As soon as I saw Frannie, I felt different, I felt stronger, I felt lucky to be home, and lucky to be alive. I wanted to marry her right away. I wasn’t the same kid as when I left. I came home really skinny, minus a leg. But she didn’t care. What do you think was the first thing she wanted? To give me some cigarettes! Overseas, cigarettes were rationed. You couldn’t find them. So when you were in the hospital you got all the cigarettes you wanted.
I had more operations and rehabilitation, but I was able to move around in a wheelchair or on crutches. As soon as I could, I started running around in the wheelchair, get the hell out of my way, I felt like a million dollars. Me and Joe, we raised hell in that hospital. We got in our wheelchairs and raised hell. We’d go up and down the boardwalk, up and down ramps, shouting. We’d stop in bars, get drunk, go down the steps to the beach, and drop in the sand headfirst. We’d get stuck in the sand. We were young kids! We were lucky we didn’t kill ourselves. But we were having fun, everyone knew we were there, just home from war. Complete strangers came up to talk to us.
I went back and forth between home and the hospital for about a year. The healing process happened at home, not in the hospital. Being with family. So they sent you home for thirty days, back to the hospital for a few days, a week, and back home for thirty days. They eased you into civilian life. At the hospital, they had to operate, do rehab, and get you physical fit. When I got to the States, I looked like a skeleton. They had to build you back up. I had three operations, rehabilitation, and they put me on an artificial leg.
While I was in the hospital, I met a boy about my age, his name was John Nocarato. He was kind of shy and he took to me real fast. He never told me why he was in the hospital. He was in the 1st or 4th Infantry Division, and when he came back to the States, he didn’t know anybody. I talked to him for a few days, and when I came back from visiting my family, he was still there. I said, “You didn’t go home?” He said, “No.” For as long as I was there, he never went home. One day he said, “Would you do me a favor?” I could see he was scared. He said, “I want to go see my family, but I want you to come with me.” They lived in a little town called Spotswood, New Jersey. So the doctor and nurse said I could take him home. We got to Spotswood, and when he got out of the car, I saw his pants started swinging. When his parents saw him, they hit the ceiling. He had gotten his leg blown off. No one knew. They screamed and hollered and cried—it was just turmoil for an hour or two. He didn’t tell nobody. In the hospital, when he had his leg off, he wore his pants hanging down to his shoe. So when he’s walking, looked like he had a leg with a shoe. The other people tucked their pants up, you could see they had one leg. That’s why he wanted me to go back with him. He was crying. It was very emotional. I tried to ease things. I told him there were a lot of us like this, he wasn’t alone. By the end of the night, his parents began to accept it. I brought him back to the hospital that night and stayed with him. He was having a hard time. He was trying to hide everything. You can’t hide it, kid. You have to face it, and make the most of what you got. There’s living to do. I kept in touch with him for about twenty years, then he got married and had kids and he died young.
When I came home, I just wanted to get married, have a family, forget about the war. I didn’t say nothing about the war to nobody. I got out of uniform, people saw me on crutches, I said a shark bit my leg off. No one asked questions. No one at home knew about the war, they only knew you went. You were the only one who knew what you went through. It was good, because you wanted to be left alone to get on with your life.
I thought of Henry every day. I went out and got a tattoo in his memory—a cross with a wreath under it, and his nickname “Dunk,” because he used to dunk everything in milk or coffee. Two guys from New York came down to see me and Mom, they served with Henry. They told us how he died trying to help save somebody and he got the Silver Star and lots of medals. He was a tech 5. I just read in World War II magazine about the war he was in, the Battle of Monte Porchia. They lost a lot of Germans and Americans in that battle. I went to visit Henry’s grave in Italy. I went on my own quietly. Just once. I still talk to him when I’m alone in the house.
Frannie and I wanted to get married right away, but our families tried to talk us out of it. They didn’t want Frannie to marry a cripple. They gave us a lot of trouble. They told Frannie, “You’re going to have to take care of him. The older he gets, the worse it’s going to get.” But that wasn’t me. I knew I’d live a normal life. I never believed in saying “I can’t.” If someone else can do something, I can do it. I may do it different, it may be awkward, but I’ll do it. If you climb a ladder, I’ll climb a ladder. I may go up every rung on my ass, but I’ll do it. I have done it.
April 23, 1945, Frannie and I ran away to Elkton, Maryland, and eloped. Not a penny between us, just each other. When you got something good you don’t let it get away. I married an angel. She put up with me and my crazy ways. Calmed me down. She understood me, helped me, never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do. She was my leg, she was everything. Gotta give the gal credit.
We went on our honeymoon in Columbus, Ohio. Drove to Johnny Martin’s house. Where were we gonna go, Hawaii? We didn’t have a damn dime. Johnny got discharged early for medical reasons, so we went to see him and Pat. We did things simple, but we had fun.
BABE
When the boat got to Pier III in New York, it was raining cats and dogs. The Red Cross was inside the building on the pier giving out coffee and donuts, and the Salvation Army stood outside in the rain to greet us. I’ll never forget that.
I took a train from New York to 30th Street Station in Philly, and took the bus to 2nd and Market. I came upon the bar where everybody in the neighborhood always had a few beers. During training, when I came home on the weekends we would go in there, or the Republican Club at 3rd and Wilbur. That day, hardly anybody was around. I was discharged earlier than most of the guys. A lot were discharged in 1946. When I got near the bar, my uncle, Charlie Shoe—he was a number writer—saw me coming down the street, and I gave him the watch I promised him, a watch I got off a kraut. He told me my dad and brothers were inside the bar. My brothers Joe and Jimmy came up and hugged me. My dad was at the end of the bar. He walked over and said, “Hey, son, welcome home,” then he went back to his seat at the bar. My dad wasn’t into the emotional scene. I think he was glad to see us home but he would never come out and say it. He was a man’s man, he would never hug you, none of that. I went home and talked to my mother before going to bed. My dad came home and went straight to bed. He never said, “Was it tough over there?” or “You must have gone through hell.” Never even asked about the war. I had some decorations, the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for our defense at Bastogne, the Bronze Star for Holland, two Purple Hearts, and a star on my wings. But I never discussed them with my dad, or anyone in my family.
The first breakfast my whole family had together was about a year after the war was over. It was a Sunday morning after Mass, and me and all my brothers were at the table. My father must have had a late night at the Republican Club, and he finally came downstairs. He took a bite of his eggs and hollered into the kitchen, “Anne, these eggs are cold.” She knew he was late coming down, and she came out and looked at him and said, “Joe, go shit in your hat.” He turned to my brother Jake and said, “Did you hear what your mother said to me? She never talked to me like that.” Jake said, “Dad, it’s getting-even time! Her boys are home!” We said, “Way to go, Mom!” and Dad got mad as hell. Mom smiled and took the eggs and heated them anyhow. She felt so good about her boys being home. She had suffered a heart attack while we were gone, probably from the stress, and now we were all home safe. Not even my father bothered her. But my father never got over my mom telling him that. He brought it up for years. He’d say, “Do you remember that morning…?” I’d say, “Yeah, Dad, you deserved it.” He’d say, “I know.”
Dad softened as he got older. Many years later, he sa
t my brothers and I down in the kitchen for a few beers. Jimmy and Jake were there, and Joe came over—he lived across the street. My father said, “You guys never talk about the war. None of you tell me anything.” We all looked at each other. My brothers didn’t have any stories to tell, so my dad asked me if I had any, and my brothers said, “Don’t ask Babe! Christ, he’ll go into a long story!” I said, “Well, one time I had a German general surrender to me.” My brother jumped ten feet off the chair. “Dad, we told you he’d come up with stories!”
I went right to work when I got home, as a foreman in the shipping department at Publickers Industries, a whiskey distillery plant on Delaware Avenue, at the old Pennsylvania Railroad building. When the company moved to Linfield, Pennsylvania, I quit and got a job at the waterfront as a cargo checker and clerk. I stayed there for twenty-seven years, and retired in 1993. They were the only two jobs I had in my life. I also got back to playing football every weekend with the kids I grew up with. We played semipro football, then Pop Warner conference, then with the church team, Corsack. Then we played for Adelstein Bulldogs, the guy who owned the bar at 2nd Street. All the guys had fought in the war. We had a few Marines, Bill met one of them, Elmer Beach, he was our halfback. And Ampy Galloway played quarterback, he lost a brother in Italy, and Georgie Adams, he got killed in Italy, he was our tackle, and the whole list goes like that, guys that got killed and wounded in the Navy, Army, every family had something.
I played football until I was thirty-two, and at thirty-seven, I married Dolores Kessler. She had three children—Dolly, Harry, and Bobby, and two years later, we had another daughter, Trisha. Being married was all right with me. I went to work, gave my wife my paycheck, and she gave me my spending money. I was very happy with that.
I got back to my hobby of betting on horses. I was running numbers before the war when I was helping out my parents. But I started going to the tracks and betting with my dad and my brothers. I still do it. I recently found out there’s a horse named after me in Ireland. Yep. It’s named Babe Heffron. The trainer’s name is Murphy. Of all things, the horse is a jumper! Jumps hurdles. The Irish love their racing.
BILL
Everyone was starting to come home from the war, and there were celebrations almost every night. Frannie thought I was a drunk because for six to eight months, every time someone came home we celebrated and got drunk. I had to explain I wasn’t a drunk! Johnny and Pat came down, and something crazy always happened when we were together. Me and Johnny went to the bar, one of the neighborhood kids just got back from war, so we got drunk, and were walking home, and Johnny starts puking in the street. We get home and Pat says to him, “What happened to your teeth?” Johnny had about five artificial teeth in the front and they were gone. So we had to backtrack a few blocks and pick through the puke, and the teeth were in the puke on Mifflin Street. Every time I go down Mifflin, I think of Johnny’s teeth.
We drove out to Johnny’s house a couple times, too. Nobody in South Philly had cars, but I got a car because a senator from Connecticut put in legislation for the president to sign that all amputees from the war got a free automobile. I belonged to a club of amputees, and we got a letter from the senator. So we go to the White House to meet Truman. We’re in line and the kid in front of me starts blabbing away with Truman about the Yankees. I said, “We’re not here to talk about baseball, we want you to sign legislation for an automobile.” He said, “Kid, you got it.” And we all got free cars. I shook his hand and thanked him. I got a brand-new black 1946 Pontiac, a model they didn’t start selling until 1947. One new car in South Philly! It stood out like a sore thumb. So I gave it to Frannie’s father, and he gave me an old junk car he had. I never regretted doing it. He was so good to us. He had nothing, and he gave us a lot. He gave us the home I own right now. He wanted to give it to me for free, but I wouldn’t take it for free. I paid him two thousand bucks for it. That’s what it cost in 1947. I paid twelve dollars a month for fourteen or fifteen years. They were lean days, but good days. I look back and it’s crazy. How the hell we done it, I’ll never know. No money, no credit cards, somehow everything worked out. People helped each other in those days.
When the men were back from war, quite a few came to visit me. Winters, Lipton, and five or six others came to see me. That’s the kind of friendship we had. I got in touch with Babe right after he got home. He took a walk down and found me on the street playing craps, and I never got rid of him! The dirty rat!
As soon as I was out of the hospital for good and we got settled, I started college to get a degree in engineering at Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia. When you go to war, your life changes. There are no guarantees. If I came back with two good legs, I might have pursued a career in sports—football or basketball. I thought I was good enough that I could make it. I was on the basketball team at home, and played a lot of football, too. It was in my mind that that’s what I wanted to do. Buck Compton was an All-American catcher and an All-American guard for UCLA. But he decided to go into law. You never knew until you got back. You made the best of it.
When I was in school, my discharge from the Army came through. The records caught up with me from the court-martial. You find out your decorations, too: I got the Silver Star for Normandy, which I knew. Me and Buck Compton were the only ones in Easy Company who got the Silver Star. I got three Bronze Stars, for Normandy, Holland, and Belgium; two Purple Hearts; two combat jump stars; two Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations, one for Normandy, and one for Bastogne. The one for Bastogne was a special one. It was the first and only time in Army history that an entire division won the award. The 10th Armored Division’s Team Cherry and Team Desiree got the award with us. The bad news was I was discharged a private because of the court-martial, and they said I owed them money, I was being paid as a sergeant, so they withheld my comp payments. I had to drop out of school, I could only afford to go for six months. I was so pissed at the Army, I didn’t care what they did with my discharge, but Frannie pursued it. She talked to Joe Toye, Babe, Winters—got letters from everyone verifying I was a sergeant. She got it straightened out, but it took five years.
We had a baby on the way, and no money; I had to take various jobs for survival. Very few people were going to hire an amputee, they were afraid you could fall. I got a job at an insurance company, worked as a VA clerk, sold rugs for a friend, worked for U.S. Gypsum, worked as a printer for a while. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
Our son Gene was born in March of 1946, and then Billy Jr. in August, 1949. We moved from Broad Street to Winton Street to raise our family. Family life was peaceful and quiet. I took the kids to the parks; we had a nice normal family life. Every night we sat down and had dinner. No hamburgers, no McDonald’s. Frannie could cook—she almost killed me a couple times, too—but I was a better cook. I was cooking since I was two, kid! Whoever got home first did the cooking.
Desk work wasn’t for me. I figured out what I really wanted to do was use my hands, build. I started working for myself, doing construction, building houses. I did cement work, plumbing, electric. I remodeled homes. I bought my first house on Broad Street, where Frannie and I lived, and I built a second home in New Jersey and sold it. I could always make a dollar. I was adept at anything. I read up on things I wanted to do, schooled myself at it. Like when I wanted to take a job with my friend in the printing business, Nick Cortez from F Company, I bluffed my way through the interview like I knew everything about printing, and of course, I knew nothing at all! But I got the job, so I read up on it, looked in the book for places that will school you, took some classes. I did that with everything. I did it in the war. I did it with construction, too. So I did okay. I stayed with construction twenty years. I still had my artificial leg then. In 1967, they had to remove it, because I was having too many problems. I was a maniac on the leg, but it kept flaring up, and the flare-ups started affecting the other leg. The more they tried to get it right, the worse it got. The doctors finally t
ook it off, and I had to learn to live on crutches. It made things a little harder because it takes away the use of your arms, they become your legs in a way. I did mostly desk work after that. But I still climbed scaffolding, did brick and concrete work. I was younger then. When I got older, I got smarter—let other guys do it for you! When my two boys got old enough, I put them to work, too. Old enough to eat, old enough to work!
BABE
I was home near a year when I looked up Bill. After all you had your own troubles to straighten out when you got home. I took a walk out to 17th and McKean to see if he was there, and sure enough he was in the street shooting dice with all the guys. I was so happy to see him alive. I jumped on his back and said, “You son of a bitch!” I got so excited to see him I forgot about his leg. He had a prosthetic leg on. He grabbed me and hugged me, and said, “Goddamn, I thought you were a cop.” We went and had a beer and I met his wife, Frannie, and then he said, “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
After that day, we got together or talked on the phone almost every day. We go to our favorite places. We have breakfast at Cousins, or a beer and a sandwich at the Irish Pub, or dinner at Popi’s. We go to E Company reunions together. We’ve been back to Europe together many times. Bill was the best man at my wedding to Dolores, and he’s my daughter Trisha’s godfather. She calls him Uncle Bill. Bill settled down a lot after he got married. He wasn’t out raising too much hell anymore. That shows you, raising a family, he had a lot to do, he can’t be worrying about running around.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 22