A Company of Heroes (7 page)

The next day at his Mass, we played a song called “On Eagle’s Wings,” based on Psalm 91, that talks about how God will lift you up on eagles’ wings and make you shine like the sun. Then a friend played “Amazing Grace
”
on the flute. I wouldn’t call the funeral sad. I would call it joyful, like Dad would have wanted it to be.

Dad’s body was transported to Gate of Heaven Cemetery, where he was buried, and an Army representative came out and played “Taps”. It was a very cold day, it had just snowed, and the sound of a single bugle filled the air. The day was extremely clear, and as the sound rang out across the snow, it seemed to resonate forever.

 

 

 

I was never quite positive that the stories my father told me about the war actually happened. At least from my perspective as a young boy, they didn’t seem real. We’d watch war movies with Dad, and he’d talk about all these far-flung places and horrific action scenes with familiarity, saying things like, “Yeah, that looks about right,” or “I was nearby there when that happened.” His stories seemed so extraordinary. I just couldn’t fathom how my dad—how anybody—had actually gone through all those experiences and lived.

Dad didn’t help us understand much, either. If I ever asked Dad a question about his combat experiences, he wouldn’t say anything in return. He’d grunt or look away or make it clear somehow that he wasn’t going to answer any questions about the subject. Whenever he talked about the war, it was on his terms, and he talked mostly about the funny parts. I believed those more. He’d have a drink in his hand and tell stories about life in the barracks, his friends, and the good times they had, poaching deer in England, avoiding the officer of the day while stowed-away British girls fell through the attic of the barracks, things like that.

My father, George L. Potter Jr., was one hell of a man. He lived creatively and intensely and was an innovator in his industry. He also died broken and bitter. Those were his life’s contradictions. He did much more than most men ever dream of doing, and he made it through the war physically. But psychologically, I don’t think he ever really survived the war. I think that’s the best way to put it.

And what about me believing his war stories?

Everything changed the night before the D-day museum opened in New Orleans. I was over there at the time and met someone by chance who put everything in perspective for me.

At the museum opening, a woman named Lies Staal was introduced as a guest. She had been a fifteen-year-old girl living in Eindhoven at the time of the Market-Garden jump. The night before the opening we had a banquet. After the meal was over, I wandered over to her table to ask her a few questions. I was curious about what it was like to live under Nazi occupation. She told me all about it, how her father was in exile in the UK, and how she and her brother needed to walk to the town of Sonne to pick potatoes out of a field. They had heard there was some food there, and that’s what they ate to survive.

This girl had witnessed the Allied parachute landing for Operation Market-Garden, and she and her brother had made their way back from the potato field to Eindhoven. The next day, when the troops came through, her mother had allowed her to stand in front of their house as the troops walked by. She had asked several of the troops to sign her autograph book. Years later, she had brought this book with her to the banquet, and she let me look at it.

On the very first page was unmistakable handwriting. It was my dad’s signature: George L. Potter. It completely stunned me—when you think of the coincidences—it still chokes me up today. Dad had obviously made the jump into Holland. He needed to have walked down the correct side of the street where she was standing. That book needed to survive the bombing of Eindhoven a few days later. The woman needed to care for that book all of those years, and then hear about this D-day museum opening, and then bring the book to the banquet. Then I needed to go over and talk to her, and she needed to show me the book. What are the chances?

Seeing Dad’s signature brought everything together for me. The piece of paper was tangible and the handwriting was his own, the scrawl that was so familiar to me. His stories and experiences were validated in my mind. I had no doubt that he had told me the truth all those years. His stories were horrific and far-fetched and fantastic—and it’s true. Real men actually lived through those extraordinary experiences.

From moment one, my father was a military man. He was born in 1923 at Fort Benning. His dad was an officer from WWI and had fought in Europe with the 5th Infantry regiment. Later, my grandfather went into the ministry, which was quite a change from his previous career. After my dad was born, the family moved around from Fort Benning to Long Beach then to Arizona—Tombstone, Mesa, and Winslow—working at different churches in those cities, then to Spokane, Washington, then to Hood River, Oregon. That’s where my dad lived in 1942 when he turned eighteen and enlisted.

When Dad enlisted, he came home and told everybody. His mother was really upset. But his dad said, “Well it’s not too bad. At least he’s enlisted, so he’ll be with a good group.” Then he asked what unit my dad had enlisted with. “The paratroopers,” Dad said. My grandfather shook his head and immediately hauled him back to the recruiter, trying to get him transferred out. But he was unsuccessful, and Dad stayed with the paratroops.

When Dad enlisted he was still attending Hood River High School where he was a good athlete and track star. He held the state record for the quarter mile. He went into the military his senior year and received his diploma as part of his enlistment.

Dad wasn’t one of the original Toccoa men. He was one of the very first replacements in Easy Company. He went through boot camp at Camp Roberts in California (Vandenberg Air Force Base today), and later joined the company February 22, 1943, while they were still training either in North Carolina or across the river at Benning. I’ve got Dad’s records. Captain Herbert Sobel initialed all the lines.

Dad was never happy about joining Easy Company late. He was one of the original guys in many ways, but he always felt a bit slighted by the original Toccoa men for being a replacement.

Although Dad seldom talked about combat, we’ve confirmed that he made the Normandy jump with Easy Company. He was in Stick 69. He lost his rifle on the jump because the aircraft was traveling too fast and it flew out of his hands. He landed on the roof of a farmhouse near Ste. Mère-Église. He heard lots of shooting going on, so he slid off the roof into a walled yard where he found another trooper from another company. They both made it to safety and found weapons soon.

We have a photo that shows a group of Easy Company men standing across a road outside Carentan. All the troopers have been identified except one, who we think is Dad. He looks just like Dad and is standing much like Dad stood at times. Next to this man is Don Hoobler with his arms crossed, and tipping his helmet is Bill Dukeman, who were both known to be friends of Dad’s.

We have another group photo of Easy Company men where we have confirmed that Dad is in the group. Dad is standing with his arm on Dukeman and on the other side of him is Vernon Menze, both killed in action in Holland.

As a kid, Dad would show us the official 506th scrapbook and point out pictures of himself in that book. There’s a photo of troopers marching in Ste. Marie-Du-Mont. He’s in that photo. When I visited Europe so many years later, I went to the mayor’s office in Ste. Marie-Du-Mont, and there’s a big blowup of that picture.

I can remember Dad talking about his records. The military said he never officially made the jump into Holland, although that’s where he was wounded and why he received his Bronze Star, although the medal was given to him in 1949. It seems that Dad had stolen a motorcycle to go to a pub in Swindon with some of the guys—borrowed maybe, but the word he always used was “
stolen
.” On the way back to Aldbourne he crashed the bike and was put in a cast, so the rosters show him in the hospital. Dad heard that the jump into Holland was coming. He didn’t want to miss it, so he broke the cast off his leg, went AWOL from the hospital, and made it back to the airfield in time for the jump. He was wounded within a few days of the fighting in Holland, sent back to another hospital, and his records never caught up with him. So there’s no record of him ever being on the Holland jump.

After the war, Dad wrote to the medic who had treated him. Fortunately, the medic had kept very accurate records and was able to verify that he had treated my dad, and on what day it happened. So Dad got his Bronze Star a few years late.

I remember Dad’s feet were always kind of messed up from frostbite in Bastogne. Once while over there, Dad saw a dead soldier with better boots than his, so he swapped boots with him. I remember him telling us this story as kids and me thinking, “Why would you ever want to take some dead guy’s boots?” But now I understand it was to survive.

In Austria the enlisted men found a truck and rode around in it just for fun. A lieutenant wanted the truck. The enlisted men weren’t too happy about this, so Dad shot out the engine first, then handed it over.

At Zell am See, the enlisted men found a speedboat and zipped around the lake, having a great time. Some officer wanted it for his own, but the enlisted men held their ground this time. They were hauled in before Colonel Robert Sink, who announced that the boat was now the property of the 506th and that the enlisted men could continue to use it as long as they gave all the other men rides in it. So that became one of Dad’s jobs in the army—giving speedboat rides, which he always chuckled about. Pat O’Keefe confirmed this story.

Dad never attended reunions. I think he still carried some bitterness from never feeling fully accepted as a replacement. Plus, I think he really just wanted to be done with the war and not think about it again. Apparently he was in contact with somebody in the company, because he always seemed to know what was happening. For instance, in 1961 Easy Company veteran David Kenyon Webster got lost at sea while out shark fishing. My father was working as a TV news photographer at the time. He convinced the TV station to rent an airplane, and he flew around searching for Webster, who was never found.

When Dad came home from the war, his folks were living again in Winslow, so he moved there. He married a girl from that city, Emely Davis (not my mom), and had a daughter with her, my half-sister.

I think Dad struggled for direction at first. He went to college some, worked some, but really was kind of a wash for the first few years after the war. I talked to his first wife and she said he felt the government owed him something. Physically, he didn’t suffer any permanent disabilities except for his feet and the frostbite issues. But the war was always in his mind and he never could seem to shake it. Dad, like many of his generation, chose to self-medicate with alcohol. In my memory (I was born in 1954), I don’t ever remember a time when alcohol wasn’t an issue for him. Later on, it became much worse.

Dad divorced his first wife around 1949 or 1950, then married my mom, Lois Larson, in 1953. At the time, his folks had moved to Lompoc, California, so Dad moved with them. He worked at the prison in Lompoc. His second wife went to nursing school in Santa Barbara. There were six or seven years between them, not a big age difference. They had four children together.

After Lompoc, Dad and Mom moved to Fresno where my dad wrote stories for the
Fresno Bee.
He tried to break into journalism as a freelancer but never could quite make enough to support a family. They moved to San Diego, where he worked security as a day job and freelanced for the TV stations. Finally, he was hired full-time by one of the TV stations, channel 10 at the time. I think it was an NBC affiliate.

Dad was a cameraman, but it was more like reporting in the early days of TV news. They gave cameramen these Bell & Howell 16 mm cameras and put them in cars with radios. Dad’s job was to drive around and shoot film footage of whatever news was happening. They didn’t have on-camera reporters in those days, just anchormen back at the studios, so the cameramen took the film back and spliced up the stories. Then the anchormen would read the stories while the film Dad took provided footage of the action.

He was really good at his job and dreamed up a variety of innovative ways to shoot film of people. For instance, Harry S. Truman toured San Diego just after his presidency was finished, and my father was sent to cover the story. He knew Truman would be doing a lot of walking around, and he wanted to get a stable shot, but these were the days before steady-cams. So Dad rigged up a child’s red wagon with his camera and sat in it while someone pulled him. United Press International did a story on Dad’s innovation with the headline “Another First for KOGO-TV and San Diego.”

What was life like growing up with my father? Mostly a huge adventure. Nothing was ever exciting enough for him. Adrenaline fueled whatever he undertook. I’ve got videos of him as a newsman in San Diego. They were building high-rises, and he decided to do a story on the iron-workers. So there he is walking on steel girders thirty stories up. Or when parasailing first started in early 1960s, he tried parasailing as part of a news story. He was the first newsman on the West Coast to fly Mach 2 in a fighter jet. That’s the kind of stuff he regularly did.

Dad loved outdoors and camping, and did a lot of that with us. It didn’t matter the season, he’d take us camping year round. He was an active father in many ways. He took us tobogganing in winter. He was active when we were Boy Scouts. He could always add more adventure to a situation. That’s how he liked it. Dad could be a lot of fun. He had a tremendous personality and could make friends with anybody.