We had a couple from Rome, Italy, call us and ask if they could come meet us. We said sure, so they came over and we invited them to spend a day and night at our home. Never knew them before or anything, they just called and wanted to know if they could come on over. So we had a good time.
I started getting asked to come speak to schools and different functions. I went to a couple colleges, some high schools, a couple elementary schools. I found that the kids in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades were the most interested of anyone. You could hear a pin drop when you went in, and they could ask you some tough questions, too. I’d often fly to different events, different states, different countries overseas to speak. Sometimes other men from Easy Company would come on those trips, and we always had a good time meeting up again. Once I went on a USO tour; my son, Wayne, went with me. It was real good. We did other trips where we visited soldiers stationed in South Korea and Japan. Sometimes it came close to startling to see the reception the men of Easy Company had when it came to visiting soldiers. I guessed Band of Brothers had made a real impression on a lot of them. They’d stand in long lines to shake our hands and have us sign books and hats and pictures. Someone said we’d become the rock stars of the military world.
On the Korean trip, we were walking into a place to eat, four Easy Company men and four of the actors who played us in the series, and they had up one of those movie poster cutouts like they have for race car drivers at the grocery store. Well, we went and looked at that poster, and it was me. Peter Youngblood Hills, anyway, the actor who played me. That was strange, you know, seeing that. But it made me grin.
About the only problem I ever had was that sometimes when I was up on stage during all those tours, I needed to use the bathroom on account of my prostate problems. They’d have us all sitting there in a row for a long time, asking us questions, and it was hard for me to get up. So I developed this signal with Wayne. If I put one hand over my nose and pumped my other in the air like I was blowing a train’s whistle, well, that meant it was time, you know, because I needed help getting to where I was going. That signal worked out fine.
It was real good meeting all those folks when we were on tour. One fall, it was just me speaking over at Mountain Empire Community College, and a woman stood up during a question and answer time and introduced herself as Jacqueline Havaux Bowers. She explained that when she as a little girl, she lived in Bastogne, Belgium, when it was under Nazi occupation. She was one of those kids we’d see every so often, coming round and asking GIs for cigarettes and chocolate. From where she stood, out on the floor of the auditorium, she said something that really put a lump in my throat. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for us,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here at all, my family wouldn’t be here at all, if it wasn’t for soldiers like you.” Then she came up to the podium and gave me a great big hug. That put things into perspective for me, you know. All those years ago. To think here was someone who’d been helped by what we did.
Well, I found I wasn’t feeling low at all anymore. After the series came out and after all those speaking events came our way, I had a new reason to get up every morning, sick as I was some days. But most days I was feeling real good. Anytime the phone rang, I’d answer it. Often it was a request to do something, and most often than not, I’d say yes.
In 2004 we went over to Normandy again, for the sixtieth anniversary of the D-day invasion. That was a real good time, seeing all the guys again. Plenty of other veterans came to that event, too, and it was great to see so many veterans get to talk about what they had done and where they had been. The weather got mighty hot over at the dedication, but they passed out water and cookies and things like that. So it was okay.
Major Winters started not feeling well. We used to phone each other now and again, but it got to where he’d have a hard time on the phone. So we’d write now and again. I’d call McClung and Rogers, Jim Alley and Popeye. They’d call, too.
My oldest grandson, Jake, along with his wife, Dawnyale, took me back to visit Toccoa. Jake wanted to run the mountain, and that sounded good to me. Toccoa looked different than I remembered. They’d smoothed the road out. Trees were a lot bigger than when we’d been there. Jake and Dawnyale ran up Currahee, and I ran a bit of it with them. Oh, maybe a couple hundred yards or so. We drove through the town, and it didn’t take more than ten minutes until word got out and newspapers showed up. They ran a story with a headline that said, “Grandson Follows Grandfather’s Footsteps.”
Staff Sergeant Robert Rader was a good friend of ours. He died back in the late 1990s, then some years later they named a bridge in his honor out there in Paso Robles, California, where his family stayed. Eight or nine of the Easy Company guys went down for the bridge dedication, including me and McClung. It was a good time, and I was glad we could honor Bob Rader that way. On the way back to wherever we needed to be, all the fellas were in this van together and got thirsty. So we stopped in at a bar in this little town we were driving through. McClung went in to see if it was a suitable establishment. He came out after a minute and said, “This is our kind of place, boys. The bartender’s got two black eyes.” So we all piled out and went in, laughing.
In late 2006, McClung and me and several of the guys from Easy Company went back to Bastogne for the first time since the war. We hiked through the woods in the snow, saw the old foxholes that were still there, and met some former German soldiers who, way back when, had been shooting at us from the other side of the road. It sent a shiver up my spine being back in Bastogne. I can’t say that I liked being there again, even for a tour. But the trip brought to me a sense of closure, you know. The war was truly over. Finally I could shut the book. We shook those old German soldiers’ hands, and they shook ours. And through an interpreter we shared some stories. We were even able to swap some jokes. None of us were fighting anymore.
Well, we went home and I started studying the last few years since the series had come out, and I felt so thankful for the good reception we’d all received. I never could have imagined things would have turned out as good as they did, but I felt like I could do things again, you know. A remembered confidence was coursing through my veins, though this time I felt at peace, like all along I had done what I was supposed to do. I didn’t need to explain the things I’d seen in the war. The things I’d done. I was Shifty Powers again, standing side by side with the best friends I’d ever known. I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.
That confidence worked itself out in some peculiar ways. Once, right around then, Dorothy and me were back at our house in Clinchco all alone, when all these motorcycles rumbled up and parked next to the river, a little distance away. It was growing dark and I started thinking they were going to have a wild party down near our house. Well, I didn’t want them raising Cain on my property, so I went and talked to a neighbor down the lane and said, “You keep your gun on me. I’m going down there to tell those guys to shove off.”
The neighbor agreed, so I hiked to the corner of my property, and, sure enough, all these young fellas had started drinking and carrying on. I walked into the center of those bikers, took a stick, and knocked out their fire. We had a few words along the lines of what I reckoned they’d understand. Then I started walking back to my house. About five minutes later, sure enough, they started up their motorcycles and roared out of there.
It felt good. To be back, you know.
It felt real good.
17
THE LAST GARDEN
I’m sorry to say that my good friend Popeye Wynn wasn’t with us when we had all that fun with the Band of Brothers tours. Popeye died in March 2000, right before the series came out. He was a kind, easygoing man and a great soldier. In his last years, he’d bought an old log cabin in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where he spent his last days with his family, fishing in the outer banks. I missed him greatly.
A few more years passed, like they’re prone to do, and it was a short while into 2008 when I start
ed having chest pains. At first I thought it was congestion, so I brushed it off. I had plenty of other things to worry about. In addition to the chest pains, my eyesight was getting worse all the time. My kids took me to Duke University for that, oh, three or four times. The doctors did laser surgery on me there, but it got to be so there wasn’t anything more they could do. I still had a bit of my peripheral vision left, but even that wasn’t very good. I hung on to my driver’s license, though. I still drove in daytime, only around the roads I knew.
I turned eighty-five that March, and when the weather got warm enough I planted a wonderful garden. It was going to be a real good garden that summer of 2008. Corn. Peas. Tomatoes. Beans. Cucumbers. Beets. Sunflowers—real big sunflowers, as tall as your head. I planted my garden on the north side of the property. We called that section the North Forty, and I also planted another garden on the south side. We called that the South Forty. I got my tomatoes staked up good and high. Deer tended to wander by and eat the tops of my tomato plants. I’d see their tracks in the morning. They’d walk down the mountain and across the river and into my yard.
It was a mild spring, I noticed, when I’d be out cultivating and planting. My daughter, Margo, came over and helped as often as she could. Most days I didn’t feel well, but I thought I didn’t let on. One day we were both out working in the garden, and I was digging a hole for a tomato plant. I said something—and I regret this so much—I said something to Margo that was short. By the look on her face, I could tell I’d hurt her. I sat down on the bench and said, “Sissy, if I say something that hurts your feelings, I really don’t mean it, I just get so tired sometimes.” And she knew what I meant, I think, for she came over and gave me a long hug. All was forgiven, you know, but in my bones I felt this tiredness I couldn’t put my finger on. A storm seemed brewing on the horizon. The air felt heavy. The sky looked gray.
That summer I made plans to go to Iraq in September with some of the Band of Brothers. We wanted to go encourage the coalition troops. Boy, I really wanted to go on that trip. My chest was still hurting me, though, so I went to the doctor to get an X-ray and antibiotics for that congestion, but the pills didn’t seem to help much.
All this time I kept having some squabbles with a gas company, and that occupied a piece of my mind. I’d always thought that when a body gets up in years, this kind of aggravation would let up, but it didn’t seem to. My grandparents had owned about two hundred and fifty acres up on Frying Pan where I used to hunt as a kid. When my grandparents passed, their property got divided among their kids . A few family members sold their chunks, but my family kept ours. Well, a couple of the pieces that got sold had the access road running through them. One gas company bought that property, and they were real nice about letting us use their road to get up to our land. Then the rights got transferred to another company, and the other company leaned more toward the ornery side. They said we couldn’t use the road anymore and put a gate on the road and a lock on the gate. I went and talked to them about getting a key to that gate. I talked till I was blue in the face. But that didn’t do no good. So I went and shot the lock off the gate.
Now, it was in our legal rights for us to use that road, because there’s a cemetery on our property at the top of that road, and nobody can legally block access to a cemetery. So I went over to the Clintwood Courthouse and talked to a boy there about getting a key. The boy at the courthouse said fine and mailed me three keys, but not one of them worked. Sometimes when you cut a key, the way they machine it, things don’t line up right at first. So I took a little file and smoothed the edges of the key to get the burrs off. But still it didn’t work. So I decided to let things rest for a spell. I reckoned a man needs to let some things go unresolved.
Well, my chest was still hurting, so I went in for more tests. The doctors did every test you could think of and found another cancer outside my lungs. It wasn’t lung cancer. It was bone cancer, and none of us were happy about that. They scheduled me for radiation treatments, every day, five days a week, for eighteen days, and I started taking those. Those treatments absolutely wiped me out. I’d get up in the morning, drink my coffee, and go to the cancer center. It’s a sixty-mile trip, and Wayne would need to drive me that far. I’d come home, sit around and rest, then go to bed and get ready to do it again the next day.
Those treatments made me real weak. I liked to get out on the deck and shoot my rifle, you know. Nobody lived very close around our house, so it was okay. I couldn’t see to hit a target very well anymore, but I knew where they were. I didn’t hit them all the time, but I’d hear the gun and smell the smoke, so I’d enjoy that. My M1 was my favorite rifle, but it got hard to lift, you know, and I told Dorothy, “You know, that doggone rifle has gotten fatter since the war.” Ammunition for M1s was hard to come by, but my friends would bring me clips. I had a .22 with a scope, which helped me see the targets, so I’d shoot that every so often. Then I had a Lugar that I’d shoot, and a .22 pistol that I’d like to shoot. As a last resort I had a BB gun, and I’d take that out on the deck.
But those days after the treatments, I mostly sat.
Our dear granddaughter-in-law Amanda, who’s married to Luke, contracted cancer as well during this time, and she and I had similar treatments. It seemed strange—she, in her twenties, and me, such an old-timer, fighting the same disease. I gave her a nickname, like I did with all my grandkids. I called her Mandy Pandy, and we’d compare notes on how things were going, you know. After we’d both had treatments, her hair started to grow back, and she bleached it blond. I joked with her that I hoped my hair would grow back the same color.
Well, the months went on, and Mandy Pandy started beating her cancer and feeling better, and I was real happy for her and the family, I was. What aggravated me was knowing I wasn’t getting the best of mine. Most days I was feeling so weak. After a while about all I could do is sit on the front porch and watch the hummingbirds come around. Then I was staying inside more, sitting in my chair, listening to books on tape. That’s what I did on good days.
I got to thinking about all my friends in Easy Company, and how there were only a few men left. At our age, a man couldn’t help but look to the other side, you know. Some of the men didn’t want to talk about it at all. They were putting off thinking about death, as best as they could, I guessed. Some of the men acted like it was no big deal, you know. But I knew death worried some of the men, too. At our age, it was right around the corner, and we all needed to face it as best we knew how.
My good friend Sergeant Jim “Moe” Alley died that March 2008, and I was sorry to hear the news. Lieutenant Buck Compton and his kids, Tracy and Syndee, went to the funeral, and said it was real nice. I guess old Moe had always been a tough nut to crack when it came to thinking about death and the spiritual side of life. At the funeral, the preacher told a story of how he’d visited Moe plenty of times, even when he was real sick at the end. The preacher always asked Moe if he was ready to go, and Moe always let on that he was fighting his Maker, not willing to give an inch. Then one day, I guess, Moe decided his battling ways were through. That day when the preacher visited and asked Moe if he was ready to do business with God, Moe said yes. So Moe and God did business. Then, just a day or so later, Moe waded through the river and passed to the other side. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that Moe was now walking those streets of gold.
That summer and fall 2008, another author decided to write another book about Easy Company. Seemed like all the folks who’d read Band of Brothers wanted to know more about the men’s lives. Well, there weren’t more than maybe thirty men in the company left by then, and twenty of them agreed to talk. So the author interviewed the last few surviving men from Company E, and asked about our stories. The book was going to be called We Who Are Alive and Remain, and it was set to come out in the spring of 2009. I was one of the men he talked to several times for that book. One day we talked, and it was a real nice fall day. Over the phone, I described to him all that was happenin
g around me. The sun was shining, and I could feel its warmth on my face. I was able to sit outside on the deck and drink my coffee and listen to the birds. The leaves were turning color and coming off the trees. We had golden and red ones and brown ones. It was a real good day, and I told him so. A while later, he sent a preview copy of that book to the house, and even though I couldn’t read it myself, the rest of the family read it and told me about it, and I liked how things were put. I said to Dorothy that I reckoned that book would be a dandy.
One morning I was thinking about what life might be like for me next spring when that book came out. I hoped I’d be there at the next reunion to see my friends again. But as I walked down the steps from the kitchen to the garage, I took a tumble. My legs were so shaky; my grip on the railing so weak. Dorothy and I talked, and from that point on I knew I had to be careful, so cautious about falling, you know. It was a mess, that cancer. It was really a mess. I still hoped I’d be able to get to the next reunion. The men would call every so often, and I’d call them back, too. Hayseed Rogers, he was ninety and still strong. His voice was always clear over the phone. And McClung, always good to talk with him. So good.
That September, I was all packed to go to Iraq on a Band of Brothers tour of the troops there. I wanted so badly to go, you know. But the night before I was to leave, I toppled over again and broke a rib. I was pretty certain then that my traveling days were over. I wasn’t going anywhere with that broken rib inside me. I hated to let those troops down, you know, after I’d already said I’d go. I really did.
Well, things started going downhill more quickly after the broken rib. Nothing was healing right. I vowed I’d fight that cancer with everything I had. More chemo and radiation treatments were scheduled, and I took those. The doctor told me about a new treatment called CyberKnife, real high levels of radiation there, and I took that. He hoped the cancer would go into remission, and that’s what I was hoping for, too. But that winter I felt so cold, you know, and my chest hurt all the time, and I wondered if I’d ever see the spring. My hearing stayed strong, and I was able to use the phone. I was glad about that. It’s a wonder all the fellas weren’t deaf. Those M1s were mighty loud, and we never wore ear protectors during the war, although I’d wear them after whenever I was shooting off my deck.
Shifty's War Page 22