Everyone was spread out on the island. We didn’t know it at the time, but the front line was like a mile long. I checked on the men constantly. Your job as a leader, beside doing your own reconnaissance and giving orders, is to let the men know you’re there with them. You didn’t have to give pep talks; as soon as they saw you that was enough. Sometimes you sat there by yourself in a foxhole so long you felt like you were fighting the whole goddamn German army yourself. You’re not of course, but that’s how you felt. Where the hell’s everybody at, you’re thinking. You have no information. So if your sergeant comes around, you see his face, you know you’re doing okay.
The middle of October, we were doing the same as we did every day—patrolling and doing outpost duty. I was trying to get somewhere fast and stole a motorcycle from a Dutchman. The entire island was flat, and you were conspicuous wherever you were. I was stupid, drove the motorcycle across an open field. Didn’t even think about it. If I had, I wouldn’t have done it. If I thought about half the things I done, I probably wouldn’t have done them. All of a sudden—bam!—a sniper shot me in the right leg. Blew me right off the motorcycle. I couldn’t walk. It hurt like holy hell. I had some shrapnel in my rear end, too. I was evacuated back to England. Fractured my right tibia, and they put a big walking cast on me that started at my foot and went up to my thigh.
The hospital was a nightmare. GIs were being carried in on stretchers, they had no heads, no arms, bodies bleeding like holy Christ almighty! Some were burned beyond recognition, moaning, crying. In bad, bad shape. A thousand times worse than me, and there’s me with a goddamn scratch. I wanted to get the hell out. I was going nuts. I asked them to send me back to Easy Company. They said, “We can’t do that.” Well, there ain’t no such thing as “you can’t.” I started plotting how I was going to get the hell out.
When you were better, they sent you to the rehabilitation ward and then to a replacement depot—repo depot, we called it. You could be half dead, but if you could walk to the front lines, you were considered walking wounded, and returned to combat. Repo depot sent you to any unit that needed bodies, whether it was artillery, infantry, tankers, truck drivers, anything. Everyone in Easy Company knew about repo depot. Quite a few already went AWOL and hitchhiked back to the unit. Whoever was going your way, you jumped on a truck. Most of the time the 101st was at the front lines, and everybody knew it.
I sure as hell wasn’t going to no repo depot and getting assigned to another unit. I found some black shoe polish, and rubbed it all over my cast to make it look like a black boot, put my pant-leg down over it, and walked out. I couldn’t even walk, but I walked anyway. I was weak, limping. I tried to get to an airfield and catch a plane, but that plan failed. I made it to the beach and was sneaking around trying to catch a boat across the English Channel, when an officer caught me. They threw me back in the hospital and court-martialed me. I said, “I’ll just go AWOL again tomorrow, and you’ll have to court-martial me again. I want to go back to my outfit.” So they said, “This guy is a nut.” They cut my cast off and said, “Now walk.” I couldn’t even stand on that leg, it got so skinny from being in the hospital, but I opened my big mouth so I had to walk, and they made me run, too. It was killing me, but I did it, and they shipped me back to duty a week later.
BABE
One night at the end of October we moved to an area closer to Arnhem where they told us we’d be out of the elements. My squad was positioned in a barn with no roof, so it wasn’t exactly out of the elements. We were relieving B Company, we always relieved B Company, and when we got to the barn, there was this big dead kraut lying there. He was about six-foot-four, black uniform—he was SS. He was lying next to a dead cow. A kid from B Company said, “You should’ve been here last night, we had a party.” The story was, the SS officer followed the rope down to CP, where Welsh was. They were all sitting on boxes, so you floated in the water. The kraut walked in by himself and said in perfect English, “Put your hands up, you are now prisoners of the German Reich, the barn is surrounded.” One of B Company’s forward observers was sitting in the corner, and drew his pistol, and shot the kraut in the head. They all started fighting over his Luger, and the forward observer got it. Meanwhile, the kraut’s squad heard the gunshot and took off back to their lines, so the B Company guys threw the dead kraut next to a dead cow. Someone said, “He was an animal, that’s where he belongs.” We all concurred.
The German lines weren’t far away, and our barn was in a spot where, if the krauts attacked from their position on the dike, we could put up enough resistance for the rest of the platoon to get a counterattack ready. The morning after we got there, a German soldier stood up out of his foxhole, and faced our lines and put his thumb to his nose, grabbed his middle, like he was laughing, and waved. I thought, Well, there’s a fresh son of a bitch! The next morning, same thing. The morning after that, we had two British snipers sent to our line to take him out. They set up positions twelve hundred yards away, he did his nose-thumbing thing, and they shot, and missed! He was too far away and too well dug in. A sergeant with the 377 Para Artillery that was attached to us devised a plan to get rid of him. He said “I’ll have a surprise for him tomorrow morning.” Next morning, the kraut stood up and did his thing. The sergeant picked up a phone, called in the coordinates, and said, “Fire,” and shells flew over our heads. They gave him what they call “air burst.” The shell blew before it hit the ground and took the German soldier with it. We were all hooting and hollering. Let’s just say you could find that kraut up in Scranton “spreading the news.” We have a law in combat: If you’re a wise guy, you’re on your own.
At night, in the barn, we crawled into bins full of hay to get some sleep. You went in feetfirst, with your head out, so you could see. At two a.m., the lookout ran in and hollered, “The Germans are coming over the dike!” We all fell out, and one of my socks came off in the straw. I put my boots on and went out the door. My assistant was with me, and as we ran up the road, I yelled, “My sock’s back there!” I had my bare foot in a wet boot. We repelled the Germans and went back to the barn, and I went searching for my sock in eight to ten feet of hay. I gave up. One night, C. T. Smith, our supply sergeant came up, he had colonels Sink and Strayer—they were going around with a microphone trying to get the Germans to surrender. I told C.T. “I ain’t got no socks, and we need clothes, we need underwear.” I figured I’d put my order in for the guys. He said, “I’ll be up in the morning,” but he never came. I tried putting a GI handkerchief around my feet, but they stayed soaked. Holland was always underwater. You couldn’t even walk along the dikes, your feet got stuck in the mud. For the next two weeks, I had one sock between two feet. I took the sock off every three days and put it on the other foot.
(Bill adds: “I don’t have that trouble!” Babe replies: “Yeah, ain’t that odd?”)
One day in the barn, I heard a noise outside, so I borrowed a rifle, headed outside, and a big shadowy figure started coming toward me. He had to be over six-foot-five. He put his hands in the air, and shouted, “Comraden, Comraden! Nicht Deutsche, Nicht Deutsche! Polsky!” I threw him against the barn and held my rifle on him. He was about thirty years old and explained in his broken English that the Germans made the Polish boys fight or they’d kill him. It was true. The Germans put a lot of the Poles in slave labor camps and conscripted the good men for the army. Who knows how many Americans he killed up to that point, but he found a chance to escape and took it. At least that was his story. I searched his pockets for weapons and found nothing. I hoped he had something to eat on him, and he did. A crust of hard bread. I said, “This is hard as a rock!” and I handed it back to him. He had torn newspapers for relieving himself and some German money, which I took, and still have. I was leading him back to the barn to turn him into our platoon CO, Harry Welsh, when a fellow Easy soldier ran over and said, “Let’s kill the son of a bitch right now!” I explained the situation, but the other soldier was adamant. He kept yelling, “Kill
him!” We argued for a few minutes, and finally I got the POW sent to headquarters. Turned out the prisoner was able to tell headquarters who was where, and what outfits. Welsh told me, “It’s a good thing you got that prisoner. He really helped us out.” It just so happened that the night before when colonels Strayer and Sink came up, they were trying to get these guys to surrender, but they didn’t succeed. I guess this guy changed his mind.
A lot of the time we did kill prisoners. You can’t have them tagging along with you. The only time you could take them was when regimental headquarters had a place for them. We captured a bunch of POWs and put them in a schoolyard, and they all escaped. After that we learned not to take POWs. Plus, it’s a risk. They’re just waiting for you to turn your back so they can kill you.
I think sometimes about the power I had over that Polish man’s life. I let him live when another soldier would have killed him instantly. It’s frightening to think any human being has that kind of power over another. I hope he lived a long, full life after being released from prison. I’d like to think that with whatever years I gave that Polish soldier, he said a few prayers for me and maybe said a few kind words about me to his family.
At the end of October, a British colonel swam across the river to tell us he had a bunch of troops trapped across the river that the Dutch were hiding, and he wanted our help getting them across the river to safety. They had British soldiers and American flyers that got shot down. We formed a party of men, got some boats, and I was on my machine gun covering the withdraw, them going over and bringing the troops back. They did it in the pitch dark, of course, you didn’t do anything in the daylight, but they got them all back safe. When they got back, there was a little Irish paratrooper, he was carrying a club, and he said, “Once I get back to Ireland, I’ll never go back in this man’s army again.” He wasn’t at all happy about how the British fought.
Here’s another thing about the British: Their cigarettes were terrible! They were like straw. They’d try to con us, “Hey, I’ll trade you Players or Woodbines for Luckys or Chesterfields, mate.” First we’d look at them like they were crazy. Then we figured, What the hell, they’re our fighting buddies. We’d give them a few packs and they thought they got the better of us. Then we’d take their horrible cigarettes and give them to the Dutch civilians who were dying for any cigarettes, and we’d tell them, “These are English cigarettes, they’re not American.” We didn’t want to make our country look bad!
We spent most of November on outpost duty and doing patrols. Unfortunately, we lost our CO Moose Heyliger when he got shot by one of our own men who was on outpost, and he was evacuated to England. The first week of November, we had a new CO, Norman Dike. He was from division HQ, a real stiff military-career type, completely inexperienced in combat. We learned right away Dike wasn’t a good soldier, let alone a good leader. We called him Foxhole Norman because whenever there was action, he wasn’t around.
When I didn’t like an officer, I just stayed away from him. It didn’t matter who the officers were, because we had great NCOs in the company.
Right after Dike came in, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the commander of the 101st Airborne was wounded inspecting the 501st and I was sent over in a Jeep to be the guard at his command post, which was a trailer in the woods. They would only give that duty to a soldier they trusted. It made me feel good to know my superiors thought that highly of me.
At the end of the month, Canadian units relieved us and we took trucks to France to recoup. We figured the war was just about over. The bad news was that six Easy Company men were dead, and fifty were wounded. We took a beating in Holland. It was awful. Montgomery did an awful job.
Many military people regard the drop in Holland as a failure, but the two American Airborne Divisions, the 101st and 82nd, did their jobs, secured their objectives, won their parts of the battle, killed and captured a lot of Germans, succeeded in pushing them back and liberated Holland. I’ve always thought the British high command could have done a better job of helping their men trapped at Arnhem, but the British army never seemed to be in a hurry. Patton should have been there; he would have kept that road open all the time. One thing I can tell you, it was quite a privilege to have the 82nd Airborne fighting alongside of us. They were great soldiers.
6
MOURMELON-LE-GRAND: R & R INTERRUPTED
End of November to Mid-December 1944
BABE
We were so happy we could finally rest and get a bath. We went eighty days counting the marshaling area with no bath. Seventy-three days on the front lines. We stunk to holy hell. Then when we got to Mourmelon, we all got dysentery. We had a hot meal of chicken and vegetables when it happened, and who knows if it was because it was our first hot food in months—maybe it was too heavy for our digestive systems after eating only apples and stale bread—or if the chicken was bad. But it seemed to affect the guys who’d been in Holland. My God, we were a mess—cramps, throwing up, running to the latrine every minute, it was coming out both ends—I remember being in so much pain I had to hold on to the bedpost. It was awful, and the officers wouldn’t let you stay in the barracks. We had to go out on the road with the new replacements and teach them how to survive. As sick as we were, we took them out and brought them back every day. Every morning Roe came around and gave us some medicine on a spoon to counteract all the symptoms. It was hell! Bill got lucky it didn’t happen to him, because he wasn’t with us when we came back to Holland. It wasn’t lucky of course that he was hit, but at least he missed being sick.
BILL
After I went AWOL, I took a boat back to France and hitchhiked to Mourmelon-le-Grand, where the 506th was resting and refitting. I got there around the 10th of December. It was like coming home. Boy, was I glad to see those guys again, and see them alive. Buck Compton went AWOL and came back around the same time.
Winters wasn’t surprised to see me. When I reported in, I told him I was court-martialed and demoted to private. But records weren’t kept, there was a war going on. I was put right back in charge of the men. I can’t say what I would have done if he didn’t. Malarkey was acting 2nd platoon sergeant after I got hurt in Holland, and I knew he done a good job.
Word was that the war in Europe would be over in a few weeks. The generals told us it was going to be over by Christmas. We heard we were getting passes anywhere we wanted to go—Paris, Reims, all over.
We had training exercises almost every day and were waiting for more supplies and replacements, but we mostly practiced for a football game. We had a big game planned, the 506 against the 502—the Five-0-Deuce, we called them, or the Five-0-Ducs. They were a pretty good football team, and we were getting ready to kick their asses.
You kind of felt like combat was behind you for a while. Our next jump was supposed to be in the spring. So me and Johnny Martin, Burt Christenson, Joe Toye, Chuck Grant, and a couple other sergeants went out and robbed about twenty cases of champagne. We threw a party in our barracks, got drunk as skunks, and trashed the joint. We ripped the bunks out of the floor, threw them out the windows, broke everything we could get our hands on. Lit things on fire. Just destroyed the place. Lipton was the first sergeant then, he came in and gave us all hell, made us clean it up. He was a lot more conscientious than I was. Lip was a good guy. Even though I was a sergeant, had responsibilities, I was a wild man. I was like Jekyll and Hyde, a troublemaker outside of combat, but in combat I was focused. Everything else became secondary.
The next morning, we had football practice for the big game, and then I had a pass to Reims for the day after that. I still have that pass. I never made it to Reims.
BABE
Everyone was excited because we had weekend passes to go to all these great places. We’d been talking about it for days, who was going where, what we were going to do when we got there. Early in the morning, I think it was the 17th, Bill came running in hollering, “Get off your asses! Let’s go! We gotta go! Krauts broke through the Ardennes!” We all looked
at each other and said, “Where the hell’s the Ardennes?” Bill said, “Just get your ass out of bed!” So instead of getting weekend passes, we had to run around and get ourselves ready to move out again.
Everybody was looking for ammo and clothes. The first thing I did was look for some extra pairs of socks. I couldn’t forget after Holland—I lost a sock, and for the last couple weeks had to keep switching the sock from one foot to the other. That was bad. I wanted to make sure I had enough gear this time. We knew it was going to be cold. It was the middle of December, and it was Belgium we were going to. We had no winter underwear, we had only our regular gear, but when they said grab everything you can, my only thought was socks. I took a few extra pair.
BILL
We had less than twenty-four hours to get ready to move out. Everyone scrambled to dig up whatever they could find—mostly ammo and warm clothes. The sergeants ran around trying to find out who had what. We didn’t have nothing. We were waiting for supplies to arrive before this happened. There was hardly any ammo around, we had no waterproof boots, no winter coats, no long underwear. For the other jumps, we knew they were coming, just didn’t know when. This time, we weren’t expecting to be in combat again. It was like being blindsided. But you have to get focused real fast, and that’s what we did.
It made you nervous to have so many replacements going in. A lot of the original company was gone, and you have no idea what these new kids are going to do. But the noncoms are the backbone of the company; good NCOs means a good, strong company. Thank God the original sergeants were still there.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 15