Sergeant Johnson added, “If you would change that around just a little and include acting NCO, would you say yeah?” Of course I was the only acting sergeant at the time.
I said, “I want to tell you boys something. Listen good. I didn’t come in here to kiss anybody’s ass. I’m going out the same way but if you all make an accusation against me on this and you can’t prove it, I’m going to demand a transfer. I’ll go to an outfit where they appreciate a fighting man. So just take your pick.”
Well, they never did accuse me. They never did charge me with it but they were all convinced that I did it. Of course they saw that it was futile to keep everybody under arrest. Everybody was ready to go AWOL. The next day we blew up a corner of the barracks. They began to fear what we would do next so they lifted the restriction on passes for Regimental Headquarters Company. The guys got acquainted with their women and mothers and dads. I did not care whether I was there or in town.38
PFC?
August 29, 1943
We finally loaded up and shipped up to Camp Shanks, New York,39 our port of embarkation. That place was top secret. After we arrived they put us in a one-room gymnasium. Boy, it was like a prison. They had armed guards on the doors and walked every inch of the perimeter. It was almost impossible to get out.
While we were there they had people go through our records real good to see if our insurances were in order and that we had specified next of kin. They went over our records with a fine-tooth comb. I guess every guy in there grabbed a file and just checked a certain section, then handed it on to someone else.
Well, they called Browny and said, “You have made a mistake in McNiece’s records.” Lieutenant Brown had become the acting company commander right after Hannah was promoted to the Regimental S-3.40
He said, “No, I have not made a mistake in McNiece’s records. They’re correct.”
They said, “Well, you’ve got him listed as a buck private.”
Brown said, “That’s what he is.”
They said, “This is a disgrace to think that you have had a man in the airborne units for thirteen months that never made PFC. That won’t get it at all. We’ve trained him for a year and a half and got him ready to ship over there and get killed maybe and he is still a buck private.”
Brown said, “I don’t care if he’s been in here thirteen months or if he’s been in here thirteen years, he’ll still be a buck private. He is not the type of person you would promote to PFC.”
They said, “Well, that won’t work. We’re sending his papers down there and you will make him a PFC tomorrow.”
He said, “Well, it is against my desires and wishes and better beliefs, but I’ll do it.”
So he called down to Miller and said, “Top Kick, send McNiece down to the orderly room. I’ve got to talk to him.”
Top Kick had already missed me. He had figured out that I had gotten out of there and gone to New York. I had professed to be sick that morning. I wanted to go on sick call. Well, after I left for sick call I managed to get on out of that building. I took off to New York City which was just a short distance away.
Miller called down to sick call and they said no, they didn’t have Private McNiece. So he knew I was AWOL and we were going to ship out the next day.
Top Kick said, “Browny, I don’t see him. I don’t know where he is exactly right now.”
Browny said, “He’s in that room with you. You get busy looking for him. I want to have him in my office right now.”
Top Kick answered, “I’ll call you when I get him located.”
Browny said, “You’re going to locate him right now. I’ve got orders. I’ve been chewed out from the colonel on down for this deal. We’ve got to make him a PFC.”
Top Kick said, “I don’t know if I can get hold of him right now.”
Browny said, “Wait a minute. Is he AWOL? He’s got to be AWOL if you can’t locate him in two buildings.”
Top Kick finally admitted, “Jake’s got out of here some place. He’s not here. I imagine he’s down in New York City getting drunk.”
Browny said, “I can’t believe that Jake would do that knowing that we are shipping out.”
Top Kick said, “I guarantee you he’ll be here in the morning. He’s not trying to get out of anything. He is just as anxious to get overseas as the rest of us.”
Browny said, “You send him in to me the minute he gets here.”
I came back the next morning and got all my stuff together. Top said, “Go in there and talk to Browny.”
So I went in there and he told me this conversation he had had with the hierarchy about making me a PFC. He said sternly, “I’m going to tell you the truth, McNiece. I’m going to write up exactly what has happened and tell them I refuse to make you a PFC even if they threaten to send me to Leavenworth!”41
Years later at a reunion, he laughed and told the other guys, “Jake said, ‘Well, Captain Brown, I really appreciate that. It would tear me up and change my whole disposition to be working under that kind of responsibility and authority of a PFC.’”
I was an acting sergeant the whole time during training, and when I jumped in behind the lines I was automatically promoted to staff sergeant. When I came out, why I would get busted in very short order back down to buck private. I never held PFC at any time I was in the service.42
Top Kick always interceded for me whenever he could. Colonel Sink and Uncle Charlie Chase kept telling him to get rid of my ass but he said, “No, no. McNiece isn’t really hurting anything. There will be a day when you are going to be awful glad to have McNiece around. McNiece will do you a good job.”
2
FUEL FOR THE MYTH
THE VOYAGE
September 5, 1943
We left the United States on September 5, 1943, bound for England. There we would put the finishing touches on our training and continue to have our own brand of fun. The company did everything it could to keep our reputation from getting out.
We shipped over on the SS Samaria. It was in the Star Lines, the same class as the Queen Elizabeth. We loaded the whole regiment on that thing. They had all kinds of rules. We could not smoke on the deck. Every man was issued a life preserver and if we were out of our quarters we had to have it on. Herb Pierce, however, would not wear one and he would smoke wherever he felt like it. Herb was in another demolitions section.
I told him one time, “Get your equipment on. The first thing that you will know, if we get hit, you are going to cause about a hundred people to lose their lives out here with you running and dashing and grabbing and shucking. Don’t do that. You are going to get a bunch of people like yourself in trouble.”
He said, “Well, okay.”
The next thing I knew he was over there leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette and his life jacket was not within a mile of him.
When we arrived at Liverpool on September 15, 1943, the commander issued a three day pass to the entire Regimental Headquarters Company. I told Top Kick Miller, “Don’t you give Herb a pass.” And I explained to him why.
He said, “Okay.”
Well, Herb came up to me about ten minutes later. Boy, he was mad. He was just a kid, one of eight seventeen-year-olds who came into our company. He became real excited when he was mad and just went to pot. He told me, “McNiece, I will kill you when we get there in France.”
I kind of grinned, “Herb, that is a two-way street down where I come from. We kill one another. I’ll be ready for you.” The funny thing is I would actually end up saving his life.
THE FILTHY 13
The demolition platoon had one of the highest ratios of sergeants and officers of any outfit. We had a platoon leader and staff sergeant in charge of the platoon and three lieutenants, each in charge of a section. A demolition section was composed of a staff sergeant and two corporals. Each one of those corporals was responsible for a squad of six men and the staff sergeant was responsible for a section of two squads. This added up to thirteen men per
section. Occasionally we would get extra men assigned to us for a particular mission. Our platoon also had a platoon sergeant and two or three Tech-5s, bridge foremen-carpenters.
Of the original Filthy 13, I still had Joe Oleskiewicz, Loulip, and Maw Darnell. Max Majewski had transferred up to regimental S-3.1 I would also loose Darnell. My section would receive several more new faces by the time we invaded Normandy. Every time a guy came into the outfit that another sergeant could not handle, they would put him over in my group and isolate him. They knew there was no discipline at all in my section.
Corporal Johnnie Hale was just a little bitty guy.2 The other two sergeants did not want him. I told them, “I’ll take him.” He was a real serious kid when he was on duty but after he got off duty he was just a wild man. He spoke squeaky-like, just like a chicken; peep, peep, peep. So we called him “Peepnuts.” I made him one of my squad leaders. Brincely R. Stroup was the other corporal. He was a little bigger than I and all muscle. He was a quiet guy, very unassuming. I would lose him on a training jump.
Jack Womer came in from the 29th Rangers about three months before the invasion.3 Our company picked up three of those Rangers when they disbanded the outfit. One of them, William Myers, was made sergeant in charge of the second demolition section. The officers had reduced Johnson from platoon sergeant to a corporal in Myers’s section. John Klak also came in from the Rangers to our platoon. I saw Womer was a first-class soldier as soon as he came in. He had the best eyes in the outfit. He had eyes like a hawk. He never missed a thing. He could see anything within ten miles. We called him “Hawkeye.” I always kept him to the flank on the left. He was also as neat as a pin, clean-shaven, and always kept his uniform pressed. Jack Agnew was a man with a lot of principles and disliked Womer for it. Jack Agnew and Robert Cone were real close friends. The later fight between Womer and Cone increased the friction between him and Agnew. After Womer was promoted to corporal I would put him as the last man in the stick.
Jack Agnew was a couple years younger than I but he was a bull. He was born in Ireland and raised in Pennsylvania. He was the best qualified combat man that I had ever seen. He could fly a plane or run any kind of big boat. He could also repair a boat. When we were down at Zell-am-See, Austria, after the war, he became Colonel Sink’s big motor man. He could just about do anything and he was an all around good soldier.4
Jack had been assigned to Davidson’s section but considered him a brown noser. He did not want anything to do with that and asked to transfer into my section while we were in England. Of course I pushed for him so they let me have him. I figured he would be a good soldier to have around for what we would have to do.5
Robert Cone was a real interesting individual.6 He was an ex-pug from Cincinnati. He was a short and stocky Jewish kid. He was probably five-five weighing a hundred and eighty pounds and nothing but muscle. He was as tough as a boot. He wanted me to work out with him with the gloves. I went out there and he was hitting me ten times for every one time I hit him. He threw a hell of a punch. It hurt. So when I had about all that I could stand, I said. “Let’s get these gloves off and go knuckle busting.”
He grinned and said, “I’m not going to do that, Jake. You’ll kill me.”
He was an awful good soldier, but not too much of the garrison type. He was the type of guy who would have been a terrific soldier if he’d had an even or close break in combat. He did not lack for guts. He did not drink much and I never saw him get drunk. The Catholics and the Protestants were big drinkers but the Hebrew boys were not. He was not an Orthodox Jew and did not live according to any doctrine that I had ever heard about. He usually took an order real well, if there was any sense in it. But if it did not make any sense to him, why he just canceled it out and did not give a hoot why. He was a nice guy and got along well with everybody.
He received the name, “Ragsman,” because he would not take care of his clothes. I do not think he ever washed a set of fatigues from the time we hit England. He would wear them until they would just be all torn up, ripped, and tattered. It would finally get so bad that the company would issue him a new set but he would not wash them either.
George Radeka was a kid from Joliet, Illinois, up around Chicago. He picked up the name “Googoo” on a field problem one night in England. We could not see very far at night because of the fog, so we kept close contact with one another. We were going out through a pasture when Googoo tripped and fell down into a fresh cow paddy. After he got up, he led the rest of the column off at an angle. Later he explained, “If you’d have found that googoo like I did, ain’t no telling which way you would have went.”
Googoo was a pretty nice guy. I received him because he could not get along with the other two sergeants. He was kind of dumb in a way but he was pretty smart in combat comprehension. He never gave anyone any trouble. Anything we would try on the officers in the barracks, why he was right in with it. He did not flinch an inch. If we wanted to put pornographic pictures up, he did it. He hated that mess hall, so he was right in on all the deer killing. He was a good man and I enjoyed having him.
Roland “Frenchy” Baribeau was from up in Massachusetts.7 He was married and had a son just before he signed up. I did not know much about Baribeau even though he had been in the platoon a long time. I do not even remember how he arrived. He may have come in as a replacement. I do not remember him being under any of the other sergeants. He was a real boozer though and one tough, tough cookie.8
William Green had been in Sergeant Myers’s section. Myers was tough and smart and he did not want Willy. Willy was a good soldier but he was young and slow-thinking. Willy could not make a decision so the platoon put him over in my outfit. If I told him what to do, he would do it but he could not figure anything out on his own. I think he had completed some college. He was a real nice, clean-cut kid and I do not think he even had to shave but about once every three days. He did not curse and was not a troublemaker but he took care of anything that came his way. He was a fighting dog. This army life was totally new to him. He fell right in with the barracks life though. He kind of just rolled with the flow.
I guess he had never had any experience at all with women before he arrived in England. Piccadilly Circus was about a two-square-mile “red light” district in London. There were about ten thousand whores and a drink at every turn. Of course, when he found out about this red light district why, he just went crazy over it. He never went anywhere else while he was over there. Every time he had a day off, he just took right off to London with a pocket full of money and two or three cartons full of cigarettes. One could sell a carton of cigarettes for two hundred bucks. He would go in and really have a ball. If he did not get a day off soon enough then he just went AWOL and came back grinning from ear to ear. So we began to call him “Piccadilly Willy.”
Chuck Plauda was a real young kid but he was very hot tempered.9 He started out in the second battalion section. He was always going to knuckle junction with someone over this or that. They finally said, “If you like that knuckle junction deal then we’ll put you over there with McNiece.” So they sent him over to my outfit about a month before the invasion. He was a good soldier but he was not very dependable. You could not tell what Chuck would do next because he was just too immature to make the correct decision. As long as someone would show him or tell him what to do he would do it until he caught one between the eyes.
They called me “McNasty.” When the thirteen of us all got together, one of us had an idea working all the time. We did not salute any officer nor did we call them “sir.” Instead we called them by their nicknames. We called Brown “Browny,” and Lieutenant Shrable Williams “Willy.” We respected each man for his own ability. With few exceptions I had a good relationship with my company officers.
In England we got in a new captain named Daniels. He was a Louisiana Cajun who spoke French fluently. He wore those riding britches and carried a riding crop. We called him “Dapper” Daniels. I had lots of trouble with him. He
and I did not get along for shit. I got into so much hell over there in England that when news of our antics became known outside the company he did not like it at all. Just before we jumped into Normandy, he transferred into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to better use his talents.
Lieutenant Leach was a sorry officer and everybody hated him. He could scheme up some of the most improbable missions that ever entered a man’s mind. They were useless and the end result would have been nothing. He came from a rich family and was arrogant. During a break on one of those forced marches back in the States, I told him, “You know what my primary objective will be when we get in behind them lines, Loot.” Then I gave him a grin. He knew I intended to kill him if I got the chance. I guess he remembered what I had said as we were getting ready for the invasion. He pulled strings to transfer up to S-2 on regimental staff.10
Second Lieutenant Charles Mellen took his place as our section leader. He was a good officer but contrary to the article written in True Magazine, he could not have whipped any of us. Any one of my guys could have whipped him without much effort.11
When we arrived in England, the subordinate units of the regiment were billeted in different locations. Regimental Headquarters Company and Service Company moved into Quonset huts on Sir Ernest Wills’ manor place near Littlecote.12 He was the cigarette magnate of England. The Quonset huts were outside the walled courtyard. In England we put the finishing touches on our combat training to prepare for the invasion of Europe.
Our training was more of the same thing that we had back in the States. It was physical, physical, physical. We did everything on the double. We continued to do field marches but we had no obstacle courses. We also practiced marching on an azimuth.
We conducted advanced infantry training while there, along with several tactical war games. They taught us to take into account tactical positions, how to deploy, use terrain, and seize the high ground. England was also a finishing course for demolitions. We learned about calculations, bridge piers, and such.
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