Every Man a Hero

by Ray Lambert

  In many cases, the damage to their feet had already been done in the first day and a half. It just got worse as they hiked. I remember treating fifty cases at our station during the first week on the island. These were extremely serious cases, with men’s feet so blistered and swollen that they couldn’t walk. In some cases, they couldn’t even get their boots on or off.

  We didn’t have drying agents with us, let alone proper antifungal medicine. So we had to figure something else out. We mixed a concoction of aspirin and alcohol into a paste, then rubbed it on the infected toes and feet. The aspirin and alcohol killed and dried out the fungus. We had clean socks brought in and gave them out to the men we treated. They needed no reminders from us about how important it was to keep their feet dry for the rest of the campaign.

  Minor cuts and scrapes were another matter. Many soldiers would complain that they just weren’t healing. There could be any number of reasons, but a number blamed the island itself. “Sicilian Disease,” they called it, as if the rocks could literally suck life from them.

  In many cases, the soldiers were just too busy fighting to be careful with their wounds. They were impatient to be healed, but also weren’t about to fuss over a little dirt, or make sure a wound was aired and redressed properly.

  Medical supplies were often short, especially during the high points of battles. The problem extended to the hospitals as well. And even when the fighting slacked off, we sometimes couldn’t get enough ambulances for transport.

  But we dealt with it, patching up guys, sending them back or moving them along, taking care of the next one in what seemed like an unending treadmill of hurt and heal.

  Victory

  By the time Troina fell, the Germans must have realized that there was no stopping us on Sicily. They began a full-scale retreat to the mainland. Meanwhile, Patton pressed east along the north from Palermo, battering the rear guard of German units determined to save themselves for a different fight. Montgomery continued to move up the eastern side of the island, making better progress each day. II Corps, our parent group, pressed through the mountains toward Messina.

  By August 17, the Allies controlled Messina, and resistance on the island had all but ended. The tenacious fighting in the mountains had bought the Germans time to get the bulk of their forces over to the mainland; Allied soldiers would pay for that in the future.

  * * *

  We were regrouping in a small town near Augusta shortly after Sicily had been liberated when word passed through the unit that Eisenhower and Bradley were coming to inspect us.

  This wasn’t a normal visit, nor were they checking to see if we were having trouble with our stocks of bandages or plasma. The generals were coming to hand out medals. The cameras rolled while Ike pinned a handful on the officers.

  General Bradley handled mine and a few others’, pinning a second Silver Star on me, awarded because of my stunt in the Sicilian minefield.

  When we were done, we all went back to work, waiting for orders we were sure would send us home.

  Seven

  (Some) Rest for the Weary

  Home, Sweet Home . . .

  I never got the paperwork for that medal, but at that point I didn’t much care; I figured it would come in due course.

  Besides, the war was over for us. We’d done our jobs, fighting for the better part of a year. We’d been in action for weeks and even months at a stretch. We’d done our duty and earned our passage back home.

  Maybe a ticker-tape parade? Or at least a small party with the family.

  That’s what we were thinking as we boarded the ship in Algiers and headed toward the Atlantic that October, two months later. Home was calling, and our heads were filled with so many sweet memories and grand visions that it was surprising the vessel didn’t just sink from the weight. I had a wife to get reacquainted with and a baby to meet. I wanted to see my parents.

  I wanted to sleep. I wanted not to hear noise. I wanted to close my eyes and not worry about how long I dozed off for, or worry over what new replacement I had to send to dodge bullets for the first time.

  I wanted peace.

  Trudging up the gangplank and onto the deck, those dreams seemed only a few days away.

  Then we realized there were English civilians aboard our ship.

  Slowly it dawned on us that we weren’t going home at all. Instead, we were going back to England to refit and retrain.

  The war was far from over, especially for us. We were the Big Red One, the army’s most experienced, most accomplished infantry division. We were too precious to be rotated home, let alone released to return to our families. We were the Big Red One, and it was our job to end the war.

  * * *

  I spent most of my days in the medical station above deck; it wasn’t the lap of luxury, but it was a lot better than the crowded bays and passages below. We were just busy enough for our thoughts to stay focused on what we were doing; the work was just easy enough for us to feel as if we were having a rest. After tourniqueting thighs amputated by shell fragments and patching groins mangled by Bouncing Betties, the worst compound fracture seemed like an easy fix. Being able to dispense aspirin for a fever without worrying about when the next supply might arrive was a treat rivaling the sweetest pie.

  We landed in Liverpool on November 5, 1943, and headed to Bridport, a quaint collection of villages not far from the English Channel. The area had once been known for producing rope. In the days before the war it was a market center, a place where fishermen might sell their catches wholesale and retail. It now had a more urgent task: housing soldiers for the coming invasion of France.

  Though we’d been away for barely a year, England this time around was a different place. There were still shortages and a great deal of sacrifice; those were constants throughout the war. Fortunately, bombings had become far less frequent; and while people remained uneasy, the planes that flew overhead now seemed always to belong to us.

  There was no sense that the war was going to end quickly, but there was a feeling of progress. Where once the newspapers had trumpeted stories of desperate commando raids as morale boosters, now the pages were filled with more honest appraisals of actions on far larger and more meaningful scales. Africa had fallen, then Sicily. Italy had changed sides and become a battleground. The Russians were fighting back.

  But in a sense, we were the biggest difference. There were more Americans in the country than when we left. Far more. And we weren’t junior partners in the war any longer. While our experience didn’t match that of the British—we had been fighting for less than half as long as they had—we’d learned many of the same lessons, and paid out tuition in blood.

  Some of the British officers at the top didn’t or couldn’t accept this. There would be friction between commanders like Montgomery and Patton for the rest of the war. But a lot of the “Tommies”—the regular British soldiers—did. Most of the ones I dealt with accepted us as equals.

  Or close. You know how soldiers are; their unit is always the best.

  The military vehicles that plied the streets of Bridport and the soldiers who filled the pubs made it impossible to think life was anything like normal in southeast England. German soldiers were building bunkers barely eighty miles away. But life went on. Bits of “normal” poked through the martial façade like dandelions poking through the pavement. Shopkeepers washed down their thresholds every morning; locals sifted into the pubs in the evening. England carried on.

  Our regiment was spread out through the area around Bridport. Some of the line companies had to settle for tents, but my med team was billeted in a pair of houses about a block from the center of town. We set up the aid station in one of the houses, taking over the downstairs living room as our examining/operating room; my office and bedroom were just upstairs.

  Our work was light, a world away from what we’d done on Sicily. I would always have someone on duty during the day just in case, but the most serious ailment for weeks on end was a cold. Not tha
t any of us complained.

  A dentist came in and we all became dental assistants. The drills the dentist used were operated by foot, the way sewing machines were. We’d have two fellows take turns, cycling the pedals while the dentist drilled.

  I went as easy as I could on the guys, not only because of what they’d gone through but because I had a notion of what was ahead. I didn’t make a fuss about their sleeping late. I gave them every break I could. I knew they’d appreciate it, and would pay it back when we needed it most.

  There were a few diversions. My brother Bill was billeted a few miles away in Walditch, and we got together whenever we could. I remember trucks regularly taking guys to London. Looking for something different to do, Bill and I went to a tennis match and watched for hours. We didn’t know what the devil was going on, but it was different.

  There were dances in the city, and big bands filling clubs with very good music. And to me, all the old things were interesting—castles and buildings from the Middle Ages, remnants of wars many centuries gone.

  I made friends with a local baker, who not only kept us well supplied with bread but occasionally invited me to his home for dinner. He had two daughters, one of whom was in the British army. A lot of the guys were dating English girls. These weren’t just wartime flings; I believe the division had eighty marriages come out of our stay there.

  Yet looking back, the sky always seemed gray for us that winter. We were resting but not quite relaxing. We were not home, and most of us knew there was no chance of going home until we went through one more stretch of hell. And as bad as things might have been in Tunisia and Sicily, it would be far worse when we hit the shore eighty miles away.

  We took our meals in a temporary mess hall set up in a building roughly across the street from that house. For Thanksgiving and Christmas we got special rations—turkey with the trimmings. Otherwise the food was filling, about on par for army food—better I’m sure than what the British were getting, but not something that would make a gourmet lick his lips.

  We were down the block from an all-girls’ school, and in the afternoons some of the guys would go out on the street to watch them pass. It made me realize how young some of our replacement soldiers were.

  And how lonely.

  The Home Front

  Back home, people hunkered down for another winter of war. Certain things that would have seemed odd two years before were now routine—blackout curtains or shades on windows on the coasts, cars without headlights at night. With imports severely limited and production shifting to items the army needed, rationing had been instituted to allow for fairer distribution and eliminate price gouging, or at least send it underground.

  The government sent families ration books with stamps, which had to be used to buy items like meat, sugar, and cooking oils. There were strict rules governing the stamps; if someone died, his or her stamps had to be turned in and couldn’t be used by another member of the family.

  There were also strict price controls on many items. People were urged to recycle tin cans and even fat for the war effort. Posters encouraged people on the “home front” to do their bit by planting victory gardens and canning vegetables and fruit to lessen the need back home.

  And of course this was the time of Rosie the Riveter—women took on factory and other jobs to make up for labor shortages caused by increased production and the need for soldiers.

  Movies were a big entertainment and diversion. A number were war movies, fictionalized versions of what we and our brother servicemen were going through, like Guadalcanal Diary, Destination Tokyo, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Laurel and Hardy, a famous comedy team of the era, managed to make air raids look like fun in Air Raid Wardens. There were family movies like Lassie Come Home and horror stories like Day of Wrath and Son of Dracula. Serial heroes soldiered up for the war in movies like Tarzan Triumphs.

  Most of these films are remembered now only by historians or movie buffs, but they were part of a shared experience back home. People weren’t just supporting soldiers; they were thinking about and praying for their husbands, their sons, their brothers. The boy who delivered your newspaper, the doctor who had looked after your measles, were now getting shot at on the other side of the world. Without real news beyond what might be gleaned from a V letter six weeks old, people hungered for whatever assurance they could get, no matter how vague or unconnected to the actual war.

  It must have worked that way for us overseas, too.

  A lot of the popular Christmas songs playing on the radio and selling in the record stores that year celebrated the good old days and family. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was a huge hit for Bing Crosby. Norman Rockwell’s famous painting Freedom from Want, showing a family sitting down to a turkey dinner, was actually painted for a magazine cover earlier in the year, but it caught what everyone in the U.S. was wanting—their “boys” home safe and sound.

  When would that be?

  Soon, maybe. But first there would be more war. Christmas Eve fell on a Friday that year. That afternoon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on the radio.

  “Our Christmas celebrations have been darkened,” said the president. “We have said Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but we have known in our hearts that the clouds which have hung over our world have prevented us from saying it with full sincerity.”

  That would change soon, he predicted. The coming year would see the Allies push ever closer to the root of the evil.

  An invasion was planned. Eisenhower would lead it. And the only possible result would be complete and total victory.

  My Guys

  War ages you up real fast. Our team members were in their early twenties, but they had the life experiences and maturity of far older men.

  The core of the team had been together since before Pearl Harbor. We’d lost some good men, but those who remained made our unit the best in the medical department.

  My opinion, of course.

  The faces roll through my mind as I look back, names slipping off my tongue . . .

  I remember John Givens as a truly dependable guy, an older man, or at least older than most of the rest—“old” is such a relative term, especially to me now.

  Herbert Glassford. Stocky and strong, exactly what you need in a litter bearer.

  Doyle Helms. Shy. Liked to sleep in his own tent, away from other guys.

  Stanley Appleby. One of my stars. You couldn’t find a better company man—though we had equals in our group.

  Leroy Kisker. Pale. A whiz at fixing things. Good with the tech stuff.

  Alton Pitt. Tall enough to be a basketball player. My man in charge of the new litter bearers.

  Ray Lepore. Tech 5, a little older than some of the other guys. Came on with us in ’42 in time for the invasion of Africa. Football player back in the Boston area. A fine soldier who caught on to new things immediately.

  Herbert Meyers. Had to be the easiest-going guy in the unit. Great demeanor. I made him a company man because he could get along with anyone and everyone. He was a Tech 3, senior guy, a leader.

  And then there were the new replacements, men who came in to us, filling in for the guys we’d lost along the way.

  Charles Shay was one of these. Quieter side. He had a different background than most of us—he was a Penobscot Indian.

  I had no say in who I got. I told headquarters how many men we needed, and they would send men over. For the most part, the guys who joined us had not had any training, at least not to the level we needed. We trained them ourselves, teaching them the fine points of bandaging while mortars are exploding nearby, showing them how to do a transfusion when the night is pitch black and there’s no one there to hold the flashlight, and all the other stuff they needed to know to help in combat.

  We went out on marches, building up endurance and strength. Fifty miles with the battalion, twenty-five out, twenty-five back, camping overnight along the way. During training, the company aid men would work through maneuvers with th
eir company, so they’d get to know not just the procedures but the men, and vice versa.

  I have a photo taken before the war started, and I’m the only one still alive. I’m the only one still here to remember it.

  Time humbles all.

  * * *

  My brother Bill was no longer with the medics.

  Following the battle of Troina, Captain Joe Dawson had been assigned to take over G Company, whose leader was shifted to another company in the battalion. Dawson asked my brother to come in as his first sergeant.

  Bill took the post. It meant a promotion, and it kept him in the regiment. He’d have more money to send home, and he’d still be around most of the action.

  I’m not sure whether he valued the promotion or simply a new challenge. I know he thought highly of Dawson—a wise assessment, as it would turn out. G Company had suffered enormous casualties; leaving Sicily, it was listed at 60 percent strength. Rebuilding it meant it could take on the personality of its leader, an aggressive, hard-charging GI. But it also meant a lot of training. Bill and the other NCOs had their work cut out for them.

  Around this time, Captain Dawson sat on a court-martial of a GI who had deserted just before the invasion of Sicily. The court-martial found the man guilty and sentenced him to death. (The sentence was commuted to forty years.) Dawson’s sentiments in a journal he kept spoke for many in the army:

  One lives a lifetime in a matter of seconds on the battlefront and many are those who have paid with their lives in order to protect the precepts of life for which we fight. Is it then fair to them to let one enjoy these blessings that shirks his responsibility and duty when others have paid so dearly? My only regret is that our judgement was not upheld . . .

  A lot of things can be forgiven in war; letting the guy next to you down isn’t one of them.

  Slapton Sands

  With the holidays gone, training started picking up. Around the middle of February we moved to Camp Devon, on the southwest coast. Two or three months earlier, the three thousand people living in the villages around Lyme Bay were ordered to leave. They weren’t told why, but many probably guessed that the beaches were a good place to practice amphibious landings. The cliffs and waves were similar to those across the Channel.