Shrable D. Williams stayed in the army. He fought in the Korean War and then joined up with Special Forces where he donned the green beret. While in Special Forces he was involved in the training of soldiers in Laos just prior to the war in Vietnam. After he retired as a lieutenant-colonel from the army in 1963, he found his real passion. He became a car enthusiast. He restored a Ford Falcon, with which he entered and won numerous contests. Eventually he restored as many as twenty-two vehicles, including the first Coleman Dairy delivery truck. His enthusiasm led him to become a founding member of the Falcon Club.
Far from being the criminals depicted in the movie, nearly all the men returned home to lead productive lives, and the wild exuberance of their airborne days had just been an adventure to last a lifetime.
Nearly thirty men passed through the ranks of the demolition section known as the Filthy 13. While Colonel Sink did his best to instill some form of discipline in the regiment, physical fitness seemed to be the top priority for combat readiness. Of the nearly six thousand men to volunteer, the physical training at Camp Toccoa weeded the 506th Parachute Infantry down to two thousand. Those who could measure up or even set the standards were valuable commodities for the tasks that would be assigned to them in combat. The regiment expected 50 percent casualties and in many units Normandy validated that prediction. For this reason, Sink and other officers cast a blind eye to the transgressions of some of their paratroopers.
Probably no one man deserves more credit for seeing the worth in Jake and his accomplices than First Sergeant Albert Miller. No one soldier was more revered than that old regular army man. No other man was more tempered to measure another’s worth, and this regular army NCO’s opinion was held in high regard by officers of all ranks. In everyone’s opinion there was no better first sergeant for Regimental Headquarters Company. The combination of Top Kick’s ability to measure the value of a man and the wisdom and fairness of their first company commander, Hank Hannah, probably saved these men for combat. The Filthy 13’s lack of discipline was not a failing but had become a source of pride.
Gene Brown had grown close to his men and even closer during the get-togethers. He ranks among the officers who Jake greatly respected. Someone once asked Gene what it took to be a successful company commander. He replied, “Get yourself a good first sergeant, then get rid of all the rats but one. Keep the best rat because he will keep the others in line and get things you need.” He had the best first sergeant with Albert Miller and there was no better rat than Jake McNiece.
Finally this story returns to one man. Jake, like the others, enlisted to fight a war. Life during the Great Depression forced him to mature at an early age. Regardless of his claim of not being well educated, he had a sharp mind with quick wit. He was blessed with incredible common sense that was critical in combat. He always found a solution to a problem no matter how unconventional. While many claimed that Jake was the toughest man in the outfit, there was too much chance involved in who would live and who would die in combat. Jake believed that there were many men killed who were better soldiers than he. He therefore concluded that he had survived because he took advantage of every opportunity that came his way. To be more specific, Jake acted without hesitation. No matter how overwhelming the odds, he kept his focus on staying alive and killing as many of the enemy as he could. By surrounding himself with men who would similarly follow without hesitation he increased his prospects of survival. This was the source of Jake’s success as a combat paratrooper.
Leaders of soldiers have debated for ages over the definition of discipline in the military. Many feel that it is a soldier’s willingness to follow orders. Some officers adhere so strictly to this philosophy that they will even issue orders that make no sense simply to test discipline. Such discipline, as measured in military drill, parades, and formations, tends to relate to the molding of individuals into a cohesive and collective body. This idea was born in a time when men marched into battle shoulder-to-shoulder, each man locked into place with the men next to him. But warfare has changed.
The other school of thought believes that discipline is the measure of doing what one knows to be right, in spite of the odds or the absence of supervision. In the confusion following a combat jump, officers were not always around to give orders. In addition, a rifle squad in World War II had more firepower and covered the same front as an infantry company during the Civil War. Sergeants then supervised the same amount of battlefield as once commanded by captains and lieutenants. Jake ascribed to this philosophy. Surprisingly, many of his men often expressed their reasoning when instructing someone else on a problem by saying, “Because that’s the way Jake would have done it.”
To him, standing formation and picking up cigarette butts contributed little to one’s ability to kill the enemy. Fighting, on the other hand, did! Neither did shining boots nor shaving improve ones fighting ability. One shined and shaved to impress the girls so this was only necessary to go into town. Why should they clean up every day when the whole purpose of training was to get dirty? A bath once a week was enough to maintain a healthy hygiene. If it worked for cowboys, why not for paratroopers? In combat, most men would go weeks or even months without a bath. All agreed that saluting was a sign of respect. Jake, like many paratroopers, felt that respect was something a man had to earn. Whether they saluted an officer or not did not make them respect him any more. Nor did a commission inspire the men to follow a man in combat. Performance did. Surprisingly, most of the regular army men, with the exception of First Sergeant Miller, did not fit well in the paratroops. They were too inflexible. Citizen soldiers instead became the NCOs in the company. Jake’s appointment to first sergeant at the end of the war validated his beliefs.
The story of the Filthy 13 is the story of Jake McNiece and twelve accomplices. For Jake, the company of men of his own nature brought out the best and worst in him. And in the army, he had the time of his life. He acted instinctively. Gene Brown summed it up best: “If there was a woman, a bottle of whiskey and a jeep sitting unguarded, while everyone else was figuring out how to get away with them, Jake would have already stolen the jeep, drank the bottle and had his way with the woman.”
While Jake was the leader, he surrounded himself with men who, by his unique standards, he considered the best. Jack Agnew was probably the best all-around qualified soldier. He had a multitude of skills that a small, resourceful unit might need in combat. He was a leader in his own right but had such an admiration for Jake that he preferred to follow him anywhere. Jack Womer, although limited in his demolition experience, was another highly qualified soldier. Jake recognized that from the start. Ragsman Cone was a hulk of a man whose biceps stretched out the fabric on his baggy jump jacket. Jake felt that had he gotten through Normandy, he would have accounted for himself very well. Frenchy Baribeau, with his toughness and fluency in French, would also have been a tremendous asset had he lived.
The number one trait that Jake looked for was a man’s tendency not to hesitate. Fights were won by superior firepower and teamwork. When charging in on the enemy, a paratrooper should not need to worry about whether his buddy was with him. On the occasions when men of the Filthy 13 and their associates were killed, all died attacking the enemy. Even Herb Pierce, the youngest surviving member of the company, fought through the thick of it and stayed by Jake’s side, even when confronted with tanks. It broke his heart when Top Kick assigned him to rear detail when the division moved to Bastogne. This was no fault of Herb’s. All the other seventeen-year-olds who had enlisted in the company were dead and Top Kick could not bear to lose another.
Combat proved Top Kick’s prediction about Jake correct. In spite of the odds in Normandy, Jake was determined to get to his bridges. His men were scattered eight miles across the Cotentin Peninsula. He no longer had the men nor the demolitions to accomplish his mission. Nonetheless, he set out for his objective. He would collect enough men and explosives along the way. Similarly, Jack Agnew and Jack Womer began to r
ound up men. Agnew linked up with Jake and Womer fell in with the 501st Regiment’s defense at Hell’s Corner.
In a time of crisis the average soldier will gravitate to anyone willing to assume responsibility. Officers are no exception. When a superior gives an order, an officer is bound to state his case, but more often than not is grateful for someone else to place him in a subordinate position. The responsibility for success or failure then rests upon the shoulders of somebody else. During the chaos of the missed drops in Normandy, there were plenty of examples of men rising to accept the challenge. Even though Colonel Johnson countermanned Sink’s orders, Jake continued to his original destination, even to the surprise of his men. They reached their bridges and wired them for demolition. Of all the men to reach the bridge, Jake probably had the farthest to walk.
In Eindhoven, they completed their mission according to the plan. There was little room for heroics. The next action was a different story. On their way through Veghel they ran into a German penetration. The last they heard, their Regimental Headquarters Company was up ahead in Uden. Meanwhile the bulk of their regiment was still in Veghel and the Germans controlled the road between the two elements. Most of Jake’s men still fought their way up to their company when they had every reason to wait it out until Colonel Sink organized an advance to reopen the road. The rest of the campaign on the “Island” was an effort to survive as comfortably as one could. With all the other demolition sergeants killed or wounded, it fell to Jake’s section to clear a path through the minefield on the banks of the Rhine for the rescue of the British paratroopers. Jake’s role was a minor part ignored by history. The bulk of the responsibility fell to E Company and the engineers.
While their actions in Normandy were the best testament to their determination, probably the single most significant act performed by the survivors of the original Filthy 13 happened in Bastogne. The irony of it all was that their superiors thought they were ridding themselves of troublemakers and Jake had believed he was going to sit out the war on easy street. By circumstance, the 101st Airborne Division became encircled and in a desperate struggle for survival. The mission for accurate drops regardless of the weather required Pathfinders. The superb navigational and flying skills of the transport pilots delivered them into the target, and pure luck kept the Pathfinders from losing more than one man. Ignored by most historians and even the official accounts by the air corps, the role of the Pathfinders in Bastogne saved the 101st Division. It required no heroics on the part of any one man. Each did his job the way he had been trained. Pushing the odds, Jake repeated this performance in another jump into Germany.
In two campaigns, this section lost more than 75 percent of its ranks. Of the thirteen members of the Filthy 13 to jump into Normandy only Jake, Womer, and Agnew finished out the war in the same section. Other members of the section from the Toccoa days, like Majewski, Mihlan, and Palys, served out the war on Regimental staff. Mike Marquez, by circumstance, fought with the Filthy 13 in its first two battles.
So what is the lesson of the Filthy 13? Like a fairy tale, every war story has to have a moral. The story of the Filthy 13 is the story of the kind of men who won World War II. These men were tough and their leader the toughest. Jake provides the example of the kind of man others gravitate to in combat. The qualities that he looked for in others were those that would get the job done in spite of any odds or difficulty. A leader of these kind of men would have to emulate the kind of traits he desired in his men. Hannah, Brown, and Williams provide examples of the caliber of officers needed to lead them.
The peacetime army always seems to go the opposite direction on this issue of discipline. The longer it has gone without a war, the more traits have crept in that Jake ridiculed. The army in the post–Cold War has gone even further to this extreme. One recruiter claimed that all he was allowed to recruit were college kids and altar boys. This just makes the job of leadership easier. An academic education does not make a man smarter nor provide him more common sense. While a fight between one unit and another was considered a sign of good esprit, it has been considered a lack of discipline in the post-Vietnam and post–Cold War army. The excuse is that war has become more technically advanced. A higher caliber of man is needed to operate the weapons. Yet with all the technology in the world, the battle is not won until the infantryman occupies the ground and plants his flag on the hill. It still comes down to a contest between fighting men. In many ways the kind of men who won World War II are not the kind of men the army is searching for today.
Jake did not tell these stories to teach any lessons though. He would always remind his audience that the Filthy 13 were not criminals. If he felt strongly about a contemporary issue such as draft dodgers during the Vietnam War, he would add it. All he wanted with these stories was to make people laugh. The more they laughed the better he told the stories. He had the best time in his life in the army and wanted to share that experience.
If Jake bragged about any personal achievement, it was that he was never promoted to Private First Class during his three and a half years of military service. Anyone could make PFC. Keep in mind that as an acting sergeant, his rank was made automatic upon jumping into combat. However, this distinction of never having been promoted was taken away from him on July 15, 2000. The 95th Regional Support Command made him an honorary colonel of the 95th “Victory” Division with all the privileges that rank would bear. After hearing Jake tell the story of his military service, however, the officers were a little alarmed that members of the unit were bound to carry out any of Jake’s appropriate orders. The colonel solved the dilemma by stating that, from what he had heard, Jake had never given an appropriate order in his life.
More recognition followed. In 2002, Jake was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame. His friend, Truman Smith, probably best summarized his postwar contribution to society: “Jake has probably done more to promote patriotism and knowledge of World War II in this part of the country than any other person.” To this day, Jake McNiece continues to entertain audiences with tales of his experiences during the greatest war in history. And in such endeavors he continues to be the lifeblood of the unit he founded—one of the best the United States has ever put into the field—the Filthy 13.
A Soldier’s Prayer
by John Agnew
Dear Lord, not all the tears we shed today
Are for those we lost along the way
Some tears are for those who dare to say
We must have lingered on the way
Tears for those who fought so brave and gave their lives
And those of us who died inside
We had been in hell and did return
God’s mercy will be shown to them
Who served so well and suffered long
They who are the humble in this land
And did proclaim freedom to all in God’s domain
Guide us, dear Lord, in Your great way
We who were not trampled on the way.
NOTES
Chapter 1: Creating a Legend
1. Tight-shoe night referred to dressing up. One’s dress shoes tended to fit rather tight.
2. The Osage tribe retained the mineral rights to their land after vast quantities of oil was discovered on it. If a white man married an Osage woman, he could have access to her share of the fortune.
3. The 506th PIR was organized at Camp Toombs, Georgia, beginning July 20, 1942. The camp was later redesignated Camp Toccoa on August 21, 1942.
4. Pronounced “Zink.”
5. Harold Hannah, the company commander, wrote of First Sergeant Albert Miller, “There was something about him that spoke of the country, of understanding men, knowing their foibles, and allowing for such without impairing the discipline he knew was needed. In my book, he was a gem.” (Hannah, A Military Interlude, p. 173.)
6. Pug was short for pugilist or boxer.
7. Jake refers to anyone who drank heavily as being an alcoholic.
8. “We ma
de Jake an honorary Polack [sic], and tried to teach him some of the Polish language, but he was an Indian from Oklahoma, so we gave it up as a bad job, he was plain hopeless.” (Frank Palys to Laura Erikson, Jan. 14, 1995.) Jack Agnew claims that the Warsaw Seven was the first group of men to come up with a name. Jack Agnew enlisted in the 506th from Pennsylvania. He started out in a different demolition section than Jake McNiece. A hell of a soldier in his own right, he admired the antics of Jake so much that he sought to join his section. Jack would serve alongside Jake in every adventure.
9. Most of the regular army men did not fit into the independent nature of the 506th. Jack Agnew admitted that they were instrumental in teaching the recruits their basic demolitions though.
10. Stick refers to a group of men to jump out of an airplane on one pass. Jake uses it in this context as another unit.
11. Colonel Sink had established a live fire obstacle course to climatize his men to combat. They had to crawl under machine-gun fire with explosive charges set off by the demolitions men on the ground and in the top of the trees. He also had pig guts scattered around to add to the feeling of combat.
12. This was the demolitions platoon’s first casualty. Jack Agnew said Joe was one of the nicest guys that he ever met and a bitter loss to the platoon.
13. Kitchen Police. Soldiers assigned to work in the mess hall for the day.
14. Private First Class. This was the first promotion. This rank was denoted by a single chevron on the sleeve.
15. The Post Exchange was a store for soldiers.
16. At the time Jake only knew his mother was part Indian. It was not until after the war that he even found out what tribe she belonged to. His mother did not practice nature worship. Jake in his usual quick wit had just made up this answer.
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