The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Colonel Silk sent down orders to follow a rigorous training schedule while in reserve. Speirs thought this an idiotic proposal and made no effort to conceal his sentiments. He told the men of Easy that he believed in training hard and sensibly back in base camp and in taking it easy in a reserve area.

  Speirs could not get the company out of two compulsory formations. The first was to hold a drawing for rotation back to the States. One man from every company would go home for a thirty-day leave; he would be chosen in a company lottery. The winner had to have been in Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, and a total absence of black marks on his service record. No VD, no AWOL, no court-martial. Only twenty-three men in Easy were eligible. Speirs shook up the names in a steel helmet and drew out Forrest Guth’s slip. There was a polite cheer. Speirs said he hated to lose Guth but wished him luck. A couple of men shook his hand. The remainder walked sadly away, according to Webster, “like men who had glimpsed Paradise on their way to hell.”

  The second formation was a battalion review. Speirs’s philosophy was to avoid the unnecessary but to do properly and with snap the required. He told the men he wanted them to look sharp. Rifles would be clean. Combat suits had to be washed. A huge boiler was set up; the men cooked their clothing with chunks of soap. It took a long time; Private Hudson decided he would skip it. When he showed up for the formation in his filthy combat suit, Speirs berated him furiously. Foley, his platoon commander, jumped on him. Sergeant Marsh, his acting squad leader, tried to make him feel the incredible magnitude of his offense. Hudson grinned sheepishly and said, “Gosh, gee whiz, why is everybody picking on me?”

  General Taylor came for the battalion review, trailed by a division PR photographer. As luck would have it, he stopped before Hudson and talked with him. The photographer took their picture together, got Hudson’s name and home-town address, and sent the photo to the local newspaper with a copy to Hudson’s parents. Of course the general looked great talking to a battle-hardened soldier just off the front lines rather than a bunch of rear echelon parade-ground troopers. “So,” Webster commented, “the only man in E Company with a dirty combat suit was the only man who had his picture taken with the general.”

  • • •

  “We didn’t realize it yet,” Winters said, “but we all started walking with more care, with eyes in the backs of our heads, making sure we didn’t get knocked off.” After Haguenau, he explained, “you suddenly had a gut feeling, ‘By God, I believe I am going to make it!’ ”

  * * *

  1. Gray, The Warriors, 28–29.

  2. Gray, The Warriors, 43–46.

  3. Quoted in Gray, The Warriors, 52.

  4. Glenn Gray writes, “To be required to carry out orders in which he does not believe, given by men who are frequently far removed from the realities with which the orders deal . . . is the familiar lot of the combat soldier . . . . It is a great boon of front-line positions that disobedience is frequently possible, since supervision is not very exact where danger of death is present. Many a conscientious soldier has discovered he could reinterpret military orders in his own spirit before obeying them.” The Warriors, 189.

  15

  “The Best Feeling in the World”

  MOURMELON

  February 25–April 2, 1945

  ON FEBRUARY 25 the men of Easy Company had a unique experience for them but commonplace for their fathers, riding through France on “40-and-8s,” French railway boxcars that held either forty men or eight horses. It was the company’s first train ride during the war, and it was properly appreciated. The weather was warm and sunny, the 40-and-8s were knee-deep in straw, there was plenty to eat, and no one shot at them.

  “As we jolted through France,” Webster wrote, “swinging our feet out the door, waving to the farmers, and taking a pull on the schnapps bottle, I thought there was nothing like going away from the front. It was the best feeling in the world.”

  They were returning to Mourmelon, but not to the barracks. This time they were billeted in large green twelve-man wall tents, about a mile outside what Webster called “the pathetically shabby garrison village of Mourmelon, abused by soldiers since Caesar’s day, consisting of six bars, two whorehouses, and a small Red Cross club.” In Webster’s scathing judgment, “Mourmelon was worse than Fayetteville, North Carolina.”

  The first task was to get clean. There were showers, although the water was lukewarm at best. But for men who had not had a proper shower since leaving Mourmelon ten weeks ago, the chance to soap and scrub, scrub and soap, lather, rinse, and repeat was pure joy. Then they got clean clothes and new Class A uniforms. But when they got to their barracks bags, left behind when the company went to Bastogne, their joy turned to fury. The rear echelon “guards” had opened the storage area to the 17th Airborne as that division moved into the Bulge, and the boys from the 17th had pillaged as if there were no tomorrow. Missing were jumpsuits, shirts, regimental insignia, jump boots, British airborne smocks, panels from Normandy and Holland parachutes, Lugers, and other priceless souvenirs.

  The regime imposed by Major Winters added to their discontent. New recruits had come in, and to integrate them into the companies, Winters instituted a rigorous training program. It was like basic all over again, and hated. Webster was so fed up “that I sometimes, in forgetful moments, wished to return to the relative freedom of combat.”

  • • •

  One of the recruits was Pvt. Patrick S. O’Keefe. He had joined the Army when he was seventeen, gone through jump school, and shipped out from New York on the Queen Elizabeth in late January. “I was sound asleep when we passed Ireland,” O’Keefe recalled, which disappointed him as both his parents were born in County Kerry, the first landfall for cross-Atlantic traffic. He arrived in Mourmelon shortly after the company returned there. His first impression of the men was that “they were all tough, old and grizzled. I thought, ‘You have bitten off more than you can chew, O’Keefe.’ ” He was assigned to 1st platoon, under Lieutenant Foley and Sergeant Christenson.

  His third night in Mourmelon, O’Keefe went out on a night problem, starting at midnight. Walking in the dark in single file, he lost sight of the man in front of him and drew a sharp breath. He tensed, looking around.

  A quiet voice from behind said, “You’re O.K., son. Just kneel down and look up and you can catch sight of them against the sky.” O’Keefe did, saw them, muttered, “Thanks,” and moved on. Later he discovered that the advice had come from Major Winters. So here was Winters, his battalion staff cavorting in Paris, leading an all-night exercise for recruits.

  O’Keefe took the lead scout position just before dawn. At first light there was to be a simulated attack against a fixed enemy position on the other side of an open field. O’Keefe got to the last ridge before the target. He signaled with his hand for the battalion to stop. He was nervous at the thought of an eighteen-year-old kid leading a group of combat-wise veterans. He signaled for the second scout behind him to come forward, with the idea he would ask to trade places. Private Hickman came up with a rush and before O’Keefe could say a word blurted out, “Boy, am I glad you are up here. I only joined this outfit three weeks ago.”

  Realizing the battalion was full of replacements restored O’Keefe’s gift of gab. “That’s O.K., kid,” he said to Hickman. “I’m going over the ridge to see what’s on the other side. You go back and be ready to pass my signal when I give it.”

  In a couple of minutes O’Keefe was back on the ridge line, holding his rifle up with both hands as a signal, “Enemy in sight.” Foley moved his platoon up to the starting line, shouted, “Lay down a field of fire!” and the attack began. After a few minutes of blasting away, Joe Liebgott jumped up, gave an Indian war whoop, rushed toward the objective, and attacked the machine-gun pit with his fixed bayonet, ripping open the sandbags, playing the hero. O’Keefe and the other replacements were mightily impressed.

  • • •

  On March 8, Colonel Sink got around to making permanent assig
nments to officers who had been serving in an acting capacity for as long as two months. Lieutenant Colonel Strayer became regimental X.O. Major Winters became 2d Battalion C.O. There was some realignment, as Major Matheson shifted from regimental S-4 to S-3, replacing Captain Nixon, who went from regimental S-3 to S-3 for 2d Battalion. Lieutenant Welsh, recovered from his Christmas Eve wound, became 2d Battalion S-2. Captain Sobel replaced Matheson as regimental S-4.

  Nixon’s demotion from regimental to battalion staff came about because of his drinking. Like everyone else who knew him, Sink recognized that Nixon was a genius in addition to being a brave, common-sense soldier, but Sink—an uninhibited drinker himself (“Bourbon Bob” was his behind-his-back nickname)—could not put up with Nixon’s nightly drunks. He asked Winters if Winters could handle Nixon. Winters was sure he could as they were the closest of friends.

  Former Easy Company officers were by March occupying key positions in regiment (S-3 and S-4) and battalion (the C.O. of 1st Battalion was Lieutenant Colonel Hester; Winters was C.O. of 2d Battalion, where the S-2 and S-3 were from Easy). One of their number, Matheson, eventually became a major general and C.O. of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. One is bound to say, one last time, that Captain Sobel must have been doing something right back in the summer of ’42 at Toccoa.

  You could never prove it with Winters, whose feelings for Sobel never softened. Indeed, Sobel’s return provided Winters with one of the most satisfactory moments of his life. Walking down the street at Mourmelon, Major Winters saw Captain Sobel coming from the opposite direction. Sobel saw Winters, dropped his head, and walked past without saluting. When he had gone a further step or two, Winters called out, “Captain Sobel, we salute the rank, not the man.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sobel answered as he snapped off a salute.

  Webster and Martin, standing nearby, were delighted (“I like to see officers pull rank on each other,” Webster commented), but not half so much as Winters.

  (Winters had another pleasure in Mourmelon, this one on a daily basis. German P.O.W.s were working in the hospital; at dusk each evening they would march back to their stockade. As they marched, they sang their marching songs. “They sang and marched with pride and vigor,” Winters wrote, “and it was beautiful. By God, they were soldiers!”)

  The man who had replaced Sobel and Winters as C.O. of Easy, Captain Speirs, continued to impress both officers and enlisted men. “Captain Speirs promises to be as good an officer as Winters,” Webster thought. He realized that many disagreed with him, men “who loathed Speirs on the ground that he had killed one of his own men in Normandy, that he was bull-headed and suspicious, that he believed there was no such thing as Combat Exhaustion.” But to Webster, “He was a brave man in combat, in fact a wild man, who had gotten his Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts legitimately. Speirs swears by common sense, combat noncoms, and training with the emphasis on battle, rather than the book. I like Speirs.”

  There were shake-ups among the noncoms. Sergeant Talbert replaced Lieutenant Lipton as 1st sergeant. A genial man, Talbert was appreciated by the enlisted men because he ignored red tape and did things by common sense rather than the book. Carson became company clerk; Luz became a platoon runner; the platoon sergeants, all original Toccoa privates, all wounded at least once, were Charles Grant (2d), Amos Taylor (3d), and Earl Hale (1st).

  Hale’s promotion caused some mumble-mumble in 1st platoon. The men had nothing against him except that he was an outsider (he had been in Company HQ section as a radio man). The men of the platoon circulated a rumor to the effect that Hale had complained to Winters that his wife was after him to get another stripe, and Winters had given him the platoon as a result. What made the men of the platoon unhappy was the way Johnny Martin got passed over. “I guess the officers didn’t like his flip attitude,” Webster commented, “yet he was the quickest thinker, the best leader among us, and a natural for a platoon sergeant.”

  Martin thought so, too. Having survived three campaigns without a wound, he decided to let the medics know that he had a trick cartilage in his knee that incapacitated him for combat. He was soon on his way back to the States.

  “The Toccoa men were thinning out like maple leaves in November,” Webster wrote. “A sense of hopelessness and exasperation filled the old men in Mourmelon. Here we were, still hiking over meadow and marsh, still trampling the rutabagas and breaking the fences, still in the field on training exercises.”

  The veterans tried goldbricking to get out of field exercises. They would report on sick call in the morning. Speirs would ask the trouble, grunt, and send them to the aid station. There they could get admitted to the hospital for a day. A day of just lying around, reading magazines. It was easy to pull. They all did it, but never more than twice. Even Webster preferred pretend war to reading or doing nothing.

  • • •

  The Ides of March brought a well-deserved reward to the men of the 101st Airborne. There was a division parade before the most brass the men had ever seen. General Eisenhower was there, along with General Taylor, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, Lt. Gen. Lewis Brereton, President Roosevelt’s secretary Stephen Early, Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, and others.

  In preparation, “everybody scrubbed and washed, polished and shined, disassembled, cleaned and reassembled all weapons,” as Lieutenant Foley recalled. “Ribbons were dug up and positioned precisely on the blouse.” The men painted their helmets, stenciled the insignia of the 506th on the side, and when they were dry, oiled them until they glistened in the sun. There was a practice parade in anticipation. Of course, the officers got the men on the parade ground three hours before Ike and his party arrived; of course the men cursed the Army and its ways.

  Eisenhower finally arrived. He drove past the whole division, then climbed up on a reviewing stand to give a speech. He announced that the division had received a Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation, the first time in the history of the Army that an entire division had been so cited, for its performance at Bastogne. In a short speech, Ike was effusive in his praise: “You were given a marvelous opportunity [in Bastogne], and you met every test . . . . I am awfully proud of you.”

  He concluded with a mixture of praise and exhortation: “With this great honor goes also a certain responsibility. Just as you are the beginning of a new tradition, you must realize, each of you, that from now on, the spotlight will beat on you with particular brilliance. Whenever you say you are a soldier of the 101st Division, everybody, whether it’s on the street, in the city, or in the front line, will expect unusual conduct of you. I know that you will meet every test of the future like you met it at Bastogne.”1

  Webster, who was becoming ever more the cynic about the Army and who was exercising vigorously the soldier’s right to grouse, was impressed in spite of himself. Private O’Keefe commented, “Even the new replacements like myself felt enormous pride in marching in that review.”

  For Lieutenant Foley, there was “the surprise to end all surprises.” Standing behind General Taylor was his senior aide, none other than Capt. Norman Dike.

  Sergeant Hale, who had had his throat slashed in the Ardennes and who had medical permission to go without a tie, had his Bronze Star presented to him by General Eisenhower. Ike wanted to know why he was not wearing a tie. Hale explained. When General Taylor confirmed Hale’s story, Ike gave his big laugh and said Hale was the only man in the entire European Theater of Operations to pull this one off.

  • • •

  There were furloughs and leaves, to England, the Riviera, Paris, Brussels, and evening passes to Reims. Captain Speirs got to go to England, where he had married a British woman who believed her husband had been killed in North Africa. Foley got to Paris and on return confessed he could not remember a thing. There were some USO shows, with big-name performers, including Marlene Dietrich.

  Garrison life was soft, but it had its price. To bring discipline and appearance up to a proper rear echelon standard, the Army had to
have some method of enforcing rules and regulations. Threatening members of a rifle company that had just come off the line and was about to go back in with a visit to the stockade was less a threat than a promise. Taking hard cash out of the hands of men who were anticipating a pass to Paris, however, caught their attention.

  A private in the 101st received $50 per month base pay, a $50 bonus for hazardous duty, and an additional $10 for being in a combat zone. General Taylor set up a summary court in Mourmelon, and it began imposing heavy fines for violations. A man found in improper uniform was fined $5. Carrying a Luger in one’s pocket cost $25. Speeding in a jeep or truck cost $20. Disorderly conduct was a $25 offense.

  Training continued. It progressed through squad and platoon to company and then to battalion level. The division was preparing for a daylight airborne mission, Operation Eclipse, a drop on and around Berlin.

  No one was going to drop on Berlin until the Allied armies had gotten across the Rhine. For months, the men of Easy had been anticipating a jump on the far side of the river, but when it came, Easy did not participate. Eisenhower decided to give the 17th Airborne a chance at a combat jump and assigned it to Operation Varsity, the largest airborne operation of all time (the 17th plus the British 1st and 6th Airborne Divisions) and to save the 82d and 101st for Berlin.