Ralph Berrier

by War;Bluegrass If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood

  Willoughby cut him off. “I’m not afraid of any German,” he said. “I’ll go ahead.”

  Willoughby set out for the ravine while Saford crept to the base of the small hill. As Willoughby got closer to the ravine, he dropped to his belly and crawled several yards. He shot Saford a quick look. No Germans here.

  In a flash, three enemy soldiers poured over the top of the ravine. They overpowered Willoughby before he could fire a shot or pull the pin on a grenade. It happened so fast, Saford had no time to react. Then, he saw it, floating through the air, wobbling in flight like a wounded quail—a grenade, coming right at him.

  The grenade sailed over his head and landed directly behind him. The ground rumbled and rose beneath his feet, as if Mount Etna were unleashing a murderous eruption. Saford felt himself lifted heavenward, just before the world went dark.

  No Germans, my ass.

  Little sweetheart come and kiss me

  We may never meet again

  We may never roam together

  Down that dear old shady lane

  —“LITTLE SWEETHEART COME AND KISS ME,”

  AS PERFORMED BY THE HALL TWINS

  Clayton received the news when he got to Camp White. The Ninety-sixth had taken to its new digs on November 1, 1943, following two months of maneuvers in the barren Oregon desert. The mock fighting and very real marching, digging, and shooting had toughened the hillbilly musician. His feet and trigger finger were well callused and he was an expert shot with his M1 rifle, an infantryman’s best friend. His fellow soldiers were just as tough as he was, and the division’s glowing performance in the field had earned it a nickname—the Deadeyes.

  Camp White was barely two years old, and its bright white barracks stood out against the tall pines and red hills of southwest Oregon. The bunks were soft as goose feathers and the chow a gourmet feast—at least that’s how it seemed to soldiers who had spent the last sixty days wandering the desert. The mail service was good and finally connected the men to the outside world.

  A lieutenant approached Clayton outside the barracks. He handed Clayton a letter and said in a firm voice:

  “Your brother is dead. I am very sorry.”

  Clayton took the letter and didn’t say anything at first. He didn’t even look at it.

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know,” the lieutenant admitted. “It’s all in the letter.”

  Clayton looked at the handwriting on the envelope, clearly a woman’s. He saw the return address—Massachusetts Avenue, Roanoke, Virginia. The letter was from Lottie Wilbourne. Dot’s mother. Saford’s mother-in-law.

  He could barely bring himself to open it.

  The letter began like any other a soldier boy receives from home. Hope this finds you well and in good health. Things are good here … blah, blah, blah … he skipped over the words, looking for the terrible part.

  Finally, Lottie got there. She had been listening to the radio and heard the awful news. Roy Hall was dead. He had died in a car wreck. The announcer said that he crashed head-on into one of the trees that guarded the entrance to Eureka Park, one of the two trees he used to speed between when he took the shortcut home. The newspaper said he was dead when officers reached him and that he had slumped over just before the crash. There had been a girl riding with him, a girl named Martha Ferguson.…

  It wasn’t Saford.

  It wasn’t a brother at all. It was Roy Hall. Roy Hall was dead. The emotional swings Clayton had felt during the previous sixty seconds would’ve staggered a draft horse. He thought he had lost a brother, certain it was his twin, only to learn he hadn’t. But his relief at knowing Saford was alive was swamped by the soul-numbing shock that his old bandleader was dead.

  Roy had died in May. Clayton had been so far removed from civilization that the news of Roy Hall’s death took nearly five months to find him. Lottie’s letter had chased him all around the United States before greeting him so grievously at Camp White.

  According to the Roanoke World-News, Roy had died around 11:30 p.m. on May 16, 1943, a Sunday night. Lottie included a World-News clipping from the May 17 afternoon edition, which carried the front-page headline “Roy Hall Dies in Auto Crash in Eureka Park.” The story wasted no time before diving into the gruesome details:

  Roy Davis Hall, popular radio entertainer and leader of the recently disbanded Blue Ridge Entertainers, died of a fractured skull, fractured neck and crushed chest after his car crashed head-on into a tree in Eureka Park, at Carroll Avenue and 16th street, about 11:30 p.m. last night, Dr. Charles M. Irvin, city cor[o]ner, said today. Dr. Irvin added that he is still investigating the case.

  Martha Ferguson, of 1020 Gilmer Ave., N.W., who was in the car with Hall at the time of the accident, was seriously, but not critically hurt. She was removed to the Lewis-Gale Hospital where physicians said she was suffering from a fractured left cheek and a broken leg.

  Clayton had no idea who Martha Ferguson was. She wasn’t Roy’s wife, he knew that much. Clayton’s period of mourning lasted about five minutes before it was time to resume training and drills. He wouldn’t know anything else about Roy Hall’s death until he got home on a furlough, whenever that would be.

  • • •

  As Clayton’s first year with the Ninety-sixth came to an end, he made plenty of friends, especially fellow Southerners who, like him, were often fodder for Midwestern boys’ jokes.

  Houston Humphries was an Arkansas ridge runner whose loping, ostrich-like gait and molasses-slow drawl earned him the natural nickname of “Speedy.” He was popular, mainly because of his ridiculous tales of chasing razorbacks in the boonies and his magic touch with the ladies. While stationed at Camp White, he took a furlough to go home and marry his hometown sweetheart. When he got back, his buddies asked him if the wedding had come off without a hitch. He told them yes and no. The girl he was sweet on, her folks wouldn’t let him marry her. So he married another girl down the street.

  Another buddy was Virgil Boone, who was from Greensboro, North Carolina, and had impressed Clayton by knowing who Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers were. Boone knew the band from its WBIG days. He and Clayton both liked the same kind of music and the same groups. In a regiment full of loudmouths, Boone was a soft-spoken, friendly fellow, someone who kept to himself and didn’t brag about how many men he would kill or women he would screw. Clayton liked that about him.

  Clayton was beginning to feel like a grizzled veteran. He walked with a bit more swagger and confidence, and he talked to new recruits like they were the baby brothers he never had. Don Huber from Wisconsin was right out of high school when he arrived at Camp White and heard a man call out “Hello there, young feller!” It was Corporal Hall. He had started calling everybody “young feller.”

  Smith and Ramirez were still his singing buddies. They sang trio harmony on all the popular Western tunes, sometimes in front of the entire company. Clayton always stole the show. He grabbed a cheap, beat-up guitar and thrashed a bluesy A chord until the rusty strings wailed. Then he sang in a high, twangy tenor:

  And if you see my milk cow,

  Please drive her on home

  I ain’t had no milk and butter

  Since my milk cow been gone

  The men of F Company, 382nd Infantry Regiment, Ninety-sixth Infantry Division had the “Milk Cow Blues” terrible bad—and they loved it.

  • • •

  John Fox did not love the blues. He despised Clayton’s playing and singing, and he especially detested fiddle music. Fox was a big, tough son of a bitch from Illinois, real intimidating. He crashed into the barracks one night, tired, perhaps drunk, and ready to fight the first person he saw—which, in this case, happened to be the little fiddle-playing corporal. The big brute demanded that Clayton silence that trashy hillbilly music.

  Clayton paused a minute, then resumed playing.

  Fox made his feelings plain. He didn’t care for the fiddle and he hated all good-for-nothing hillbillies, who, as far as he was
concerned, were less than human and had no place in this man’s army.

  Clayton had had enough.

  “Buddy, if you don’t shut up, you gonna eat this fiddle,” he said.

  Fox responded with a barrage of slurs, hitting all the high points of hillbilly stereotypes. Toothlessness was probably mentioned. Personal hygiene and illiteracy are popular subjects. Of course, you can’t belittle a hillbilly properly without bringing up inbreeding, which I am sure Fox did not forget to mention.

  Now, had Fox known Clayton Hall’s story up until this point, perhaps he would have chosen his words more carefully and treated his brother in arms more respectfully. Sadly, he knew nothing about the little guy’s rough upbringing, or about the name-calling he endured as a boy, or about his preferred method for dealing with smart-mouthed bullies who called him those names. All he saw was a sawed-off, twangy-talking runt of a soldier who didn’t even reach his chin.

  Fox looked away from Clayton for a fateful second to grin at his comrades, who were laughing right along with him. Before Fox turned back around, Clayton whacked him in the face with the fiddle—hard. Splinters and steel strings exploded from Fox’s face. Before Fox could get his wits back, the little soon-to-be-former corporal punched him in the nose.

  Soldiers jumped in and separated the two brawlers before things got out of hand, which might’ve saved Clayton’s life, considering how outsized he was. Clayton got busted down to buck private again, but he didn’t care. Losing a cheap fiddle hurt him worse than losing his stripes. It was a good thing for Fox he wasn’t playing a banjo, or else he might’ve killed him.

  The barracks weren’t silent for long. Clayton, Smith, and Ramirez kept their little band together through the spring of ’44. While other men played on football and baseball intramural teams, the trio of singing soldiers played and jammed amid their bunks. On weekends they’d head down to the USO show in Medford, where they entertained their buddies with tumbleweed tales and old cowhands from the Rio Grande and sang in three-part harmony. They were so good their commanding officers occasionally gave them a pass from the duty roster so they’d have time for practice.

  One night at a USO performance, Armed Forces Radio put the cowboy trio on the air. An announcer told the boys they’d be singing to fighting men all over the globe, which easily eclipsed the Roanoke radio market as the largest audience Clayton had ever sung for. Standing behind the microphone, he strummed a G chord and launched into that famous Sons of the Pioneers yodel. The three young men harmonized on all the verses and even yodeled in harmony.

  That was the career peak for the Camp White cowboy trio. Just when the act had gone international, Uncle Sam busted up the party. Word came down that the Ninety-sixth had been designated as an amphibious division, one that would invade foreign lands from the sea beneath screaming skies of artillery fire. The Deadeyes were on their way to California for specialized training, before they would ship off to their ultimate destination. After months spent sweating and shooting in the Oregon desert, the division was not bound for Africa or Italy or anywhere in Europe after all. The Deadeyes were going to the jungles of the South Pacific to fight the Japanese.

  Smith the Canadian joined an artillery company. Ramirez was sent to specialized training. The big radio performance was their swan song. They had stayed together just long enough to yodel their way across the globe, all the way to southern England, where their music was heard on a radio in the barracks near Winchester. An American soldier turned up the volume and listened closely to the cowboy song, a number he knew by heart. One voice in particular sounded familiar to the combat-tested soldier, who recognized his twin’s voice from ten thousand miles away.

  Saford listened to Clayton singing on the radio. He probably wished he was with his brother, back in the States, singing those old Western numbers. I’m sure he thought he could sing them better than Clayton’s new band.

  • • •

  Saford was, of course, very much alive.

  The Germans had left him for dead after the grenade blast in Sicily, and he lay unconscious for three hours before an American patrol picked him up. He awoke in a field hospital, where doctors had treated a grievous wound to the back of his head. Shrapnel had penetrated his helmet and pierced his skull. Army surgeons had patched him up, replacing missing bone with a small piece of steel. Saford lay immobile for days.

  The weeks passed and Saford remained hospitalized. He never learned what happened to Willoughby. He never asked. He got word that the Sixtieth Infantry was shipping out—not to invade Italy, as it turned out, but to England, where it would prepare for the major attack against Fortress Europe. Saford was badly discouraged. Doctors would not release him to rejoin the Sixtieth, which meant Saford might be assigned to a new division.

  He was having none of it. One afternoon, Saford heard a Jeep idling outside his hospital tent. He gathered his clothes, put on his boots, and headed outside. He jumped in the passenger seat and demanded that the driver deliver him immediately to Sixtieth Infantry headquarters. The driver resisted at first, then peeled away from the field hospital with his stowaway in tow.

  Back with the Sixtieth, Saford boarded a ship bound for England. He spent the winter and spring of 1943–44 encamped near Winchester, where he would train, rest, recover, and, on one memorable occasion, hear his favorite songs played over the radio, sung by a familiar voice. Saford, too, had heard the sad news about Roy Hall.

  • • •

  People heard and repeated all kinds of stories about the night Roy Hall died. Some said that Roy had eaten seven pickled eggs at the Rugby Grocery Store and had had a heart attack before he crashed into the tree in Eureka Park. Others heard that he had stopped at a diner and offered a ride home to a young waitress just getting off the late shift.

  Jay Hugh blamed himself for his older brother’s death. Roy had called him that fateful Sunday evening and asked if Jay Hugh would help deliver hams to a family in northwest Roanoke. Jay Hugh was tired and told Roy he’d just stay home and would see him in the morning. A few hours later, Roy was dead and Jay Hugh was left to agonize for his remaining thirty years about what might have happened if he had gone with his brother.

  Fifty years after the wreck, Clayton and Saford subscribed to the “Roy was giving a girl a ride home and had a heart attack right before he hit the tree” theory. At least that’s what they told me. I have no idea if that’s what they privately believed. Best not to talk about it. Kind of like having a mama who never got married. It’s just nobody’s business.

  Nobody knows how Roy and Martha Ferguson knew each other. There were so many women around the band in those days. In the black-and-white publicity photos, Roy Hall looks like a paunchy, middle-aged cowboy—not exactly matinee idol material. Roanoke had been good to him, judging by his expanding waistline. Lots of chicken dinners before show dates. People loved Roy Hall and his band. His music sounds so simple and quaint today, it’s hard to believe that girls went gaga over it. But they did. It’s hard to believe today because we weren’t there in 1940 when the Blue Ridge Entertainers arrived with all the fanfare of a traveling circus. We weren’t part of the full house at the Academy of Music. They played rock and roll before there was such a thing. If they had all grown up two decades later, they would’ve played electric guitars and drums.

  As if Roy’s tragic death wasn’t bad enough, Roy’s wife, Mattie, had just learned she was pregnant. Roy left behind one and a half daughters—Martha, going on two, and a girl born seven months after his death. Roy’s family had hoped for a boy, so he could be named after his daddy. When the baby girl came, Mattie had a plan—she named the child Royce Ann. Roy’s brothers and sisters always called her “Roy Ann,” but it didn’t matter because the baby’s big sister had other ideas. Little Martha called her new sister “bee-bee” instead of baby. And forevermore that’s who she was—BeeBe Hall.

  Over the years, Martha and BeeBe would hear whispers that their father’s little indiscretion with the woman in the
car wasn’t an isolated incident, but their mother never said a bad word about their father, even though she was still young and pretty when he died. She and Roy had been married fewer than three years. Her daughters grew up surrounded by all kinds of vestiges of their father, some pleasant, some not. At Easter egg hunts in Eureka Park, they were confronted by the enormous scarred oak tree that had killed their father. The tree stood for years after Roy’s death, before it was finally cut down and the road through Eureka Park closed off because it was deemed too dangerous.

  Mattie kept Roy’s old songbooks and at least one other document: an unsigned contract from a movie studio that produced B Westerns. Late in 1942, a big car had pulled up to Roy’s house, and a fat man climbed out and trundled up to the porch, where Roy was sitting smoking a cigarette. “You’re a hard man to find,” said the fat man, whose nickname, naturally, was Tiny. He wanted to talk to Roy about appearing with his band in a picture. Roy loved the idea, except there was one problem: Thanks to the war, he no longer had a band.

  Tiny left the contract with him and assured him they’d talk again once the war was over and Roy’s band got back together. He squeezed back into his car and drove away.

  That’s the way Clayton and Saford heard the story, anyway. They would have been in the movies, if not for that lousy, stinking war.

  Roy’s girls remembered that movie contract. They colored, scrawled, and drew pictures on it until one day it was just gone, like flowers in the fall, like a father neither of them knew.

  • • •

  England seemed like paradise to Saford, despite the many gray, rainy days. The days just seem brighter when you can understand what the natives are saying. The division arrived in southern England in November 1943, where it settled around the ancient city of Winchester. Tens of thousands of Americans invaded the small towns and villages of the southern countryside. Saford one day told his kin that “you couldn’t have sown a rye field any thicker” than the crowds of American soldiers jammed into the area.