Because of the inherent danger of what we did, and the fear we all had to master on a daily basis, we typically developed a cynical, black humor about ourselves and the tasks ahead. We had some grimly humorous songs like “Blood on the Risers” and “The Paratrooper’s Lament,” that we sang to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Then there were the jokes, like the old standard about the soldier getting ready for his first qualifying jump. He’d gone through all the pre-jump training, and memorized all the instructions: if his chute didn’t open, he was to pull his reserve chute; then he’d land, climb on the truck, and go back to the packing shed. Well, our hero jumped and started counting, “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand,” but his main chute didn’t open up. So he pulled his reserve chute, and waited for it to open. But again, nothing happened. Then he said to himself, “I bet the damn truck won’t be there either.”
I graduated from Parachute School on October 3, 1942. Once we had our wings, we were qualified to wear our jump boots with the trousers bloused. We wore our boots and wings with tremendous pride, tucking our cuffs into our boot tops and folding our trousers over them, thus fully exposing the boots. Back then, the only people allowed to wear jump boots were qualified paratroopers; if anyone else was caught wearing them, the trousers were quickly cut off the man, and his boots were removed as a warning. We were top dogs in the Army.
After graduation, I went back to Erie on leave, intent on having the time of my life. Looking back, I think I probably made a horse’s ass out of myself. At least one classmate had preceded me into the parachute troops, but that October I was the only trooper from my school in town. It was forbidden to wear our jump uniforms in civilian situations, but I did it anyway. Military police were rare, and as there were so few paratroopers and the uniform was so new, I figured even if I did run into an MP, he wouldn’t know the regulations.
My father and stepmom were very proud of me, and I was proud to make them proud. I would not turn eighteen for another two months.
I spent my leave showing off. I got together with former classmates and demonstrated my skills at unarmed combat. I spouted off a lot of the BS our instructors had fed us about paratroopers being able to take on five ordinary men. Best of all, even though were all still underage, I took my friends to bars and got them served, because I was in uniform.
For once in my life, I received more invitations than I had time for. This might also have had to do with the fact that I was dating not one, but two girls. Those wings on my breast entitled me to a lot of privileges, but I hadn’t yet learned to drive a car. I turned this to my hotshot advantage too, and took cabs. One of the girls lived way out in the country, and her mother was very impressed when I pulled up to the house in a taxi. It raised a lot of eyebrows to see a young paratrooper getting out of a cab. Imagine the difference if I’d had to ask my father to drive us on a date!
When I reported back to Fort Benning, I was assigned to I Company, 3d Battalion, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Being assigned to the 507 that late in the organization of the regiment had its disadvantages. Even though I was a former NCO, I did not get my stripes back because the full quota of NCOs in I Company had already been met. The very day I was assigned, I was put on a cadre list, a skeleton force of NCOs and officers—first sergeant, supply sergeant, and at least three platoon sergeants—kept in readiness to supply the cadre for the next regiment to be formed.
We trained very hard in the 507, conducting squad-level, platoon-level, and weapons qualification training. Company I was a rifle company, which meant the M1 was now my primary individual weapon. We had more extensive cross-training in weapons than in the regular infantry; almost everyone in a parachute rifle company got the chance to fire every weapon in the TO&E, including the .45-caliber Tommy gun, the Browning automatic rifle (BAR), and a light .30-caliber machine gun that was exactly the same as the water-cooled machine gun I had used in the 112th, except that it was air-cooled.
I now saw the new .30-caliber carbine for the first time. The paratroops had a specially designed carbine with a pistol grip and a folding, heavy wire stock. The grip was at the hinge of the stock, which folded onto the side of the carbine, so we could fire it one-handed when necessary. I received preliminary training on the carbine, but was never issued one; the TO&E changed too fast. At one time, we were supposed to have both a carbine and a rifle, because we could jump with the carbine in one piece and use it before assembling our M1. Then we were to carry a rifle only. Later on, they thought about giving us a pistol as well as a rifle, but that idea was canceled too, at least for the 82d Airborne. I’m not sure how the TO&E ended up for the 101st.
Most of the platoon leaders in the 507 were good, well-rounded officers. I never got promoted in I Company, though, because I ran into difficulties with an inexperienced officer who was our instructor for marksmanship training. I had a natural flair for shooting, and by the time I came to the 507, I had already developed my skills. I’d started hunting in the mountains of Pennsylvania at eleven, and had shot several bucks, so I knew something about rifles before I entered the Army. I had completed marksmanship training as a private in 1941, taught the M1 course as a drill instructor in 1942, and fired numerous times on a range since then, including one instance where I’d shot the highest score in I Company. (The prize was a three-day pass, a couple of cartons of cigarettes and a steak dinner.) Our green lieutenant was not the best instructor, and I corrected him in class. Unfortunately, this conduct did not help me much as far as promotions were concerned. I don’t think I ever did get off his list.
Our training in the 507 was even more physical than that to which I was accustomed. There was much more emphasis on squad, platoon, and company tactical training, and a lot of endurance training, which required us to be in the field for extended periods, going for long hours without rest. We also had realistic live-fire exercises. We did more shooting on tactical problems than the regular infantry. We concentrated a lot on night training, which is always tough, but helped us greatly in future operations.
The 507 finally moved to the Alabama area, way out in the boonies in the pine forest. It was very difficult to get to town. There wasn’t even a bridge; men and vehicles alike had to cross the river by ferry. We were literally crammed into tarpaper shacks, double-bunked in flimsy, unheated buildings with very low ceilings, about twenty-four feet wide by thirty-five feet long, where we also had to store our field equipment and clothing. Northerners may think the South is always warm, but I spent some of the coldest nights of my life in the swamps of Georgia and Alabama in November and December 1942. The conditions in modern prisons are far better than the housing in most military camps during World War II.
Not surprisingly, we had trouble with the AWOL rate in Company I. Our company commander decided to make an example of one of the soldiers who returned late from his furlough. He tied a jump rope around the soldier’s neck and led him around the company and training areas, saying, “If I can’t trust you to come back from furlough on time, I’ll keep you tied so you can’t leave.” The first officer senior to our commander to observe this disgusting example of improper treatment stopped it. This was the worst case of the misuse of command authority and discipline that I ever encountered throughout my military career.
I had a lot of furloughs and leaves in 1942, and when the 507th granted furloughs for Christmas that year, I took another one without complaint. That Christmas, I made sure to see my Great-aunt Myra, whose library had all those stories about the Civil War that had fascinated me as a kid. In 1942, she must have been close to seventy. Public transportation had been cut way back, and the only way to get to Kennedy, New York, was to stick out my thumb. We had the kind of reunion you have when you return to the person who has loved you more than anyone else in your childhood. I don’t know who was prouder—me to show her my wings, or her to see me wearing them.
My holiday, however, was threatened with being cut short by a telegram stating my furlough had been can
celed. Shortly after, I received another canceling the first one. I thought that second telegram was just about the best present I’d ever received. After Christmas, I had more good news when I returned to Alabama and discovered why I’d almost been recalled. The Army had issued activation papers for a new parachute infantry regiment, and I was to report as part of the cadre.
Chapter 7
Second Assignment: Cadre, 513 Parachute Infantry Regiment; Volunteering for Overseas Duty
When I got back to Fort Benning, I was transferred to Headquarters Company, 2d Battalion of the Parachute School, on the main post, where I eagerly waited assignment to the next regiment to be formed. I felt irritated at having to wait around through most of January as a private first class, but I was finally transferred to Headquarters Company, 2d Battalion, 513th PIR, at the end of the month. In February I was promoted to sergeant, the same grade I had made before volunteering for the parachute troops, and I was made a platoon sergeant. I was now eighteen years and two months old.
Although I was glad to get my promotion, I had a hard time of it emotionally after I left the 507. I had only been in the regiment a few months, but I had made friends, and the unit had become my home. In the 513th, I had to start making friends all over again. I didn’t immediately have a full-sized platoon. Men were assigned as they came out of Parachute School, and it took some time for the unit to fill up. As a result, I was billeted in a tarpaper shanty by myself, or with only one or two other NCOs, for what seemed to me a long while. Even after the unit filled up, I didn’t make many close friends in the 513. I was only in the unit four months, and as a platoon sergeant, I didn’t want to become too friendly with the men in my platoon, at least not until I could feel comfortable with them.
I was young, the other NCOs didn’t stick around after duty, and I often found myself alone. My mother had sent me a fine portable radio for Christmas, and I lay on my bunk night after night trying to find stations with music. I particularly remember listening in the dark to “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca, but many other tunes of the day remain deeply embedded in my memory: “I’ll Walk Alone,” “Fools Rush In,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “We’ll Meet Again,” “There Are Such Things.” These songs still evoke the loneliness of being far from home and the uncertainty of what was to come.
The late winter and early spring of 1943 found me training new men for a fledgling regiment. The soldiers had completed their basic infantry training prior to Parachute School, so we began with squad and platoon unit training. As far as I was concerned, this was getting very repetitious.
The airborne units were expanding at a hectic rate. No sooner had a regiment been formed than a tremendous push began to groom officers, NCOs, and potential NCOs for the next one. In March, I was transferred to Regimental Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 513, where, in addition to training a platoon of men, I was assigned to a group of officers and NCOs who were taking extra classroom training and instructions at least three nights a week. Some of us, myself included, were also instructing yet another group of NCOs and potential NCOs for assignment to the next parachute infantry regiment. The hardest thing was that I was now confined to a unit that was not expected to go overseas for six or eight more months.
I did get weekend passes for Atlanta, but most often I went on my own. There wasn’t much to do other than go to the movies, booze it up, and look for female companionship. The more I drank, the sadder I became. We also got passes to Columbus, Georgia, and Phenix City, Alabama, its sister city across the Chattahoochee, but there was very little transportation into town. Both had some pretty rough honky-tonks, with poker, craps, and other games going in the back rooms, especially in Phenix City. Paratroopers were paid an extra $50 per month, a lot of money for the time, and we could make some big wins when our luck was running well. This resulted in a conspiracy between the gambling operators and the taxi drivers hired to take men back to base. It got so that every payday we were pulling a drowned trooper out of the Chattahoochee River who had been taken for a ride after he had started home with his winnings.
These deaths created very high tensions between paratroopers and the locals, and more than once a full-scale riot was only avoided through the exercise of overwhelming police authority. Paratroopers were awfully clannish, and when one of us got into trouble, we could always count on help from our comrades. There was heavy rivalry between the armored divisions and the paratroopers, both of which considered themselves to be undoubtedly the best organization in the Army, and this also led to quite a few skirmishes. To alleviate the tension, our commanders sent details of troopers into town as a “city patrol” to supplement the MPs and police. Paratroopers were much more likely to take orders from their own kind.
In April, I was twice selected as sergeant in charge of this detail, and I rapidly gained an education in areas of life I had never known existed. The main job of the city patrol was to protect our troopers from the brutality of the MPs and the civilian police. All of these latter carried a “sap” or blackjack, a leather-covered weapon filled with lead balls or shot, which they were quick to use on a trooper’s head. Not that the troopers didn’t need it at times—a drunken paratrooper could quickly become very obnoxious—but as CPs, our most important duty was to get to trouble spots as fast as we could to take charge of our own people.
I was assigned a command car to patrol the streets, keeping a check on troopers on the sidewalks and on disturbances in the outlying honky-tonks. I also spent time in the police station at Columbus, where I saw a lot of things that opened my eyes. The jail had horizontal cells stacked three or four deep, with just enough room in each cell for a man to crawl into it. Most of the people who ended up in these cages were black. It also had a large holding tank, usually filled with drunks and prostitutes. I learned a lot of new language and behavior at the tender age of eighteen during my duty at the Columbus police station.
In mid-April, the rumor started that the 513 was to provide a “replacement packet” for overseas shipment, which was how replacements for parachute units were designated. The levy was going to a combat area. No NCOs were supposed to be included, but I was young and eager and had certainly had my fill of basic and small-unit training, so I requested permission to go with the packet.
Anyone who asks why a soldier would volunteer for overseas combat would also probably wonder why in hell anyone would volunteer to jump out of a perfectly good airplane in mid-flight. But many other soldiers in World War II shared my desire to get into combat. In the American Civil War they called it “seeing the elephant”—seeing combat for the first time. Of course, most soldiers like myself, eager to get into war, quickly change their minds once they’re there. After seeing the first artillery and mortar rounds fall about them, and hearing the sharp crack of machine guns and rifle fire close about their ears, they’ll tell you they daily prayed for a quick peace and wondered privately to themselves, “Why in hell did I rush into this?”
Initially, my transfer request was denied. There was, I was told, a critical need for experienced NCOs to train the 513th Parachute Infantry. But I kept making a nuisance of myself until the company commander reluctantly agreed to approve my request.
And so it happened that when the 82d Airborne went overseas in April 1943, I was in one of the two replacement groups it carried with it to North Africa. Two packets went with the 82d because it was estimated that training accidents in the rough, rocky terrain would be much higher than usual. It was also thought that illness would be considerable because of sanitation problems and the reliance on canned foods without fresh meat, vegetables, or fruit.
Unit designations for those going overseas were not allowed to be publicly displayed. When we packed to leave, we stenciled EGB447 or EGB448 on our duffel bags. This identified them as part of a particular shipment, “EGB” being nothing more than a shipping code. Over time, not only our bags, but also we, ourselves, became so designated. I was an EGB448, the last group assigned to the 82d A
irborne Division. The first packet brought the 82d up to strength after their losses in North Africa so they could go into Sicily for their first combat jump, but we, the EGB448s, were assigned after that jump.
We moved from Fort Benning, Georgia, to our embarkation point at Camp Shanks, New York. The EGBs weren’t immediately assigned, but we moved along with the unit in order to be readily assigned whenever men were needed. The worst possible assignment in the Army, at least in World War II, was as a replacement to another unit. At first, even our name, “replacement,” was negative. The word had a bad ring: it reminded us that we were taking the place of someone who had been killed or wounded. Later on, the Army tried to come up with something more positive, and so all replacements became “reinforcements.” We were also referred to as “casuals,” soldiers or officers not attached to any unit and often without assignment, who were only temporarily at a location.
Allied Landings in the Mediterranean 1942–1944
I left Camp Shanks with the rest of my packet, moved by rail down to New York Harbor, and was loaded onto the George Washington, a transport headed for Casablanca. Our ship was a converted passenger liner. All the civilian niceties, including dining rooms, had been removed. They just loaded the whole hull down with cots and made room to feed and handle large numbers of troops. And when I say “loaded down,” I really mean it. The cots were similar to stretchers—nothing but a frame with a piece of canvas laced to it. The frame was attached to vertical poles, which made for easy stacking. And stack us they did, four to six cots high, to use every inch of available space.
Descending from the Clouds Page 6
