Shifty's War

by Marcus Brotherton

  Near that time the colonel wanted to simulate some real battle conditions for us, see, so he had the men lug in these washtubs of hog parts and scatter them around the ground. It was a roped course with barbwire stretched at knee length over the top. We crawled under the barbwire through the hog guts—getting sticky from the livers, lungs, and bloody bowels. Machine-gun bullets zinged over our heads to make sure we stayed low. A messy day it was, and it made me wonder at the trouble to come.

  Speaking of trouble, leading Easy Company was a tall fella with long arms and jet-black hair who we all got to know real well. Captain Herbert Sobel was his name, although behind his back a few of the boys called him the Black Swan. That was the nicest one of his nicknames, for the other things the fellas called him shouldn’t be put in a book. Real hard training with Captain Sobel, real hard. It’s not that Captain Sobel wasn’t good at taking us raw recruits and turning us into soldiers. He was doing all that, pushing us, yelling at us, hollering “Hi-Yo Silver” and “The Japs are gonna get you.” He made us run farther, faster. Long after all the other companies had quit for the day, Easy Company would still be out training. He wanted his company to be the best at Camp Toccoa, and I admired him for that. But I still didn’t like the man. Shoot—I reckon nobody likes his drill instructor much, but with Captain Sobel, our dislike ran close to hatred.

  It was Captain Sobel’s disagreeableness that rankled us so. I never saw the man smile or crack a joke. He shouted with a high nasally voice, and he shouted near everything he said. Why, he’d tear into a man, make him feel as low-down as if he was picking slate. He’d nitpick about things, rules he fashioned just to make you feel mean. It might be the imaginary dust on your rifle he saw at inspection that restricted you to base for a weekend. Or it might be the imaginary lint on your shoulder that put you on latrine detail. The Army calls a man like that chickenshit, there’s no nice name for it. It means contemptible. A man who lives by and enforces rules of no consequence. That was our Captain Sobel.

  We went on bivouacs, they called them. During the day we might be far off into the woods, but at night we’d be in our tents. Captain Sobel and Sergeant Bill Evans, another officer nobody liked much, went around on these bivouacs trying to steal our rifles. It’s a rule you always had to have yours with you. I always slipped mine into my sleeping bag, so it wasn’t much of a problem. Well, one night I guess Captain Sobel and Sergeant Evans are sneaking around stealing weapons and they come to this company and it’s been a long day and everyone’s out real heavy. So they steal the rifles and make themselves scarce. Come next morning Captain Sobel walks up to us in Easy Company and starts shouting that we’re worthless soldiers who’ve lost our rifles. But the men shrug and wonder what he’s talking about: everyone’s still got his rifle. Turns out the night was too dark, and ole Captain Sobel and Sergeant Evans had stumbled into the wrong company by mistake. They took Fox Company’s rifles, and the officers of Fox Company were none too happy about it. We all had a good laugh about that one.

  Popeye and me both started out as privates, see, and I think most enlisted men have mixed feelings about the officers who lead them. One night we were practicing infiltration. The Second Platoon was up on a little hill, and all of us in the Third were down a way off. They had dug in, and after it got dark we was supposed to go up the top of the hill without getting caught. Now, Popeye couldn’t walk through the woods for beans. We started infiltrating, and he was making all kinds of racket, you know. This guy jumped up and hollered, “You’re a prisoner of war. You’re caught.” Well, Popeye just hauled back, hit him in the eye with his fist, and kept going. Next day we’re standing in formation, and this lieutenant came by with a big black eye. Nobody ever told him who gave it to him. Good thing it was so dark.

  I’m not saying that was our attitude with all our officers. In contrast to Captain Sobel, we had some fine men leading us. A company is further divided into platoons, see, called the First Platoon, the Second Platoon, and so on. First Lieutenant Walter Moore led us in the Third Platoon, and he was a good officer, an everyday fella. He never pulled rank on you or nothing. Everybody liked him fine.

  And Second Lieutenant Dick Winters, the company executive officer. His job was to lead the company whenever Captain Sobel wasn’t around. Lieutenant Winters was how you’d picture an officer of an elite outfit to be. In top physical shape, yes, square jawed and a good wrestler, but respectful and kind-spoken, too, always on the lookout for his men. Now and again, Popeye and me enjoyed aggravating Lieutenant Winters. You’ve always got to call an officer by his rank, you know, but he’d be passing us by and we’d call out real low, “Why, hello, Dick Winters,” when no one else was around. He’d brush us off and grin. He could have really busted our chops for that, but I think it didn’t bother him because he knew we both respected him so much. I couldn’t rightly say, but there seemed to be friction growing between Captain Sobel and Lieutenant Winters, maybe trouble a-brewing. Only time would tell.

  Another fella I respected a lot was our platoon sergeant, Amos Taylor, who went by the first name Buck. He was a straight-shooting Eagle Scout from northwest Philadelphia and loved being out in the wilderness, same as me. One time back in high school, he and some buddies went camping in a heavy snowstorm for three days, just for the fun of it. That’s the type of man he was.

  Sergeant Buck Taylor was no dummy when it came to the men he was leading, and he could see a fella like Bill Kiehn was going to get washed out of the paratroopers real quick if he kept up with that chip on his shoulder. Now, Kiehn was an okay guy. Long after other fellas were exhausted, Kiehn was still going strong. He’d be just the sort of man you could rely on in combat. Only problem was that snarly attitude of his. So Sergeant Taylor pulled Bill Kiehn aside one morning real early, got him out of bed I believe, and taught him close order drill, which he still needed to learn. Well, it was still dark outside, but there was Sergeant Taylor taking extra time with Kiehn, going back and forth, left to right, about face, just the two of them. Sure enough, that extra time won Kiehn over, and he shaped up and became an excellent soldier. That Sergeant Taylor fella, he had a lot of leadership in him, he did.

  Round that time they held a race up Mount Currahee for the whole company. Plenty of guys had already quit the paratroopers by then, and the fellas who were left were in excellent shape. I put my shoulder to it and aimed to come in first. But, turns out plenty of guys in the company could run better than me, and I came in eighth. I guess that wasn’t bad, considering the group I was in. But I resolved to do better at the next test, if I could.

  Sure enough, my time for shining came on the rifle range. We were tested on hitting our targets and everyone had to meet a certain score. Top of the line was a grade called expert marksman, and Captain Sobel said anybody who makes expert rifleman gets a three-day pass. That was real incentive. Me and one other fella, that Sergeant Buck Taylor, were the only ones in the company to make expert marksman. So I was real happy about that. Guess all my practice shooting coins back home had paid off.

  Sergeant Taylor was courting a sweet woman named Elaine and had plans to see her with his three-day pass, but there was nowhere I wanted to go except home to Clinchco. I moped around the barracks the evening after I got the pass. Popeye sensed something was up because he asked if I was going home and I said no, I didn’t have enough money. “Shoot—I’ll take care of that,” Popeye said. He got a helmet and walked through the barracks calling to the guys, “Hey—Shifty’s got three days off and doesn’t have enough money to get home. Everybody chip in. Here—I’m going to start it with five dollars.” Popeye placed a bill in the helmet, and everybody else threw in a dollar or fifty cents, whatever he had. Popeye handed the helmet to me. “Count it, Shifty. You got enough?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I even got a little bit left over.”

  Popeye grinned. “Then give me back my damn five dollars.” I gave him back his money. I still laugh when I think of that.

  Well, I went on my pass,
and it was a fine time, then came back to Toccoa. We had some more training, and then our time at Toccoa was done. But there was more training to go through, you know. We had already done a bit of early paratrooper stuff at Toccoa, specific to the jumping out of planes, just jumping from modest heights, maybe thirty feet or so. You’d strap yourself into a harness, “ball crushers” the fellas called them, and fling yourself out. It helped a man squash his basic fear of jumping. We weren’t real paratroopers yet, that was for sure, and we sure weren’t getting our extra fifty dollars jump pay yet neither. We needed to go over to Atlanta to take our jump training still. We needed to get ourselves to Fort Benning. That’s when the real fun started.

  Colonel Sink had read some magazine article about these long hikes the Japanese soldiers were taking. They could march all night, you know, real tough customers there. Well, the colonel had a good streak of competitiveness in him, so he figured, my boys can whup their boys at whatever needs whupping—hiking, marching, whatever they can do—and he passed word to our officers: I want you to hike from Toccoa to Benning. That was about one hundred and twenty miles. When Lieutenant Moore called us together in Third Platoon and related the news, I remember a swell kid named Mike Ranney busted out laughing. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. “Sergeant Ranney, be quiet,” Lieutenant Moore said. “We’re going to complete the march in three days, and every damned man will complete it on his own two feet.” Ranney shut up real quick about that.

  We started our march on December 1. It was foggy that morning about seven-thirty when we set off, and gray clouds hung low in the sky. Each of us carried all we needed. After an hour of marching, the rain began. We kept going. A good-hearted farm boy named Dewitt Lowrey noticed a little yellow dog following us. The dog must have been a stray, for he had no collar or identifications, and he kept up with us for several miles. Finally we noticed the dog was limping. Dewitt picked him up and saw his toenails were worn and the pads on his paws were sore. He told us, “If y’all will take the stuff in my backpack, I’ll put that dog in my pack and carry him.” So we did. The dog rode on Dewitt’s back from then on. He became our mascot and we named him Draftee, and he was a fine dog, he was.

  We stopped for lunch that first day around noon and ate in the cold and rain, then kept marching through the back hills of Georgia. Blisters bubbled up on our feet and we kept going though it grew colder. We stopped near eight o’clock that night, and the wind whipped fierce through our camping area. We made our fires, heated our dinner, put up our tents, and tried to sleep. I shivered with my one blanket and never could get warm. I wondered if we might all freeze to death before morning.

  We didn’t. We got up and kept on marching. It was raining again and cold and we kept going straight through the second day until quarter of ten at night. I saw guys fall asleep while walking and head right into the trees.

  Third morning, my feet were really sore, but we got up and kept marching. Everything clung to us—wet boots, wet socks, wet jacket, wet pants. Only now we started to feel a little tingle at what we were doing. I guess the national news shows had received word of the march, and it spiked people’s interest all over the country. A United States Army unit was out-marching the Japs—it was just the kind of hopeful news the nation needed. Late afternoon of the third day we straggled into the outskirts of Atlanta, beat and cold, exhausted, but feeling mighty fine, too. We marched to the campus of Oglethorpe University and it felt like a big parade. That night, those of us who were still able put on our dress uniforms and hit the town. Anything we wanted, the city gave us. Men bought us beers, meals. Girls gave us hugs. Mike Ranney walked into a liquor store and a fella offered to buy him anything he wanted.

  More celebrating came the next morning. We marched down Peachtree Boulevard for a civic reception in the heart of the city. Bands played. Folks cheered all around us. I guess one or two fellas from other platoons didn’t finish the hike, but every man from Lieutenant Moore’s Third Platoon made the hike. It was the platoon I was in, and, as a reward, Third Platoon got to lead the parade. We marched through downtown Atlanta straight to the railway depot on our way to Fort Benning. Lieutenant Winters told us that Colonel Sink was mighty proud.

  After the march came jump school at Benning. We swaggered after all we had been through at Toccoa; we felt we could handle anything. Our new instructors lined us up the first morning and said, Okay, you’re in the big time now. This is men’s country. Anyone who wants to leave right now, no problem, we’ll put you in another unit. We said we’re fine, let’s go.

  The first stage of jump school is all physical training, and those instructors led us out on a little run, ten miles or so. It was all flat ground. Shoot, we could run on flat ground all day. About halfway through our first run, the instructor calls one of our men to take the lead. Our man says okay and starts double-timing it. We were hardly sweating, but the poor instructor wheezed like an old tire that’d been blown. Before that day was out, they said no more physical training for you; you’re all in good enough shape already. So we went straight into jump training.

  They take you up towers first. There’s different heights, see, and two hundred and fifty feet is the largest. Popeye and I did fine on those. They teach you how to pack a chute. Later on, we’d have other fellas—riggers, they called them—pack our chutes for us. But at the start, we needed to learn how to pack our own. Well, I packed my chute, then repacked it, and that night I didn’t sleep a wink. Next morning was our first real jump, see, so I just tossed and turned. Did I do it right? What did I do wrong? What did I miss?

  Next morning they took us out to the airfield. Back home in Clinchco, I had never seen an airplane, much less had a ride in one. So the first time I walked out onto the airfield, I looked at that big old C-47, turned to Popeye, and said. “Heck, I don’t need to worry about my chute. They’re never going to get that thing off the ground.”

  But they did. That C-47 rumbled to life with those big engines just a rolling and turning, and we were flying. When you jump, they have what they call sticks: two lines of men face each other on benches inside the plane. I was in the second stick, which meant me and my bench were to jump after the fellas sitting across from us. As we flew I started sweating, you know, really feeling a gulp in my throat as to what we were about to do, and I thought, boy, I’m sure glad I’m not sitting over there in that first bench. They all jumped, and the plane circled over the drop zone again. That meant it was our turn. No quitting now. It was time, and I was thinking, man I wish I had been in that first group.

  I stood up and hooked up and shuffled to the door. The jumpmaster took a little extra time with each man for this first jump, making sure you were in the right position. I placed my elbows, arms, and fingers outside of the door. The jumpmaster patted my arm and I stepped out. Over my head, my chute snapped into place almost instantly. My hands were over top my reserve chute, and I swung a bit and looked around at the landscape. The view felt just like I was standing on top of Frying Pan back home in Virginia, looking out over mile after mile. I couldn’t help wondering what good that reserve would do come actual battle time. We were jumping from way up, that first practice jump, maybe twelve hundred feet or so, but I heard that in combat they’d take you down to six or seven hundred feet so there wasn’t as much time to get shot at. A reserve chute wouldn’t do you any good from that low. I guessed it was more a security blanket than anything, something that made a man feel he might have a second chance. The ground came up at me in an instant. Everything happens so fast, you don’t really know what’s going on. My feet hit the field. I rolled over on my side and gathered the silk. All around me I heard fellas hollering and jumping up and down. We had made it. It wasn’t that hard, you know.

  We soon learned it wasn’t all easy going. One poor fella ripped three fingers off on a jump. Another practice jump, a boy named Forrest Guth stood ahead of me in line. Everybody called him Goody. He was a swell fella and knew a lot about tinkering with weapons, making them
more accurate, easier to fire, which I respected a lot. We stood up, hooked up, and they said go, go, go. I was halfway out of that plane, and there lay poor Goody on the floor. You’re all running out the door so quickly, you know, pushing against the man ahead of you, so I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to pause and miss the drop zone, ’cause a man is liable to end up in water or on a tree, so I just jumped over Goody and went out the door.

  Well, we got down on the ground. The first man I saw was Goody. He looked a little shaken but otherwise fine. I don’t know how he got down so quick, because I jumped ahead of him and yet he beat me to the ground. It was a mystery.

  Some time passed, and the company made one final practice jump—this, a night jump—and then we were through. We earned our jump wings and pinned them on our uniforms and drank a few beers to celebrate. Those little silver wings meant we were real paratroopers. We now were allowed to tuck our pants into our boots, so anybody could see from a distance what we were. We also got our extra fifty dollars pay, and I was real happy about that. An extra fifty dollars was a heap of money at the time. My first month’s pay in the service was twenty-one dollars. Then they upped it to fifty dollars per month. Then, with this extra fifty, that made a hundred dollars a month. If you made expert rifleman, that made an extra four dollars per month. So I was getting one hundred and four dollars per month total. I was rich.

  Everything seemed like a breeze after we became paratroopers. Other fellas went into town and picked fights with other units, you know, if they saw some other guy blousing his trousers when he hadn’t earned it or whatever. I went to town, too, but I was never one much for fights without a good reason. Still, I walked with a new swagger in my step, too, you know, just feeling like I could do anything I set my mind to. I guess all the fellas felt that way. We were real paratroopers now. We were ten feet tall and bulletproof.