Gordon,
near Augusta, Georgia, and then to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. In
June of 1942, the 751st Tank Battalion performed a tactical
demonstration for Winston Churchill at Fort Jackson. Churchill was
impressed with the battalion and wanted it in England to help protect
the British Isles from a Nazi invasion. And so the battalion boarded a
train bound for Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, where they staged
for a few days before being loaded into the backs of trucks and hauled,
in the dead of night, from Pennsylvania to New York Harbor. One can
only imagine the mixture of fear, excitement, and anxiety the tankers
must have felt as they drove through a blacked out New York City toward
an uncertain future.
On August 6, 1942, the Battalion boarded the H.M.S. Andes at New York Harbor, a British ship that carried over 7,000 troops at a time. Once on board, the men of the 751st were ordered below decks away from unfriendly eyes, where they stayed until the Andes was out to sea. The Andes made a stop at Halifax, Nova Scotia, before heading toward England. Many men of the 751st complain to this day of the British food they were fed, dishes like mutton and kidney pie. They also remember the seasickness they suffered almost nonstop for the eleven days it took to sail the Atlantic.
On August 17, 1942, the Andes sailed into port at Liverpool, England. From Liverpool the 751st was taken to an assembly area to gather up their gear before traveling to South Hampton, near London, where they would live and train for the next five months. While there, they were reviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt. When not training, the men of the 751st were allowed to see the sights and to experience London’s night life. Many of the men remember the pubs fondly and speak of the warm, strong beer served there. The British treated Americans well; the women, especially, loved the Yanks.
But during the day it was all seriousness. The 751st Tank Battalion trained hard for their upcoming encounter with the enemy; the time and place of which being still unknown to them.
On September 11, 1942, a little over a month after it landed in England, the 751st Tank Battalion suffered its first casualty of the war. After a day of training, the men of the battalion were relaxing in their barracks. A captain was in his room cleaning his .45 caliber pistol when it accidentally fired, sending a round through the wall and into one of the enlisted men’s barracks on the other side. The round struck and killed Tec5 William A. Kaminski of Ohio. Kaminski was later buried at the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge, England.
On January 8, 1943, the 751st boarded ships once again and sailed for Oran, Algeria, where they would help reinforce the Allied forces of Operation Torch that had landed in Africa a couple of months earlier. Their first real taste of combat came in early April of 1943, when the battalion, attached to the 34th Infantry Division, attacked the Germans at Fondouk el Okbi in Tunisia. But the Germans were not to be easily moved. The fighting was tough. The battalion lost several of their M-3 Grant tanks during this battle and the 34th Division suffered heavy casualties as the Germans fended off their initial advances. During this battle, my father, Paul Neumiller, lost his best buddy, Thomas Lamb. Lamb’s tank was hit and he was burned beyond recognition. My father had to identify a pair of rings as those belonging to Lamb, and always said that it was the worst day of his life.
By May the Allies had driven the Germans north to the Mediterranean, where they were evacuating their armies to Sicily and Italy. Company A of the 751st Tank Battalion was the first Allied unit to enter the strategic port city of Bizerte, Tunisia. Most of the Germans had retreated in front of them, leaving behind a few snipers and booby traps to harass the advancing Allied army. By mid May, the African continent was securely in the hands of the Allies.
On August 6, 1942, the Battalion boarded the H.M.S. Andes at New York Harbor, a British ship that carried over 7,000 troops at a time. Once on board, the men of the 751st were ordered below decks away from unfriendly eyes, where they stayed until the Andes was out to sea. The Andes made a stop at Halifax, Nova Scotia, before heading toward England. Many men of the 751st complain to this day of the British food they were fed, dishes like mutton and kidney pie. They also remember the seasickness they suffered almost nonstop for the eleven days it took to sail the Atlantic.
On August 17, 1942, the Andes sailed into port at Liverpool, England. From Liverpool the 751st was taken to an assembly area to gather up their gear before traveling to South Hampton, near London, where they would live and train for the next five months. While there, they were reviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt. When not training, the men of the 751st were allowed to see the sights and to experience London’s night life. Many of the men remember the pubs fondly and speak of the warm, strong beer served there. The British treated Americans well; the women, especially, loved the Yanks.
But during the day it was all seriousness. The 751st Tank Battalion trained hard for their upcoming encounter with the enemy; the time and place of which being still unknown to them.
On September 11, 1942, a little over a month after it landed in England, the 751st Tank Battalion suffered its first casualty of the war. After a day of training, the men of the battalion were relaxing in their barracks. A captain was in his room cleaning his .45 caliber pistol when it accidentally fired, sending a round through the wall and into one of the enlisted men’s barracks on the other side. The round struck and killed Tec5 William A. Kaminski of Ohio. Kaminski was later buried at the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge, England.
On January 8, 1943, the 751st boarded ships once again and sailed for Oran, Algeria, where they would help reinforce the Allied forces of Operation Torch that had landed in Africa a couple of months earlier. Their first real taste of combat came in early April of 1943, when the battalion, attached to the 34th Infantry Division, attacked the Germans at Fondouk el Okbi in Tunisia. But the Germans were not to be easily moved. The fighting was tough. The battalion lost several of their M-3 Grant tanks during this battle and the 34th Division suffered heavy casualties as the Germans fended off their initial advances. During this battle, my father, Paul Neumiller, lost his best buddy, Thomas Lamb. Lamb’s tank was hit and he was burned beyond recognition. My father had to identify a pair of rings as those belonging to Lamb, and always said that it was the worst day of his life.
By May the Allies had driven the Germans north to the Mediterranean, where they were evacuating their armies to Sicily and Italy. Company A of the 751st Tank Battalion was the first Allied unit to enter the strategic port city of Bizerte, Tunisia. Most of the Germans had retreated in front of them, leaving behind a few snipers and booby traps to harass the advancing Allied army. By mid May, the African continent was securely in the hands of the Allies.
Once the African campaign was complete, the 751st was sent back to
Oran, Algeria, where they were issued new M-4 Sherman tanks, and where
they trained for the upcoming invasion of Italy. There was time to
relax, too, and the tankers spent this time swimming in the
Mediterranean and drinking wine sold to them by local tribesmen. What little fun they had at Oran was short-lived, however, because on
the 7th of September, 1943, the battalion loaded their tanks and
equipment on ships at the port at Oran and sailed for Italy.
On September 9, the 751st Tank Battalion was attached to the 36th Infantry Division when they made an amphibious landing near Salerno, south of Naples. While they were at sea General Eisenhower announced that the Italians had surrendered to the Allies, lifting the spirits of many of the soldiers, but the Germans weren’t about to give Italy up without a fight. The landing parties met stiff German resistance at Salerno. The 751st landed near the small town of Paestum and made steady progress inland, heading north toward Avellino, suffering many casualties.
Once Naples had been liberated, it became a favorite place for soldiers to visit, and the men of the 751st were no exception. One researcher says that Naples became to World War II what Paris was to World War I, a city of sin. Anything the soldiers desired could be found there. There were zones that were supposed to be off limits to soldiers, but apparently they had no trouble visiting them anyway.
In October, the 751st waterproofed their tanks near Capua and forded the Volturno river and continued the fight all the way to Venafro and Mt. Cairo. The terrain here became so rough that the battalion parked their tanks and continued on as infantry. It was nearly impossible to keep units supplied in these rough, trackless mountains, so mules and men’s backs were used. Many of the tankers still speak of this as some of the toughest work they did.
By early winter of 1943, the Allied advance had stalled, running up against the German Gustav Line, a collection of fortifications running across Italy from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. So a plan was put into place to land units north of the Gustav line in order to draw German troops away from the line and allow those troops south of it to advance. The 751st was chosen to take part in this new landing and was pulled from the front line and sent to a port town near Naples to train. The site chosen for the new landing was thirty miles south of Rome at Anzio, a resort town dating back to Roman times.
On January 21, 1944, British and American troops, including the 751st Tank Battalion, boarded ships at the Naples harbor and sailed for Anzio. They came ashore at Anzio on January 22. The plan was to land, then make a dash south toward the Gustav Line while troops south of the line mounted an offensive. Resistance was light at first, but that didn’t last long. The Germans quickly reinforced the area with fresh troops coming down from the north and forced the Allies to dig in and take defensive actions. And that’s how it stayed for the next 138 days, both sides mounting offensives and counteroffensives and neither being able to force their opponents from their positions. Both sides shelled the other nearly nonstop for four months. Casualties were high; some estimates have them at over 60,000 on each side. For those that were there it was the defining moment of their lives. Many of the tankers of the 751st came to see Anzio as a benchmark of the war and in their lives, speaking of life in terms of before Anzio and after.
It was about this time that Paul Neumiller and Art Nitsche played a little prank on their friend, Warren Pawling. One night while Warren was asleep, and drunk, Paul and Art decided to clip off half of Warren's mustache with a fingernail clipper. While they were doing this the Germans began shelling their position and all of them ran for cover. Later, Warren noticed his clipped mustache and attributed it to a near miss with shrapnel. Paul and Art never told him what really happened and for the next fifty years Warren told his friends and family how he lost his mustache to German shrapnel, believing this was the truth. Finally, in 1999, during that year's reunion in Sanduskey, Ohio, Warren was telling this story to Edna Neumiller, Julie Seil, and Karie Dent, while his wife listened to the familiar tale. While he was telling the story Paul came to the table and interrupted, telling Warren that he had a confession to make, then told him the truth. Warren's wife was flabbergasted, saying "you mean you've been telling that story for fifty-five years and it wasn't true?" At first Warren tried to dispute the truth, but then realized it was true and laughed.
Finally, on May 23, 1944, the 751st took part in the breakout from Anzio, pushing toward the town of Cisterna. From there, they moved north toward Rome. During a stop along the way to Rome, Paul Neumiller was getting some homemade alcohol from another tanker when the Germans began shelling them. The other tankers jumped into a dry well nearby and stood near the top on a narrow ledge. Thinking there was enough room for him, too, Paul leaped in, missing the ledge and falling all the way down the well. He put his hands out on the way down and tore off several of his fingernails. He was pulled from the well by Al Adams and others. Paul hurt his back from the fall and was sent behind lines to a hospital. Because of this he was absent when the 751st helped liberate Rome. (Company D of the 751st was one of the first Allied units to enter Rome.) He joined up with the battalion again later.
After a short rest and reorganization period, the battalion moved north from Rome along the east coast of Italy, fighting its way across the Arno river at Pisa. From there they moved inland and supported Task Force 45 in November, 1944, in an attack on Mt. Belvedere. They were unsuccessful and were pushed back by a heavy German counteroffensive. In March, 1945, the battalion supported the 10th Mountain Division (Bob Dole's division) in a new assault on Mt. Belvedere. This time they were successful.
The final Allied offensive in Italy began in April, 1945, and found the 751st Tank Battalion again in support of the 10th Mountain Division. The battalion was the first armored unit to reach the Po Valley and cross it. When the Germans surrendered in May, the battalion was part of the force occupying the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan.
By the end of the North African and Italian campaigns, the 751st Tank Battalion had racked up a total of 581 days of actual combat time. Individuals in the battalion had earned the following awards:
· 3 Distinguished Service Crosses
· 7 Legions of Merit
· 37 Silver Stars
· 1 Oak Leaf Cluster to the Silver Star
· 63 Bronze Stars
· 3 Oak Leaf Clusters to the Bronze Star
· 4 Brazilian War Medals
· 4 Soldier’s Medals
On September 9, the 751st Tank Battalion was attached to the 36th Infantry Division when they made an amphibious landing near Salerno, south of Naples. While they were at sea General Eisenhower announced that the Italians had surrendered to the Allies, lifting the spirits of many of the soldiers, but the Germans weren’t about to give Italy up without a fight. The landing parties met stiff German resistance at Salerno. The 751st landed near the small town of Paestum and made steady progress inland, heading north toward Avellino, suffering many casualties.
Once Naples had been liberated, it became a favorite place for soldiers to visit, and the men of the 751st were no exception. One researcher says that Naples became to World War II what Paris was to World War I, a city of sin. Anything the soldiers desired could be found there. There were zones that were supposed to be off limits to soldiers, but apparently they had no trouble visiting them anyway.
In October, the 751st waterproofed their tanks near Capua and forded the Volturno river and continued the fight all the way to Venafro and Mt. Cairo. The terrain here became so rough that the battalion parked their tanks and continued on as infantry. It was nearly impossible to keep units supplied in these rough, trackless mountains, so mules and men’s backs were used. Many of the tankers still speak of this as some of the toughest work they did.
By early winter of 1943, the Allied advance had stalled, running up against the German Gustav Line, a collection of fortifications running across Italy from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. So a plan was put into place to land units north of the Gustav line in order to draw German troops away from the line and allow those troops south of it to advance. The 751st was chosen to take part in this new landing and was pulled from the front line and sent to a port town near Naples to train. The site chosen for the new landing was thirty miles south of Rome at Anzio, a resort town dating back to Roman times.
On January 21, 1944, British and American troops, including the 751st Tank Battalion, boarded ships at the Naples harbor and sailed for Anzio. They came ashore at Anzio on January 22. The plan was to land, then make a dash south toward the Gustav Line while troops south of the line mounted an offensive. Resistance was light at first, but that didn’t last long. The Germans quickly reinforced the area with fresh troops coming down from the north and forced the Allies to dig in and take defensive actions. And that’s how it stayed for the next 138 days, both sides mounting offensives and counteroffensives and neither being able to force their opponents from their positions. Both sides shelled the other nearly nonstop for four months. Casualties were high; some estimates have them at over 60,000 on each side. For those that were there it was the defining moment of their lives. Many of the tankers of the 751st came to see Anzio as a benchmark of the war and in their lives, speaking of life in terms of before Anzio and after.
It was about this time that Paul Neumiller and Art Nitsche played a little prank on their friend, Warren Pawling. One night while Warren was asleep, and drunk, Paul and Art decided to clip off half of Warren's mustache with a fingernail clipper. While they were doing this the Germans began shelling their position and all of them ran for cover. Later, Warren noticed his clipped mustache and attributed it to a near miss with shrapnel. Paul and Art never told him what really happened and for the next fifty years Warren told his friends and family how he lost his mustache to German shrapnel, believing this was the truth. Finally, in 1999, during that year's reunion in Sanduskey, Ohio, Warren was telling this story to Edna Neumiller, Julie Seil, and Karie Dent, while his wife listened to the familiar tale. While he was telling the story Paul came to the table and interrupted, telling Warren that he had a confession to make, then told him the truth. Warren's wife was flabbergasted, saying "you mean you've been telling that story for fifty-five years and it wasn't true?" At first Warren tried to dispute the truth, but then realized it was true and laughed.
Finally, on May 23, 1944, the 751st took part in the breakout from Anzio, pushing toward the town of Cisterna. From there, they moved north toward Rome. During a stop along the way to Rome, Paul Neumiller was getting some homemade alcohol from another tanker when the Germans began shelling them. The other tankers jumped into a dry well nearby and stood near the top on a narrow ledge. Thinking there was enough room for him, too, Paul leaped in, missing the ledge and falling all the way down the well. He put his hands out on the way down and tore off several of his fingernails. He was pulled from the well by Al Adams and others. Paul hurt his back from the fall and was sent behind lines to a hospital. Because of this he was absent when the 751st helped liberate Rome. (Company D of the 751st was one of the first Allied units to enter Rome.) He joined up with the battalion again later.
After a short rest and reorganization period, the battalion moved north from Rome along the east coast of Italy, fighting its way across the Arno river at Pisa. From there they moved inland and supported Task Force 45 in November, 1944, in an attack on Mt. Belvedere. They were unsuccessful and were pushed back by a heavy German counteroffensive. In March, 1945, the battalion supported the 10th Mountain Division (Bob Dole's division) in a new assault on Mt. Belvedere. This time they were successful.
The final Allied offensive in Italy began in April, 1945, and found the 751st Tank Battalion again in support of the 10th Mountain Division. The battalion was the first armored unit to reach the Po Valley and cross it. When the Germans surrendered in May, the battalion was part of the force occupying the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan.
By the end of the North African and Italian campaigns, the 751st Tank Battalion had racked up a total of 581 days of actual combat time. Individuals in the battalion had earned the following awards:
· 3 Distinguished Service Crosses
· 7 Legions of Merit
· 37 Silver Stars
· 1 Oak Leaf Cluster to the Silver Star
· 63 Bronze Stars
· 3 Oak Leaf Clusters to the Bronze Star
· 4 Brazilian War Medals
· 4 Soldier’s Medals
