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By Al Zdon
If you go to the Martin Hughes High School in Buhl, you'll find two very large team pictures mounted in the entrance hallway.
Those pictures show the 1941 and 1942 boys basketball teams.
Both teams included a starting guard named George Smilanich. Both teams won the Minnesota State Boys Basketball Tournament.
The state titles were the crowning athletic glory for Smilanich. In fact,
less than a year later, Smilanich was driving a tank in North Africa. Over the next couple of years, Smilanich, as part of the famous "Hell on Wheels" 2nd Armored Division participated in the landing at
Omaha Beach, the hedgerow fighting in France, the Battle of the Bulge, and the final victory in Germany.
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George "Pecky" Smilanich grew up near Buhl, the son of Mane
"Mike" and Yelena Smilanich. Mike worked in the Wanless Mine and the family lived in the Wanless Location, a mining community about a mile from Buhl.
"It was during the Depression and things were a
little rough. Nearly all the mines were shut down. My dad was a pump man at the Wanless, but he took whatever work he could find."
Smilanich did the same. In fact, he interrupted his high school
career for two years to work in a CCC camp, sending his paychecks home to help support his family. When he did get back into school, he worked in the summers on the track gangs at the mines.
He
inherited the name Pecky from his brother. "Everybody had a nickname. They called my brother Pecky, and then they called me Little Pecky because I did everything he did."
In those days, it wasn't
unusual for small towns to produce tremendous basketball teams. Led by an all-state guard named John Klarich, the Buhl team went 26-3 in 1941 with a team made up of juniors. They were coached by Melvin
"Muxie" Anderson.
After a battle-royal with Chisholm to win the District 7 title, Buhl advanced to the state tourney where they beat Red Wing 31-29 in the title game.
The next year, Coach Anderson
asked for a $50 pay raise to support his family. The school board immediately fired him and hired a young coach named Mario Retica.
"The new coach told us, 'I'm not going to do any changes, just play
the same way you did last year. If you have any questions, ask me.'"
The team roared through the season with a 28-0 record and defeated Marshall 30-29 for its second consecutive state championship.
The player who scored the winning free throw, George Klasna, had been knocked unconscious earlier in the game.
Both Smilanich and Klarich hoped to further their careers in basketball and football at
La Crosse State Teachers College in Wisconsin. In fact, Smilanich had a job in La Crosse cleaning up the Elks Club when he got his greetings from the federal government.
"I had an opportunity at La
Crosse to get into the V-12 program for Naval Air and avoid the draft, but my brother, who was already in the service, told my parents I should keep my feet on the ground. I didn't want to disappoint my
parents, so I went in the Army."
His group of draftees left on a bus from Hibbing to Ft. Snelling, and like good Range lads they celebrated their last taste of freedom. "They drove the bus right into
the stockade and just waited until everybody sobered up."
Smilanich took his basic training at Ft. Knox, and after taking tests that revealed his background in operating heavy equipment, he was
assigned to train in the tank corps.
Four months later, he was in Gen. George Patton's Second Armored Division. He served in Easy Company of the 67th Armored Regiment. Smilanich joined the division in
Oran, North Africa. "All we did there was train. The First Armored Division got all beat up at Kasserine Pass, and guys from Second replaced them. We replaced the guys from the Second that went to the
First."
After about four months, in July 1943, the division landed at Sicily. "We landed at Gela and drove up to Palermo, but it was pretty easy going. The Italians were surrendering faster than we
could capture them."
The next stop was England to get ready for the Normandy invasion. "The U-boats were all over at that time, and so our ship swung way over about 200 miles from Florida and then
headed to Scotland." The 2nd Armored eventually made it to its base at Tidworth Barracks in England.
The training intensified as D-Day drew nearer. One day, after a long road march, the tank crews
were busy taking care of their machinery – changing the oil, greasing the treads, changing the plugs.
"I was under the tank by the back hatch, and I was as greasy as everything else. Pretty soon, I
hear a guy talking to me. He says, 'How's that tank, soldier?' I told him, 'Not too damn hot.' He said, 'What's the problem?' And I said, 'It's just got too damn many miles on it.'
"So, he said, 'Burn the son of a bitch.'"
By this time Smilanich noticed the shiny shoes of the stranger and he crawled out from under the tank. As he stood up, he found out he was talking to General
Patton himself.
"I said, 'I'm sorry sir, I didn't know who it was…' But he just looked at me and said, 'Carry on, soldier,' and he walked away."
A shaken Smilanich was quickly approached by his
company officer who wanted to know what Patton had said to him. "I told him that Patton told me to burn the tank. He looked at me and said, 'Don't do that or you'll be in the Army the rest of your life.'"
The 2nd Armored practiced getting their tanks into and out of the LSTs, and even did some dry runs toward the French coast when the clouds were low and the planes couldn't fly.
The unit landed
on Omaha Beach on D-Day plus 3 when the tanks were needed to continue the assault into France. The men were sealed in their tanks with a layer of thick grease all over the tank to protect it in case it
was dropped into deeper water. There was also a shroud over the top.
As the LST approached the beach, the LST next to them took a direct artillery hit and was destroyed. Some of the men survived and
swam over the LST Smilanich was on.
"When we finally got to the beach, the LST dropped the hatch and we drove out, right on to dry land. The tide had gone out."
By evening, the tanks had made it to
the top of the ridge overlooking the beach. A German plane attacked as the men slept, but the only near miss was a chunk of dirt that was kicked up by a shell that hit the pup tent a major was sleeping
in. "He got up and yelled at the plane, 'Come back, you SOB, you haven't got me yet.'"
The tanks headed inland and took part in the St. Lo breakthrough, and then headed out into the hedgerow country.
The tanks would have to climb to the top of the hedgerow and then balance for time before it could head down the other side. With its belly exposed, the tank was most vulnerable to being hit by a German
anti-tank weapon.
"At that point it was easy for them to hit us from below with a bazooka. The thinnest piece of metal on a tank is on the bottom. I always kept the front of my tank covered in
sandbags, so it was protected from the front."
As Smilanich's tank exposed its bottom on a hedgerow, it was hit by a shell and it started burning. All the crew was able to get out. It was the first of
three tanks Smilanich was in that were destroyed during the war.
The second loss was the worst. "It was a bazooka that got us. The tank exploded immediately, and four guys couldn't make it out. Have
you ever seen metal burn? You saw it when those tanks caught fire."
Each time Smilanich lost a tank, he had to make his way back to a depot to get a new one. "And every time I did that, I got a new
tank crew."
As the tanks drove into Germany, the orders were given to capture a crossroads. Two light tanks, and the medium tank that Smilanich was driving, were ordered in.
"They let the two
light tanks go by and then they hit us. It must have been an 88 shell because it went right through the tank and right through the commander's leg."
The tank was engulfed in flame, but all of the crew
except the commander was able to get out. Smilanich was free of the tank when he heard a voice screaming, "Smiley, help. Smiley, help." It was Stan Novak, the tank commander.
"I grabbed a bed roll off
the back of the tank and wrapped it around me. I got back into the tank and tried to get him out. But he was a big guy, about 215-220 lbs. Finally, I got him on the back of the tank. The amazing thing
was the Germans stopped firing while all this was going on."
Smilanich signaled for another tank to come up and at this point the firing began again. They managed to get the wounded tank commander to
safety. "He was in so much pain, he was biting on my collar. So I got his pain killer out and jabbed him with it. That didn't seem to work, so I jabbed him with mine."
At the hospital tent, Smilanich
hung around to see how his friend was doing. After a time a doctor came out. "Who put that tourniquet on that leg?" the doctor demanded. "I did, sir," Smilanich answered. "Well, you just saved that man's
life."
Smilanich was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions. Strangely enough, the officer who recommended Smilanich for the medal received a Silver Star even though he had nothing to do with the
rescue.
Life in the tank corps was not easy. Smilanich said there was great stress, and some men couldn't handle it. "You had to be alert all the time or get shot. I just tried to keep everybody
happy."
Inside the tank was full of jostling and close quarters, but it was bearable, at least until the tank was under attack and it had to be buttoned up for an extended time. "Then you had to eat
in there, sleep in there, and take care of your other needs in there."
At one point, a French family attached themselves to Smilanich's tank for a time because they were starving. Smilanich would
share his own rations and cook for the family. After the war, on a visit to France, Smilanich located the family and found out they were one of the wealthiest families in that part of France. "And they
remembered the name of every kid in that tank."
The 2nd Armored Division had driven into Germany by October, but had to change directions in December and race into the Ardennes to help stem the German
attack into Belgium – the Battle of the Bulge.
One of Smilanich's most vivid memories is a German shell ricocheting off the road and shaving off the top of the head of one of the American officers.
The division cut off a German advance on Christmas day, and the encircled Germans fought to get free.
"It was a night battle, you couldn't believe it. Nobody was taking any prisoners. It was kill or
be killed and that was it. There were no lights. The Germans would try to move their column by going bumper to bumper down the road in the dark. And so we'd shoot the first tank and the last tank, and
the others would be trapped. They'd have to get out of their tanks, and that's when the shooting would begin. I don't like to talk about this stuff."
The weather turned bitterly cold in early January.
"As long as the tank was running, the transmission was right next to me and that kept me warm. But you couldn't run the tank all the time, especially at night you didn't want to give away your position."
The tankers would call in a bulldozer to dig a wide trench the tank could hide in with only the turret and 76 mm gun sticking up. When the tanks ran out of gas, eventually a supply truck would catch
up with them. "We'd have to fill it with five-gallon jerry cans, and it took 179 gallons to fill the tank. It also used 12 gallons of oil."
Even when the tank could run, the cold was intense.
Smilanich couldn't wear his boots to use the pedals, and only could wear his felt liners. On Jan. 10, he finally had to go to the rear with frozen feet. He was sent all the way back to England where he
spent three weeks in a hospital before his feet healed up enough for him to return to his unit.
In March, the division drove across the Rhine and it was the first American division to reach the Elbe
in early April. "We were just about to enter Berlin, but they stopped us. We had to stay on the outskirts for two weeks waiting for the Russians to take it before we were allowed to go in." Still the
division was the first U.S. unit to enter the German capital.
Smilanich and his companions were billeted in a barracks that had been used for the athletes in the 1936 Olympics.
With the war over,
the men thought of little but going home, but it wasn't meant to be for the 2nd Armored. "We were the honor guard at the Potsdam Conference. I got to see Truman, Churchill, Zhukov. We were Patton's
wonderful outfit. We headed up every parade that came along. I had enough points to go home, but they wouldn't let me leave."
Finally, in November, Smilanich got his orders home. He made his way to
Camp Lucky Strike at Reims, but there were no ships available because of a longshoreman's strike. The men were sent to Marseilles on "cattle cars" to find another ship, but then had to wait two weeks
again while an army unit that was also going on the ship received two shots of penicillin each day for 14 days. The young men had contracted venereal disease.
Smilanich was released at Camp McCoy,
Wisconsin, and started college at St. Cloud State Teacher's College in January. He immediately joined the basketball team, and was part of the team that went to the NAIA national championship game that
year. That fall, he was the kicker on the football team and earned the nickname, "the golden toe."
He married his wife, Mary Jane, in 1946, and after that football season gave up playing sports to
settle down to work and school work. He got a teaching and coaching job in Erie, Illinois, and worked there for four years before he got a similar job in his hometown of Buhl in 1954.
He taught and
coached there 13 years and then moved on to Hibbing in 1967. He retired in 1984. He and Mary Jane had three children, two boys and a girl.
He has been back for two major reunions in Belgium in the
past few months, the first to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. On his second trip, he was the only American visitor as the people of Calles, Belgium, celebrated the
anniversary of their liberation.
"You can't understand how grateful those people were and are to be liberated. Even the people who weren't born then are part of it." Smilanich had one experience of
walking into a room of several hundred people and everyone stood up and applauded. The Smilanich's had a similar experience at a restaurant when they got up to leave.
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