A Company of Heroes (14 page)

Geographically speaking, BeeBoy was right on the money!

The “Smokey” nickname came from a tobacco-chewing habit Daddy had in his war years with Easy Company. When we were growing up, Daddy always smoked either a pipe or a cigar. He was never one to consume alcohol, claiming that whatever he drank, he would drink with voracity. Water was his drink of choice, way before it was fashionable. He couldn’t get enough of it. During training, he found he required more water than the average fellow and devised ways of gaining access to his comrades’ canteens. In the field, he began to carry extra Hershey’s bars, which proved to be just what a soldier considered a fair trade for a big swig of extra water.

Dad and Carwood Lipton often went on leave either alone or just the two of them. Many others preferred to go drinking and try their luck with girls. But Lipton and Dad wanted to tour museums and art galleries. This did not stem from a highbrow attitude but was a way to take in the local culture. They could be mischievous, too. Once, while the men were training in Aldbourne, Dad traveled to the city of Bath, England, with one of the men. On a museum tour it came time for lunch and the museum closed. Daddy and his buddy hid inside the building. As soon as they found themselves alone they stripped down, jumped into the water of the ancient Roman baths, splashed around like eggbeaters, then got dressed and resumed the tour after lunch was concluded and the museum opened again.

Daddy was in the 3rd Platoon, and this isn’t much known about the Band of Brothers, but there’s a real hierarchy among the men regarding which platoon they came from. Most of the needling is done in good nature. Once we asked Bill Guarnere why there weren’t many pictures of him taken during the war. He was quick to reply, “I’ll tell ya why, dammit, ’cause your dad and Gutty
¹¹
were in the back posing for pictures like tourists, while 1st Platoon was on the front line getting their heads shot at.”

Dad jumped on D-day and landed near an apple tree on a farm in Normandy with only half his machine gun. It was too heavy to jump with the whole. He was about six miles off course. Fortunately, John Eubanks, who carried the tripod to the machine gun, was the first man Dad met on the ground. Unfortunately, Eubanks had felt no need to be carrying around a tripod with no gun or gunner in sight, so he had promptly discarded it upon landing. Dad was able to prop the gun on low stone walls and shoot from that position.

Forrest Guth joined them shortly. The men had a couple of ways to identify friendly troops in the dark: one way was for both to sound their toy crickets that they carried, and another was for one person to speak a word and the other to respond in a code that had been established earlier. As Dad, Guth, and Eubanks roamed the Normandy countryside, they heard a loud whisper coming from the dark. A soldier challenged them with the code word—“
Flash
.” Before Dad or Gutty could even catch their breath, Eubanks blurted “
Lightning
,” a logical answer, yes, but unfortunately not the right one. (The correct response that night was “
Thunder.
”
)
Knowing what was sure to follow a wrong response, they hit the dirt as their comrade lobbed a grenade their way. Fortunately, they escaped injury. The unknown soldier scattered, and they never did learn his identity. Floyd Talbert joined them a short time later. Eventually they joined up with a group from the 502nd that had spotted some Germans under a barn near Ravenoville. Dad and some of the men had to take out a bunker there.

Dad was wounded while fighting in Normandy. They evacuated him to a hospital in England where he was put in a cast that ran from hip to toe. As different groups of military upper brass toured the hospital, they spoke to each wounded man, and if appropriate, pinned a Purple Heart to the man’s pillow, where it was supposed to stay. Dad heard out each group as they talked about their appreciation of the military, about his service and valor, and on and on . . . then once they left he unpinned each award from his pillow and stashed it. After a few weeks he had a small cache of Purple Hearts. He knew they’d come in handy some day.

After eight weeks in the hospital, Dad returned to Easy Company. Floyd “Tab” Talbert had been mistakenly wounded by another Easy Company man’s bayonet. He arrived back at the company about the same time Dad did, but Talbert hadn’t got any awards because his wound hadn’t come from an enemy. Tab was truly one of Dad’s favorite people, and there was no one he loved to tease more than Tab. Dad and Paul Rogers, another of Dad’s good friends, put together a makeshift award ceremony, complete with an infamous poem called “The Night of the Bayonette,” and awarded Talbert his very own Purple Heart with much pomp and circumstance.

Dad was wounded for the final time in Bastogne on Christmas Eve, 1944. It was early morning and snow covered the rocky frozen ground. His assistant was a new man and had dug their foxhole, but not deep enough. Daddy was taller for a paratrooper, about six-one, and stuck out of the foxhole. A sniper got him in the left shoulder. The bullet traveled across his body and came out his right shoulder. It nicked his spinal column, which left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Paul Rogers and Jim Alley heaved him out of his hole and hauled him into the woods where Doc Roe gave him morphine and plasma. Lipton rushed over to see what he could do to assist. As Lipton leaned over Dad, trying to get him to talk or respond, one of the men looked down and said, “Lip, you’re standing on Smokey’s hand.” It was then that most of the men realized that Dad had no sensations from the neck down and that his injuries, this time, were very serious. It was a story that always caused Lipton’s eyes to well up when telling.

Dad was taken to an aid station, then by ambulance to Sedan, then flown to England and on to a hospital in Wales. He was placed in a plaster cast from the top of his head to his waist with only his face left unplastered. But the cast was in the way, and the open wounds from the bullet holes couldn’t be treated. Medical staff cut the cast off. Two holes were bored into the sides of Dad’s skull. Steel tongs were inserted and clamped off, which held his head immobile, (the device was called Crutchfield Tongs). Pulleys provided traction and prevented any movement prompted by the rest of his body. Dad stayed in that position, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling, for six weeks.

One day while Dad was recuperating, Dr. Stadium, who was treating him at the time, turned to the nurse and said, “Keep an eye on this one, he’s goldbricking.” Daddy was infuriated. “Damn it!” he yelled, “If I could climb out of this bed, I’d show you what goldbricking is!” The doctor smiled as he walked out of the room. Daddy found out later the doctor was just trying to rile him up to help reconnect nerves and keep a fighting spirit in him. After the war Daddy learned of this doctor’s whereabouts, which happened to be in New Orleans, and remained in touch with him for years. During his recovery Daddy’s little finger started to move. He said it was really weird because hair had grown all over his hands and fingers. It reminded him of Sasquatch. Soon he was listed as “walking wounded.”

Although Daddy started getting better, the Army chose not to release him. He was shipped to Atlanta and was there up until 1945 when the war ended in Europe. He was well enough to be sent home, but not dischargeable according to the Army. He speculated that they wanted to keep him around longer so that he’d continue to heal, releasing the Army of the responsibility of paying for a full disability. During this time his father kept asking him when he was coming home, but Dad couldn’t give him an answer. Finally, after a routine examination, the attending physician informed Dad that he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital but would be sent to Fort Benning to serve for limited duty. Dad placed a call to his father to pass along this new information. BeeBoy became unglued and ordered Dad to relay a message back to this army doctor saying precisely, “If you send my son to any location other than home, I will personally drive him to the US Capitol building, march him down onto the Senate floor, strip him down to his skivvies, and let someone besides the Army make a determination!” It was not long after that when the doctor sallied into Daddy’s room and said, “Son, you’re going home.”

Daddy was discharged from the military with 90 percent disability. For the rest of his life he suffered with chronic back and shoulder pain and always walked like a man well beyond his years. The worst part about his injury was that we could never give Dad a big hug around his neck or ride piggyback as children do because we were well aware of the pain he suffered. Whenever someone greeted him with a pat on the back, unaware of his disabilities, you could see a slight wince in his eye or face, yet he would never mention it.

Following the war the Army offered aptitude tests for the men to determine the best career for their particular talents. Daddy’s turned out to be a bulldozer operator. He thought it best, however, to put his brain to use rather than his brawn.

Under the GI Bill, Dad enrolled at Cumberland Law School in Lebanon, Tennessee. Six months into law school he went home to Mississippi and passed the state bar exam. He returned to the university to officially earn his law degree but was actually a licensed attorney before graduating. He never practiced law, but instead became an oil broker, the liaison between the oil companies and the land owners to lease the rights to drill and own the oil below the surface.

Dad secured employment soon after graduating, but without a vehicle found it impossible to go to work. Vets with cash prompted huge lines at car dealerships across the country. Dad couldn’t wait for a new car to roll off the line. About this time his letter writing began. He wrote to Henry Ford II explaining the predicament. The letter obviously got the attention of Mr. Ford, and Dad was phoned by the local dealership and told his automobile had been delivered and was awaiting payment and pick up. Dad got his car and was off to work.

In 1950, while on vacation in Acapulco, Dad’s life changed forever. One day it was raining, and all outside activities came to a standstill. The hotel’s social director circled everyone in the lobby and asked them to say who they were and where they were from. A nice rhythm was established as the speaker shifted from person to person around the circle.

A very tall and beautiful girl stood up and quietly spoke her name, “I’m Betty Ball Ludeau from Ville Platte, Louisiana,” but before the next person could stand to speak, a male voice was heard from across the room, “Uh, would you mind repeating that name?” The girl was stunned as all eyes and ears were focused on her. She repeated the same. “Would you please spell that last name?” the man called out from afar. The girl was now overcome with embarrassment. That was how our Dad met our mama. He claimed it was love at first sight. At the very moment he laid eyes on her he declared to himself, “I’m gonna make that girl my wife.” The courtship began.

Mama’s father had died of a massive heart attack when he was only thiry-four and she was nine. She, her mother, and her brother fell into the care of her father’s parents, who lived next door. Papa Ludeau was a man of means and had managed to acquire businesses, interests, and properties on which oil was found. Mama had been reared with the taste for a good life and never had any concerns of her own. Her mother, Eunice, was widowed young and lived a full life of travel and leisure. Once, for fun and enjoyment, Eunice signed up to be the official house mother for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Louisiana State University. Mama, being in her early twenties then, managed to have an entire fraternity at her disposal as big brothers and she proceeded to dance her way through college.

During the courtship, Dad worked in Hammond, Louisiana, as a young oil man and he began to drive to Baton Rouge to see Mama. Since he wasn’t a big dancer, nor did he have any interest in hanging out in “saloons,” as he called them, they had little in common. As much as he persisted, she resisted. After a number of proposals she finally admitted to Dad why she was not fit for marriage. He would often retell the story of the moonlit evening when he again asked for her hand, and she responded with, “Walter, I can’t marry you. I don’t know how to cook!” The next words Dad said to Mama she could recall verbatim. “Betty, I’m not marrying you to be my cook, I’m marrying you to be my bride.”

They were married June 14, 1951. Daddy lovingly referred to Mama as his “bride” throughout their marriage. Theirs was considered one of the most entertaining, independent, generous, joint-yet-separate unions that many have ever witnessed. Mama was his muse and the light of his life. He claimed that she was the most exciting and entertaining woman he had ever had the privilege to know. Whenever she would walk into a room or anywhere to join him, he would ask whoever was in earshot, “Isn’t she the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen?” Throughout their entire marriage, not a day ever passed if Daddy was in Mama’s company when he failed to say the following words, “Mama, have I told you how much I love you today? And tell me, what can I do to make you happy?” He absolutely loved her more than life itself.

It should be said that as a parent, Daddy used military tactics in lieu of books by Dr. Spock. Dad had no hobbies. If asked, he responded in a gruff manner, “I work, that’s all I know how to do, work!” He had no problem requiring the same of us. We can remember as toddlers being out in the yard alongside him as he raked the oversized magnolia leaves, picking them up one by one with our little hands and depositing them into a trash-can. He expected any job to be carried out precisely as directed, in a timely manner, and without argument or debate. Whenever given a task on our own it was our duty to report to him upon its completion. For confirmation and by rote his next question was always, “Are you ready for inspection?” If the task was not done right, we risked not only completely redoing the task but were subject to additional assignments.