Sir Ernest Wills came out there on an inspection tour. We had a big dump out there. He got to looking around and saw deer heads, rabbit fur, hides of all kinds, and remains of fish that we had thrown away. Boy, he just hit the ceiling. He claimed that he had all this stuff inventoried and knew how much he had. Then he inventoried what was left and demanded that the government pay him several thousand dollars in restitution. It came down through division headquarters to Colonel Sink and on down to Regimental Headquarters Company. Well, the officers had not eaten a bite of it but if they could not pin it on someone they were going to have to pay the bill. Of course we did not have any money. We spent every penny we earned.
So “Dapper” Daniels fell us out and began to question us and make accusations. He said it was going to cost so much. We did not care how much it cost. They were not really doing us right by the lousy food we were getting. So nobody confessed to anything. The officers were trying to get some enlisted man to admit that he did it without the oversight of officers. No one would make any announcements that they had been involved.20
After he finished pleading and begging and harassing and so forth, he had gotten a lot of the guys to admit they had eaten meat in my barracks but they did not know what it was. When it came down to it, he got no confessions out of anybody.
He then walked right up to me and said, “I’m going to tell you something Sergeant McNiece. This shit has stopped as of now! There will not be another deer killed. There will not be a rabbit taken and nobody even gets close to those hatcheries. There are going to be armed guards on that hatchery from now on.”
I said, “Well, Captain Daniels, this cuts me to the quick. You are addressing me just like I was involved in this sort of thing that was going on. I have had nothing to do with it. What you ought to do is find the guy who was involved and be talking to him. I am free as a breeze.”
He said, “That’s a dirty lousy lie! Shit McNiece, they can put me in the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck and blindfold me at night and drive it around here within a five mile area of this camp for two hours and I can step off of the tail gate of that truck and walk right straight to the door of your barracks.”
In England during the blackouts on dark nights when it was foggy, one could not see his hand in front of his face. One just went around by feel. It was just about that kind of night there that night.
I said, “That would be a pretty good chore, Daniels. How would you propose to do all that? We have guys get lost between barracks here. You could not find your way to the latrine from here right now. How could you do that?”
He said, “I would just follow my nose. That barracks of yours smells like a damn hamburger and barbecue joint twenty-four hours a day. I can smell you! I better not smell you any more. That shit is going to quit!”
I said, “I certainly hope it does. I hope this whole outfit does not get penalized over some man’s hunger and greed.”
The officers finally had to pay Sir Ernest Wills several thousand dollars. It was assessed to their pay. After that they began to put guards on the fish hatchery at night. Shorty Mihlan would tell me when and where they would put a guard. He knew all that.
I went in there one night and gigged trout. When I got my cargo pockets all filled up why somebody on guard hollered at me to halt. So I took out. I ran down and around this damn stone wall and got back to my barracks. I slipped my jump suit off and threw it up under my bed on the brick floor.
We were a small unit. Headquarters Company and Service Company were all that was there. So I knew most of those guards. They come running and charged into our barracks. Of course I was in bed. All the other guys knew something was happening but they did not know what.
The guards came in and screamed, “Attention!” We all fell out of bed. “McNiece,” they said, “you’ve been down there in that hatchery gigging fish.”
I said, “Bullshit! When did that happen?”
They said, “About ten minutes ago.”
I said, “I was lying here in this bunk sound asleep until you all came in here and started screaming that shit about attention.”
Meanwhile those fish were flopping under the bed, flap, flap, flap. So I started moving my feet around and tried to run their asses out. “Get out of here. Nobody in this barracks has been involved in gigging a fish,” and those fish were just a flopping under there. I could hear those jump pants of mine, splat, splat, splat. I would move around and bump into bunks and everything else. We got rid of the guards and they did not find a fish we had.
FILTHIER
We slept on mattresses filled with dried dirty cornshucks over hogwire frames. If someone hit one a cloud of dust would raise up just like a sandstorm. Well, if someone took his clothes off and slept on it, the next morning he would be covered with a fine coat of black dust. My boys were so dirty and nasty that we would jump in there with our clothes on and come out feeling pretty good. So we slept in our full uniforms, seven days a week.
We were under a ration and they issued us only one scuttle of coal a day to do our washing. We used it instead to do our cooking. We did not wash our clothes. What good would it do to wash them in that filth that we were in over there.
Neither did we clean our barracks. When we had an inspection, we just told the officers to go on and help themselves. The floors were brick and a half inch from level, just like a road. We did not clean anything. We did not take any trash out. We had fish skins and heads and guts laying all over the place. It just smelled like the city dump. The platoon assigned the platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Charles “Chaplain” Williams, to our barracks in the hope that he would inspire us to clean up but he could not.
Well, this group of boys that were with me did not shave, shine, nor shower, not even for inspections. We were under restriction all the time but we did not care because we went AWOL everytime there was a moment or a chance to take it.
We were a filthy bunch of people since we were only permitted one bath a week because of the water shortage. Sir Ernest Wills had six or seven cars and limousines that he washed every day down there out of this water supply but we could only take a bath but once a week and that was set up for Saturday. The shower was a cold water deal and we had to get in line for it. So it would take two or three hours to get a shower. Come Saturday I wanted to have my coon dog right in the middle of that Red Light district in Piccadilly Circus in London. I did not want to be standing in line waiting for a bath.
As soon as me and my boys got passes, each of us would just grab one set of those ODs21 and put them in a sack and away we went. We would go in our junk clothes into one of those Red Cross buildings over there in Regents Square in London. We would go in and get us a shower, shave, and shine, change clothes and boy, we had one or two women before any of the others even got into town. We would then raise Cain until Monday morning.
So they were getting to call us the “Filthy 13.” Thirteen men was the number of men in a demolition section.22
TOM YOUNG’S BARRACKS DISPLAY
We had a big general inspection there one day. Of course my section did not do anything to get ready. Our clothes were just stacked here and there and the beds were not made.
Tom Young, Burl Prickett, and Sergeant Myers were in the next Quonset hut. There was about ten yards between each Quonset hut. Of course they were going to make their section look really great, especially compared to mine. There were a lot of loose bricks around there. So they went out and got some of these bricks and arranged them up in this circle that was about two feet in diameter. They found a bazooka shell and painted it white then stood it up in the middle. They then went back out in the woods and picked them a bunch of leaves and wild flowers. They constructed this display halfway between our barracks.
I saw this going on and of course I knew what was happening. There was a wall that ran right along our barracks. It had a hole in it where we stepped into this long latrine that had been a stable. It had those “honey buckets.” They were just like coal
scuttle buckets. This latrine had a platform on it which we used for bowel or kidney movements. We could not flush it so that stuff kept accumulating in the buckets. These scavenger wagons would come through once a week and pick up all those honey buckets. By the time of the inspection those honey buckets were just about full.
So I waited until just about two minutes before they called us outside then I ran in there and grabbed me one of those honey buckets. I came back and just dumped it all over the flowers, bazooka shell, and bricks. My people were in the barracks laughing their heads off. When Tom, Prickett, and Myers heard this commotion, they looked out and there I had this honey bucket just pouring it all over their display. You never saw such a mad scramble in your life. They did not even get close to cleaning it up before someone blew that whistle and we all had to fall in. The general was mad but there was not anything he could do. We were already under restraint all the time.
Tom Young was a big ole boy from down in Texas. He and his brother and I jumped into Normandy. His brother, Kaiser, was killed almost immediately. Ole Tom kind of took a shine to me in the absence of his brother. So we became very, very close friends.
QUEEN OF THE FILTHY 13
Someone put out a stupid order that we could not have any cheesecake pictures over our bunks. Of course cheesecake then was where a lady had on a short dress or a pair of shorts that came down to the knee. Those were our pinups back then. He said no one could have anything on their wall except a family portrait.
So I sat down and wrote Eleanor Powell that I was in charge of the Filthy 13 and we needed thirteen uncensored and assorted photos, none of them alike. I told her we were going to have a big contest to elect the queen of the Filthy 13 and I would appreciate if she would send me pictures so that I could let the boys know who they were voting for.
She was a great dancer and famous Hollywood star. In about a couple weeks or so I received this big envelope and it had thirteen of these pictures and none of them were alike. So I told the boys, “Now take your pen or pencil or something and write down on the bottom of it, ‘To Peepnuts from your loving mother,’ or ‘to Tom from Aunt Sue or Sister Lil’ or something like it. Have that on each one of them and we will hang them up.” Since she had signed the pictures, we just penned in the messages.
So when the officers came in to inspect the barracks, why they just hit the ceiling. They said, “Get them off the wall!”
I said, “No, you can’t get them of the wall. We are allowed one family portrait.”
They said, “These are not family portraits. They are all the same woman.”
I said, “These guys are related to a lot of people. Read those captions on them. Some of these are from grandmothers, some mothers, some sisters.” They said, “These are all from Eleanor Powell.”
I said, “That’s beside the point. She may be related to everyone of these guys. You’ve got us limited to one thing above ground.”
They finally just gave up and said, “Well, forget it.”
We kept those pictures up. When we jumped into Normandy, some of the boys took those things down off the wall and put them in their helmets and jumped with them.
PRE-INVASION PARTY
In the first part of June, I was under arrest of quarters. The previous week I had decided to go to London. I had gone down by the Service Company quarters to see if there were any vehicles available which there were not. I noticed this captian had come over in a jeep and was talking to Colonel Sink. So I confiscated his jeep and took off to London. When I returned I was placed under arrest of quarters until they figured out what charges they wanted to bring against me.
We were going to have a big demolition platoon party one night just before the invasion. The officers went over to arrange for our use of an air force hangar. They were going to schedule music and dancing. They would send two two-and-a-half-ton trucks into town to pick up girls. They had it all decorated and this and that. The officers also wanted a fifth of whiskey per man. There were fifty of us. So they needed fifty fifths of whiskey.
Lieutenant Shrable Williams23 came to me and said, “Jake, I know you buy whiskey by the fifths. Where do you get it?”
Well I said, “It’s in London but it wouldn’t do me any good to tell you where I get it. You couldn’t find it anyway even if I told you. Besides they wouldn’t let you have it.” I said, “But I’ll tell you what. If you’ll give me a seventy-two-hour pass, and have every man in this platoon give me a five pound note, I’ll go to London and get you that whiskey.”24
He said, “McNiece, what do you mean a three-day pass to London? I can’t even get you to the mess hall.”
I said, “Well, we’ll have to figure out something because it is not available to you people. Why don’t you put me on three days of detached service to 3rd Battalion to instruct them in mines, booby traps, and explosives.”
He said, “Jake, can’t you see you’re not worth flying down there to Lankensbere.”
I asked, “Do you want the whiskey or don’t you? That’s the only choice you’ve got.”
Each one of them gave me a five pound note and I left to buy fifty bottles of booze. I checked in at the Red Cross motel there in Piccadilly Circus. However, I did not have a very good means of conveyance of all this whiskey that I was buying. I would go down to this gin mill that I knew of and buy me ten bottles of Scotch or Bourbon or whatever they were holding at the time. Then I would take them back up to the Regents Palace, which was a hotel mainly just for GIs. I had a security lock on each cubicle. I would then go down and get me ten more fifths of whiskey in a duffel bag then take it back to my room and lock it up. Later I would go out and party the rest of the night on my own. So I had to make a total of five trips.
I had made three or four trips back and forth and was coming out of there one evening during a blackout. I was not drunk yet. It was early in the evening and I had just gone back and gotten me ten bottles of bourbon. I then saw this officer approaching. He was a lieutenant. He was looking at me and really giving me the eye and then here he comes. I thought he was a lieutenant looking for a big salute.
We got to probably within fifteen feet or so when he said, “I don’t believe you recognize me?”
I slid my whiskey down real easy on the cobblestone so I would not break any. I said, “Yeah, I recognize you. You are a first lieutenant in the United States Air Force and you’re wanting to be highballed. You met the wrong boy at the wrong place and the wrong time. I don’t salute.”
He said, “I didn’t mean that Jake.” He called me by my name. I thought that was odd. I hesitated hitting him until I figured out why he knew my name. He asked, “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Truman Smith.” It was Truman Smith from Ponca City.
[Truman remembered it this way:]
I’d gotten away from the base rather late without lunch or dinner and it was well into the blackout when I felt I was approaching my target, the S&F Grill, about a block from Piccadilly Circus. I say “felt,” because the blackout eliminated the sense of sight, leaving touch, smell, taste and sound.
It was crowded. I could feel the bodies and they felt me as everyone jostled and groped each other. Then I finally felt a non-body.
What in hell was it? It wasn’t soft, yet it was moving along in the flow. It kind of rattled like a Coke truck full of bottles—and it felt like a bunch of bottles—in a canvas sack.
A little bit of light came from between the blackout curtains in the doorway of a bistro and I saw that it was a GI carrying a duffel bag—and I recognized him.
“Jake!” It was Jake McNiece from my hometown.
“Friend or enemy?” Jake challenged in the dark, having not recognized me.
“Truman Smith, from Ponca City, Oklahoma.”
“Well, howdy boy,” Jake responded in a little cheerier tone. “I’d like to say its good to see ya, but I can’t see a bloody thing in this blackout.”
Having reached the S&F Grill, I steered him inside where we could see each other.
<
br /> Jake was about four years older than I and had been one of my idols when he played high school football. And being senior to me, I was pleased that he even recognized me.
“Well, son, it’s good to see ya, even though you’re wearin’ a Lieutenant’s uniform. I don’t like Lieutenants…Good thing I didn’t see that uniform in the blackout, or I’d-a knocked the hell outa ya just for the fun of it.”
He was smiling and I hoped he was kidding, because Jake was known as a fighter and a hell-raiser. That was his character and his charm: friendly, smiling, easy-going, one hundred and seventy pounds of impulsive “dynamite.” It was no wonder he was in the 101st Airborne. Although I was a bit puzzled that he was still a Buck Private.25
Truman had just been a little ole pudgy kid. I am probably five years older than him. I had left home just before he began to change into a young adult. That was why I did not recognize him at first.
We shook hands and I said, “Truman, I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you at all. You’ve changed tremendously since I saw you previous to becoming a young man.”
He asked, “What have you got in that sack? You sound like a pop truck.”
I said, “I’ve got ten fifths of whiskey.”
Well, we went out and had some dinner and I asked, “Let’s go out and party.”
He said, “Jake, your attitude shows that you are kind of looking for trouble already and being kind of antagonistic. You don’t have anything on your sleeve to lose but I’ve got a bar. I don’t want to sacrifice it for one night with you!”
We had a good long talk and I could not pull him off.26 I wound up with fifty fifths of whiskey in a duffel bag and grabbed the trolley back to camp. I drank three or four bottles but only broke one.27
Well, the next day we threw a party up there like you never saw. There were men and women having all kinds of sexual affairs out on the dance floor and around the sides. Others would run and jump and catch parachutes hanging from the ceiling and swing back and forth. The enlisted men were fighting with the officers. The air force provost marshall came in there and asked our officers if they wanted some assistance to quell this mob.
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