Every Man a Hero

by Ray Lambert

  I’d come to the conclusion that there wasn’t any job around that I wanted or that would have me. So pretty much, the army was it. I just needed to talk it out.

  In the morning, Uncle Alvin drove me back. I went and found the sergeant, who gave me a puzzled look and asked where I’d gone off to.

  “It was a big decision and I wanted to be sure,” I said. “I wasn’t quite sure. Now I am.”

  He pointed to the bus for Fort Benning.

  First and 16th

  I didn’t know it, I didn’t plan it, but I’d landed in one of the most capable and famous units of the regular U.S. Army, the 1st Division.

  I’m partial, of course, but it’s not just me saying it. Even today, the “Big Red One”—our division’s nickname, which comes directly from the unit patch—is such a prestigious outfit that guys will continue to wear the patch on their “off” shoulder after they’ve been transferred—something that isn’t allowed or even desired for most other regular army divisions. Past members of the 1st tend to look up others; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come out of the supermarket to find a fellow retiree waiting to chat me up by my car, which has a division plate on it.

  Why is the 1st so famous?

  Most simply because it was the “first”—in World War I, it was the first American division in France, the first posted to the front, the first to fire at the enemy, and the first called out for exemplary action. As a matter of fact, the 1st was literally the first division created in that war—we had no actual divisions until then.

  You may have heard in history class that America’s decision to join World War I on the side of the Allies dramatically changed the momentum of the war. What you may not have heard is that the 1st played a key role in the Battle of Cantigny in May 1918. The Germans were holding the village of Cantigny, France, protruding into the Allied line like a dagger that could strike the rest of the Allied army.

  The 1st was tasked to take the village some fifty miles north of Paris. They not only seized it, but then managed to hold it after the Germans counterattacked. Realizing it was a strategic spot, the enemy threw everything it could at the division, which until then had no combat experience. More than one thousand men in the division were killed or wounded, but the Yanks (as our guys were called) held tight.

  Not only was this an important strategic victory—it meant the Allies didn’t have to worry about being attacked on their sides or flanks, the weakest points—but the 1st Division’s courage and competence showed the French and British that we were up to par with the best fighters in the world.

  That wasn’t a simple operation, either. Not only did we have air support from the French—common now, rare in 1918—but the infantry made generous use of tanks and artillery, or combined arms, to use the military term. It was a modern fight in every sense of the word, a baptism by fire in the deadly tactics that would feature not only in World War I’s endgame but in conflicts that would follow for years to come.

  The 1st Division was also involved in Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne, substantial battles later that year that helped seal Germany’s doom. These were costly campaigns, and the division’s reputation was earned with courage and a lot of blood. More than twenty thousand casualties were tallied by the time peace was declared that November. The men who led the division, Major Generals William Sibert, Robert L. Bullard, and Charles P. Summerall, are enshrined in army lore as some of the greatest individual commanders we have been fortunate to have.

  Battle exploits, awards, and citations are tangible things. At least as important—much more important, I would say—is the spirit that a unit develops from an efficient and successful group. The proper term is esprit de corps. It can be hard to define—a culture of success, a reputation, a sense that you belong to an excellent organization that gets things—big things—done. The 1st had that spirit.

  We also had a motto, adopted in World War I, that reminded us and others what we were all about: No mission too difficult, no sacrifice too great—Duty First!

  Big tests lay ahead. The 1st would pass them all, and our esprit de corps and the legend of the division would only grow.

  The 16th Regiment

  Divisions are made up of smaller units, some with a special purpose, some that assist other units. In the American infantry, the bulk of the manpower is organized in regiments—large, mostly self-contained units that do most of the fighting. The U.S. Army had recently adopted a structure that assigned three regiments to each division. (In military terms, these are “triangular divisions,” and they remain a common arrangement.)

  Regiments as a general rule were commanded by a colonel, who in turn answered to the division’s general. In theory and usually in practice, the regiments could be maneuvered or deployed in battle separately, augmented by smaller units or sometimes attached whole to other units depending on the need.

  Each infantry regiment had three battalions, along with a headquarters company, artillery, an antitank company—and, most importantly as my service began, a medical detachment.

  The battalions—and I’m making generalizations here—each had about nine hundred men, organized as companies. An infantry battalion would usually have a headquarters company, three rifle companies, and a weapons company. The rifle companies would list about 190 soldiers each.

  The 1st Division had three regiments—the 16th, the 18th, and the 26th. I went over to the 16th, where I was to be trained as a medic.

  If I had known next to nothing about the 1st Division, I was even more ignorant about the 16th Regiment. But if I had known—and had any say at all—it surely would have been the unit to ask for.

  The 16th Regiment is one of the oldest units if not the oldest unit in the army. We trace our history back to the 11th Regiment—same unit, different name—which was formed May 4, 1861, less than a month after Fort Sumter was fired on to start the Civil War.

  Mustered at Fort Independence, Massachusetts, the regiment was part of George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, taking part in the Virginia Peninsula Campaign and some of the most famous and bloody fights of the war, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Its soldiers were at Appomattox to disarm the rebels when Robert E. Lee surrendered.

  Have you heard about Teddy Roosevelt and his famous charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish–American War? The 16th helped take the hill. Later it was sent to the Philippines and saw action there. General John “Black Jack” Pershing led the 16th and sister units in action against Mexican bandits and Pancho Villa. In World War I, the 16th had the honor of parading through Paris, announcing the arrival of American combat troops—or as Black Jack Pershing put it with the words “Lafayette, we are here!” letting France know we were repaying the debt incurred when the French and the Marquis de Lafayette helped us win our independence.

  The 16th was on the receiving end of the first bullets fired by Germans at American troops at Bathelémont; as part of the 1st Division, the regiment was involved in the fight for Cantigny and other critical battles as the Allies pushed the Germans back and pressed on to victory.

  It was a great unit. Something to be very proud of, as I would soon learn.

  From Dogs to Soldiers

  When the recruiter asked me what sorts of jobs I’d had, I led with my stint as veterinary assistant. That apparently impressed him and the rest of the army, because I was assigned to the 2nd Battalion’s medical detachment as a medic.

  I guess they figured if a man can take care of dogs, soldiers would be a cinch.

  Truthfully, there were similarities beyond the fact that GIs at the time were often called “dogfaces.” The most important thing I’d done as a veterinarian’s assistant was give rabies shots; plunging a needle of morphine (or whatever else was called for) in a soldier’s arm was relatively easy after that. I can’t remember a soldier trying to bite me, which is more than I can say for the dogs. And if my qualifications on paper didn’t amount to much more than that, they were actually bett
er than those of most of the recruits who found themselves in the medical corps.

  Doctors were officers, and generally in charge, at least in name—as always, a lot of the real work and authority was done by the NCOs, or noncommissioned officers. Each battalion’s medical detachment had about thirty men total, including a doctor and a staff sergeant in charge. All had training in first aid, though this was fairly basic care. In the field, the medics would be divided among three different jobs. Some would work directly with the companies—“company men”—caring for anyone hurt or otherwise in need of care. Some would man a battalion first-aid station close to the front line. The last group—the stretcher bearers—worked in between.

  As a raw recruit, a lot of my time after I learned how to march and the basics of getting along in the army was spent doing nonmedical things. Medics at Benning didn’t do advanced infantry training, and we were used more for driving vehicles than applying bandages—which made sense, I suppose, since not only were there few injuries to deal with, but we weren’t very deeply trained in medicine at that point.

  Medicine, and especially battlefield medicine, was very different in those days, nowhere near like it is today, where helicopters can whisk injured GIs directly off the battlefield and the care they receive on the way to a hospital can equal what they would get at a trauma center. I’ve met Special Forces medics who are practically doctors.

  Back then, our job was much simpler: stop bleeding, usually with a tourniquet; clean wounds; inject the wounded man with morphine to ease his pain. (A tourniquet would cut off blood to a limb above a traumatic wound, preventing the patient from bleeding out. Its use in combat dates back at least to Alexander the Great. There are complications from using tourniquets, however, and the practice has greatly declined since my war.)

  The soldier would then be taken—usually by two stretcher bearers, who were also medics—to the battalion first-aid station near the front lines. There he would be treated by other medics and, if warranted, the doctor in charge of the unit.

  If the wounds were light, the soldier might simply walk back to his unit. Serious cases would be evacuated to a larger station—the regimental aid station, usually close to the regimental headquarters a couple of miles back. There they would receive further treatment before being shipped on to a collection point and finally a hospital.

  * * *

  The division had only just been assigned to Fort Benning, and our area, Harmony Church, was more pasture than military camp.

  Muddy pasture, I should say. We were out in tents, four men in each, and one of our first jobs was to build wooden platforms to keep our feet dry, or almost dry, when it rained. We built sidewalks as well, and soon the place began to actually look like something.

  The army was growing quickly, and as guys even fresher than me joined the unit, I realized I already knew quite a lot. Not just about bandaging or setting compound fractures. We got many kids from cities like New York or Philadelphia who had spent all their time in the city, and didn’t know much about machines or how to fix them—a handy skill when your Jeep or ambulance breaks down.

  I was always ready to learn something new, and to take on another job. People tell you never to volunteer when you’re in the army; it will only lead to trouble. Fortunately, I hadn’t heard that advice. The officers and NCOs in charge appreciated the fact that I was willing to do whatever they asked, taking on jobs that I’d never had before. They gave me more and more as time went on. Not only didn’t I mind, I liked it.

  Brothers in Arms

  I’d been in the army for only a few weeks when another new recruit showed up at our camp—my brother Euel. He and I had talked about his joining as well, so it wasn’t all that surprising to find him in khakis. He’d joined a different unit, also training at Benning—the cavalry, which was still part of the army in 1940.

  My brother had asked to be assigned there because he loved horses, and I imagine he had some romantic ideas about what that might involve in the army. But the reality was not very pleasant. As he put it to me after a few weeks, “All I’m doing is shoveling shit in the stables.”

  “Join the medics,” I told him.

  I guess I made the job sound attractive, or maybe anything sounded good after a few weeks of handling manure. He quickly agreed. We went and talked to my commanding officer, and Euel joined the medical department and came over to the 16th Infantry. He’d prove to be just as good a medic and leader as I was, as time would tell.

  Euel never really liked his first name, and for some reason I either never knew or have long since forgotten, he acquired a new nickname soon after joining: Bill. It was our father’s name, which may explain why he favored it. In any event, people started calling him that and it stuck for the rest of his life—just as I will for the rest of the book.

  * * *

  People have asked me if having my brother in the same unit made me worry about him, especially later on during combat.

  I don’t think I ever worried about him. I was concerned, maybe.

  That’s a different thing. When you’re worried, you’re constantly thinking of someone or something.

  When you’re concerned, it’s not in your mind constantly.

  We were both still kids in some ways. Maybe I thought of myself as indestructible, and him even more so, because he was my older brother. Nothing could happen to either of us.

  You have a lot of optimism when you’re young.

  * * *

  Our training became more complicated as the weeks and months passed. When the division went on maneuvers—the military term for practicing combat or combat-related procedures—the medics would set up an aid station. If there was a mock battle, we would treat mock wounds, as well as the occasional sprained ankle or whatnot.

  A typical aid station would be set up in a large tent marked by Red Cross flags. An operating table—a stretcher perched on our two large medical chests—would be set up near the middle of the tent, off-center enough to allow for an area at the side where the walking wounded could be treated. We had a station where we’d clean and disinfect instruments with alcohol. The rest of the space would be taken up with supplies.

  Things were more ad hoc during amphibious landings; you weren’t going to set up a tent in the water, or give the enemy an obvious target. And the wounded were always the first priority.

  Besides learning how to use things like tourniquets, properly clean wounds, and set broken bones, we were taught how to give blood transfusions and use plasma on the battlefield, along with more complicated procedures for assisting the doctor. Though plasma would turn out to be a lifesaver, there weren’t too many opportunities to use it at the forward aid stations where I would work during the war.

  I was sent for medical training to Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Fitzsimons and the U.S. Army played an important role in battling tuberculosis, which was a devastating disease at the time. TB, or consumption as it was known in earlier times, is an infectious disease that had plagued the army in World War I. Fluoroscopy, an early form of X-rays, and other screening helped identify the disease in its early stages, allowing patients to be isolated and treated before infecting others. At the hospital I was taught how to remove fluid from lungs, placing a needle to drain the organ and then forcing the liquid out.

  We also trained to assist during surgery, and learned how to set bones by working with animal bones. Here my experience with the veterinarian and working on the farm really did pay off.

  Besides becoming familiar with how to treat injuries and wounds, we developed the professional attitude you need to treat the injured in battle. You have to be able to distance yourself from the person you’re helping; if you think too much about the patient as a person, a fellow soldier, or even a friend, your feelings can choke out your ability to help him. Not a good thing.

  I spent about six months at the hospital, learning and working with real patients. When I got back to my unit, I shared what I’d learned with the ot
hers. Not to brag, but Command was already looking at me to teach and lead. It was the sort of thing I liked to do. I guess I had a talent for it, even though I’d never had a chance to develop it before.

  Sugar “Ray”

  Our training and that of the entire army ramped up; we took part in the Louisiana Maneuvers, a massive exercise that, looking back, illustrates exactly how depleted and out of date our army really was: soldiers marched with sticks, and trucks stood in for armored vehicles by posting the word “tank” on a placard on the side. We were moving in the right direction, but with fits and starts.

  The army wasn’t all training and hard work, though. We had our share of recreation. In my case, that meant boxing.

  The sport was very popular at the time. Units would pit their own champions against each other, and competitions between battalions and divisions were a hit with the troops. I imagine there was a bit of bragging among the brass as well.

  I’d been fairly athletic as a kid, and I could hold my own with my fists. Let me say I weighed somewhere between 145 and 170 pounds at the time—a welterweight at the lower number, a middleweight at the higher range. I’m not saying I was a great fighter, but I did well enough in the ring for some of the guys to compare me to a very famous boxer who dominated in those weight classes—Sugar Ray.

  For you younger readers, that’s Sugar Ray Robinson, an African American who boxed in the 1940s, and whom a lot of boxing historians still regard as one of the best pound-for-pound boxers of all time. More recently, another outstanding welterweight earned the nickname—and accolades—Sugar Ray Leonard.

  I was nowhere near as good as them, of course. But everybody gets a nickname in the army. Mine became Sugar Ray. “Sugar” was quickly dropped, and from then on, like my brother, I had a name that would follow me through life.

  Boxing was recreation, but we took it seriously. We trained hard. In one case, we journeyed to New York City and Stillman’s Gym, the city’s famous university for world-class professors of boxing science—I mean professional boxers. We trained for three days before heading to upstate New York to fight matches in Plattsburgh with other members of the division.