Bill didn’t have to look for girls, he found them wherever he went, and he brought them back to the barracks. Like the broad whose leg came through the ceiling. And instead of KP being a punishment, Bill made out. That was typical Bill. There we were at four a.m. the next morning, loaded down with full field packs and rifles on our backs, and Bill’s sitting there peeling potatoes and laughing. Everybody was yelling, “You dago bastard, you son of a bitch!” KP isn’t a punishment if you miss out on a twenty-five-mile forced march. I thought, Boy, that lucky son-of-a-gun.
When we got weekend furloughs, we went to London. But if you couldn’t get to London, we went to Windsor, just to get out of Aldbourne. It was the biggest village around and a fifteen-minute ride by bus. We met some of the local girls and danced. The toughest part was the blackouts. The bars and cafes closed at ten p.m., so the bus came at ten thirty to get you back to camp, and you better be there. The walk took three hours. I never had to walk, I wasn’t that stupid, but some guys walked.
One of the pubs we would go to in London was called the Windsor Dive. There was always a fight in there. Everybody was fighting. The Airborne, the tankers, Canadians, Americans, British. Good old-fashioned brawls. Somebody would say something like, “What comes out of the sky?” And one of his buddies would say, “Birdshit and paratroopers,” and then it would start. We’d all go after them.
We made more money than the British so the women were hanging out more with us. We made more money in a lot of ways. If you were a private, you got a base pay of fifty dollars a month, plus hazardous duty pay, combat pay, jump pay, and if you were in for more than three years you got longevity pay. Then higher rank got you more money. It went private, private first class, corporal, sergeant, staff sergeant, 2nd lieutenant, 1st lieutenant, and so on. We did pretty well for GIs. When I joined the Army, I was a corporal, then a technician. When you got broken down for combat and joined another area like I did—I was in the artillery and then went into the Airborne—they took your former rank off you. I didn’t care. It was all the same to me.
We worked hard and trained hard. But overall, Aldbourne was a fun time. We went into pubs, and we were only nineteen, twenty years old. Some of the kids were seventeen, eighteen and they’re the ones who couldn’t handle the beer. You had to help get them back to the sleeping quarters. There was a horse racing track nearby called Membury, that’s where we took off for the invasion. They had horse racing there, but during the war, they closed the track and made the stables into barracks, and sent the horses out to pastures. It’s back in operation now; the British love their horse racing.
We had a few D-days called off. At the end of August, we took trucks to the marshaling area at Membury and then that jump was called off. We were supposed to go to Belgium. Boy, did we have a good time after that was called off! Everybody was happy. Bill put Chuck Grant on detail and guard duty at the sheds where our chutes were stored, and he told Chuck to take me with him. I thought, Boy, this is all right. We never made it to the packing shed. Chuck took me right to a pub, and I wasn’t going to disobey his orders! Chuck was one of those guys, besides being a great soldier and great guy, he loved life, loved women, loved a beer. He always wore his hat sideways, so it was hanging over one ear. He looked like a movie star—tall, slim, blond, curly hair. That night, he hit on one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen in England. And then her husband walked in. He was an English officer, and he was looking at Chuck like he could shoot him. We never did guard the shed. Every night, we’d sneak away and go to the pub in Membury. Bill would’ve raised hell with us if he knew.
(Bill chides Babe: “The reason you had to guard the packing shed was because when we left for D-day, we packed all our clothes up. When we came back, someone cut all our stuff open, cut the patches off everything, it was turmoil. If I knew you were at the pub, I’d have shot you both, and missed. Lucky you didn’t get us all killed, you dummy!”)
At the end of our stay in Aldbourne, a couple days before we were sent to the marshaling area for the last time, we were in our billets, waiting for our last replacements. One of our sergeants walked in with a runt of a guy and introduced him as Miller. Miller tossed his duffel bag on the floor, and grabbed a lower bunk near the door, like he was already one of the guys. I thought he was a little cocky at first, but he turned out to be a pretty likeable guy. His first night in the barracks, a drunk soldier in our platoon who had a habit of pissing anywhere—I won’t name names, he took Miller’s bunk for a latrine and pissed on his head. Miller screamed and woke us up and a couple of us jumped up and grabbed the soldier. I told Miller that where I grew up in South Philly, if a bird shit on your head or a dog pissed on your leg, it was good luck. Somebody on the street corner would say, “You’re gonna hit the number today!” So I told Miller he would definitely get through the war without a scratch.
It was around September 10 or 11, we went back to the marshaling area at Membury Airfield for a jump in Holland on the 17th, which was code-named Operation Market Garden. They put us behind barbed wire. Once you’re in, you’re in. They make sure you can’t go out and discuss it in bars and say, “Oh yeah, we’re leaving tomorrow to jump in Holland.” They put up sand tables and diagrams, explained the objectives of every division going in, and showed us the exact locations and situations we’d be running into, up to every detail.
At night, you had your own thoughts. We sat on our beds and thought. And we’d bullshit. Some guys played cards. I never got into playing cards. But I played Pinochle—me, Eddie Stein, and Dick Davenport. We called it Jew Pinochle. Eddie Stein was a Jewish kid from St. Louis. This was his version—it’s three-handed and cutthroat. Guy makes the bid and then you got to put ’em up, the other two work against you to put you up so you don’t make your bid, and it costs you the game. We enjoyed it.
Some guys played darts. I’d rather sit at the bar and have a beer. Pinochle was my way of gambling. Some guys played poker. I thought it ruined friendships and I stayed away from it. We got a lot of laughs playing Pinochle. A lot of kidding. Whoever lost, we antagonized him all night. They did it to me, I did it to them.
We tried to keep things light. Every man had his own feelings about going into combat. We had no idea what we were going to face. But we were raring to go. After all, why did we enlist? Some guys were nervous, but we trained for this, we were ready to do what we were trained for.
I couldn’t wait to jump. Just like with my first jump in training. How am I gonna get a taste of it if I didn’t do it? I wasn’t afraid. I wanted that star on my wings. You got one for every combat jump. The guys who were in Normandy had one. Your jump wings mean more than anything. You can have your Purple Heart and your Bronze Star, but don’t ever take the jump wings. You worked hard for them and knew what they stood for and what that entailed, and you were ready to face whatever was coming. If you didn’t feel that way, you wouldn’t make it through training. So damn right, I was ready.
We had to wait, it seemed like forever to board the planes. Our gear was so heavy and uncomfortable. It felt like a hundred pounds of extra weight strapped to you. We had two boxes of machine-gun ammo, rifle with bayonet, musette bag, six grenades, two bandoleers of rifle ammo, reserve parachute, Mae West, two knives—one was a trench knife with brass knuckles and a long knife, smoke grenade, main parachute, and gas mask.
At one point, I was lying on the ground on the airfield, with my chute under my head, taking the weight off my back from my backpack. Mike McMann, my assistant machine gunner said, “Yo, Jigger, I hope that ain’t our plane.” I looked up and there’s the name Doris in big red letters on the fuselage. He said, “Christ, we’re going to get blown right out of the sky.” I said, “Mike, you always got such kind thoughts?” Sure enough, that was the plane we got in.
BILL
In the marshaling area, we were briefed on Market Garden. There were three Airborne divisions going in, the 101st, 82nd, and British 1st Airborne. We had to keep one road open that ran from Son in the
south straight up to Arnhem in the north. The 101st was jumping in at the south end, in Son, the 82nd was jumping in the middle at Nijmegen, and the British troopers were jumping at Arnhem. If we secured the road, and kept all the bridges open, the British tanks could advance up to Arnhem, and cross the Lower Rhine into Berlin with the British Second Army. We studied maps and sand tables, mock-ups of the geography, like for Normandy, but in Normandy, there was so much chaos, all the preparation was for nothing. They told us this jump would be quick and easy. The war would be over by Christmas. We all thought, Thank Christ for that. But who the hell knew?
The road we were securing was what they called Hell’s Highway. Believe me, the name was correct! If the Germans took the bridges on that road, we were in trouble. It was one road in, one road out, and Allied troops would be trapped.
Our first objective was the Wilhelmina Canal bridge in Son, then the city of Eindhoven, meet the British Armored there, and get the road secured all the way up. Lots of risks being taken, but we didn’t know. Only the generals knew. Everything the Army had—money, resources, everything—was put into Market Garden. Everything was at a standstill until it was over. Huge risk.
What worried me was the entire mission was under British command. It was strictly a limey deal, under Montgomery. The Brits were different fighters than us. We figured that out real fast in Normandy. They were fighting the war for years and were tired of war. The soldiers were lions—they fought like the Americans—but they were led by a bunch of damned donkeys. Ever hear that said? The ranks were handed down, like with British royalty. They weren’t earned. So who knows what was leading their army. See, now I’m educating ya! Their leaders were very leisurely in their way of fighting. They liked to stop for tea and crumpets and set up housekeeping in the middle of a battle. True. Tea and crumpets. I saw it for myself.
Mentally, the Holland jump was different from Normandy. When you been on the front lines in combat, one day is enough, one week is plenty. We were on the front lines in Normandy over a month. When you think back you have no idea how you done it. When you’re in it, your only thought is, I’ve got to get the hell out alive. Your body is performing superhuman feats. When you get out you think, How in the hell did I survive that? You look around, you see this guy’s wounded, this guy’s gone, that guy’s gone. You can’t believe it. The replacements didn’t have that, they were looking at combat from an entirely different perspective. They were going in not knowing what’s coming. We were going in knowing what was coming, and that was another kind of fear. What we saw in Normandy was still fresh in our minds.
Some were more willing to go through it again, some weren’t. I was ready to go through it all of the time. Hell, yes. If you weren’t, you shouldn’t be there. But you looked at it differently. Before you see combat, you’re eager to get in; once you get in, you want to get the hell out. We went into Holland more cautious, more careful than the replacements. We knew from experience what the alternative was—death, see ya later. Ain’t no recourse from that, kid. It’s final. Bing, bang, see ya later.
Popeye Wynn, he was hit in the backside on D-day, he met us at the airfield. He went AWOL from the hospital, just made it. He still wasn’t recovered, I think he could barely walk, but he wanted to jump with the company.
When we boarded the planes at the airfield, I thought, Here we go again.
5
HOLLAND: PARADES, GRENADES, AND HELL’S HIGHWAY
Mid-September to End of November 1944
BABE
Going to Holland we flew in C-47s, with P-38 fighters trailing us for safety. The P-38s fired at anything they had to. Once we got close to the drop zone, we heard occasional bursts of antiaircraft fire, but not much. Things were pretty quiet. Looking out the door of the plane, I saw a windmill, might have been on the Belgium side of the border, and shots were firing out of it at the planes in the sky. We had been told the Germans used windmills to hide their antiaircraft batteries, and sure as hell they did. Right away a couple P-38s that were escorting us flew straight under the tail of our plane right for that windmill. They blasted it, and all we could see were plumes of black smoke. The windmill was destroyed.
The plane’s crew chief, who was an old guy to us kids—he was in his late twenties—went up and down the aisle telling us all what a credit to our country we were. “You guys should be proud of yourselves,” he said. “I wish I could do what you do.” He made us feel really good about what we were doing. He told us he’d mail letters for us, so some of the guys scribbled off letters and handed them to him. I said, “By the way, who’s Doris?” He told me it was the pilot’s wife. I told him about the broad back in South Philly and the Dear John letter. He must have related the story to the pilot, because the pilot, a really nice guy from New Jersey, came out to shake my hand. He looked at us all and said, “Don’t worry, boys, I’ll be dropping you right where you belong.”
The mood in the plane was tense. Guys were praying, sitting in contemplation. We felt some flak on the tail of our plane, and the order came to stand up and hook up. Sometimes you felt that order in the pit of your stomach. When you stepped out that door, you knew full well you might not be alive when you hit the ground. We were told to check equipment and stand in the door. Joe Toye was push-master. They make sure you get a good fast stick out of the plane. The green light came on, even though we weren’t by the drop zone yet. We jumped from about twelve hundred feet, which is pretty high for a combat jump, but the area was supposed to be quiet. We were glad to go out that high because that meant there was no major threat in the area.
I heard a story later that in Bill’s plane, a few of the guys were cutting up and laughing, I guess to relieve the anxiety. Bill was watching all the guys, like he always did. He was standing up, and he turned to the rest of the guys and asked, “You guys doing all right?” Then he said, “I just want to remind you, the krauts are down there waiting for us.” All of a sudden, it got quiet. He was saying, If you don’t want to think about what’s coming, I’m going to make you think about it. He wanted the guys to be in fighting mode before they hit the ground.
The jump couldn’t have gone better. It was noon on Sunday, September 17. A bright, beautiful, sunny day. We landed in a giant field. I could hear rifle and machine-gun fire in the distance. The Germans must have been shooting blindly from somewhere far, because shells would go past our ears and just drop to the ground. Projectiles that had no spin on them and just ran out of steam. A crashed glider and C-47 were burning on the field, and chaplains and troopers were trying to drag the dead and wounded off the drop zone. When you landed, you were supposed to move fast—cut your chute off, gather your gear and get off the drop zone to your platoon, and get into formation. One reason you had to move fast was so you didn’t get hit with anything. Gear was raining down on us, guns and ammo, and equipment. Landing troopers were running and grabbing whatever they could stash on them. As I was running to get to my platoon, a trooper lying on the ground cried, “Help me, Heffron, please! My leg is broken. Don’t leave me for the krauts!” I recognized him from jump school, so I stopped to help him. He was in Dog Company. I tried using a rifle to splinter his leg, but we figured out he could use it better as a crutch, and then I carried him off the field. Lieutenant Peacock, who I never liked—he’s the one who turned Bill in for having a girl in the barracks—wasn’t far away and he barked, “Heffron, join your platoon!” I carried the trooper to the road where he could get transportation and took off. I told him to be happy for his broken leg. He had a million-dollar wound there. He was hurt just bad enough to be forced out of combat, but not critically wounded. Being hurt and in pain meant nothing. A good soldier still fought like that, most Easy Company men did. No one wanted to let their buddies down. You wanted to do your part. And you wanted to do it well. On the other hand, you were happy for fate to intervene and take you off the battlefield. That broken leg was a ticket home.
As machine gunner for 2nd Platoon, I had to be ready to set up
my machine gun at any moment, wherever they told me to. The gun was heavy, about twenty-six pounds, you threw it over your shoulder; it had a shoulder sack that it fit right into. It was an air-cooled 30-caliber automatic machine gun. The regular outfits had water-cooled. We had no way of using them. We had to carry a light 30 shoulder type. Mike McMann was my assistant then. I always had different assistants but everyone knew what they had to do. You set up the bipod in the dirt, the bipod strapped right on the gun itself. You threw it down and you stayed there. Your assistant fed the belt of ammo into the gun so it didn’t jam. Our job was to provide cover fire for the rest of the platoon’s advancement whenever we were under attack or on the offensive. Then you picked up the gun and advanced with them, and set it up again. Mostly, it was used in defensive position. You set the gun up, wait for the krauts to come over, and you nail them. My job was to repulse any attack or patrols. If everyone was digging in for the night, you became a defensive machine gunner. Once you opened fire, you gave your position away, so you had to move from that spot quickly. We moved around a lot with those heavy guns.
The Dutch were out to greet us. They were so happy. They called us angels from the sky. They hated the Germans. The Germans came around to their farms every three to six months with wagons and trucks and took all the newborn animals and first fruits, took whatever livestock and produce they wanted, and brought it back for the German farmers.
When we entered the village of Son on the way to the Wilhelmina Canal, the Germans hit us with an 88; they hit a big vacant department store window, and the glass blew out, and the pressure blew me into the center of the street and knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I was dizzy and I hoisted my gun over my shoulder, and a kid from Dog Company said, “You all right?” I felt something warm running down my arm, and I looked and I was bleeding. It wasn’t nothing. I was okay. A couple days later, my hand got swollen, it had dirt in it, and I went back to the aid station to get it lanced and bandaged, and I was fine after that. But when it first happened, I caught up to my squad, and my squad leader, Joe Toye, said, “Where the hell you been, Heffron?” I told him I got tied up for a while.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 11