BILL
Me and Babe became like family. He was at my house, or I was at his house. We did construction projects on each other’s houses. We did some work at Babe’s house, and he helped me remodel my kitchen. I made him do the hard work. I had him mixing cement! I thought, I need help, and there’s only one nut that don’t know what he’s doing, I’ll call Babe! We go out a lot, too. Partying and socializing. I drive and he doesn’t—he takes the bus everywhere—so I always pick him up when we go out. We went back to Europe in 1954 and 1959 and about fifteen times since then. We have a good time. Even though Babe’s nickname is “Grumpy.” That’s his nature. Babe is not flexible. He won’t bend for nothing. No way. He lives by his watch. Don’t be a minute late. Don’t even be on time, that’s too late. But Babe is a good guy. A very loyal friend. He’ll give you anything he has. He’ll give you the shirt off his back. Our friendship has meant everything. Just like with any of the E Company men, when you spend all that time so close together trying to survive, you got something you can’t explain. If I could explain it, I’d be a genius. It means something your whole life. Like every Christmas, the memories that time of year brings back are very sad. A lot of our buddies were killed. So there’s somebody there that understands.
BABE
In 1949 Bill and I were invited to the premier of the movie Battleground at the Boyd Theater in Philly. The movie was about the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, so they invited us to talk about our experience. Before we got on stage they asked us about broads during the war. I said, “We didn’t see girls in Belgium!” Bill said, “We’d rather have had a heater than a broad!” The guy told us we couldn’t say those things on stage because they were trying to push Denise Darcel, make her a star. They wanted it to be a sexy show, so they told us they were passing us by!
Bill and I worked together at Publickers Industries after Bill retired from construction. He worked down where they fermented the whiskey; he bottled it. We worked in different departments but went to a few union meetings together. You had to be a member of the union to work there, and every week, it seemed, the union went on strike. One time we formed a picket line along the railroad, and they were going to drive the train into our building. Bill was there, I was there, there were about forty to fifty of us. The engineer was married to my sister-in-law, and he got off the train and wouldn’t cross the line. So one of the bigwigs, a guy in a three-piece suit, gets on the train, and we knew he’d run us all over. So Bill gets the idea to lay down on his back and put his leg across the tracks. They didn’t know it was an artificial leg. So the engineer started the train up and was moving down the tracks toward Bill, and he was gonna defy Bill, and Bill was gonna defy him, and we’re all rooting for Bill. Well, the engineer stopped a couple feet from Bill, but they called the cops. They came in with dogs and threw us in the paddy wagon. We went to the police station, sat down on the benches, and waited for a lawyer to get us out. When I got to work after the strike was settled, they told me I can no longer be the foreman since I was one of the forerunners of the strike. I said, “You might as well fire me, then.” One of the fellas came in and said, “You’re not gonna fire him for something like that, everybody was there.” Bill was the troublemaker, but he didn’t get fired. They knew he was a goofy bastard. I lost my job and had to wait for an opening, and I was put into inventory. I can say one thing about Bill, though. He has a way of getting things done.
After Publickers, we worked down at the waterfront. I started 1968, Bill started a year or two after that. We both checked cargo. We worked with South Philly’s longshoreman. They’re the best in the country. As rough as cops. They work in gangs of thirteen to fifteen men to unload cargo from ships. Then checkers count and check what comes off to make sure it’s right. Everyone moves fast because the ship is usually expected at another pier. Bill had to leave the waterfront because of the chisels and the forklifts—it was a dangerous situation for him. He couldn’t get out of the way of them fast enough.
BILL
When they started drafting for Vietnam in the late sixties, my son Gene was about twenty. He enlisted in the Army to go to the 101st Airborne like his pop. By that time the 101st Airborne changed from paratroopers to an air mobile division. They were trained as paratroopers, too, but instead of being jumpers they were used to fly and rappel down from helicopters. I got my son Billy exempt from duty. I knew what it was all about, and I wasn’t about to send both sons. I told them Billy had to stay home and take care of me. I lied, but I’m glad I did it. That conflict was a mess, just like Iraq. Decisions are made with no common sense, and our kids go, they give their all, and they give their lives. Thank God Gene came back alive. He came home, and we never talked about it. You never talked about it in those days. He said, “How in the hell you done it, Pop, I’ll never know.” He got married and had six children. Billy had three children. Today I have twenty-two grandchildren and great-grandchildren. With Vietnam, I finally understood what my parents went through. My wife and I worried every minute, it was hard keeping Frannie calm. When you lose a kid, that stays with you forever.
At that time, America was an entirely different country from what it was during WWII. When I went to war, we had good government, good leaders. They had common sense. Today, nobody has common sense. You mix politics and religion, you got trouble. America gets worse, not better. No common sense, no patriotism. Everybody was trying to get their kids out of going to Vietnam, trying everything. They sent them to live in Canada. They laughed at you because you sent your kids. An entirely different generation.
The one thing I can say about war is that the winners lose and the losers lose. But I’m proud that I fought for my country, and that my son did, too. And proud that we fought with the 101st Airborne. I wear the eagle on my hat, on my jacket. I have eagles all over my house. If you go upstairs, your eyeballs will come out. I’ve got a whole room full of eagles. Four shelves of eagles and plaques. My wife used to say, “You like the eagles so much, go sleep with them in the back room.” You know what they call us today? The old buzzards! We’re a bunch of old geezers.
The division is still active today. After World War II, they were in the Korean War, and then nothing until the fifties when they formed the air mobile division. When they needed a mobile division, the 101st was the first one formed and it’s still the only one today like that. They fought in Korea and Vietnam. They are now in Iraq. Any hotspot in the world, the 101st can be ready within a day. The 82nd Airborne is still paratroops. A year or two from now, the helicopters will be history and they’ll have rockets, who knows? That’s technology today. Now you’re getting too smart!
I stayed close friends with Johnny Martin until he died about a year ago. I flew out to bury him, and his son Billy said he had a gun I gave his father. I said, “Billy, you’re nuttier than a fruitcake, I never gave him a gun.” “Yeah,” he said, “I have the note you wrote that you got it right after D-day and you gave one to him.” I didn’t remember. Took me about a week. Beating my brains out trying to think about D-day and everything that happened. I went to every man in the company until I got to George Luz. He spent a lot of time with me and Johnny on pass in London. Bang, it hit me like a brick. I captured two German SS, and they surrendered, gave me their guns, and I shot ’em. I gave one gun to George Luz and one to Johnny.
Another story about a gun and Johnny Martin. His brother Billy was in the Merchant Marines and they delivered stuff by boat—all the supplies to England and all over the world. So one time he came to England, and me and Johnny went to meet him. I grabbed a Thompson submachine gun, wrapped it up, and gave it to Billy. I don’t know whose gun it was. There was stuff lying around all over the place. If somebody noticed a gun missing, I probably blamed Smitty. I always blamed Smitty.
I told Billy, “Take this back to the United States if you can. If anyone tries to steal it, throw it in the ocean, don’t give it to nobody. If you get it back, and I don’t make it back, keep it as a souvenir.” When I got ho
me and went to see Johnny Martin, sure enough Billy was there and gave me the gun. When I took it home, Frannie was scared to death of it. After all that, I ended up giving it to a neighbor to get rid of it!
(Babe adds: “Bill’s still the troublemaker that he was. Wait till you hear stories about Europe.”)
BABE
A friend came up one day and gave me a box of chocolates, and we went to take a box to Bill. I said to him in the car, “I’m gonna put a five-dollar bill here and tell you verbatim what Bill’s going to say to you when you hand him the chocolates.” Bill opens the door, my friend hands him the chocolates. And Bill says, “What are you trying to do, give me diabetes?!” My friend handed me a five and we laughed like hell. I know what Bill’s going to say before he says it.
If you ever hear Bill’s sayings, he copies them from me. If you offer him something to eat, he says, “No, thanks, I just had a peanut.” Well, he got that from me. It’s supposed to be funny, but he says it constantly, so it gets on my nerves. Bill says, “I’m sorry you ever told me that one.”
I can’t say enough about our friendship over the years. Anytime we go anywhere we have a good time. We’ve never had an argument or dispute, or a bad word. Never. We’re there for each other. We give each other encouragement. If he’s ever broke, I got it. Same with me; if I was broke, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask him. Bill was good to my daughter while I was sick. I was lying in a hospital bed for almost a year, and the doctors didn’t expect me to walk again. Bill took care of us. He came to see me every day.
(Bill adds: “You owe me for parking. Sixteen dollars a day for a year! He was on so many drugs, he was nuttier than a fruitcake. Coco loco!”)
They had me on all kinds of drugs, and when I came home, I wouldn’t take any more pills. I’m supposed to take three of them—high blood pressure, iron, and high cholesterol. But I don’t care if I’m healthy or not, no more pills. I can’t get myself to put foreign things in my body. Since I was a kid I never cried cop, and I don’t believe in crying cop. Bill don’t take any pills either. We’re eighty-four. Doctors get all worked up when we tell them. You’d think the doctor was the one whose body it is. Joe Toye said to me one time, “You guys from South Philly are tough sons of bitches.” It’s true. I never worry about death, because I know there’s something good on the other side.
As for the problem with my hands, after I got out of the hospital in Belgium, I did my duty. I didn’t say a word, I led patrols and carried the machine gun and never said a word. I was home about twenty years before it finally left me. The doctor, when I come home, said you have to drink a lot of milk. Twenty-three years later it was gone, and it never came back. I remember, it was my first year on the waterfront when I realized I hadn’t had any pain, it just went away. No doctor ever told me what the hell condition it was, but I must have been lacking something, and my body got what it needed after a while.
The 101st Airborne had a reunion the year after the war was over. It was great seeing the men again, especially off the battlefield! I can’t say enough about the men I fought with. They were all just good, top-shelf guys. Bill started getting the men together for the reunions in 1947, after he got out of the hospital, and ran them almost sixty years. He made it so the men didn’t have to lift a finger. He did everything, and no one helped. I made phone calls to the guys in my platoon, but Bill did the rest. It’s because of Bill that we’ve all stayed so close.
The reunions have always been more fun than serious. When you’re with the guys, you’re eighteen years old again. The guys still kid each other. At the first reunion Bill went to Walter Gordon and said to him, “I didn’t know they let guys with one leg in the paratroopers!” There were so many crazy stories. I can’t say anything without getting someone in trouble with their family. Their families will say, “Well, I didn’t know that, you son of a bitch!” Bill and I try to have fun. When Bill was still wearing an artificial leg, he tattooed a giant eagle on it, and wore his pant leg up so everyone could see, and he danced all night. One year, we dressed up in zoot suits. Me, Bill, and Ralph Spina. We looked like the Three Stooges. Pin-striped suits with the big shoulders and peg legs, and hats. When the elevator opened and I saw Bill in his zoot suit, I took such a laughing fit, everyone thought I was gonna drop dead. The guys couldn’t believe what they were looking at. Colonel Strayer said to his wife, “Now I’ve seen everything.” I thought, Well, he’s the president of an insurance company, so he just thinks we’re nuts. We always try to make the guys laugh, make everyone feel at home.
My jump school buddy, J. D. Henderson, went to a couple reunions with us. He was a farmer, never had much. Many of the guys didn’t have much. I’ve had it pretty good, so did Bill, we got no complaints. We’ve traveled all over. Bill would call me and say “Babe, we’re going here and there.” We went to reunions in different states, or to Europe. We used the governor’s plane to go to St. Louis in 1951. I got a photo in my parlor of that trip in 1951, sitting with Eddie Stein. He died in 2000, he was a good guy. He took Landsberg (the concentration camp Easy liberated) pretty hard. I liked Eddie; he owned an entire block, he had a big company selling eggs and poultry, he had fifty people plucking chickens. Bill and I visited him there and met his wife, Vernelle.
We were so happy to see some of the guys become millionaires, they made their way in the world, and they worked hard to get there. Walter Gordon did well, Winters did well with his own company in Pennsylvania. Compton did well; he graduated UCLA, played football and baseball, worked for the DA, became a lawyer and a federal judge. He sent Sirhan Sirhan away, life in prison. He’s the one who shot Robert Kennedy. Compton wanted to give him the death penalty, but the jury voted against it.
Other guys in E Company had it tough, but we all did well overall. We all lived and had children and grandchildren, and when you think of the guys that never got the chance, right there, we all made out well. But we can’t forget the kids who came home and had to struggle through life with their physical wounds, like Chuck Grant. He had a hell of a time. When he got shot, the war was over, and this crazy bastard shot him in the head. He lived with brain damage. That was the toughest part of the whole thing, that he made it through the whole war, and then that happened.
I never forgot my promise to John Julian, the pact he and I and J. D. Henderson made. It took me about twelve years to get up the guts to contact his mother. I wrote her a letter and she called me and said, “Babe, you don’t have to travel to Sispy, Alabama.” I thought she didn’t want me bringing up old wounds. But instead, she was coming to me. Her daughter was having a baby in Camden, New Jersey, right over the bridge, I could have walked there. I visited her at her daughter’s home. It was tough. I was all broken down. She was a better soldier than I was. Stiff upper lip. Didn’t show emotion. I gave her our regimental scrapbook. I only had one but I thought she deserved it. I said, “I know your son would love you to have this.” She was so grateful that I came. My cousin went with me, and afterward, we stopped at a local bar; let’s be honest, I needed a drink. It gets to me just repeating it. But I had to do it because I gave Julian my word. J. D. couldn’t do it, he had no money. He said, “Babe, I’m proud of you.” I know Julian was looking down on me saying “Good job, well done.” You hear people say, “The veterans are full of hooey, how can they keep these things in mind for sixty years?” But we do.
I hear Vietnam vets say they suffer from flashbacks and I think, Hey, I’ve been having them since 1944, I have seniority! Any soldier who lived through combat, whether it was in 1776, 1861, 1918, 1942, any war, will never be entirely free of the war he fought. Some are just able to brush it off better than others. Bill doesn’t think about the war. He thinks about the men. I think about the war every day, only because reminders are all around. During a thunderstorm, when the sky lights up after the booms, it sounds and looks like the recoil of the big German guns. It always makes me happy to be standing exactly where I am, and not back in 1944 Europe. In September and October, I’m t
hinking of Holland and everything I experienced there. In December I think of Bastogne. With Christmas comes very bad memories. January 1st, New Year’s Day, I always think of John Julian. I never, never enjoy a New Year, and never cared about Christmas. I just like to be left alone. Bill says, “Humbug on Christmas, humbug on New Year’s.” I say, “You’re right, Bill. Humbug!” Most of the guys can’t handle it, because of the Bulge and the friends we lost. It’s part of living.
Stephen Ambrose called around 1990 and started interviewing all the members of Easy Company to write a book about us. Bill met with him and some of the Toccoa guys. Ambrose called me on the phone. When Band of Brothers came out in 1992, people wanted to talk about the war. As hard as it is for all of us, I think we all believe it’s important for people today to know about the war. Kids today see these movies and they think it’s a fairy tale. They don’t understand this was real; this was no fairy tale. Kids today are different than we were. Today, they’re spoiled rotten, and they don’t have the same respect for their country or even their parents. We were raised to be self-supporting. When we made money we brought it home to our mother. And they don’t want to hear nothing of fighting for your country. It’s unpatriotic to fight for your country! A kid at the neighborhood bar said, “I ain’t fighting any wars for this country, my parents should have stayed in Bolivia.” He was talking to someone else. I said, “Your parents should have stayed in Bolivia.” He said, “I wasn’t talking to you.” I said, “That’s right, I just wanted to agree with you.” I said, “What if a German had a bayonet up your ass, are you gonna fight then?” I didn’t want to get locked up, so I finished my beer and left. It seems to me a lot of kids today are like that. I hope we never have to prove it, I mean on a large scale—not like Iraq, and they can’t get them to volunteer for Iraq. I hope I’m wrong.
Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Page 23