We Who Are Alive and Remain (21 page)

We were sent out on patrols. You had to go to a certain area. One was to a house maybe a half mile away from where we stayed. We would spend the night in the house, observing out the windows. You needed to situate yourself in the house so you couldn’t be seen from the outside. It was jet black in the house. You couldn’t see anything in front of you except when the enemy shot a flare—they were about three hundred yards away from where we were. We went on patrols to that house for about two weeks.

Another time a runner came over and told me and four other guys to go to see Captain Winters, who sent us on another patrol. I think the guys were Art Youman, who was patrol leader, Jim Ally, Rod Strohl, Willie Wagner, and me. Art sent me up the dike to observe any enemy over the top. I said okay, got about nine tenths of the way up, took my helmet off and put it on the barrel of my gun, then lifted my helmet over the barrel of the road. Nothing happened, so I climbed up higher and looked across the road. One of the enemy shot a flare in the air. It lit up the whole area. As I looked across the road, there was a German soldier directly in front of me with a potato masher grenade. He threw it at me. I ducked as fast as I could. The grenade hit my helmet and bounced off. I hollered to the guys, “Live grenade! Get the hell away from here!” The thing exploded. Every one of us got wounded. Jim Alley got hit thirty-two times. In 1994 he went to the hospital again, even this late in life, and they still found a piece of shrapnel in his body.

After the grenade exploded I hollered to the guys, “Get moving! Get going as fast as you can go!” I had eight grenades on me, so I started throwing grenades in the direction of the enemy—throwing them in one direction, then another, so they’d confuse the enemy. It didn’t take long, and I heard screaming, hollering, crying from the enemy. As soon as I threw all my grenades I started moving. Back at the command post, Winters took one look at us and said, “O my God, get to the hospital, all of you.”

They put us in a rubber raft and took us back across the river, where a six-by-six truck was waiting for us. They took us to Eindhoven, to a hospital. Every one of us was bleeding pretty hard. I got hit in the neck. My wound was not very big, but the wound was right next to my jugular vein, so they told me that it was too dangerous to take out. So that piece is still in my neck. About ten years ago they took an X-ray of the area and said the metal has all been grown over, so it’s still better to leave it in. But I set off metal detectors in airports all the time. I get a charge out of that wherever I go.

I was in the hospital in Holland about five days only. They took all five of us there, but we weren’t on the same floor. I didn’t know where the other guys were. I was in my hospital bed on the fifth floor when I heard a loud roar of motors. We were informed that some enemy dive bombers were coming in our direction. I heard they bombed the northern end of the hospital, but I can’t confirm it because right after that they took me downstairs, so I didn’t see it. After that, I was sent back to the Island, and pretty soon after that we were sent to Mourmelon, France, by train.

The Island meant patrols. It was strictly a holding position. The Germans were across the river on the high ground, so you didn’t move in the daylight. If you sneezed, they were on you with an 88. You moved at night. The 101st Airborne Division was attached to the British XII Corps, and the British were making the calls. Our position didn’t make too much sense, at least to me, but that’s what we did.

I think everybody was getting plenty of sleep. We were sleeping in barns and buildings. But we were wet all the time, so a bath or a change of socks would have been great, but we didn’t have that, either. It was a long time to be under fire, but the guys stood up pretty good, I thought.

This is where we had some problems—they called it the Island, but it was really two dikes. We set up a defensive line. In front of us was a dike much higher than ours, where the Germans were. If you got up on your dike in daytime, they killed you, so we couldn’t do hardly anything in the day. Just bayonet charges. But that was kind of silly. There was this one charge we made where the OP [outpost] had seen a whole bunch of Germans in the high grass, so we were going to rout them. We ran maybe three hundred yards toward the Germans, hollering, screaming, shooting, doing some good. We were smack dab in the middle of the two dikes when we saw another huge bunch of Germans coming toward us like ants over a hill. It was maybe ten against one. That was the first time I ever heard Lieutenant Dick Winters cuss. He said, “Oh, shit.” The Krauts began firing at us; their mortars were zeroed in perfectly. We got the hell out of there. One of our guys was killed that day; twenty-one were wounded.

That was when I got blown off the dike, wounded by a mortar round. It happened just as I reached the top of our dike. We had a foxhole on the reverse slope. Just before I reached our foxhole a piece of shrapnel hit my leg—nothing big, nothing bad, but it burned like hell. The hot metal went right through my boot. Luckily it didn’t hit any bones, just went into the calf of my leg. Gene Roe dug into me to get it out. My leg went numb for a while, so I didn’t feel a lot of pain. I could still hop. I think Burton Christenson grabbed my arm and helped me get to a house where an aid station had been set up. They evacuated me to Brussels to an English hospital.

I stayed in the hospital a while, then rejoined the company in Mourmelon. Two weeks later, we were in Bastogne.

Respite in Mourmelon

After seventy days on the front line in Holland, the 101st was sent to Mourmelon, France, to rest and refit. We arrived in France on November 25, 1944, and stayed in an old French military base. It wasn’t fancy, but for a while it meant we had some hot food and were able to just sit down, relax, and take life easy. We had gone for more than two months in Holland without a bath or shower.

We got our back pay but we didn’t have any place to spend it in Mourmelon. So there was a lot of gambling going on. I was never much of a poker player, though I liked it.

There’d be about six or seven of us sitting around in one of those old barns, playing poker. Now, when you’re playing poker, you’ve got to concentrate. One of the guys took a hand grenade, screwed the top off, and poured the powder out. He put the grenade back together and loosened the pin. While we were playing poker, the guy came in and worked the pin so the grenade popped off his vest and fell on the floor. “Live grenade!” he hollered. Everybody in there dove anywhere he could. Money and cards flew everywhere. The guy who dropped the grenade ran off. It was all a big joke.

Here’s the funny thing: while we were at Mourmelon, several guys tried the same joke. (Nobody stole the money when the poker players scattered—everybody knew if he did, the guys would catch him and he’d get whupped. It was just to aggravate somebody.) It didn’t matter how many times different guys tried the joke, the results were always the same. If someone hollered “Live grenade!” you automatically took cover.

As a replacement, I was sent overseas in November 1944. Some of us went to one unit, some of us went to another unit. I happened to end up with Easy Company while they were in Mourmelon.

Some of the guys didn’t like replacements very much. One day, I had just gotten out of a shower when this guy, he had just been working on something greasy, came up and rubbed his greasy hands all through my hair. I said, “You sonuvabitch, get back or I’ll knock you on your ass.” So he and I got into it and had a fight. The guy was supposed to be an amateur boxer. The next day he came to me and asked me what rings I was wearing. He had a couple of cuts on his face. I was pretty tough back then. After that, the guy and I got to be the best of friends.

Winter was coming, so they took most of our summer clothes away in preparation to get new gear. I turned in my boots to get new ones. I have small feet—size 6—so they didn’t have any boots for me right away because they were too hard to replace, they said. So I just went without. I found an old pair of shoes lying around, size 8½, much too big for me, but I wore those in Mourmelon.

On December 17, a lot of the guys had gone into town that day to buy souvenirs. I went to the movies, but for some reason they had a real show there that day with live people—Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney, one of the Williams girls. While sitting there, the lights suddenly went up, the captain comes in and says, “Go back to your barracks. Be ready to move out in an hour.”

I still didn’t have any boots. What could I do? The old shoes I had wouldn’t work—I couldn’t run in those. I had some heavy wool socks, so I put them on, then wrapped some burlap sacks around my feet with some leather shoelaces I had. They didn’t come off, and worked pretty well. I think there were three guys from E Company who wrapped their feet like this, without any boots at all. In the end, those burlap sacks saved my feet. Some of the guys with boots, once they got wet, the boots froze. They couldn’t even take off their boots, and they ended up with frostbite. After I saw some of that, I was glad I didn’t have boots.

As soon as we got to Mourmelon, I left and went to Paris. I didn’t wait for a pass, but I was known for that—I was a good combat soldier, but the worst garrison soldier in the whole damn world. What did I do in Paris? Man [laughs], what do soldiers usually do when they go to town?! My wife’s sitting here—that’s all I’m going to say!

I got picked up off the street, some guy with a bullhorn was hollering, “If you’re from the 101st get back on the truck.” So I jumped on the truck. They just picked us up in the clothes we were in and that’s how we went to Bastogne. I was wearing my ODs and looked like hell. I got back in time to put on fatigues. No warm clothes. No coat. Just that. We had no idea where we were going.

The year before Bastogne, I had been sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains for additional infantry training. It was late January, maybe early February, very cold, and we went there on winter maneuvers. Someone had told us that the sleeping bags the army issued were no good below thirty degrees. The guy said, “If you really want to stay warm up there, you better wrap another blanket around the inside of your sleeping bag. And get ahold of all the socks you can.” So most of us did that and we were fairly comfortable then.

So a year later in Mourmelon it was a Sunday night, and guys were just coming back from passes. Sergeant Buck Taylor came into the barracks and said, “Guys, we’re going up!” I grabbed my sleeping bag and started wrapping blankets around it and sewing them in. A couple of guys asked what I was doing and did the same. My bag was original issue and hadn’t even been used yet. By sewing the blankets in, I was able to stay warmer in Bastogne—as long as I was in the bag, anyway.

In Mourmelon I was assigned to Easy Company, 2nd Battalion. The platoon assignments were alphabetical, so by the time they got down to the
S
’s I was put into the 3rd Platoon and assigned to Sergeant Shifty Powers. We talked about hunting. He had been an avid hunter, too, so when he found out that I had done a lot of deer and bird hunting he said he wanted me to be his first scout. From then on, he and Lieutenant Ed Shames would just point at me and thumb me to go on patrol whenever they needed reconnaissance.

One day, without warning, we were told to load up. We were moving into Bastogne to replace the Allied troops who were being overrun by the Germans. The Germans were really putting up a last-ditch effort to take Bastogne. Seven roads came into the town, so it was a strategic transportation, communication, and supply hub. The Germans were totally overwhelming the troops we had there, who were stretched out too thin to be effective. We needed to hold the line to close down the German advance.

Frozen Hell

Bastogne—I hate to talk about that place. It was a lot of fighting, just a lot of fighting.

Bastogne was about fifty or sixty miles from Mourmelon. There was no time to get airplanes for us. So they gathered a gang of stake-body trucks, similar to cattle trucks, and got the MPs from Paris to round up everybody from the division to get everybody back from leaves and truck us up to Bastogne.

We went north through Bastogne and established our defense, December 17, 1944. We dug our foxholes in a heavily wooded area; we dug right through the ice and frost. As the shelling went on, you deepened your hole. We went on scouting trips. We could see Germans down in valley below us, set up with their guns and tanks. They were shelling this area. Most of the shelling happened at night. Someone would get wounded and you wouldn’t find who until morning. Everything was torn up. Trees. Terrible explosions.

We wore our green fatigues and jackets. You didn’t have many extra pairs of socks, so you had to be careful to not get wet feet and get frostbite. There were three of us in a foxhole. We threw everything in there to keep warm—cardboard, canvas, pine boughs—whatever you could find to cover up. Everybody was dirty. You smelled. You put water in your helmet to rinse off but you could only heat water in daytime because you didn’t want fires to show. I didn’t get an overcoat until the middle of Bastogne and we were resupplied by air.

When we got up there, a fine drizzle was falling. We got out of the trucks and saw something that we’d never again see in our lives. It was our soldiers retreating. I couldn’t believe it. As they retreated they were mumbling, “Don’t stay here, go someplace else, the enemy’s going to kill us”—stuff like that. We found out later on that the 28th Division lost something like 7,000 killed, and the 106th Division got a worse beating than the 28th, maybe 8,000 to 9,000 killed. The Malmédy massacre had just occurred, where about 120 American prisoners of war were executed by the Germans. What a sight that was—every one of us felt so bad seeing our guys walk the other way like that, but it made sense when you knew what they had been through. Some of our guys had tears in their eyes. We didn’t have much ammo. So as guys were retreating, we took any kind of ammo they had.