A Company of Heroes
Page 7
It was fortunate that Toni had blond hair and blue eyes, and that she spoke German fluently. (She had been raised by a German nanny who taught her the language.) Her captors found her both useful and attractive, so they didn’t kill her. Still, conditions in Auschwitz were horrible. Everywhere around her was death and dying. She knew she had to get out. Toni could think of only one plan—it was a long shot and risky, but she decided to take it. From prewar times, Toni’s family was acquainted with an influential German countess. Toni was able to smuggle a letter out to her, telling the countess her family’s story and begging for help. The countess received the letter, was able to pull some strings from the outside, and had Toni transferred to another Nazi labor camp, this one still severe, but less murderous than Auschwitz. The countess was more powerful than Toni realized. On the first night inside her new prison cell, Toni heard a familiar voice in the next room. She couldn’t believe it. It was Toni’s mother, along with baby Richard. The little family was reunited in the new prison camp.
The next three and a half years passed slowly and harshly. Toni remained in the prison camp with her aging mother and young son, sometimes hearing the Allied bombing of nearby railroads. Toni was not used as a translator this time; she worked at hard labor with a pick and shovel. Her specific job was to carry buckets of railroad ties and help repair the bombed railways. It was slave labor, but every night she was able to see all the family she had left in the world.
The grandmother, named Irene Puchalski, continued to act in her profession as a doctor, and constantly took care of people in the prison camp, giving away her provisions. Toward the end of the war, Irene grew sick with dysentery. She had helped other people, but in the end she could not help herself. The grandmother died in the camp. Toni had now lost her father, brother, husband, and mother. It was just her and her young son. Toni herself was sick, thin. One picture survived of her during that time. She has sunken, drawn cheekbones. Her eyes convey hopelessness. There wasn’t much time—or hope—left for her.
Gordy Carson’s Story
Hold that thought, and let me tell you about my father.
Gordon Carson (known as Gordy to his friends) was born July 30, 1924, in Geneva, New York. Unlike Toni, he wasn’t a child of wealth or privilege and he didn’t have an easy upbringing. Gordy’s dad was a former WWI Marine: hardnosed, alcoholic, and a real roaring drunk. Life at home was chaotic, loud, unpredictable, and frightening. His mother was an alcoholic, too. This little short thing, maybe four-foot-ten, could put away an eighteen pack a day and still walk.
Despite the hard times, Gordy grew up learning to be charming, even a bit of a smooth talker. Friends referred to him as the “lovable scoundrel.” He found solace from a difficult home life in sports and threw himself into athletics. At Geneva High School he was the only athlete to letter in five sports in one year: lacrosse, track, basketball, football, and baseball. He dreamed of playing professional baseball someday and had the potential to make it. Everybody said so, except his father. Gordy had a quieter side to him, too, one he rarely showed to anybody. For fun he read Plato and Socrates. He dreamed of going to college one day and studying philosophy. He wanted to make something of his life.
WWII hit, and Gordy and his classmates put plans on hold and enlisted. Gordy found out there was an extra fifty bucks a month for being a paratrooper, so he signed up and was soon on a train bound for Camp Toccoa.
Gordy threw himself headlong into the training. He was one of five men in the company who received highest scores in the physical competition at Toccoa. Yet there was still time for his other “hobbies.” Gordy developed a reputation among the men as a real ladies’ man. The guys in the company even gave him the nickname “Loverboy.”
Gordy kept an extensive journal while at Toccoa, which described the training jumps from airplanes, the running, the marching, the endless physical exertion, and the other members of the outfit. He didn’t like training at Toccoa much, yet on November 29, 1942, wrote of the joy of camaraderie he was experiencing:Our 13 weeks of training, as I look back on it, has been one mass of countless days. We came here raw, very raw, recruits and go from here soldiers. We have learned to live with each other, and with all our grumbling, swearing, and noise, we have learned to know that you have to have buddies to get along in the service.
While at Camp Benning, he wrote about the thrill of jumping, which also shows you a bit of his personality: I think I am getting jump crazy because when I am on the ground I want to jump some more. The feel of that rush of the prop blast cannot be told in writing. It gets you after a while. You jump out excited and then you feel that rush of the wind. I don’t know whether I close my eyes or not, but all of a sudden I feel that opening jerk and I shout with all my might.
From America, Gordy and Easy Company boarded the troop ship Samaria and sailed to England, where more training occurred in Aldbourne. Gordy’s journal also covered this time extensively. He wrote about first seeing England on September 17, 1943:Kissed the Samaria good-bye and put our feet on good old ground for the first time in 11 days. We organized as a battalion and marched 1½ miles to the railroad station. The people are the same the world over, and we looked at them as much as they did at us. We saw some spots that were bombed bad. It is really awful and some of the buildings are just stripped. The people here really know that there is a war going on, for their homes have been bombed in front of them.
He wrote simply and poignantly on December 31, 1943:Last day of 1943. Tomorrow shall be a new year, and I wonder what it shall bring, wonder how many of us will see 1945.
Wartime England was its own world, filled with dread of the combat that was to come. Some of the men used the opportunity to experience life to the fullest while they still could. Gordy was one of them. Once, Gordy and Sgt. Bill Guarnere smuggled two English girls back to their barracks. They hid the girls in the attic while the tight-lipped Lt. Peacock made rounds. One of the hidden girls slipped, and her legs fell through the ceiling. Peacock busted the soldiers, and Guarnere took the rap for my dad.
The high jinks stopped very soon. Gordy parachuted into Normandy on D-day and survived the intense fighting that followed over the next month as Easy Company helped liberate various French towns.
Gordy jumped again into Holland for Operation Market-Garden. The fighting was fierce, but again, he survived.
Then, in the harsh cold of winter, from December 1944 to February 1945, Easy Company fought the Germans in Bastogne. Conditions were horrible. The men of Easy Company had little food and no proper winter clothing. Days passed, filled with bloodshed. The men endured the constant pounding of German shells. Gordy was in his foxhole one day during a shelling. A German 88 flew in and hit the tree above him and exploded, driving a large jagged arrow of wood into his leg. He was sent to the frontline aid station in the surrounded hospital in Bastogne. Supplies were low in the hospital, and a medic gave Gordy a bottle of booze for pain. It was crème de menthe, and Gordy drank half the bottle. The Germans bombed the town that night and Gordy got on his hands and knees in the hospital to brace himself against the concussions. He threw up—green—in his helmet.
Gordy recovered from his wound and rejoined Easy Company just as they headed through Germany. The war was nearly over, yet there was much work still to be done. For three days and nights as Easy Company drove south, wave after wave of German soldiers marched north in the center of the autobahn, still in ranks but defeated, heading home.
In Germany, Gordy became a clerk for Captain Ron Speirs, who was then Easy Company’s commander. One of Gordy’s jobs was to pick out a company command post (CP) each night in the different occupied villages they came to. Gordy, who had a smattering of high school German, would pick out the best house in each town, knock on the door, and tell the people inside to leave. One evening he knocked on an apartment complex and the residents came out, including one elderly lady who reminded him of his grandmother. Out of compassion, Gordy told her not to worry, and stay where she was.
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By the time they got to the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s hideout in the Alps, Speirs and Gordy were good buddies. Together they drank bottles of wine, then got out their .45s and shot wine bottles off the Nest’s railing in celebration.
Gordy found Hermann Goering’s car, and he and Speirs immediately hopped in and went for an extended joyride. Upper Brass wanted the car, but before they turned it over, they wondered if the windows were bulletproof. They paced off ten yards, aimed their M1s and fired. The windows were not.
From Germany, the company was sent to Kaprun, Austria, for occupation duties.
How They Met
Mercifully, the war ended in 1945, and Toni’s captors deserted the prison camp. But she was not free yet. Along with many in the prison camp, she was transferred to a displaced persons’ (DP) camp, which just happened to be in Kaprun, Austria. It was part of the huge humanitarian effort that began to take place. Following World War II, some eleven to twenty million people were considered displaced persons. Allied military and civilian authorities faced considerable logistic, linguistic, and transportation challenges in helping displaced persons find their way home to resettle. It was no simple task. Many DPs were sick, extremely malnourished, and in need of food and medical care. Many, including Toni, had no homes to return to or no way of getting there.
It’s hard for people today to fully understand the depth of what happens during a war the size of World War II. What is it like to displace several million people? That’s the size of several large-scale American cities. Imagine just New York City. Its population is about eight million people today. More than eleven million people died in the Nazi ovens during WWII. A million and a half of those were children. And millions more were displaced from their homes and were taken for slave labor, like my mother, Toni. I don’t think we can fathom the scope of that—how traumatized people were, how scattered they were all over the globe. My whole extended family on my mother’s side disappeared—she and my brother Richard were the only two out of nineteen on that side of the family left alive.
One of Easy Company’s tasks was to help with the DPs. As Easy Company drove into Kaprun, all the DPs were together outside the DP camp on the grass. Gordy, ever the ladies’ man, immediately noticed Toni’s blond hair and went out of his way to meet her. Gordy didn’t speak any Polish, and Toni didn’t speak any English, but they both spoke German and made a connection. Toni and Gordy began to see a lot of each other. He introduced her to his commander. Because Toni spoke five languages, Speirs put her to work for Easy Company as a translator, helping with the DPs. On the side, Speirs also gave Toni a Luger to defend herself, because of all the drunk GIs around. Mom always said you couldn’t imagine how happy people were that the war was over. An atmosphere of jubilance permeated the region.
Toni became a familiar face to Easy Company men. Once, Easy Company was having a party complete with ever-present beer kegs. Toni’s son, Richard, who was about three or four years old by then, turned on the spigot of a keg and emptied out all the beer. Joe Lesniewski, Pat Christenson, and George Luz caught him at it, but laughed it off good-naturedly. Richard became known around Easy Company as “that little blond kid.” We have a picture of Toni with Sgt. Ralph Spina and young Richard. The child is wearing clothes made of parachute material given to Toni from the paratroopers. There weren’t any stores around there where a person could get cloth or baby clothes.
Toni and Gordy were very close, constantly. They spent the summer of 1945 together in Kaprun, taking in the beauty of the countryside, going for long walks, and falling deeper and deeper in love. But by August, many of the men from Easy Company were officially done with their duties, and plans were made to ship them back to Cherbourg, then back to the states. Gordy, as a high-points man, was one of these men. Gordy and Toni parted. Gordy was still in the Army. It wasn’t like he could cart a wife along with him, particularly one with a young Polish son. Or could he? Perhaps it was just a fun summer, they concluded, one bright spot in years of horror. They wondered if they would ever see each other again. They concluded probably not.
Speirs remained in Austria for a short time. With Gordy gone, Speirs discovered that Toni was pregnant with Gordy’s child. Speirs sent word to Gordy, who was then in Cherbourg, inches away from heading home.
Gordy had a decision to make. Like other GIs, he could have claimed that the baby was not his and skipped the country and kept going. Being with Toni would also mean taking on the responsibility of Toni’s other son, Richard. Gordy still had college ahead of him. And dreams of playing professional sports. He had always been known as a ladies’ man—this was just one of those things that happens, right?
Nothing But Hopes Ahead
Well, it must have been true love, because my father returned to Austria and proposed. On the day of the wedding in October 1945, George Luz had found some kind of rickshaw, like those in Asia. Luz pulled Toni around Kaprun while Gordy finished his day’s duty. All DPs needed to wear white arm bands, but Toni didn’t have hers on. A major drove by in a jeep, stopped, and ordered Toni to put on her arm band. She did, but as soon as he was out of sight, the affable Luz told her not to wear such a thing on her wedding day.
They married, but because there was no married housing, Toni and Richard continued to live in the DP camp while Gordy stayed in the Army camp. The family waited for clearance to come back to the States. It wasn’t easy. Thousands of American men were coming home, some with new families, and America had so far closed its doors to receiving displaced persons.
The night their baby was born, Gordy secured a house in town for Toni so she could be inside and comfortable. A doctor came from Vienna to deliver the baby. Immediately after the birth, mother and baby went back to the DP camp. Their new son, Gary Carson, was born on March 3, 1946. That little baby was me. I was the first son of Easy Company born in Europe. It staggers me when I think about the odds against me being born. Fortunately, my mother had regained her health from her days in the prison camps, and I weighed in at a whopping nine pounds.
Finally the red tape parted and clearances were allowed. My mother and father, along with my half-brother, Richard, and me, came to the States on a troop ship through Ellis Island. My mother and Richard were listed as being Polish, but I was listed as an American citizen, born to an American GI. My brother and I both caught whooping cough while on the ship. I was the sickest, and they thought they were going to lose me. But we both survived. We returned home, a free family, to our new life in the United States. My dad had survived the war. My mother had found her place of freedom and security at last. We were all together, a young family with nothing but hopes ahead.
The Trauma of War
I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after.
The trauma that both my parents had been through during the war affected the family forever after. I remember some of Mom and Dad’s early arguments. He would say things like, “Well, you don’t know what I went through.” And she would say, “Bullshit, you don’t know what I went through.” I always got a kick out of that, because Dad could never bluff her as to how horrible war is. She went through it all.
After the war, Dad went to Springfield College in Massachusetts where he majored in physical education and minored in philosophy. He graduated and they moved to the West Coast where he got a job. Dad did okay for a while, but, like a lot of the other guys, he drank a lot. I think that was that generation’s drug of choice. Fortunately, he was a gentle drunk, always an easygoing guy, and always a gentleman. You couldn’t help but love him. He told me once that after World War II and all he had seen, his philosophy of life was that he was simply going to have as much fun as he could. That was basically what he lived by even years later when he found out he had liver cancer. We were sitting near the ocean on a log down in Olympia and he said, “Well, I’ve had my fun.” That’s how he viewed life and death—enjoy each day while you’re still alive—and boy, he sure did. But his fun often trumped any sense of responsibility.
When Dad first got out of college he worked for the YMCA in Bellingham as athletic director. He got involved with the Jaycees, and that led to a job as a life insurance salesman, which is what he worked at the rest of his life. When he moved to Seattle he worked for Olympic National Life. Later he moved to Olympia, and he and my stepmom bought a beautiful home on the beach. He worked for Midland National Life then and that’s where he finished his career. He sold life insurance to the GIs up at Fort Lewis. Being an old Airborne Ranger, he had an instant bond with them and was quite successful in his business.
Mom was an accountant after the war. She was a hell of a mathematician. There were five children in the family and three in Dad’s second. A few years after the divorce, Pat Christenson helped get my mother a good job down in California. They had stayed good friends since the war and had always written letters back and forth. Every year he sent Christmas cards of drawings he had done. She packed up the three younger kids and moved down to Sacramento. After a few years, she moved back up to the Pacific Northwest.
How My Parents Died