A Company of Heroes (41 page)

Gariann went to visit the family’s Dutch relatives, then went to visit her great uncle’s grave and whispered her grandma’s words.

A neighbor of the Van Klinken family named Chuck Borg was just a young boy when news of Robert’s death came to the town. Chuck’s family lived across the road from the Van Klinken’s cabin. The news of Robert’s death left an impression on Chuck for years and he eventually went into the Army himself, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Years later, he was walking through a cemetery in Holland and saw the name Robert Van Klinken. It profoundly affected him. Chuck wrote home immediately and told his folks about it. When reading
Band of Brothers
several years later, he came across the name of his mom’s old neighbor and friend once again. Chuck contacted the Twisp Chamber of Commerce and got in touch with my aunt and myself. Since then he has been an adopted part of our family. When he returned to the States to live, he established the Robert Van Klinken Memorial Scholarship at Liberty Bell High School in Twisp, where Robert went to school. The scholarship awards college money to hardworking, adventuresome country boys, similar to Robert’s personality and drive.

This past year on Veteran’s Day, Robert’s great-grand-nephew, J. R. Matkins, took a picture of Robert Van Klinken to his third grade class along with the book
Band of Brothers.
The eight-year-old told his classmates about his relative who gave his life in the war so that generations could live in freedom. His classmates were impressed. J. R. also went to last year’s Easy Company reunion along with his family.

For years, very few of the specific details of Robert Van Klinken’s death were known to his family. Then, during the writing of this book, the family of Burton “Pat” Christenson and the Van Klinkens were connected, and details were shared for the first time. [To read the details, please see the essay about Pat Christenson.]

What’s the one thing Gariann and her family would like people to remember about Robert Van Klinken?

“That he was a good man,” Gariann said. “And that our family will always love him. He’ll always be very much alive in our hearts.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

This past September
⁴²
I was in my home office one afternoon writing the essay about Lieutenant George Lavenson, when two ordinary events happened almost simultaneously that raised for me anew the two questions that Stephen Ambrose posed. One, I received an e-mail from my friend, Susie Krabacher, who had just written a letter to the United Nations special envoy to Haiti. And two, my wife came home with new school shoes for our six-year-old daughter.

You’ll recall that Lavenson’s nephew, Joel, had asked Ambrose if he had any theories about why he (Joel) was so passionate about researching his deceased uncle’s life. Ambrose answered: “All men ultimately want to know two things—‘
To whom do I owe thanks that I should live in such opportunity? ’
And, ‘
Will I have the courage when the time comes?
’”

Answering Ambrose’s questions can be difficult. Few of us today actu-ally jump out of airplanes into combat, or undertake any of the large-scale events that traditionally produce heroes. Sometimes the questions only tick quietly in the back of our minds. We need to strain to hear their subtleties.

Yet answering Ambrose’s two questions reaches the heart of why we keep wanting to know more about the Band of Brothers. We read because of interest and to gather information, yes, but we also continually look to World War II for clues to the potential for our own heroics. We want to know if we’ve got the right stuff. We hope to live authentic lives that amount to something purposeful, and we’re searching for examples that show us the way.

That’s where Ambrose’s questions connect with Krabacher’s e-mail and my daughter’s new shoes.

Susie Krabacher is the CEO of the Mercy & Sharing Foundation, a philanthropic organization that runs orphanages, schools, and feeding centers in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. The situation in Haiti is continually desperate, and Krabacher’s letter urged the Haitian government to take better, quicker action for their country’s abandoned children.

In Haiti, where most people live on less than two dollars a day, these children are often left along roads and sewers or on hospital grounds, dumped like trash. Krabacher attached a picture that showed row after row of cribs in a Haitian hospital, three children in each crib. The children were dirty and disheveled and had likely spent most of their lives in those cribs. Some stared at the camera. Other children slept. Some looked off into space with large, vacant eyes.

In a contrasting culture, the shoes my daughter received that afternoon were everything a six-year-old could want. They were striped pink and brown, sparkly, with shiny hearts jangling from stretchy laces. I hugged my daughter as I admired her new shoes, and I couldn’t help wonder why we live in a country so comparatively wealthy, when not more than five hundred miles off the coast of Florida there are abandoned babies sleeping three to a crib.

I couldn’t help but hear Ambrose’s first question, “
To whom do I owe thanks that I should live in such opportunity?”

Ambrose’s second question, “
Will I have the courage when the time comes?”
is asked by people of all generations faced with the fight for ideals. The question deals with issues of justice, self-sacrifice, and compassion in action. It’s about whether we have the stuff of heroics. And hero can be a tricky word, even when applied to the men of Easy Company.

When you read through the essays in this book, did you respond with mixed feelings? I know I did. All the men profiled fought heroically in the war, but reading about their lives after the war, we learn that not all the stories had happy endings. Some men survived and lived exemplary lives, caring well for their families and communities. They were heroes through the war and models of how to live afterward. Others floundered, drifted into addictions or despair, and never seemed sure of the right road. Were they heroes, too? Perhaps the definition of hero needs to be broadened. Some of the men were so broken that they did not do well after the war, but that does not negate what they did in those vital years of conflict. They did not live perfect lives, and yet they still did mighty things.

Hero is a concept that beckons us. Most of us today, if we are not military personnel or third world humanitarians, will never fight in conditions anywhere close to the terror of Bastogne. Still, we face battles that we hope matter. We take actions that we hope have significance. We don’t aspire necessarily to be international heroes; we just want to do more than sit on the couch watching reruns of
Matlock.

Ambrose’s questions mean most for us today when we remember that the soldiers who fought in the battlefields of Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne indeed gave much. And they gave it for a reason—so that we could live for what matters. The liberty that the Band of Brothers fought for was not a freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want, but rather a freedom from tyranny, a freedom of self-determination, a freedom to make something of our lives.

The men of Easy Company were everyday guys, kids like those we grew up with, yet they reached way beyond themselves and way beyond their home turf. Because they were ordinary men who chose to live extraordinarily, their examples inspire us to make deliberate decisions for right action. They invite us to be courageous in our commitments, to provide security for our families, to be noble in our careers and communities, and to be engaged on a global front. They fought and bled and some of them died on foreign soil, and part of their legacy to us is an unselfish global perspective.

Here is one way to make a fitting and tangible tribute to their heroics and to begin ours: write a check to our charity of choice in honor of the Band of Brothers. We might consider organizations that help the families of our fallen military people. Or we might follow the global vision and reach out to another battle that matters, such as the abandoned children in Haiti. Here is a land where innocents are still waiting for people who will be their heroes and offer them the tools for opportunity. I can vouch that the goal of Krabacher’s organization is to help alleviate human suffering for this generation and the generations to come, a principle the men of Easy Company continually stood for.

Scenes and lines from the essays we’ve just read will stay with us for some time. For me, there’s a scene from the story of Pat Christenson: a telephone call, the announcement, “Pat’s home,” his ten-year-old nephew, Gary, sprints out of the house without his jacket, running down the street to meet his hero home from the war. Maybe in some small way we can be some child’s hero, too.

A check is not the same as spilling blood. But this much we can do as evidence of the potential for heroics in us all. I suggest as a good place to start, writing in the amount of a new pair of shoes.

For more information see
www.haitichildren.com
.

This book originated at the 2008 Easy Company reunion in Salem, Oregon. I had written another book called
We Who Are Alive and Remain,
and, at the back of that book, had invited four adult children of Easy Company members to talk about their deceased fathers. The section acted as an appendix and was meant to convey the idea that many more stories could be told. Advance copies of the book were circulating at the reunion, and the appendix garnered a good amount of attention from the E Company men and their wives, many of whom said things like, “There are so many guys from the company whose stories need to be told, you should do a whole book about this.”

Ed Tipper and Amos “Buck” Taylor, although neither was able to attend that year’s reunion, both phoned later and strongly encouraged another book. Thanks go to both men.

I am always grateful for Natalee Rosenstein, Michelle Vega, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, and the excellent staff at Penguin, who care deeply about the men of Easy Company’s legacy and championed this project from the start.

Thanks go to my agent and friend, Greg Johnson, Rachelle Gardner, and the team at the WordServe Literary Group for making projects happen.

Tracy Compton introduced me to Chris Langlois, the grandson of Doc Roe. Chris invited me to join a closed Internet forum for children and relatives of Easy Company men. I joined the forum, explained the project, and right away several Easy Company relatives expressed eagerness in participating, which got the ball rolling. We corresponded about how we wanted to do this book for three reasons: 1) as a tribute to their fathers or loved ones, 2) as a remembrance book for future generations, 3) for current readers’ enjoyment, inspiration, and leadership. This book could not have been made without all the contributors. Thank you so much.

George Luz Jr., C. Susan Finn (daughter of Burr Smith), Bill Guarnere—who organized and kept records of Easy Company reunions for years—and Herb Suerth Jr., current president of the Men of Easy Company Association, helped put me in touch with other contributors.

Thanks go to many others who helped along the way, including Rich Riley, a WWII 101st Airborne historian and friend of Easy Company, historian Jake Powers, Joe “Mooch” Muccia from www.MajorDick Winters .com, Peter van de Wal in Holland, Marci Carson, Joe Toye, Vance Day, Carol Pulver—who regularly writes letters of encouragement to the troops—Colonel Susan Luz, Merav Brooks, Robyn Post, Michael Pohlman, PhD, Paul Woodage from
www.Battlebus.fr
, and Bryan and the gang from Valor Studios.

Gratefulness is continually expressed to Stephen Ambrose, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and HBO.

Lieutenant Buck Compton remains a strong source of personal inspiration. Thank you, Buck. None of this would have happened without your book starting it all.

Newspaper journalists Dorothy Brotherton and H. C. Jones went through each essay line by line and offered valuable suggestions along the way.

Karen Clark and Bob Craddock, two great lifelong friends, encouraged me in many ways throughout the writing of the book.

I’m thankful for friendship, love, and support from Mike and Judy, Jon and Alison, Japheth and Elly, David and Carrie, Addy and Zach, Peter Sheldrup, Roger Chamberlin, David Kopp, and our friends at the Tuesday night dinner club.

I am ever grateful to my wife, Mary Margaret Brotherton, for her strong support in this project and her love always.

Thanks go to my father, D. Graham Brotherton, who has acted heroically throughout his life and career.

Final thanks go to the international community of fans who continue to preserve the legacy of the Band of Brothers and hold closely what it means to live in freedom.

All honor goes to him who holds our lives in his hands. Daniel 5:23b.