The Last Battle (21 page)

Whether Gangl and Keblitsch stuck to the main road and bluffed their way through roadblocks or avoided them by going cross-country on forest tracks is unclear. All we know is that despite the myriad potential dangers of their journey, the two men made it to the outskirts of Kufstein unscathed. But then they faced a hazard of a different kind. They would be driving into a city newly occupied by American troops—soldiers wary of ambush, of snipers, and of all the other hazards common to warfare in built-up areas. And Gangl was likely aware of recent events that made their approach to the American lines even more risky, despite the large white flag now flying from the kübelwagen’s antenna: For several days the Allied radio stations to which Gangl’s resistance colleagues listened had been reporting
the unspeakable horrors discovered by the American units that liberated Dachau and other concentration camps near Munich. As a seasoned combat veteran who had undoubtedly seen his share of horror on the Russian Front, Gangl would have realized that if the GIs moving into Kufstein had been among those who had witnessed the gruesome conditions inside the camps, they might not be in any mood to accept the surrender of two Germans, white flag or not.
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Some forty-five minutes after leaving Wörgl, Gangl and Keblitsch rolled into the southern end of Kufstein and found . . . no one. The streets were deserted, and white bedsheets and red-white-red Austrian flags hung from shuttered windows. Driving slowly toward the center of town with their own white flag flying high, the two men rounded a corner and found themselves barely thirty feet from four American M4 Sherman tanks, two parked on either side of the street. Keblitsch stopped the kübelwagen immediately, and both men slowly and carefully raised their hands in the air. GIs wearing padded tanker helmets appeared from behind the armored vehicles and moved forward, their M3 submachine guns pointed at the Germans. Dropping to their knees in response to yelled commands from the advancing Americans, Gangl and Keblitsch—their hands still in the air—must have wondered if they were about to be gunned down in the street. Instead, both men were quickly frisked, told to stand, and with their hands still in the air hustled toward the rear of the nearest Sherman. Waiting there was a squat, powerfully built man wearing a wrinkled khaki uniform and a .45-caliber automatic pistol in a shoulder holster, his teeth clenching a well-chewed but unlit cigar.

Assuming the man to be in charge, Gangl introduced himself in passable English, said he wished to surrender the German garrison in Wörgl, and added that he had information about important French prisoners. After motioning toward his tunic pocket and getting a nod from the officer in return, Gangl carefully retrieved Christiane Mabire’s letter and proffered it to the American. The man unceremoniously ripped the envelope open and quickly scanned the letter, then hoisted himself aboard the Sherman, and dropped into the turret. Minutes later he reappeared and climbed onto the tank’s rear engine deck, a wide smile on his face.

Looking down at the German major, the American said his name was Lee and that it looked like they were all going on a rescue mission.
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CHAPTER 6

TANKERS ON THE MARCH

T
HAT
J
ACK
L
EE WAS SMILING
at the thought of roaring off behind German lines on what might well have been the last day of World War II in Europe gives a fair insight into the then twenty-seven-year-old tanker’s personality. The five-foot-ten, 190-pound former high school and college football star from New York was by all accounts a rough-talking, hard-drinking, and hard-charging bull of a man who’d found his niche in war. And, as with many men—in many wars—to whom that description has applied, Lee’s early life gave clear indications of the warrior he would eventually become.

J
OHN
C
AREY
L
EE
J
R
.
WAS BORN
in Nebraska on March 12, 1918, the first of four children of Dr. John C. Lee Sr. and Mary Agnes (Fleming) Lee. Both parents were natives of rural New York and had moved to Nebraska a year before Jack’s birth, apparently so the elder Lee could accept his first position after graduating from medical school. The young couple returned to New York sometime in the mid-1920s and settled in Norwich, a small town in the south-central part of the state, where Dr. Lee established what soon became a thriving private practice. Jack and his three younger siblings—brothers William and David and sister Mary—grew up in solidly upper-middle-class comfort. The family was Roman Catholic, though it seems
Jack didn’t let the church’s precepts unduly cramp his style. He grew up adventurous and independent, with a quick grin and a devil-may-care attitude that made him increasingly popular with girls but occasionally got him in minor trouble both at home and at school.

Bright and inquisitive, Jack was a better-than-average student who also excelled in athletics. Football became his game of choice, and he was a star player during his four years at Norwich High School. He took those gridiron skills with him when he entered Vermont’s Norwich University in 1938, earning letters in the sport each of the four years he spent there. Far more important, however, was the new skill the brash young man from New York mastered at Norwich: he became a cavalryman.

Founded by Captain Alden Partridge
¹
in 1819 as the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, by the time of Lee’s arrival Norwich had evolved into one of the nation’s premier private military colleges, combining a traditional four-year civilian education in such fields as engineering and the social sciences with training in military subjects that prepared graduates for service as reserve officers.
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Among the martial skills to which the student-cadets were exposed were those of traditional cavalry: horsemanship, saber drill, and mounted tactics. As the soldiers-to-be wheeled and galloped and surged across the training fields, many of them discovered within themselves an innate affinity for the spirit of cavalry: a delight in the lightning advance, the rapid encirclement, and the chance to ruthlessly exploit any weakness in an enemy’s defenses. It comes as no great revelation that Jack Lee, who so obviously loved the team spirit, intricate maneuvering, and broken-field running of football, took to cavalry training with almost obsessive enthusiasm. Nor is it a surprise that his enthusiasm was more than matched by his mastery of every facet of the training—a mastery rooted in the same athleticism, intelligence, competitiveness, and self-confidence that stood him in such good stead on the football field. Indeed, the cavalry so well suited Lee’s temperament and capabilities—and, we can safely assume, ideally complemented what many who knew him called his “swashbuckling” personality—that during his last year at Norwich he listed “Cavalry” as the army branch to which he wanted to be assigned following his postgraduation commissioning.
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Lee understood, of course, that the cavalry in which he would actually serve would be mechanized rather than hoofed, but he obviously felt that a tank was a perfectly acceptable substitution for a horse.
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The United States’ December 1941 entry into World War II ensured that Jack Lee and his fellow Norwich graduates were called to active duty shortly after their May 11, 1942, graduation. To his immense delight, the newly commissioned Second Lieutenant Lee received orders directing him to report to the Armored Force School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to attend the basic armor officer course. He lingered in New York state only long enough to marry a woman named Virginia
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and then headed south by train. During the ninety-day program Lee soaked up the fundamentals of tank gunnery, armor tactics, communications, and vehicle maintenance, and during the concluding three-day field exercise he demonstrated what one of his instructors called “a natural talent” for armored warfare.

Upon completion of the Fort Knox course, Lee received orders assigning him to the 12th Armored Division, which was then forming at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, a newly established installation
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straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The 12th AD was initially constituted as a heavy armored division consisting of six tank battalions, three armored-infantry battalions, three armored-artillery battalions, and supporting engineer, reconnaissance, medical, and supply units. However, the initial combat experience of U.S. armored units in North Africa and Sicily showed the heavy armored division structure to be unwieldy and overly complex, and in November 1943 the 12th began reorganizing on the light armored division model then being adopted army-wide. This structure was built around three combat commands—A, B, and R (reserve), each of which had a tank battalion, an armored-infantry battalion, and an armored-artillery battalion, plus support units. The 12th AD undertook this metamorphosis even as it was moving to a new post: Camp Barkley, near Abilene, Texas.
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By the time the reorganization was completed, Lee—now a first lieutenant—was the executive officer (second in command) and leader of the five-tank 1st Platoon in Captain Donald Cowan’s Company B, 23rd Tank Battalion.

Lee’s company was equipped with early models of the M4 Sherman medium tank, a robust vehicle armed with a single turret-mounted 75mm cannon, two .30-caliber machine guns (one in the lower hull and the other mounted coaxially
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with the main gun), and one .50-caliber machine gun (on a swivel mount atop the turret for air defense). Each tank was crewed by five men—the driver and assistant driver/machine gunner in the lower hull, and the gunner, loader, and vehicle commander in the turret. Though the Sherman was inferior in both armor and armament to the German tanks
it was meant to engage—a fact Lee and his comrades wouldn’t become aware of until they entered combat—it was mechanically reliable and surprisingly nimble for a vehicle with an average combat weight of some thirty-five tons.

Given Jack Lee’s temperament, it comes as no surprise that during the 12th AD’s training in both Kentucky and Texas he personally demonstrated the “mental alertness and aggressiveness, and ability to think, act and quickly take advantage of tactical opportunities”
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that the army considered to be the essential qualities of an armored corps officer. Lee worked doggedly to mold his platoon into an aggressive, determined, and cohesive group. Indeed, he and his twenty-five men soon developed a reputation as Company B’s rough-and-tumble, “Hell for Leather” platoon,
¹⁰
always eager to push themselves to the limit during field maneuvers—and equally ready to raise a little hell in Abilene’s bars and clubs when they got the chance. Lee himself was no slouch when it came to having fun; he pushed himself and his men hard during the workday, but off duty he was known as a man who thoroughly enjoyed a drink and a laugh. His frequent companion on his forays into Abilene was First Lt. Harry Basse, Company B’s motor officer—the man responsible for managing the maintenance program for the company’s tracked and wheeled vehicles. Though the thirty-three-year-old from Pomona, California, was in many ways Lee’s exact opposite—tall, lanky, soft-spoken, and contemplative
¹¹
—the two men formed a lifelong friendship that was initially based on mutual respect for each other’s military skills and on a shared desire to put those skills to work killing Germans.

In July 1944 Lee, Basse, and the roughly 10,750 other men of the 12th AD learned that they would soon have the chance to put all their training to good use: The division was alerted for overseas movement. Leaving their tanks and other vehicles behind in Texas, in August the troops boarded trains for the slow trip to Camp Shanks, New York, twenty miles north of Manhattan. Arriving in groups between September 8 and 13, the GIs underwent several days of predeployment processing—physical exams, inoculations, equipment issue, and the sobering act of updating wills and GI life-insurance forms—and on September 18 and 19 were back on the rails, this time for the short ride to the port of embarkation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The men of the division were allocated among several vessels, with the 23rd TB embarked on
Empress of Australia
, a twenty-five-year-old Canadian Pacific Steamships passenger liner converted for troopship
duty.
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After eleven days at sea—largely spent sleeping, playing seemingly endless games of poker, and attempting to stave off seasickness—the men of the 23rd TB gratefully disembarked at the southern English port of Southampton. They and the rest of the division were then moved north by train and bus to Tidworth Barracks, a vast staging area on Salisbury Plain, where they spent the remainder of September and the first weeks of November gearing up for war.
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