In the first week of the Holland campaign, we knew Market Garden failed. We didn’t get into Arnhem, and we took too many casualties, but we weren’t defeated. We captured the bridges in Eindhoven, the 82nd Airborne took the bridge in Nijmegen, but we couldn’t keep the road open for the advancement down Hell’s Highway, and the British and Polish in Arnhem, who were supposed to be the first into Germany, got slaughtered.
Too many loose ends. Take the larger context of that operation. Three divisions. Together we’re supposed to form a corridor right into Germany, hit the Germans from the flank. The first problem was there were just too many damn Germans. But even if we had more men, it wouldn’t have mattered. As soon as we jumped, the British were supposed to come up with all their arms and their tanks. They got held up. We needed the British to come up the road faster than they did. For Operation Market Garden to work, everything had to be timed to perfection, and everyone needed to move fast. There was too much stopping, too much inefficiency, not enough of a push.
Now, we never fought with the British in the war. They are supposed to come up and meet us in Eindhoven. The British were good soldiers. They had a lot of time in combat. But their leaders had them stopping for friggin’ tea in every town. Maybe if they met their own troops in Eindhoven, not us, they would have fought better, instead of throwing two different armies together. That was a risk.
Strategy-wise, it should have been the opposite—the British should have jumped where we jumped and met their own armored division, and we should have been in Arnhem. If you watch the movie A Bridge Too Far, that tells you what happened when the British were dropped in Arnhem. They jumped on top of a German armored division. And the Dutch warned them the German armored was there! They told Montgomery; he knew all about it. And still they jumped right on top of them. The Germans were waiting.
If we were in Arnhem, we’d have gotten the shit beat out of us, too, but we fought differently, and we may have succeeded. If Patton was there, he’d have blown right through to Arnhem. He would have hit them like a brick. Instead, Montgomery wanted all the glory. He was an egotistical son of a bitch. No one liked him. Montgomery led this operation, so who was going to be the first one into Germany? Montgomery gets first pick, of course he wanted to be the first one in Germany, to be the hero. So that, to me, was failure because of a political move. First into Germany, the British?!
So yes, with Market Garden they left too many loose ends. That’s my own concept of the war. You read about this stuff after the war is over, and sixty years later you still analyze it. A lot of mistakes were made.
BABE
After the Neunen fight where we had to fall back, I thought we did a good job. We regrouped, got our tanks rolling, moved down Hell’s Highway, and took every town we needed to. Hell’s Highway was two weeks of the same thing every day. We’d be sleeping in apple orchards, the Germans would break the highway, we’d go out and get into a firefight or tank battle, go back to foxholes, and get called out again. We’d advance, dig foxholes in another orchard, or in the woods, and do the same exact thing the next day. Half the time we didn’t know where the hell we were. We moved from Son all the way up to Nijmegen that way.
We were heading up to Nijmegen, where the 82nd Airborne captured the bridge that would allow the English tanks to cross over toward Arnhem. The entire 506th was taking up new positions on the Island. It was a stretch of land sandwiched between two rivers—the Waal River and the Lower Rhine. But our immediate plan was to get showers. By the bridge, there were portable showers maintained by black troops attached to the Canadian army. The water from the showers came from the river. I thought of my mother always telling me, “Wash behind your ears, Edward.” Well, that was the least of my worries now. But we’d gone a few weeks without a shower, and our uniforms were drenched with rain and sweat and covered with mud and soot. We all stunk to holy hell. We couldn’t even stand the smell of ourselves.
When we got there, the soldier standing guard at the bridge, said, “You fellas here for a shower?” He told us the Germans blew the showers to hell when they tried to bomb the bridge. Boy, oh boy, were we mad. We were so desperate for those showers, we almost jumped in the damn river. We thought two weeks was bad. We didn’t know we’d end up going seventy-two days without showers.
We took up positions along a dike by the river. There were huge dikes maybe two stories high to keep the area from flooding. They had roads on top of them and then they sloped down on the sides. They were steep enough you couldn’t see what was on the other side of them if you were on flat ground. So we dug in behind the dikes, and our front line was all along the dike, to prevent the Germans from coming over it.
We couldn’t move around by day, you were too conspicuous. We only moved under cover of darkness. At night, it was eerie in the foxholes. You heard the rumbling of German motorcycles going up and down the dike all night long, and you couldn’t tell whether they were coming over it or not.
It was cold and dreary, always raining, and the lower ground was muddy and flooded. Rats were all over the place trying to scrounge food, and there were also pigs running around unattended, eating everything they could find, even dead corpses. You saw them in ditches wherever there were dead bodies.
Sitting in our foxholes, we’d see our own B-29s flying overhead to Germany. First, you’d hear a noise, and you’d wait and wait to see the plane, and they would drop silver foil all over to louse up German radar. It all fell on top of us. The sky would be full of American B-29s, I mean full, and we would yell, “Go get ’em!” What a great thing to look at and think, I’m glad they’re on our side. We put the silver foil in our pockets for souvenirs.
BILL
Easy Company was all set up at the perimeter, and all of a sudden I hear Babe screaming and hollering, so loud the Germans could hear him screaming, too. I ran over, tried to find out what the hell was going on and shut him the hell up. Here, he was on outpost and dozed off next to his machine gun, when he felt something like rain. He woke up, and Bill Morganti was taking a piss on his machine gun. It was pitch black, Morganti couldn’t see what he was pissing on. Babe’s ranting and hollering, ready to go fist city with Morganti. I said, “So he peed on your machine gun, what’s the difference? Shut the hell up. You’re gonna get us all killed.” He still didn’t shut up. Babe’s still pissed off, or pissed on! He’s still looking for Morganti.
When our platoon was in a static position, I would go out and help 1st Platoon fight. They were usually the first to encounter the enemy. We were second, 3rd Platoon was in the rear. It ended up 1st Platoon took the most casualties and 3rd took the least. It just happened that way. I was always worried about what was happening in all three platoons, not just my platoon. I couldn’t help myself. I was a snoop, always asked questions, had my nose in everything. Always wanted to know where 1st and 3rd Platoon were, where headquarters was.
It was around Opheusden, 2nd Platoon was doing patrols, relieving other companies on the lines. Dick Winters took out a patrol to make sure our lines were secure. We were spread so far apart on the island, you never saw anybody on your flanks. His patrol found a bunch of SS nearby. Now SS troopers, these are no-good sons of bitches. This wasn’t the ordinary German or Polish kid who was ordered to fight in the German army. These were Nazis. Gestapos. They started training as young boys to be loyal to Hitler. They lived and died by Hitler, did all his dirty work. They wore long black coats; you could spot them anywhere.
Back in Normandy, I caught two of them off guard, two SS. I came up behind them and grabbed them. Pointed my M1 at their heads, they handed me their weapons and surrendered to me, and I blew their brains out. I had no sympathy. We killed a lot of Germans that surrendered. The same ones would kill you if they got the chance, so it was easy as killing a bug. Today, you’d get arrested. I took their guns, gave one to George Luz and one to Johnny Martin. Martin kept his, and Luz’s we hocked in London. We had no money, so George says, “How about that gun you gave me?” I think
it was a Luger. We sold it and had a ball.
First Platoon beat the shillelagh out of those Nazis. It was like a duck shoot. When our platoon joined them, they were already at the end of the action. I would have liked to have blown them all away myself. They killed Dukeman. William Dukeman. He was a Toccoa man. No matter what platoon you were in, these men were like family. It affects you, but you can’t stop to think about it.
At night, when the battle is over for a short time, that’s when things like that hit you. You think of who got hit, who got killed. Sometimes I got the shakes. When you did get a minute to yourself, and you weren’t on the line, you felt the effects from the day, but you didn’t want nobody to see you. I imagine lots of guys sat in their foxholes crying like a baby. But no matter how bad it got, I couldn’t let my guard down. I couldn’t stop to cry. I had men to lead.
You have so many mixed emotions in combat. You don’t know what’s going to happen today, tomorrow. No idea. Some days you want to get hurt and get out. On the other hand the war’s got to be won, too, so you don’t want to let your buddies down, you don’t want to be what they call a goldbricker, trying to get out while you can still fight. Half of you wants to get the hell out and half of you doesn’t want to leave your buddies to do this on their own. You’d give your life up for them. That’s how I felt. Each man felt differently. I remember thinking, Lord, get me the hell out of this place, and my next thought would be, But If I leave, then what’s going to happen to my men? You go through so many conflicting emotions. You jump from one conclusion to another real quick. And on top of that, somebody’s trying to kill you every goddamn minute.
I went to help Johnny’s platoon at the front; they chased the SS over a dike to a river crossing. The SS started shelling the hell out of us with artillery to keep us away. We were trying to withdraw back over a dike, and they had it zeroed in. They bombed the hell out of us. The ground was exploding, men were getting hit left and right, limbs flying, and everyone was yelling for medics. It was a bad, bad scene. I got to the dike just as Leo Boyle got hit and fell flat on his face. Shrapnel hit him in the back of the leg, and ripped open his thigh, he was bleeding something terrible, there was almost nothing left of it. There were a few of us who were able to stomach seeing blood and guts and patch up a wound when no medics were around. Not everyone could, but it didn’t bother me a bit. Me and Pat Christenson ripped off Boyle’s pant leg and put sulfa powder on his wound, and tried to help him best we could until the medics came and patched him up. He went out like a light, but we knew he’d be okay. Poor Boyle was shot in the leg in Normandy and wasn’t recovered from that yet.
BABE
My buddy Jim Campbell and I were sitting in an apple orchard, and he seemed upset. He had a letter from his wife, and he wanted me to read it. He said, “Well, she got another guy. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our baby.” I didn’t even know what to say.
October 6th, our platoon was relieving B Company in a defensive position on the dike. The stupidity of it was they brought us up by truck in broad daylight, on a main road. The Germans had the high ground, so you had to figure they could see us. When we got out of the truck, a kid from headquarters company went over to a wooded area to go to the bathroom, and a shell exploded on him, and a piece of him flew over the truck. I know that’s hard to hear, but that’s how it happens in war.
Bill was taking some of the men to set up a mortar, and he gave the rest of us our orders. We were walking up beside a house to go occupy it, and as B Company was leaving, they told us things had been pretty quiet. “The only action was a round of mortar shells on a nearby house,” one of the troopers said. He kind of shrugged it off. We knew the Germans had a bead on the area. Joe Toye was ahead of me and hollered, “Hey, Heffron, bring your machine gun up.” I started up in back of him when Jim Campbell—he was Toye’s assistant—says “Heffron, you stay here with the gun. I’ll go with Toye.” As soon as they turned the corner of the house, a German 88 exploded right on top of them. The side of the house came crashing down on us, and we were buried in white chalk and debris. You could smell the spent shell. I ran over to check on Toye and Campbell. There was a large cloud of shell powder, like a mushroom cloud, and Toye stepped out of it. He said, “Don’t touch me, I’m hit all over.” He was hit bad in the back and legs. His neck was all chewed up with shrapnel, it looked like rats got to it. It was his third time hit in four months of combat. I looked at Campbell. Before I could check his pulse, Toye said: “He’s dead, Heffron, I checked.” The shell had hit Campbell in the back, killing him instantly. He had a pair of Dutch wooden shoes, a gift from a farmer, in his musette bag, and the shell sliced those shoes right in half. But what I couldn’t believe was that Joe Toye, bleeding and in pain himself, reached over to check on Campbell. That was the kind of soldier Toye was. I threw my topcoat over Campbell—I had nothing else to cover him with—and said a prayer for him. Then I threw Toye over my shoulder and carried him back to the aid area. We were being shot at and mortars were falling all around us. I stumbled a couple of times and fell, but we made it. For days, I was in a stupor over Campbell’s death. It was supposed to be me that went up with Toye. I can’t figure out why at the last minute Campbell said, “I’ll go.” Why was I allowed to live? He took that shell for me. He saved my life. I never, never forget it. I eat it, sleep it, breathe it. Still, not a day goes by I don’t wonder why I got to go home, get married, and have a family, and he never got that chance. When I talk about it, Bill says, “You were just lucky, forget about it.” When someone takes a shell for you, it’s hard to forget about it.
BILL
About a week after we got onto the Island, Winters was promoted. Finally we got rid of the Quaker! Nah, Winters was the best CO we ever had. Probably the best CO in the Army. The men were pretty upset when we found out we were losing Winters. The CO can make or break the company. He can get the men killed or keep them alive. Luckily, we had the NCOs, all Toccoa men, to hold the company up if leadership was poor. Because who knew what we’d get?
The first replacement for Winters, you never saw the guy. They got rid of him quick, and sent in Lt. Fred “Moose” Heyliger from headquarters. Moose was an E Company man, who was promoted to HQ before D-day. We all liked Moose. He was a good man, a good officer, always out there in the field with us, made good decisions.
We stayed in static position for a while, on outpost duty, sending out constant patrols, trying to keep the Germans from breaking through our lines. We could only move around at night; we got very little sleep. We slept when we could, shivering and wet most of the time. Couldn’t do a damned thing to get dry. But you couldn’t complain. What were you gonna do? Where were you going? It’s not like home, kid. If you didn’t feel good, tough shit. You have a stomachache? Well, unless you prefer getting killed to a stomachache, you’re going to take the stomachache and fight.
We lived on K rations and apples. Lots of orchards around, and we’d hit the trees with our guns and get the apples to drop, and that was most of our diet.
Joe Toye would try and lighten things up at night by singing “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Or he’d be humming it wherever he was. It would be quiet at night, and when it’s been quiet for so damn long and you’re out there all by yourself, you think of a million things. He’d sing a line of that song and before you know it, the guy next to him starts singing, and the guys next to him, and soon everybody’s singing. Even I’m singing, and thinking, What the hell, we’re all nuts. The Germans could follow the whole front line! Sometimes I was trying to sleep, and all of a sudden I heard the singing start and I’d think, Shut up, you sons-of-beetles! You’re in a foxhole! But I didn’t say it out loud. Nah. Every time I hear that song, I think of old Joe Toye. Yeah, there were some good times. Little things like that never leave your mind.
Babe sang all the time, too. He sang all the old Irish songs, like “Bridget O’Flynn,” or he’d get us all singing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.�
�� He sang pretty good, too. I tell him he chirps, so he don’t get full of himself. Music was very important to us back then. It was a big part of our lives. The music during the World War II era was very soothing. Took you away from where you were.
My days were spent running around all over the place trying to figure out what’s going on, in the front, in the back. My right-hand man was Rod Bain. Very quiet, very nice kid, you never knew he was there. He was our platoon’s radioman, and every time I wanted information whether it was from one of the other companies, platoons, or headquarters, I hollered “Bain!” and he found out what was going on. I always called him because he was a good soldier, very dependable. I don’t know how he put up with it, but he did everything I asked, and then some. Probably cursed me under his breath! Anytime I needed help, I called on him, Babe, or Toye first. Whatever you called on them to do, they got it done, no questions asked.
Bain did a lot of running around as the radioman, too. He had a tough job, he was a technician, a T-5. We needed to communicate, especially on patrols, but if you did it by radio, the Germans could tap in. So he laid wire from outpost to company CP a couple hundred yards away. They had a phone and outpost had a phone. The krauts would break the wire when they shelled us. Bain had to crawl out there by himself, find the break in the wire, and connect it. He done that over and over. I give him a lot of credit.
When we were attacking, or on the defensive, I ran back and forth making sure guns were trained right, and directing 2nd Platoon’s fire. When I gave an order and a man didn’t like it, I told them I don’t give a goddamn whether you like me or not, I’m going to get you out of the battle alive. I told them I don’t give a rat’s ass if you like what I’m telling you; they looked in my eyes and knew I was serious, and they got it done.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 14