by Don Malarkey
Some of our fun was a bit more conventional, like me emerging as Easy’s dart champion in the British pubs. Or like Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band coming to put on a concert in Newbury. Miller’s band was my favorite, and Skip’s as well. Not only did I love his music, but I felt a kinship to the man. I’d been a Sigma Nu at the University of Oregon; he’d been a Sigma Nu at the University of Colorado. Each company was allotted six tickets. I went with Skip, Guarnere, Toye, and a few others. The place was packed, largely with well-oiled paratroopers and their English girlfriends, none of whom were particularly on their best behavior.
The first song was “Moonlight Serenade,” which the band charged through beautifully despite a ton of gabbing from the audience. The band followed with the famous “In the Mood.” Latecomers were straggling in and trying to find seats. After about sixteen bars, Miller’s baton came down and stayed down. The band stopped on cue, as if somebody had pulled the plug on a jukebox machine.
I was stunned. Miller took the microphone and said if he heard one more sound from late-arriving paratroopers, the band would walk offstage. For good. Furthermore, he hadn’t expected to see a bunch of officers hogging the front rows. Generals, colonels, and other officers went to work, turning into enforcers instead of listeners. It worked. Nary a sound was heard the rest of the evening. It was a highlight of my military life.
But soon after came a couple of lowlights. One night, me, Chuck Grant, Joe Toye, and a few others were in our room on the third floor at the Regent Palace, drinking, when Joe said he needed to take a leak and headed down the hallway. Fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t back. With his good looks and boxer’s biceps, we figured he might have run into some sweet British girl. But half an hour later, when he still wasn’t back, we started getting concerned.
“I’m going looking for him,” I said.
I walked into the lavatory. No Joe. I was turning to leave when I heard a noise outside. One of the windows was slightly open. Strange. I poked my head out. There was Joe, climbing out on the roof of an atrium. It was glass and fortified with chicken wire. It had to be strong, Joe weighed nearly two hundred pounds. It was three stories down off the sides.
“What the hell you doing out there, Joe?”
He froze.
“Please, come on back.”
I wasn’t sure if he was drunk, crazy, or a little of both.
“Joe, come on, everybody’s worried about you.”
For a moment, I wondered if he wasn’t trying to do something drastic. Gradually, I coaxed him back and, when he was safely inside, looked him dead in the eye.
“Joe, what’s going on?”
The look in his eye told me the question might have been a bit harsh. Because here’s this guy with arms like pistons—toughest guy in the unit, period—and he’s looking like he’s about to cry. He started going on the way he did at the pub before we’d made our Normandy jump. About his childhood. His dad. Forced into the coal mines at fifteen. His not being able to speak or write as well as he thought he should.
“The hell of it is, Malark, I feel like a friggin’ failure.”
“You’re no failure, Toye, and you know it. I’ve seen how you gobbled up Currahee week after week. I saw how you fought on D-day with no skin on your left arm. And how the guys look up to you.”
“I might have gotten a scholarship, played college football.”
“And wound up right here, Joe, like Buck Compton and the other college football stars. Look, I’m not just blowing smoke when I say this, but you’re the most admired man in Easy. Ask any of ’em. They’ll tell you.”
He brought his hand up to his face and wiped his eyes.
“Look, Joe, that you didn’t go to high school—hell, that’s not your fault. You didn’t have any choice. We all have things in our past we regret—people we regret—but you can’t unring a bell.”
Whether it was the booze wearing off, my words, or his coming to terms with whatever he was wrestling with, he sort of nodded. “Let’s get back to the room,” he said. We never spoke of the incident again. And he always remained one of my closest friends, especially after my run-in with Dewitt Lowery.
In Aldbourne, I’d come back to the barracks after a night of pub-crawling and I heard some sniffling coming from the bunk across from mine. In the near dark, I realized it was Lowery, a kid from the South, sitting on the side of his bed. He smelled all boozed up, which, frankly, wasn’t uncommon for a lot of us. But as I got closer, I realized he was crying. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Dewitt, are you—?”
He bristled. “Stay away from me, Malarkey,” he shot back, then flipped out his jump knife and stuck it right at my gut. I looked down. The point of the blade was about an inch from my stomach.
That’s when it happened. These two strapping arms came at Lowery from behind, lifted him up, spun him around, pinned him to the wall, and clamped a hand to his throat. It was Joe Toye. It scared the living hell out of Lowery. And, for a moment, me.
“Damn you, Lowery,” he said. “You ever threaten Don Malarkey again and I’ll kill you. Got that? I’ll kil/you.”
In the morning, Lowery apologized to me. The irony was that what had gotten his dander up was the same thing that had sent Joe Toye into a tailspin that night at the Regent Palace: thinking he wasn’t as smart as some of the rest of us. Lowery had apparently taken a lot of harassing that night in the pubs about being from the South, and not well educated, well spoken, or well read. And it festered inside until he exploded, in his case, with a knife to my gut.
That incident, Joe’s incident, and one involving me reminded me that all guys really wanted—all I really wanted—was a little respect. And when it wasn’t there, we all handled it in different ways, some worse than others. One evening, we were at the Red Cross Club when 1st Sgt. Carwood Lipton walked by. Lipton had suffered an arm injury in Normandy, and Don Moone and I let our Irish humor too far out on its leash. “Moonbeam” chided him as Lipton passed in one direction. I got him on the return trip.
“Hey, crip,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He grabbed each of us by the collar and lifted us from our chairs.
“You wanna get pulverized together or one at a time?”
We were too scared to speak. Lipton let go. “Hell, I’m sorry,” he said, “but if this arm doesn’t heal right, it could cost me my football career.”
Everyone had a story deeper than what you could see—and some of us looked pretty damn foolish for not realizing that. Some stored hurts deep down, hurts that rose to the surface in some unplanned moment like that. Well, not everyone. I had my wounds. And I knew how to wound others with my selfishness; you could ask Bernice Franetovich about that. But, for now, I’d hidden mine real deep—in the same way the cutthroat trout on the Nehalem would tuck themselves back under a log or back behind an overhanging branch or in the shade. For protection, plain and simple.
Two months after we’d arrived back in England, Easy Company, loaded to the hilt in a C-47, left for a daylight jump into Holland and a whole new chapter of war. The plane, towing one of the hundreds of gliders that were used to drop men, artillery, and more, headed east, passing over London.
Though, after my dizzy spell in that Normandy tree, I’d worried a bit about flying again, it hadn’t been a problem; once the rest of the 2nd Platoon had piled in, I wasn’t about to stay behind. I kept looking out my window, not easy given that my back was to it and, piled with gear, wasn’t exactly mobile. You could see P-47 and P-51 fighter planes on our flanks. We had escorts on this jump.
Training had been light since our arrival back in England. Combat jump after combat jump was planned, but scrapped, largely because General Patton’s Third Army troops were moving so fast across France they were blasting right through our planned drop zones. There’s no need for air troops when the boys on the ground are taking care of business. We cheered each report of their success; it postponed our return to battle. But nothing seemed to be gettin
g in the way of our Holland drop, which involved none of the secrecy we’d used for the Normandy mission.
We headed over the Strait of Dover, and looking back, we could see the white cliffs. Soon we were over occupied Holland. We were homing in on our drop zone, about twenty miles beyond the front line of the British Second Army, just west of Son. We were to be attached to the British Second Army and be part of General Montgomery’s plan to end the war quickly. Our objective was to take control of the north-south road that ran about forty miles from Eindhoven to Ethel to Nijmegen to Arnhem and its many bridges. To open a path for the British XXX Corps to drive through Arnhem and over the Lower Rhine River and into Germany. A massive British tank force was to breech the German lines and move straight to Arnhem on the path cleared by the Airborne. It was to be called Operation Market Garden.
I looked at the dozen and a half guys around me. Some new faces, like Babe Heffron. Lots of familiar faces. Leo Boyle was back in action after his leg wound in Normandy. My pan of the guys stopped on Eugene Jackson, a guy who, in some ways, had no business being here. He’d been seriously wounded in Normandy. Taken a large fragment from a mortar in the side of his head. Left a six-inch gash and took half his ear. But one day he showed up, reporting for full field duty, all wrapped up in bandages, looking like something from a Halloween haunted house.
A few of us went to Winters or Compton—can’t remember which—and said there was no way Jackson was ready for duty again; the guy should be back in a hospital. Winters checked him out, agreed, and read the riot act to regimental medics who’d given the thumbs-up for his return. Jackson was returned to Oxford. But he’d recovered, and here he was, ready to go again. Ready to fight. I looked at him and just mentally shook my head in amazement. What an amazing bunch of guys.
Spirits were high. We were well rested, and no longer being hounded by the likes of Sobel and Evans, God rest his soul. Winters had replaced the unreasonableness of these two with a sense of compassion and fairness. It was clear and sunny over Holland, a rarity around here. High noon, September 17, 1944. Time to get this war over with, maybe by Christmas.
10
“BEYOND THIS PLACE OF WRATH AND TEARS”
Holland
September 17-November 26, 1944
As I neared the ground, the thousands of parachutes near and far looked like so many jellyfish floating in the Warrenton boat basin back home. Compared to Normandy, landing in Holland was a breeze, the biggest concern being hit by falling equipment or a glider. No hedgerows. No flak. No darkness. We quickly assembled in a nearby wooded area, the Zonsche Forest. Suddenly, I heard a sickening sound in the sky: Two gliders had collided and, with a sort of pathetic quiet, fell to earth.
We moved east to the Son-Veghel highway, then headed south for our first objective: capturing the small town of Son and, more important, a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal, just south. Capturing Son was a cakewalk—the Germans had fallen back—and now we needed to capture the bridge. But less than a kilometer from the bridge, our column was pounded by German 88 artillery and a machine gun, both coming at us from straight down the road.
Nobody got hit, but we were under serious attack. And that allowed the Germans to finish the job of wiring the bridge with explosives to blow it, a strategic move that would slow the Allied march considerably. Covering the east side of the road, Easy Company pushed forward, firing rifles and lobbing mortar shells, finally silencing the Germans. But not until they’d exploded the bridge. That night, we lashed a bunch of small boats together and crossed in the darkness. We would attack Eindhoven the next morning, E Company entering the city from the northeast.
As we approached the city of about one hundred thousand, civilians and partisans were eager to point out locations of holed-up Germans, having been under the Nazi thumb for more than than five years now. The Dutch, showering us with shouts of “Nice to see you” and gifts and invitations for food and drink, were far more helpful in this regard than the French. In fact, so many Easy Company guys had been sent to follow leads like this that Buck Compton and Bill Guarnere couldn’t spare any more men.
But I was told to go with some other E Company men to check out one report of German soldiers holed up in a basement. I was packing a tommy gun. We yelled for them to come out, and lo and behold, they filed up like model prisoners—ten to fifteen of them. I was surprised at the ease with which they gave themselves up.
Meanwhile, others in Easy Company didn’t have it so good. Lt. Bob Brewer was leading a patrol on the outskirts of town when a sniper caught him right in the throat with a bullet. He went down like a man who would never get up. The guys around him—I was elsewhere—saw the blood pouring from his neck, saw him writhing on the ground, and with no medic around gave him up for dead. But, when the skirmish was over, a Dutch farmer raced to Brewer, stopped the bleeding, and most likely saved his life. When medics came across Brewer, he was still very much alive. They claimed that without the farmer’s help, Brewer would certainly have died. Instead, he was shipped out to England and went on to live a fruitful life, spending a good part of it in the CIA.
We met little resistance and had Eindhoven in our hands by late in the day, then awaited the Brits and the U.S.-made Sherman tanks they were driving. They soon arrived. At this rate, I figured, I’d be in Astoria for Christmas. At daylight the next morning, Dutch women moved through the fog, delivering cookies to our foxholes. What service! These Dutch were wonderful. But our walk in the park was about to turn bloody.
As we pulled a U-turn and swung back north, in pursuit of a tiny village called Nuenen, we moved through and were just on the outskirts when it happened. All was quiet. But, then, German machine-gun fire broke out from both flanks. A German panzer unit had formed a half-moon defense.
“Kraut tanks, kraut tanks!” soldiers were yelling. Apparently a panzer brigade, stationed just to the east in Helmond, had arrived with fifty tanks. We’d never seen an offensive like that. One of the tanks fired on a British tank and hit it dead-on. Flames burst into the sky. The panicked crew popped out, the gunner last. With no legs. The tank, on its own, kept moving forward, threatening to run over our own guys, who had to slither toward the enemy to avoid being squashed, the results of which we’d seen in Normandy. It wasn’t pretty.
A second British tank emerged. It, too, got blasted. Two more went up in smoke. Two others turned and headed back to Nuenen. Easy Company fell back with them, bullets adding insult to injury on our retreat.
A handful of guys went down. One was Buck Compton, taking bullets in his butt. A handful of us made our way toward him.
“Get the hell out of here!” he said. “Leave me!”
We ignored his pleas. Eugene Roe, our medic, crouched to give him some help. Bullets flew around us.
“Let the friggin’ Germans take care of me,” Compton said above the sound of machine-gun fire and more. “Take care of yourselves.”
Given the way we were being pounded, it seemed like a good idea, but no way were we leaving Buck. His size—he was 220 pounds—almost meant he’d get his way by default. But then someone thought fast: We ripped the door off a farm outbuilding and Guarnere, Toye, Babe Heffron, and I all but lashed him to it and dragged him to a roadside ditch until we could slide him on a tank, facedown since his wounds were on his backside.
I was always amazed at how black humor showed its face amid the horror of war. Carwood Lipton looked at Compton and laughed, having heard that the bullet had gone in one cheek and out the other. “You’re the only guy I saw who got hit with one bullet and got four holes in him,” he said. Compton didn’t think it was as funny as Lipton and calmly threatened to kill him if he ever got off the friggin’ tank.
Around us, guys were going down like bowling pins. Chuck Grant took a hit. Some guy—can’t remember who—turned to jelly amid the hail of machine-gun bullets. Just curled up in a ball against some rock wall and tried to will himself back home or something. We’d lost four men; eleven others were wounded. One had
gone nuts. So we did the only thing we could do: got the hell out of there—as in retreat. It felt rotten.
The Germans had Holland and weren’t about to give it back. We wanted to continue heading north to Nijmegen on what we’d started calling Hell’s Highway. Ultimate goal: Germany. Their goal was to get through to the highway and split our forces. They hadn’t done it at Nuenen, but would try again. And succeed.
Near Veghel, we’d been called to an armored column of British tanks and vehicles en route north. For the first time in Holland, we were in trucks. We’d got reports from the Dutch underground that a panzer attack was headed northwest toward Uden, another town just north of Veghel. Suddenly, a German panzer task force slammed through our column, splitting Easy Company in two. One group, headed by Winters and including Skip and Toye, ended up in Uden. A small group of others, about eight of us, headed by Guarnere, were pinned down in Veghel, about three miles southwest. The Germans had circled the town with tanks and were shooting the living hell out of everything. Bullets zinging. Walls exploding. Guys screaming. The worst we saw in Holland. Pure hell.
Guarnere and I talked it over. We needed to locate the F company commander and explain our dilemma. Tell him we could, if he wanted, join up with his group. The officer told us to keep under cover; he’d let us know if we could be of use. We wound up in the cellar of a house packed with Dutch family members and neighbors on the north fringe of the battle lines. Outside, shells, bullets, mortars, and grenades had turned the quiet town into another stop on Hell’s Highway. The noise and pounding wouldn’t stop. We thought we were goners. Men and women were sobbing. Praying. Children were crying. The works. Not that we soldiers weren’t about to pee our pants, too. For all we knew, the rest of our company had been blown from here to hell’s half acre and before long the front door would get busted down and we’d all be learning our Heil Hitlers. Or worse. Later, we learned that the others in our company had assumed the same thing about us: that we were all goners.