The Morning Reports showed men only when they had a change of status. Casualties were often reported retroactively.

• 9 Sep 1944 MR - shows their location as 1/2 mile south of Malancourt, France. At this stage, less than a month on the continent, the MR included no map coordinates. However, starting 14 Sep 1944, they did begin using map coordinates and were still at the same location, then identified as VU7870 Nord de Guerre.
  • The "Record of Events" states "Co contacted enemy in well fortified position at Manville, France. Remained in contact all day. Casualties 4 EM, 5 Tanks. WEATHER: Good. MORALE: Good"
  • Four men (Sgt Beck [MOS 795 = Tank Commander], Cpl Gray [MOS 616 = Gunner], Cpl Petrick [MOS 616 = Gunner], Pvt Blade [MOS 531 = Cannoneer]) were Lightly Wounded in Action (i.e. wound not considered life-threatening) and taken to 34th Evacuation Hospital.

• 12 Sep 1944 MR - 2d Lt David (no MOS given) was retroactively reported Lightly Wounded in Action as of 9 Sep, with a shrapnel wound, a light wound to his right knee and a sprain of his right knee. But he had remained on duty and not been hospitalized.

• 13 Sep 1944 MR - Bryan, Lewis, Wallace, Glazier and Polifka (listed in order of rank and showing their MOS) were all shown as Missing in Action as of 9 Sep when the company was at Malancourt.

• "Malancourt" is Malancourt-la-Montagne. The Coordinates Translator of the EchoDelta.net web site allows us to enter the coordinates VU7870 for the Nord de Guerre Grid system. This provides the latitude and longitude 49° 13' 04'' N 6° 03' 40'' E which would have been the location from which the C/40 Headquarters was 1/2 mile south, presumably about the location of Roncourt.

• "Manville" is Amanvillers. They may have been looking at a map with the names in German. The province of Lorraine had gone back and forth between being part of France and part of Germany over the decades. When the Germans took the area in 1940, they re-annexed Lorraine which they had lost to France at the end of World War I. So, the map they saw in 1944 may have had the German name for the town. Since it is now part of France, all maps now have the French name Amanvillers.

• Company C lost 5 tanks on 9 Sep 1944!! So, it is possible that all five still-unaccounted men were all in different tanks. Hopefully the GRS post-combat research in their Individual Deceased Personnel Files (below) determined who was in which tank. But the fact that the GRS information in at least one of the IDPFs (as noted in the Overview section above) seemed to think all five men were in a single tank crew looks like GRS failed to establish who was in which tank and thus in which crew so that they could identify and interview survivors from the tank crews of these five men. We will see what the IDPFs show in the section below.

• Four men were wounded that same day, possibly members of the same crews as some of the still-unaccounted men. Clearly, these were potential witnesses who GRS could have interviewed.

Company C was part of a task force, possibly under the command of the S-3 officer. In addition to C/40, the task force include the 489th Field Artillery Battalion and Company A of the 48th Armored Infantry. Both of these were other elements of 7th Armored Division.

• This brief account gives very important location and mission information that seems to exist only in this record. It was written at the end of the month, about 3 weeks after the events. And it includes all elements of the task force in its casualty report.

• Six C/40 tanks were lost!! This was a significant part of their entire force. The Company had three tank platoons, each with 5 tanks for a total of 15 tanks (although there were additional tanks in the Co HQ). Assuming that the lost tanks came from the three tank platoons, a loss of 6 of 15 tanks was 50% of C/40's tank platoon strength!!

• The position of company headquarters given only as 1/2 mile south of Malancourt in the Morning Reports and thus in the vicinity of Roncourt is given in the After Action Report more precisely as a "position west of Roncourt".

• The mission of the task force was to assist the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of 5th Infantry Division in the attack. The objective is not mentioned, but we know from the Morning Reports that it was Amanvillers. The point of departure for the attack was Habonville, about 3.5 miles southwest of Malancourt. It is not clear whether this was the point of departure for only 1st Bn, 2nd Infantry so that the task force with C/40 attacked from the area west of Roncourt or if both the 5ID and 7AD troops attacked Amanvillers from Habonville. Other records are needed to clarify this.

• Amanvillers is ESE from Habonville and not SW. So the reference "attacked the southwest from the vicinity of Habonville" seems to be a reference from the position near Roncourt of the C/40 headquarters and not a reference to the direction of the attack. An attack on Amanvillers from the vicinity of Habonville would also have been an attack on the southwest part of Amanvillers so that the reference may mean that.

• The attack began at 13159 Sep. This means 1315 hours (1:15 PM) on 9 Sep. So, it was a daylight afternoon attack.

• "AT" refers to Anti-Tank guns. The German 88mm gun was a very effective anti-tank weapon, far more effective than the 57mm anti-tank guns towed by 7th Armored Division's anti-tank squad halftracks.

• The killed enlisted man may have been a member of A/48th Armored Infantry Battalion. However, I have not found any A/48 deaths as 9 Sep 1944 casualties. So, the identity of the killed man is unknown. By the end of the month when the After Action Report was written, none of the C/40 missing men had yet been learned to have been killed. The one wounded officer was probably C/40's 2d Lt David, as noted in the Morning Report of 12 Sep 1944.

It was reported by Liaison Officer, 40th Tk Bn, that the Task Force commanded by Col McConnell sent to cooperate with the 2d Infantry in their attack from Verneville toward Tignomont had encountered stiff resistance at St Privat. South of St Privat the enemy was firmly entrenched in the woods with well-concealed concrete pillboxes. Two strong forts were also of great aid to the enemy in their defense. It was rumored that for the past several years, since the German occupation, no civilians had been allowed entrance into these woods. In the attack on this date, Col McConnell's Task Force lost seven tanks, one M-10 and one M-7.

• Two crucial errors, both apparently arising from the same early mistake, show that the GRS personnel had no real understanding of what had happened nor how to properly address it. The fundamental error leading to both erroneous conclusions is that these men were the 5-man crew of a single tank. This led to the conclusion that the entire crew was killed so that there were no survivors or witnesses. It also led to the erroneous conclusion that these 5 men were indeed all killed in the same tank in a lone incident for which there were no witnesses.

• Anyone familiar with a tank crew would realize that a tank would not have two men with the rank of Sergeant.

• The first step in dealing with a tank casualty is to determine where in the tank he rode, based on his MOS. The IDPFs of tankers handled by competent GRS personnel always established this as the first step in their investigation. There was apparently no attempt to do that in any of the cases of these five men. If their MOSs had been checked (a simple task), the investigators would have realized they had two tank commanders and two cannoneers -- which meant the missing men were from the crews of at least two tanks.

• Had they realized that these men were only part of several tank crews and not the full crew of a single tank, they would have known with certainty who to interview about their loss: the other members of the same tank crews who had survived. The Morning Reports list 5 casualties from that day (1 officer, 4 enlisted men) who would all have been present. Yet no effort was apparently made to find and interview or seek statements from these men nor any other C/40 men who were there when these men were killed. Six tanks were lost that day. That means there were 30 men present, 25 of whom survived. None of them were sought out by GRS and asked about the events.

• Whoever handled these cases had no understanding of tank crews nor how to work with their cases. Frankly, the handling of these cases is tragically poor and makes it extremely difficult now to sift hard facts from the errors of the IDPFs.

• The case was clearly complicated by the fact that the attacking forces had to withdraw and leave the damaged tanks because of enemy fire. However, that does not excuse the gross mishandling of these cases by the GRS personnel who handled them.

• The IDPF actually gets worse as you go back. An investigative team in August 1947 took statements from people at Manonville and Martincourt -- which were not at all where the men had been killed and thus a complete waste of resources. The records do clearly show where the men were so that it makes absolutely no sense that the investigators looked for them somewhere else.

• And it was even worse. When they did focus on a location actually mentioned in the records, even though all records pointed to the line of departure being 3 miles southwest of Malancourt and the objective even further away, they focused instead on Malancourt and noted (PDF p 35) "No Unknowns on record having been recovered from the above location. Area should be reinvestigated." They never even considered the place where the combat took place.

• To their credit, they did (PDF p 37) in June 1947 investigate -- 3 years after the fact -- whether there were still any US tanks at Saint Privat-la-Montagne. But by then there were no more 1944-destroyed tanks present.

• And therein lies the heart of the problem: it appears that no investigation into Homer Bryan's case really began 7 April 1947. There are two records dated 1946 (PDF pp 17-20). On 30 Aug 1946, there is a note that he had medical treatment 13 Mar 1943 at Camp Polk, Louisiana. An "Identification Data" form stamped 3 Sep 1946 gives his identification and physical characteristics, his unit and a brief summary of where he was last seen.

• So, the bottom line is that it was not until 2 1/2 years after his death that GRS began trying to determine what had happened to him. And the GRS personnel who investigated his case and those of the other four men had no familiarity with tank crews, never determined the MOS of each of the five men, made no attempt to identify and contact witnesses although there definitely were surviving witnesses, did not consult the C/40 Morning Reports nor the 40th Tank Battalion After Action Report nor the CCA After Action Report, sought for Unknowns recovered from a location 5 miles too far north, made on-site visits to look for them in towns that the records clearly indicated were the wrong place to look. They then wrongly concluded that the men had been the crew of a single tank hit in isolation where no one witnessed what had happened. GRS utterly failed these men by not even looking for them until 2 1/2 years later and then doing a very incompetent job of dealing with their cases.

• This is an extraordinary document for several reasons. It is on pages 24-25 of the PDF of his IDPF.

• Most extraordinary is that his effects included "1 Set of Dog Tags" (note the plural). A soldier wore his dog tags at all times. A set consisted of two dog tags on a chain worn around his neck. If he was killed, one dog tag was taken from his body for the unit to process the official notification of his death. The other dog tag remained with the body and would be buried with it. So, this raises very significant questions.
  • How was it that one of his dog tags were not with his body?
  • If he was killed and his remains never found (as with the other four men), how was it that anyone had access to his dog tags at all?
  • What had happened to his body that they were able to obtain his dog tags and other personal effects that he apparently had been carrying on him when he was killed?
  • Why was he still considered Missing in Action if they had his dog tags?

• How were his other personal effects (two wrist watches and a U.S. dime) obtained? The tankers carried their personal effects with them on the tank. And it seems that the effects of the other men were all lost -- either being destroyed by fire that consumed the tank or by never being gathered because the enemy controlled the place where the tank was hit. So, it seems that these effects were found on his body.
  • And once again the question is: What happened to his body if they had access to it to retrieve these personal effects that he presumably carried on him when he was killed?
  • Did they also retrieve his body, and send it to the collection point for retrieval by Graves Registration for burial, but the absence of the dog tags led to his remains being labeled as an Unknown because the remains had no identification?

• The dates on the inventory raise even more questions. How was it that while the Morning Reports showed him MIA as of 9 Sep the inventory showed him as MIA as of 21 Sep? Why was it nearly a month after he was killed that the inventory was finally done for him?

• He was killed 9 Sep 1944 in France. The inventory was done 6 Oct 1944 by which time 7th Armored Division had moved about 230 miles north to the Netherlands. How had Bernard Glazier's personal effects, including his dog tags, been carried all those miles over all that time?

• The person doing the inventory is also unusual. Usually, the personal effects were inventoried within his battalion, although that was not always the case. In this case, the person doing the inventory was in Division Headquarters.

• And, of course, all this begs the question of why the post-war Graves Registration investigative personnel never sought out the answers to all these questions!! Nor did they do anything about this case in a timely manner nor try to find witnesses.

It is important to note that two American tanks are indicated on the recovery map as being just to the west in a nearby field. However, no record of the serial numbers or nicknames or other markings of those tanks are indicated in the file for X-1115.

The dental chart prepared from the remains of X-1115 is on PDF page 19. All of the teeth were missing except for left 15 and 16 (the lower rear teeth) and right 5 (fourth from the back on top right). It was clear from the remains that teeth left 6 and 7 (top left 2nd and 3rd from the back) had been extracted. Limited as it is, the dental chart eliminates three of the five men.

• Bernard Glazier's 1942 chart shows left 15 gone, but left 15 is present for X-1115.
• Florian Wallace's 1942 chart shows both left 15 and 16 gone, but both are present for X-1115.
• Peter Polifka's 1942 chart shows left 16 gone, but left 16 is present for X-1115.

The chart is not inconsistent with either Jack Lewis or Homer Bryan's dental charts, allowing for the possibility that they had further dental work after their 1942 charts. In particular, men about to be sent into combat were given extra dental work to prevent the necessity of emergency dental treatment in the field.