To the Church on Time
The family was never told anything about his enlistment, but daughter Marlene Langlois noted the big wartime story was about how her father met her mother. When Easy Company was stationed in Aldbourne, Doc Roe met a striking British girl who told him her name was Maxine. They met in Swindon, where she was assigned to work in a munitions factory. With all the British men going off to war, the young women were needed to keep the town running.
Maxine wasn’t very impressed with Doc Roe at first, but he was persistent. One weekend he followed her to her boarding house. When he knocked on the door and asked for Maxine, “There’s no one named Maxine here,” came the stern reply.
Doc Roe was flummoxed. He had watched her enter the house. She had to be there.
It turns out that Maxine had given him a fake name. It was popular for the British girls to not reveal their real names to the Yanks. Her real name was Vera.
Sometime later, when Vera and Doc Roe were married, they named one of their daughters Maxine, in honor of the joke. The other daughter, Marlene, was named after the popular WWII song “Lili Marlene.”
Vera and Doc Roe courted during his stay in Aldbourne and wrote letters when he was stationed elsewhere. The family has a picture their dad gave their mother from that era. It’s signed on the front, “All my love to the dearest person in the world, ‘My Rat.’ Your old Rip, Gene.”
During their courtship in England, Doc Roe visited Dartmouth several times. Vera talked about how Doc brought gifts to her family: chocolate and cigarettes, prized possessions in wartime England. He also gave her a silver-plated pistol with pearl grips. On one side it had his picture; on the other it had hers. When she went home with the pistol, her brother made her throw it into the channel. Vera had eleven siblings, and times were financially hard for her family. They couldn’t even take care of all their children, so a few of them boarded with other families.
A wedding was scheduled for a beautiful weekend in early June 1944. What bride wouldn’t want a June wedding? Vera showed up at the church with her white dress on, but Doc Roe didn’t show. Their wedding date had been set for June 6, the D-day invasion, and the groom was jumping into combat. None of the men knew the exact date of the invasion, and Doc Roe wasn’t able to get word back to his fiancée when he found out.
They decided to plan for a new wedding date as soon as the war in Europe was over and he could get back to England for a time. V-E Day was May 8, 1945, and Doc Roe married Vera in July 1945. They wanted a quiet, quick wedding and went to a justice of the peace. A taxi driver was one of their witnesses along with somebody else they didn’t know.
In the series it shows Doc Roe developing a friendship with the nurse in the hospital in Bastogne. The family noted that’s mostly made up. The nurse was a real person named Renée LeMaire, and it was probable that Doc Roe ran across her while bringing wounded back and forth to Bastogne, but there’s no indication he had any sort of relationship with her or shared chocolate bars as is shown in the series. The series is correct, however, when it shows that the hospital/church was bombed and she was killed. A Congolese nurse is also shown in the series. In real life she was named Augusta Chiwi and worked in an aid station several blocks away. She survived the bombings.
More War Stories
Grandson Kyle Tircuit remembered a few war stories his grandfather told him. Immediately before the men were shipped overseas, some of them stopped up a tub, filled it with peroxide, and bleached their hair as a prank. Doc Roe was one of them.
Kyle also remembers his grandpa telling him about a time he treated someone with a head wound in Bastogne. Supplies were low, and the wound was serious, so the ever-resourceful Doc Roe took mud and snow and packed the man’s brains back in his head. He was able to buy enough time to get the man to help.
Easy Company veteran Earl McClung told the family a story about when the men were in Holland, positioned on the dike. A shell came in and hit the foxhole two ahead of McClung’s. The soldiers in the foxhole didn’t climb out or make any sounds. By the size of the blast, McClung figured they were torn up badly but probably not dead. He shouted for a medic. Doc Roe came running and jumped in the foxhole where the two men were. It turned out the two weren’t hurt at all. McClung said, “I felt so guilty for putting Roe in a situation like that—running in the middle of an artillery barrage, when no one was hurt.”
McClung told another story that happened in Holland. Someone was wounded on a flatland area, and a medic was tasked with running out and picking him up. Doc Roe asked McClung to go along as a stretcher-bearer. McClung said yes and picked up his rifle.
“You can’t take that with you,” Roe said. “We’re going as medics.”
“There’s no way I’m going out there without my rifle,” McClung said.
Roe nodded. “Oh yes you are.” They went out, weaponless, and brought the wounded man back to safety.
Doc Roe was injured in the fighting in Holland for Operation Market-Garden. When he jumped from the plane, he landed on some barbed wire and cut his calf. He eventually received more than one Purple Heart, but the family is not sure of the circumstances around his other injuries.
When E Company went to Eagle’s Nest, the men raided Hitler’s wine cellars, and one of Doc Roe’s unofficial duties was to drive a big delivery truck around with all the liquor in it. The generals and colonels commandeered the champagne and fine brandies. The enlisted men got the wine and beer.
The wedding present that E Company gave Doc Roe and Vera came from Berchtesgaden—a set of forks and knives from the Eagle’s Nest. There were no spoons, just forks and knives, with fine etchings on them. Years later, Doc Roe was inducted into the Louisiana World War II Museum’s Hall of Honor at Baton Rouge. The family donated the forks and knives to the museum to be put on display.
When the war was over, Doc Roe came home first. His new wife came over later on the Queen Mary and emigrated through Ellis Island.
When Doc Roe came home he brought a German Luger home as a souvenir. It had a swastika on it. His mother took one look at it and said, “We’re not having any of that in the house.” She threw it in the bayou.
Grandson Chris noted that his Paw-Paw seldom spoke of the war except to talk about the good times he had and the friends he had made. In 1992, Chris’s parents brought him a copy of the book, signed by his grandfather. “I was twenty at the time,” Chris said, “at Louisiana State University. The first thing I did was go to the appendix and look for his name. He was listed just three times. I remember closing the book and saying to myself, ‘Well, I guess Paw-Paw didn’t do much in the war.’”
But that thought changed completely in 2001 when Chris and his family went to Paris for the world premiere of the series. “Whenever I said I was with the Roe family, people’s eyes lit up,” Chris said. “Other veterans would shake my hand like I had done something important. They’d say, ‘Your grandfather was a wonderful man, an angel, a hero.’ You don’t ever think about those tough men using a word like ‘angel’—but that’s the word they used to describe my grandfather. Several said they would never want to be a medic, because when the shelling began, they were at least able to duck in foxholes, but the medic was the guy who had to get up and run through the middle of it. I kick myself a million times for not sitting down with him when he was alive and begging him to tell me more about his experiences.”
Doc Roe’s Brilliance
With the war over, Doc Roe and his new wife settled in Baton Rouge, where three children were born. Doc Roe was a good father who pursued outdoor activities with his children such as hunting, fishing, and horse-back riding. He always owned horses.
One of Marlene’s first memories of her father is of his rough, hardened skin from having to work out in hot weather so much. He often laid asphalt in south Louisiana where the temperatures regularly climbed to 95 degrees. He was dark brown from working all day in the sun.
“We had the most normal life you could think of,” Mar
lene said. “We spent a lot of time on the bayous on little boats, fishing and crabbing. He stayed close to his parents and brothers and sisters, and we often visited. It was a very family-oriented way to grow up.”
Marlene noted that despite her dad’s lack of education, he was a brilliant man. “He could take plans and build a parking lot,” she said, “or figure out a blueprint faster than most engineers could. Those were skills he was just born with. He never had any formal training. It was always amazing that he could accomplish what he did.”
Grandson Kyle runs a construction business today. One of the contractors he works with has a lowboy trailer, a heavy-duty one pulled by a big rig. The contractor and Doc Roe built the trailer together years ago. It’s still on the road and going strong.
The Roe children remember few household rules growing up, other than being taught to be respectful, which their father always was, and that boys couldn’t hit girls. “Of course, Eugene [Jr.] was the baby,” Marlene said, “and with two older sisters, we aggravated him as only older sisters can do. But Daddy was always very strong about that—you do not hit your sisters no matter how much they irritate you.”
In the series, Doc Roe was shown smoking Lucky Strikes. That was authentic. Doc Roe smoked a couple packs of Lucky Strikes daily until the day he died. He liked to drink whiskey, too. “Mother and Daddy always drank Seagram’s Seven and Coke,” Marlene said. “It was always my job to make their highballs at night. I have no idea why that job fell to me, but that was my job.”
“He could be pretty traditional,” Eugene Jr. said. “For instance, he never wanted me to take typing in high school. He thought that was only for girls. It was the same way with band class. Real guys played football, he said. Only sissies played in the band.”
Eugene Jr. speculated that there were two times in his life he disappointed his father. Eugene Jr. did well in school (he was class valedictorian) and was given an opportunity to go to West Point on scholarship. The West Point opportunity was a real honor. Eugene Sr. had a great respect for the West Point grads he served with, and Eugene Jr. knew his father would have loved him to go to West Point. But a military career did not appeal to Eugene Jr., and he also wanted to stay closer to home.
The second time was after Eugene Jr. graduated from Louisiana State University, when he went to work for Exxon. “I think he really wanted me to take over his construction business,” Eugene Jr. said. “I remember him saying, ‘I don’t understand why an educated man would ever want to work for someone else.’ That was his view of independence—being able to stand on your own. He had worked himself up to running construction companies with the limited education he had. So he really valued a man starting and running his own business.”
Eugene Jr. noted that his father was pleased with him in other ways. “He was proud as a peacock that I made valedictorian. And we grew up sort of on a farm and always had cows and horses. I won quite a few trophies in horse shows, and he was always really proud of those trophies. He’d brag about me in front of other people. That’s how he showed it.”
The construction business is known for its seasonal ups and downs. Doc Roe experienced both. Sometimes he had more work than he knew what to do with. Sometimes, it was a bust. He went through bankruptcy, but at other times the money flowed in. When it did, Doc Roe was always generous with it. His grandsons remember as boys receiving hundred dollar bills at Christmastime, which seemed a fortune to them. Paw-Paw often bought them toys, too—bulldozers and tractors—things he could relate to.
“It was always a real adventure to go to his house,” said grandson Derek Tircuit. “He had dirt, chickens, dogs, and all this large equipment all over, backhoes and tractors. As a young boy, that was heaven. You could run around in the middle of nowhere and climb on stuff. It was an adventure. And we could do whatever we wanted to—that was Grandpa’s attitude toward us. If you want to go climb on a tractor, that was fine with him.”
The marriage between Vera and Doc Roe was mostly good, said the family, but pressures eventually took their toll. Vera went back to England to visit relatives every four or five years, but the lack of immediate family wore on her. “I remember traveling back to England several times with Mom,” Marlene said. “Maxine, age eight, Eugene Jr., eighteen months, and I, age six, went once. We flew on the old Pan Am planes and had to fly to Greenland first, then change planes to continue to England. It was hard for Mom to go back to England. She had to steel herself when she was away from her family. Then she saw them again, then she had to steel herself again to leave, never knowing when and if she’d be able to go back, or who would be alive when she did. It was always a mixed thing for her to go home. Telephone conversations were more difficult back then also. For many years there was no phone in the family home. We used to have to call England person-to-person and contact a nearby pub. Somebody in the pub would relay the message and go get the family member, who’d come back to the pub at the arranged time. That’s how mother would talk to her family.”
After twenty-seven years together, Doc Roe and Vera divorced. About five years later, Doc Roe remarried, but Vera never did. She kept her British citizenship, but never moved back to England. America was her new home now. Family ties were always cordial with Doc Roe’s new wife, as she played no part in the divorce.
Remarkably Calm
Doc Roe was more of a teacher than perhaps he ever knew.
Kyle remembers once when he was thirteen, his grandfather bought a brand new pickup truck, a Ford F-250. Somebody came to the yard to get a load of dirt, and Grandpa told Kyle to go move his new truck. “I backed it right into a ditch and put a dent in the bumper,” Kyle said. “I figured he’d be really mad, but he just came over, looked at it, and said, ‘Oh well. It’s just the first dent in the truck, there’s probably plenty more to come.’ That’s always stayed with me.”
The experience also made a big impression on grandson Derek, who was there when it happened. “You could cause serious mayhem at Grandpa’s place, but it just didn’t matter to him,” Derek said. “He had this weird calm about him. When Kyle put the truck in the ditch, Grandpa got the backhoe and pulled it out. You think, if you’re a kid and you wreck some adult’s truck, it’s a pretty big deal. But with Grandpa, it wasn’t. There was no cussing or throwing things, no freaking out. He just hooked up a chain and got the job done. I attribute his strange peace to what he had been through—the war, the concentration camps—he had seen it all, and after the war every other experience paled by comparison. One of your buddies gets his legs blown off, that’s a problem. But a dented truck, in the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing.”
In spite of his calm demeanor, nobody messed with Doc Roe either. “Paw-Paw had been working on a car,” Kyle said. “It backfired and he was burned. While he was home recuperating, I went deer hunting on his property with some friends. I forgot to let my grandfather know we were on his land. He figured somebody was trespassing. When we finished hunting, Paw-Paw had closed and locked the gate on us. There he was on the front porch with gauze wrapped around his head and a shotgun in his hands, trying to figure out who was on his property. You didn’t mess with Paw-Paw.”
When Doc Roe retired from the construction business, he did side jobs, then bought a Western apparel and gear store, which later burned to the ground, then was rebuilt. Doc Roe took it all in stride.
“Probably the thing I remember most from him was his attitude that anything can be fixed, no matter how messed up it was,” Kyle said. “It didn’t matter if it was a stuck machine or a burnt store, his take was always, ‘Don’t worry about things. It’s all going to be okay.’ I’ve seen him go from being bankrupt to rolling in the money again. He chose to keep a positive attitude through both good times and bad.”
Doc Roe didn’t keep in touch with his Easy Company friends until later in life. After he retired, he enjoyed reconnecting with his old friends. “If you’d have asked him what part of his life he was proudest of, he would have said his service in
the war,” Chris said.
Established in their Blood
In the early 1990s, Doc Roe contracted lung cancer and fought it for several years. “His chemo treatments were certainly not pleasant,” Marlene said. “He always bounced back, but then started going downhill and never really got up again. He was at home, under hospice. We were there with him at the end. He fell into a light coma and died peacefully, just stopped breathing.”
Kyle characterizes the last few months as “long, agonizing, and painful” for his grandfather. “It was really hard to see him go down little by little. The day he died it was like he had his old strength back. He was headstrong, wanting to get up and go to work that day. But his feet had swollen up and he couldn’t put his shoes on. That was tough.”
Doc Roe died December 30, 1998. The funeral was very plain and ordinary, a small, private ceremony, a tape recording of “Taps,” a flag-draped coffin.
Marlene noted that her father was never known to be religious, but after he had contracted cancer and knew he was going to die, a man came to visit him every once in a while who did Bible readings with him. “I think it helped Dad reconcile things with God,” she said. “I certainly hope he was at peace when he died.”
How would the family want Doc Roe remembered?
“He was just a good person,” Marlene said. “He treated people well. And I think that his service in World War II was something he was especially proud of. That’s what I’d want people to know about my dad.”
Things really hit home for Derek one day in 2001 on the trip to Normandy, in, of all places, the buffet line at lunch. He tells the story in his words:My fiancée went to the line first and I sat down at random at a table with an older man, one of the originals. “What are you doing here?” he said gruffly. I told him I was the grandson of Doc Roe. His countenance completely changed, and then he laughed. “You know, I always saw your grandfather at reunions and he’d say, ‘You know, I don’t remember you, but if you drop your pants and show me the bullet hole in your butt, I’ll probably remember which one you were.’”
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