Filthy Thirteen

by Richard Killblane

  37. Richard Killblane’s interview with Tom Young.

  38. Tom Young remembered the story exactly the same way.

  39. After the war, Robert Sink became commandant of cadets at West Point. Later he was promoted to brigadier-general as the assistant division commander of the 11th Airborne Division. Then in 1953, Major-General Sink assumed command of the 7th Armored Division.

  40. Jake received his first bronze star medal.

  41. Jack Agnew described a patrol led by Oscar “Skip” Simpson. Leach instructed “Go out past this First Battalion then come around by Second and Third and come back in.” The patrol became pinned down and had to fight its way out. When Simpson returned and reported the enemy contact, Leach said, “I just wanted to know if they were still there.” Jack said the men lost all respect for Leach then.

  Later Jack was given a motorcycle to reconnoiter the route to Cherbourg. The next day he led a unit down the road but it did not look the same. He warned them of that. They said they would take it from there and proceeded the wrong way. They had a truck loaded with explosives that Leach wanted to bring back for training. That evening the truck blew up killing several men. Having lost all respect for Leach, the demolitions men easily blamed him for the accident.

  42. Richard Killblane’s interview with Tom Young.

  43. Chuck Plauda in an interview with Stars and Stripes claimed to have joined up with a group of men and reached the bridge but neither Jake nor Jack Agnew remembered seeing him. He may have fought on the other bridge. (“‘Filthy 13’—Their Number Is Down,” Stars and Stripes, Nov. 30, 1944.)

  44. Jack Womer’s account was taken from an interview with him by Richard Killblane.

  45. Runners were designated couriers who carried messages.

  46. That was the common belief of what happened to Lieutenant Charles Mellen. Frank Palys, however, discovered his body in the middle of a field. Mellen’s body was in a crawling position with his right leg pulled up and his carbine cradled in his arms. He was shot twice in the left side. Mellen had evidently died instantly from machine-gun fire. (Frank Palys to Laura Erickson, Jan 14, 1994.) Lt John H. Reeder, who was with Palys when he discovered Mellen’s body, reported it to Regimental S-1 on June 9. (“Journals.”)

  47. George Baran was captured after being wounded then sent to a German hospital near Cherbourg. He was freed when Cherbourg fell to the Americans. (Springfield Daily Republican.)

  48. Hale and Cone landed almost simultaneously with a German between them. Cone fired first and killed the German. Peepnuts was killed two weeks later on June 20. “‘He was right behind me,’ Oleskiewicz said. ‘We were crawling across a field after getting a machine-gun nest. I heard a single shot, turned around and “Peepnuts” was dead.’” (Springfield Daily Republican.)

  49. “‘None of us saw him,’ McNiece explained. ‘But we heard from the group he joined that he went with them to clean out three machine-gun nests. He got it at the third.’” (Springfield Daily Republican.)

  50. Rasmussen was shown the grave and dog tags of Baribeau right after he was captured. Evidently, Frenchy had landed in the same vicinity as Rasmussen near Montebourg.

  51. Lt. Alex Bobuck was captured but escaped. He turned Cone’s dog tags in to Regimental S-1 on June 7 and reported that Cone had been wounded. (“Journals.”) Charles Lonegran claimed to have seen Ragsman Cone at the German hospital in Cherbourg. (Springfield Daily Republican.)

  52. It was a leg pack of explosives and not a flamethrower.

  53. “‘I helped him through two fields before we ran into an aid man, he [Trigger Gann] said. ‘Then I went back to pick up our knives and some equipment. I got into a fight with some Germans and I had to leave Rasputin rather than reveal his position.’ When he came back Rasputin was gone.” (Springfield Daily Republican.) Rasmussen said he broke his ankle because a leg pack would not release and Gann did not find an aid man.

  54. Rasmussen jumped out right behind Lt. Gene Brown as the second man in the other stick. He landed near Montebourg in the same vicinity as

  Trigger Gann and Frenchy Baribeau of Jake’s stick. The Germans captured him a few days later and took him to a hospital in Volognes then to Cherbourg where they placed him in a pill box with a red cross painted on it. There he ran into George Baran. They were scheduled to move to Brest one evening but the Allies bombed the nearby submarine pens, so they stayed. He remained a prisoner for 30 days until the Americans finally took Cherbourg. Because of the broken ankle Rass could no longer jump so he was transferred to the gliders and fought all the way through to Berchtesgaden.

  55. Airborne troops were issued the new M1943 field jacket and field pants on which the riggers sewed a cargo pocket.

  56. Both were just having fun with each other. Jake and Top Kick actually thought highly of each other.

  57. Pinks and Greens was the term for the officer’s service uniform. The coat was an olive drab and the trousers were beige with a pink cast.

  58. Richard Killblane’s interview with Virgil Smith.

  59. Virgil Smith continued, “I was assigned my own jeep. I would catch Jake and we would go hunting on the weekends when we were not doing anything. We went hunting quite a few times. We would put the windshield down on that jeep and take turns driving and shooting. Somebody must have heard our carbines and turned us in. We usually came in on one side but that Sunday we came in on the other side and there were the game wardens on bicycles waiting for us. They chased us but never did catch us.”

  60. “The name Dinty was given to me way back in Fort Benning because of Dinty Moore stew and that’s what this one guy started calling me and it stuck. One guy even named his son after me, Dinty.” (Mohr, Memories, p. 13.)

  61. On June 19, Sink made Hank Hannah commander of the 1st Battalion and put him in for the Legion of Merit. He assumed command three days later. On June 30, General Maxwell Taylor promoted Hannah to lieutenant colonel as the division operations officer (G-3). (Hannah, Military Interlude, pp. 119–122.)

  Captain Edward A. Peters had taken over the company after Daniels tranferred to the OSS. On D-Day, Peters led five men against a machine-gun nest. He single-handedly knocked it out but was killed in the process. (“Journals”) The demolition platoon only lost two officers. Charles Mellen was killed in action and Gene Brown was promoted to company commander.

  Lieutenant Shrable Williams moved up to platoon leader.

  Lieutenant Sylvester Horner also survived Normandy and was SSG Davidson’s section leader. Lieutenant Edward Haley survived Normandy and joined the platoon to replace Mellen as Jake’s section leader. Lieutenant Eugene Dance transferred in from G Company and asked for SSG Myers’ section since they had known each other from their time in the 29th Ranger Battalion. SFC Charles G. “Chaplain” Williams had been wounded then captured in Normandy. Baran said he saw him in the German hospital at Cherbourg. (Springfield Daily Republican.) Earl Boegerhausen replaced him as the platoon sergeant.

  Chapter 4: Surviving Holland

  1. The Airborne troops were the best trained units the Allies had and Eisenhower knew it would be a waste not to use them. Consequently, a number of airborne drops had been proposed, but Patton’s Third Army kept overrunning the drop zones before any jump could take place. Finally the British proposed an airborne operation that made sense: seize a series of bridges along a major transportation artery and then push up the corridor with tanks. This was essentially Germany’s 1940 invasion of Holland in reverse. The problem lay in the details, an unknown German SS panzer corps at Arnhem, and the lack of British urgency.

  2. Jack Agnew said that they were not allowed to write anything on the planes when they jumped into Normandy but for the Holland jump they wrote their names and “The Filthy 13” on the side of their C-47.

  3. Mike Marquez jumped in with an M3 “Grease gun.” He threw it away as soon as he could pick up an M1 Garand, because the Grease gun was “ugly and only good for close in fighting.”

  4. Tom Young remembered,
“I was the last man in the stick [of Lt. Dance’s plane]. Our plane was being jostled about due to flak. I went into the cabin and saw the navigator and radio operator slumped over dead. The pilot was leaning over to one side with blood spurting out of his head. I yelled at the copilot to turn on the green light. He calmly reached over and flipped the switch. We were in such a rush to get out of the plane that I went out the door with three others.”

  Jack Womer remembered that before the jump Jake made him the number three man in the stick. This position was important because he stood next to the door with his hand on the green light. He could see everything that went on inside and out of the aircraft. They did not expect trouble from too many Germans on the ground but expected lots of trouble with the flak. The flak made Jack nervous. Lt. Dance’s

  plane was hit and swerved in front of theirs and the paratroopers were jumping out and hitting the propeller of Jack’s C-47. Jack told his stick to go. They went out on the red light.

  Steve Kovacs was in the other plane which was hit by flak and caught fire a minute short of their drop zone. The men bailed out and the aircraft crashed. (George E. Koskimaki, Hell’s Highway; Chronicle of the 101st Airborne Division in the Holland Campaign, September– November, 1944, p. 58.)

  5. Lefty McGee was another paratrooper from Jake’s hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma. He survived the war and died in 1998 still living in Ponca City.

  6. The 506th took Son, Holland, the first day but the Germans blew the bridge. The 506th reached Eindhoven the next day. 3d Battalion led into the city from the north followed by 2d Battalion with the 1st Battalion behind in reserve. As soon as the lead battalion encountered resistance, Sink deployed the 2d Battalion to the east. Enemy resistance quickly broke, giving way to celebration by the citizens.

  7. There is some confusion as to how Davidson and Myers actually died. Eugene Dance did not remember any conversation with Jake. Very few of the men even remembered who Dance was. Dance remembered that the British convoy was backed up bumper-to-bumper. When the Messerschmitts came in, the drivers abandoned their trucks. Dance and Myers ran forward to get the drivers back in their trucks to get them moving again. A bomb landed fifteen feet from Dance. Myers’s body absorbed the blast, which saved Dance’s life. Steve Kovacs remembered Myers was out in the open yelling at everybody to take cover when he was killed. (Koskimaki, Hell’s Highway, p. 131.)

  Herb Pierce was on outpost duty in Davidson’s section. Davidson yelled at him, “Let’s get out of here!” They started out of the building for an air raid shelter with Myers in the lead. When Herb saw the bombs falling, he turned back into the building but the blast killed Davidson.

  CPL Tom Young said there was a shelter near each bridge. When the Messerschmitts came, he could see what they were going to do. He told his squad—Armando Marquez, Steve Kovacs and Frank Kough—to get into the shelter. He told Bill Myers and Jim Davidson to get in there too but they just stood out in the open. The planes dropped three bombs. A piece of shrapnel about the size of an egg hit Myers in the kidney and another piece hit him on the back of the leg slicing the muscle in two. Myers fell on Tom who carried him into the shelter. The planes returned on a strafing run and set the convoy of trucks ablaze.

  Davidson stood there shooting at them with his Thompson submachine gun when he was hit. The rounds had taken his legs off.

  When the bombing began, Jack Agnew saw Manny Freedman lying under a plate glass window in an alley way. He called over, “Manny, get out of there!” He came over and with the next bomb “the window just popped out and went right down like a knife blade.”

  Manny turned to Jack, “Boy, I wouldn’t have made it would I?” Jack answered, “No, you would not.” From there Jack ran around trying to find an air raid shelter. He came upon the bodies of Davidson and Myers. They were not more than three feet apart. He could see from the bullet holes where he believed Davidson had been killed by strafing while standing against a wall. When he picked Jim up, Jack’s fingers went right through the back of Davidson’s head. A round had blown his brains out. Myers had his legs blown off but was still alive. Jack said he carried Myers down into the air raid shelter where he found Armando Marquez.

  Mike Marquez had dug a foxhole over in Jake’s sector. His brother, Armando, was on the next bridge. Mike did not want him anywhere near because he would have worried about taking care of him. In Mike’s mind, Armando had no business even being in Holland in the first place. He had broken his leg on that last practice jump before the Normandy invasion. Armando, however, wanted to see action and talked Gene Eib into releasing him from the hospital for the Holland jump. After the bombing, Mike ran over to check on his brother. Armando had brains and blood dripping from under his helmet. After a few words with him, Mike realized that Armando was all right. He had evidently put on Davidson’s helmet. To Mike’s relief, the bombing, however, re-injured Armando’s leg so he was later evacuated which caused him to miss the Battle of the Bulge. Myers was evacuated that morning but died on the way to the field hospital.

  8. Tom Young said that shrapnel from one bomb hit part of the shelter, then his leg. It did not go in very deep and he was able to pick it out. It did not hurt too much so he marched with the platoon to Son. A medic saw the blood on his leg and checked it out. He then had Tom evacuated.

  9. The bombing had inflicted significant casualties on the platoon. When the bridge was turned over to the British there was no longer a need for the demolition platoon. All the demolition officers were sent to other assignments according to need. Eugene Dance was one of the most senior first lieutenants in the regiment. He was promoted to captain with command of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion.

  10. The Germans realized how vulnerable the corridor was. German armor tried to sever the corridor at Veghel on the morning of September 22. In anticipation, Division ordered the 506th, minus 1st Battalion, north to Veghel and Uden. The regiment moved up on the morning of the 22nd both in trucks and on foot. Lead elements of the 2nd Battalion with Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Chase and Regimental Headquarters Company reached Uden around 11:00 and then were immediately cut off. The Germans had severed the road between them and Veghel and tried to take the two towns. Veghel and Opheusden turned out to be the hardest fought battle of the 506th in Holland. The demolitions platoon more likely ran into the Germans at Veghel and fought their way up to their company in Uden. (Koskimaki, Hell’s Highway, pp. 270-290.)

  11. Mike Marquez was pulled to guard Sink’s headquarters. Jack Agnew was again detailed as a dispatch rider and sent up to communicate with the British.

  12. In spite of his callous humor, the subsequent event would lead to Jake’s one recurring nightmare. His wife, Martha, said the cold would always bring on the memory of this event.

  13. Herb Pierce remembered they were driving into Uden when a GI stepped out in the road and warned them not to go any further. They could hear artillery up the road. A lieutenant was riding in the front of the truck. As soon as they stopped everyone climbed out of the truck. On the right side of the road was a row of beautiful houses. On the left were hardly any buildings. Suddenly the Germans opened up on them. From this point the stories differ significantly. Evidently everyone scattered in different directions.

  14. Herb Pierce said many of the paratroopers stayed in the ditch for a while and then Jake yelled, “We’re going into that house over there!” They ran for the building. “Once inside, the walls came apart. The Germans laid those 88s right down our throats. Evidently they had seen us go in there.” Jake yelled, “Let’s get out of here!” Herb jumped out of the kitchen window and buried himself in a grease pit. The Germans blew that house apart. The paratroopers then started back up the road.

  The field was six feet above the road. The Germans attacked with a captured American tank. An officer charged the tank with a hand grenade only to be killed when he climbed on it. The rest of the paratroopers fought their way up the street.

  Herb remembered that the tanks were firing on
them at pointblank range. While he was in one house he saw a little girl wearing a white dress run out of a house into the street. A German tank shot her and she was a mass of blood. Herb ran out to pick her up but a medic got to her first and yelled that he would take care of her. He heard she lived.

  Jack Womer jumped into a ditch with a bunch of other paratroopers. He saw a guy with his head blown off. Jack followed the ditch to a house. There were paratroopers all around the house. He figured he would go down into the cellar but could not because it was full of paratroopers “waiting for orders.” He remembered only tanks attacking them.

  Jack Agnew and Mike Marquez both missed the ambush. Jack did remember experiencing the heaviest mortaring in Veghel. When he crawled out of his foxhole, he could not see how anyone could have survived it.

  15. Herb Pierce remembered, “Jake and I were in a foxhole together. I was scared to death. I was shaking so bad I could not shoot or even hold a cigarette. Jake just chewed tobacco and spit, chewed and spit, chewed and spit. It seemed like it did not bother him. I told him I was scared. Jake said to me, ‘Kid, you show your fear by shaking. I’m just as scared as you and my guts are tearing me up.’ He told us to get out of there and we ran.”

  Herb Pierce later told Jake’s wife, Martha, how he had once threatened to kill Jake when they got into combat but it was Jake who threatened to kill him and in turn saved his life.

  16. Jack Womer remembered a captain coming over to the house hiding the paratroopers. He said, “We’ve got to go back in town. The tanks have left.” Jack came out and a lieutenant asked if anyone could fire a bazooka. Joe Oleskiewicz had a bazooka. The officer told Jack where there were some bazooka rounds. Jack and Joe ran across the road to get the rounds. Then the 88s opened up on Joe. Jack did not see what happened to him. He later saw a pistol Joe had carried next to the body missing its upper torso.

  17. Jack Womer remembered, “When the mortars landed in the ditch, Jake and I took off. I went back to finish digging my hole and Graham and the others were gone. They had run out of the ditch and left their equipment. I looked around. The ditch ran under a road and there was Graham. I said, ‘This is a good place, so we stayed in there for two days.”