Shifty's War

by Marcus Brotherton

  Of course, you wore a steel helmet, a basic steel pot with a chin strap. You had your main parachute on your back, and your reserve chute on your front. Around your neck went a yellow Mae West lifejacket to be used if you landed in water. I guess the Germans had flooded a lot of the inland areas, real deep water there, so drowning was a real concern. Funnily enough, they called it a Mae West because it inflated and looked like two huge bosoms. The lifejacket wasn’t a perfect system by any means. I tried it a couple times in training, and it was almost impossible to get to the handles that opened up the bladders to inflate it. If you did, the Mae West would inflate against your equipment and sometimes pop. Or it’d squeeze the air out of you until you passed out. Shoot—with all the equipment we wore, I doubt a Mae West would have kept us afloat much anyway.

  If a man operated a machine gun or bazooka or was part of a mortar squad, he carried pieces of that equipment, too—the base plate, the launch tube, the rockets, and so on. Other fellas might help him carry his ammo or extra equipment. But it was heavy going there.

  The British had come up with this new thing, a leg bag, they called it, and some of the fellas were given these leg bags to stow extra ammunition, radios, machine-gun tripods, medical gear, high explosives—anything we might need once on the ground. I didn’t carry one, wasn’t ordered to, and didn’t volunteer. I’d never want to stick my weapon in a leg bag. I always strung it up front through my reserve chute. That way, my rifle was always in my hands, even as I floated down from the sky. My rifle was always loaded, always ready to fire. By the time a paratrooper got all his gear on, I’d guess he was more than double his body weight. It was tough to walk, much less climb into a plane.

  We got mail call then, and I learned my younger brother Jimmy had enlisted in the Navy and was being sent to the Pacific. That meant three boys out of four from the Powers family were now in the service. Frankie, the youngest, was still too little, but wanted to go as soon as he was able. Another fella from the company, Bill Guarnere, wasn’t as lucky with the letter he received. He learned his brother, Henry, a medic with the First Armored Division, had just been killed in the fighting in North Africa. We all felt real bad for Bill. He took the news hard, of course, and a new, angry glint came into his eyes. He vowed revenge on his brother’s death in the days to come.

  That evening before we headed to the airfield, the Army gave us the last supper. It was the best meal I’d ever eaten—thick steaks, mashed potatoes, bread with butter, peas, coffee—as much as any man could hold. Even ice cream for dessert. That wind still whipped outside, even stronger now, and as we cleaned our mess kits, word came that the mission was scrubbed for the night. We let out a moan and shuffled off to watch a movie instead. It proved real hard to sleep later on. We knew the wind would die down soon. There’d be no way they’d postpone the invasion twice.

  The morning of June 5 dawned clear and bright. We suited up again and were trucked out to the airfield. Each of us was ordered to swallow a motion sickness pill, which we had never needed before, and was given a little slip of paper. On it, General Eisenhower had written a message of encouragement. Bill Kiehn was standing next to me and read it out loud for all the guys to hear: “Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. . .. Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

  It took four extra guys, two pulling and two pushing, to get each man up into the plane. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw most of the company headquarters staff climbing into the same plane together, a different plane than me. Lieutenant Thomas Meehan was with that group, the man now leading Easy Company. Sergeant Bill Evans also climbed aboard, the officer nobody liked much. About a dozen other young leaders climbed into that plane, their faces set like flint. Flight 66. Funny how that name sticks in my mind, even today. A kind young medic named Ed Pepping was set to go on that flight, but they pulled him out at the last minute. Burr Smith, a bighearted Californian, was also set to get on that flight, but he was transferred to another plane at the last minute, too.

  It was real dusky inside our own plane as I climbed aboard. Paratroopers shuffled to sit down on the benches lining either side of the fuselage. Behind me in the stick was Sergeant Buck Taylor. He’d be the last man out of the plane and jump just after me. It felt good having a capable leader like him nearby. Ahead of me in the stick was Bill Kiehn; another good friend, he’d jump just before I went out. Popeye was placed in another plane. We promised we’d meet up on the ground if we could.

  As our plane’s engines roared up and we took off on the runway, I couldn’t help but think I was passing from one world into the next. We flew encased in the murky steel tube; the red lights inside the plane gave each man’s face a ghostly tint. You’d glimpse the glow from a cigarette tip now and again as men breathed in and exhaled smoke. No one joked or told stories. The engines rumbled with a deafening roar. The motion sickness pills mixed with the adrenaline in my veins, shoving it back to wherever it came from, making me feel far away, like my head wasn’t on my body anymore.

  Just before my eyes closed, one part of that little paper that Kiehn had read replayed in my mind. General Eisenhower was talking to us. I knew his voice from hearing it over the radio lots of times and I imagined it booming in my ears: “Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.”

  Yeah, I vowed silently, and so will we. We’re well trained and well equipped, and we’ll fight back with all we’ve got.

  Normandy lay ahead, the pills kicked in, and I drifted into an edgy sleep.

  6

  THE THINGS I HAD NO WORDS FOR

  My helmet clanked against the side of the plane, and my eyes flew open. Our jumpmaster braced himself near the gusts of the open door and glanced down at the channel. Word passed along the line of men: dots, he saw, stretching far across the moonlit sea—battleships, gunships, carriers, destroyers. All churning a beeline toward the Normandy coast. It felt good knowing all that massive firepower was on our side, you know, but still I worried for those boys who’d be storming the beach, come a few hours. Those of us who were going to jump into the middle of the mix would have it rough enough, I reckoned, but those who ran straight at the enemy would have it even rougher. I thanked God I was a paratrooper and not a rifleman down on those ships.

  We flew in formation for some time. The only sound was the drone of our C-47. It might have been past midnight, maybe one o’clock, when the dark hulk of the Normandy coastline emerged out the windows. Our pilots—God bless every one of them—had to face all this from another kind of perspective and make huge choices. We hit a cloud bank and dived from fifteen hundred feet to about seven hundred. We were still flying too high, too fast to make a safe jump, but I figured they’d slow down for us later on. The coast was nearly upon us, and I fidgeted in my seat near the back of the plane. Within arm’s reach were two fifty-gallon drums of aviation gas, carried as reserve fuel. I hoped to hell nothing would spark it off.

  When the first ping hit our plane, I thought we might be flying into a rainstorm. We kept flying and I heard two more pings. Three. Four. I glimpsed flashes of light, then something whammed against the fuselage like a sledgehammer on a railway spike. Our plane lurched as our pilot weaved to miss the next one. The sky brightened then shaded, blazed then blackened. It reminded me of fireworks except we were flying straight through the explosions. Another burst. Another wallop. Our plane shuddered and pitched us about. I heard a thick rat-a-tat-tat from antiaircraft fire. Bullets began to zing through our cabin and on through the other side. Another burst. Another flash. Heavy flak slammed against the side of our plane. Our left motor caught and sputtered. My nerves were taut. I writhed in my seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Bill Kiehn yelled. I shot a glance at Sergeant Buck Taylor. His fists wer
e clenched, his mouth held in a grimace. The plane made for too big of a target for the enemy. We were trapped inside. We couldn’t wait to jump out.

  Near the doorway, a red light flashed on, our signal to stand up and hook up. We sounded off, the plane still hurtling through the explosions. Starting at the back of the stick, each man shouted his number then tapped the shoulder of man ahead of him. Ten okay. Nine okay. Eight okay. Seven okay. We knew we had three minutes before the green light flashed on, our signal to jump. There came our green light, ahead of time. “Go! Go! Go!” yelled the jumpmaster. The line of men surged forward and out the door. Too fast! Too fast! I thought, the plane’s flying too fast, but I withheld a curse for our pilot. I knew the man was as scared as me. If I’d been him, I’d’ve done the same thing and kept flying as fast as I could. As I neared the door, our plane began to tilt. The motor must’ve been hit, all right. The pilot was leaning the plane to its side to put out the fire. Go! Go! Go! A few more seconds and the plane would be at a right angle. I’d be crawling up the side of a wall, unable to scramble up and jump free. The door was still about ten feet away. Bracing my leg against the incline, I plowed forward against the back of Bill Kiehn’s packed parachute. Go! Go! Go! In front of us loomed the crazy hole of night.

  The moment I jumped, a tremendous hurricane hit me from the plane’s prop blast. For a split second, everything seemed weightless; my body felt lost. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed our plane’s left motor flaming in a ball. My static line caught tight and jerked my chute open with a flapping whoosh from behind my head. Abruptly I slowed and swung through the darkness. The sky was full of lead and flak. Bullets ripped up at me, tearing apart my chute’s panels. A man on the ground was traversing us with long bursts of fire. How blue it looked, how green. I figured it’d be all red, you know, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know exactly how the Germans loaded their tracers, but we loaded ours with four bullets, then one tracer, then four bullets, then another tracer. So for every tracer I saw, I knew four more bullets were coming right behind it. I wanted to land, to crouch on the ground, to find a tree and duck for cover, but it felt like I wasn’t moving, just hanging stationary in the air.

  I almost broke a grin when I glimpsed treetops below my feet. But you don’t want to land in a tree, so I yanked on a riser, steering the chute to the side. My boots brushed past branches, scooted over the tops of hedgerows, and I aimed for an open, empty space. Field maybe. Not water, I hoped. I landed with a soft thud. Pasture. Thank God. Adrenaline surged through my body. I slid out of my chute, checked my rifle, and patted my gear to make sure everything was there. All my ammo was still on me, all my equipment looked in working order. The moon had broken through the clouds, and I crouched, not sure where anything was. I stared into the dim light, trying to orient myself. I wondered if I’d ever meet up with Popeye like we had promised. Off in the distance I heard gunfire. I wondered where the other men in my outfit were. I heard the late night warble of a crested lark, probably scared out of its nest. It was just that bird and me. The gunfire died down and it grew quiet. I was all alone.

  Well, the enemy could have been anywhere. My eyes adjusted to the light and I found I could make out the shape of things pretty well. Wasn’t much to see. Leaves and bushes. Deep shadows for cover. I was happy about that. I had parachuted into an area strewn with eight divisions of Germans, four million land mines, and fields said to be flooded higher than a man’s head, but I was perfectly dry and out in the boonies, with no fighting around. Our outfit was supposed to have dropped near a town called Sainte-Mère-Église, but I didn’t see no town. No buildings, no roads, no street signs. I got to studying about how fast we’d been flying, and the time it took to get all the men out of the plane. Between the first and last man out, I guess a lot of distance could fly by. I might have been anywhere. I wasn’t afraid. I mean, I was. But I wasn’t. We had received so much training, you know, I knew that I simply needed to take stock of my situation and do the next right thing. I remembered from the sand tables that we were landing on a little peninsula—Cherbourg, it was called. So Utah Beach would be to the east of me. If I got out my map and compass, I figured I could head down that way toward where the sun would be rising and hopefully find my outfit. I wondered if the rest of the fellas were as lost as I was.

  I started walking. I’d only gone about ten feet when a leaf flickered in the shadows of a nearby hedgerow. Moonlight spilled through the branches and I could see the man’s face clearly. Sergeant Taylor. He was folding up his map, shaking his head in disgust. I was glad he had made it to the ground without getting shot. I walked closer and he immediately recognized me. “Any idea where we are, Shifty?” he whispered.

  I shook my head. “Just glad to be on the ground, Sergeant.”

  “I think we’re off the map,” he said. “As close as I can figure, we’re about seven miles from where we’re supposed to be. We should be able to find a road and be there by first light. Follow me.”

  The plan sounded good and we set out at a march, all the time looking for trees, buildings, some sort of landmarks to get better bearings. Across the field I noticed another shadow moving in front of a hedgerow. Sergeant Taylor and I crouched to the ground. A silhouetted figure emerged from the end of thicket and started moving across the field toward us. The man held his weapon in the firing position and he moved slowly, glancing all around.

  “I’ll click him,” Sergeant Taylor said to me. “You aim.” I nodded and brought my rifle to eye level. The army had given us these little toy crickets that click-clacked as a signal so we could tell who was friendly out in the dark. Sergeant Taylor click-clacked the man. The figure walked closer without any response. He was maybe fifty yards away.

  “He’s a Kraut,” Sergeant Taylor hissed. “Shoot him, Shifty.”

  Squinting down the barrel of my M1, I could see the man’s outline. Forty yards. Thirty. I had a clear shot to his forehead. Earlier back in Aldbourne, I had filed my rifle’s sear, the piece that holds the hammer back when the bolt opens, so it made a hair trigger. It would only take a murmur of my finger to make my rifle fire. I steadied my aim. “Let’s give him another chance,” I said. “Give him the password.” My rifle stayed zeroed on the figure’s head. The army had also given us code words for signaling. You’d say a word and a man needed to answer the correct word, otherwise you were to blast him. The words changed every day or so. Tonight’s were “Flash” and “Thunder.”

  “Flash!” Sergeant Taylor called out in a hush. His voice seemed to go a mile in the night air. There was no response.

  “Maybe he didn’t hear,” I said.

  “He heard all right. Shoot him, Shifty. He’s a Kraut. Shoot him, now!”

  I steadied the rifle and held my breath. He was maybe fifteen yards away. So this was it. I started to move my finger.

  “Thunder . . . ?” came a man’s voice. “Jesus Christ, did someone say Flash?—Thunder! Thunder! For Christ’s sake, Thunder!”

  We recognized the voice immediately. It was Bill Kiehn’s. Sergeant Taylor and I stood up and motioned him over. Bill took a shaky step or two toward us and we saw his familiar face clearly in the moonlight. “Shit, Bill,” I said, and slapped him on the back. “I come near a hair of shooting you. I’m mighty tickled I didn’t.”

  “So am I,” he said, and gave me a wry smile.

  Bill Kiehn had lost his cricket signaler in the jump. He was breathing heavy but otherwise fine. He fell in with us, and we took off walking again.

  The grass was wet with dew, and we walked for some time without seeing anything significant or any people. Occasionally we heard gunfire, and we headed in the direction it came from. Near a row of trees we approached the figure of another man. He was lying on his side, moaning. We gave him both signals and he didn’t respond, so I held my weapon on him until we got close enough to see his face. It was Private First Class Phil Peruginni, another man from Easy Company. I didn’t know him well, but we had talked a few times. He was still harne
ssed to his parachute, his leg twisted in front of him.

  “Broken,” he said, as we crouched. “Couple places I think. Hurts like hell.”

  Sergeant Taylor pulled out his first aid kit and gave him his shot of morphine. “Sorry, Phil,” he said, “there’s nothing more we can do.” He turned to me. “Cover him up with his parachute, Shifty. It’ll keep him warm. Medics will find him soon enough.”

  I hated to leave the man, but Sergeant Taylor was right. We couldn’t carry the man in the condition he was in. Shoot, we had no idea where we’d carry him to. I took branches and camouflaged the area he lay in. Phil had a canteen full of water, his food, and another morphine syrette in his bag. We said so long and kept going.

  The darkness was turning gray when we stumbled across a two-lane road. It looked like it would lead to where we needed to be, so we started to follow that. It might be safer to follow a road, you know, or it might be more dangerous. But following it was easier than hiking cross-country, that was for sure. We walked along the road and didn’t see any Germans, though after a little while we began to see a civilian or two sticking their heads out from behind their haystacks.

  The sky began to show pale orange across the horizon, pale blue farther up toward the clouds. Dawn was breaking, June 6, 1944. In a few hours, our men on the ships would be storming the beaches. As we walked, day-old mosquitoes buzzed near our ears, eager for one more chance at blood. Sergeant Taylor, Bill Kiehn, and I made a small band of three as we headed east. We walked as near to the sides of the road as we could, with me slightly ahead of the other two men. As we rounded a curve, I heard voices around the other side. Dropping to one knee, I raised my hand in a fist, the signal for the others to stop. We listened, but the voices had faded, so we scrambled closer into the trees off the road and edged forward. We pushed back branches and caught a clear view of a group of men setting up a roadblock.