Band of Brothers

by Stephen Ambrose

  Just before Easy moved out, Malarkey went into a panic. He remembered he had $3,600 in his money belt. He asked Lieutenant Compton for help; Compton put him in touch with a division fiscal officer, who said he would deposit the money, but if he did, Malarkey could not get at it until he was discharged. That was fine with Malarkey; he handed over the money and took the receipt. He climbed into his trailer with the happy thought that after the war he could return to the University of Oregon and not have to wash dishes to pay his way.

  "We were packed in like sardines," Private Freeman remembered. Captain Winters used a different image: "You were just like an animal in there, you were just packed into that trailer like a cattle car." As the trucks pulled out, Carson thought about the football practice he had been anticipating with relish, contrasted it with his actual situation, and began singing "What a Difference a Day Makes."

  The trucks had no benches, and damn little in the way of springs. Every curve sent men crashing around, every bump bounced them up into the air. It was hard on the kidneys—relief came only when the trucks stopped to close up the convoy—and on the legs. The trucks drove with lights blazing until they reached the Belgium border, a calculated risk taken for the sake of speed.

  As the truck-borne troopers were on the road, VIII Corps command decided where to use them. The 82nd would go to the north shoulder of the penetration, near St. Vith. The 101st would go to Bastogne.

  The trucks carrying Easy stopped a few kilometers outside Bastogne. The men jumped out—a tailgate jump, they called it— relieved themselves, stretched, grumbled, and formed up into columns for the march into Bastogne. They could hear a firefight going on. "Here we go again," said Private Freeman.

  The columns marched on both sides of the road, toward the front; down the middle of the road came the defeated American troops, fleeing the front in disarray, moblike. Many had thrown away their rifles, their coats, all encumbrances. Some were in a panic, staggering, exhausted, shouting, "Run! Run! They'll murder you! They'll kill you! They've got everything, tanks, machine-guns, air power, everything!"

  "They were just babbling," Winters recalled. "It was pathetic. We felt ashamed."

  As Easy and the other companies in 2nd Battalion marched into Bastogne and out again (residents had hot coffee for them, but not much else), uppermost in every man's mind was ammunition. "Where's the ammo? We can't fight without ammo." The retreating horde supplied some. "Got any ammo?" the paratroopers would ask those who were not victims of total panic. "Sure, buddy, glad to let you have it." (Gordon noted sardonically that by giving away their ammo, the retreating men relieved themselves of any further obligation to stand and fight.) Still, Easy marched toward the sound of battle without sufficient ammunition.

  Outside Bastogne, headed northeast, the sound of the artillery fire increased. Soon it was punctuated by small arms fire. "Where the hell's the ammo?"

  Second Lt. George C. Rice, S-4 of Team Desobry of Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division (which had fallen back under heavy pressure from Noville through Foy), learned of the shortage. He jumped in his jeep and drove to Foy, where he loaded the vehicle with cases of hand grenades and M-l ammunition, turned around, and met the column coming out of Bastogne. He passed out the stuff as the troopers marched by, realized the need was much greater, returned to the supply dump at Foy, found a truck, overloaded it and the jeep with weapons and ammunition, drove back to the oncoming column, and had his men throw it out by the handfuls. Officers and men scrambled on hands and knees for the clips of M-l ammo. The firefight noise coupled with the panic in the faces of the retreating American troops made it clear that they were going to need every bullet they could get. Lieutenant Rice kept it coming until every man had all he could carry.2

  2. Rapport and Northwood, Rendezvous with Destiny, 462.

  As Easy moved toward Foy, the sounds of battle became intense. The 1st Battalion of the 506th was up ahead, in Noville, involved in a furious fight, taking a beating. Colonel Sink decided to push 3rd Battalion to Foy and to use 2nd Battalion to protect his right flank. Easy went into an area of woods and open fields, its left on the east side of the road Bastogne-Foy-Noville. Fox Company was to its right, Dog in reserve.

  Sounds of battle were coming closer. To the rear, south of Bastogne, the Germans were about to cut the highway and complete the encirclement of the Bastogne area. Easy had no artillery or air support. It was short on food, mortar ammunition, and other necessary equipment, and completely lacked winter clothing even as the temperature began to plunge below the freezing mark. But thanks to 2nd Lieutenant Rice, it had grenades and M-l ammunition.

  The Curahee scrapbook spoke for Easy, for 2nd Battalion, for the 506th: "We weren't particularly elated at being here. Rumors are that Krauts are everywhere and hitting hard. Farthest from your mind is the thought of falling back. In fact it isn't there at all. And so you dig your hole carefully and deep, and wait, not for that mythical super man, but for the enemy you had beaten twice before and will again. You look first to the left, then right, at your buddies also preparing. You feel confident with Bill over there. You know you can depend on him."

  11 'THEY GOT US SURROUNDED-THE POOR BASTARDS"

  *

  BASTOGNE

  December 19-31,1944

  On December 19 Easy went into the line south of Foy as one part of the ring defense of Bastogne. It was, in effect, one of the wagons in the circle. Inside were the 101st Airborne, Combat Command B of the 10th Armored, plus the 463rd Field Artillery Battalion. Against this force the Germans launched as many as fifteen divisions, four of them armored, supported by heavy artillery.

  The fighting was furious and costly. During the nineteenth and twentieth, the 1st Battalion of the 506th, supported by Team Desobry of the 10th Armored, engaged the 2nd Panzer Division at Neville, northeast of Foy. When the battalion pulled back beyond Foy on the twentieth, it had lost thirteen officers and 199 enlisted men (out of about 600). Together with Team Desobry, it had destroyed at least thirty enemy tanks and inflicted casualties of between 500 and 1,000. Most important, it had held for forty-eight hours while the defense was being set up around Bastogne.

  Easy and the other companies badly needed the time, as the situation in the defensive perimeter was fluid and confused. Easy's left was on the Bastogne-Noville road, linked to 3rd Battalion on the other side. Dog Company, on the right flank of 2nd Battalion, extended to the railroad station at Halt, but it was not linked to the 501st PIR. Winters worried that the battalion was not in the right position; he sent Nixon back to regimental HQ to check; Nixon returned to say the battalion was where it was supposed to be.

  Easy's position was in a wood looking out on a grazing field that sloped down to the village of Foy, about a kilometer away. The trees were pines, 8 to 10 inches in diameter, planted in rows. The men dug foxholes to form a Main Line of Resistance a few meters inside the woods, with outposts on the edge. Winters set up battalion HQ just behind the company at the south edge of the woods. The first night on the MLR was quiet, even peaceful; the fighting was to the north, in Noville, 4 kilometers away.

  At dawn on December 20, a heavy mist hung over the woods and fields. Winters rose and looked around. To his left he saw a German soldier in his long winter overcoat emerge from the woods. He had no rifle, no pack. He walked to the middle of a clearing. Two men with Winters instinctively brought their rifles to their shoulders, but he gave them a hand signal to hold their fire. The Americans watched as the German took off his overcoat, pulled down his pants, squatted, and relieved himself. When he was finished, Winters hollered in his best German, "Kommen sie hier!" The soldier put up his hands and walked over to surrender. Winters went through his pockets; all he had were a few pictures and the end of a loaf of hard black bread.

  "Think of this," Winters commented. "Here is a German soldier, in the light of early dawn, who went to take a crap, got turned around in the woods, walked through our lines, past the company CP and ended up behind the Battalion CP! That
sure was some line of defense we had that first night!"

  German soldiers were not the only ones who got lost that day. Medic Ralph Spina and Pvt. Ed "Babe" Heffron went back into Bastogne to scrounge up some medical supplies. At the aid station Spina got some of what he needed (the 101st was already running low on medical supplies, a major problem). The two E Company men grabbed a hot meal, and although they hated to leave the stove, with darkness coming on, they set out for the line.

  Heffron suggested a shortcut across a wooded area. Spina agreed. Heffron led the way. Suddenly he fell into a hole. There was a shout of surprise. Then a voice called out from under Heffron, "Hinkle, Hinkle, ist das dui"

  Heffron came barreling out of the foxhole and took off in the opposite direction, yelling "Hinkle Your Ass, Kraut!" He and Spina got reoriented and finally found the E Company CP.

  (Spina, who recalled the incident, concluded: "To this day every time I see Babe, I ask him how Hinkle is feeling or if he has seen Hinkle lately.")

  The medics were the most popular, respected, and appreciated men in the company. Their weapons were first-aid kits,- their place on the line was wherever a man called out that he was wounded. Lieutenant Foley had special praise for Pvt. Eugene Roe. "He was there when he was needed, and how he got 'there' you often wondered. He never received recognition for his bravery, his heroic servicing of the wounded. I recommended him for a Silver Star after a devastating firefight when his exploits were typically outstanding. Maybe I didn't use the proper words and phrases, perhaps Lieutenant Dike didn't approve, or somewhere along the line it was cast aside. I don't know. I never knew except that if any man who struggled in the snow and the cold, in the many attacks through the open and through the woods, ever deserved such a medal, it was our medic, Gene Roe."

  On December 20 what was left of the 1st Battalion of the 506th and Team Desobry pulled back from Noville and went into reserve. Easy awaited an attack that did not come; the damage inflicted by 1st Battalion was so great that the Germans made their assaults on other sectors of the defensive perimeter. Easy underwent artillery and mortar bombardments, but no infantry attack.

  On December 21, it snowed, a soft, dry snow. It kept coming, 6 inches, 12 inches. The temperature fell to well below freezing, the wind came up, even in the woods. The men were colder than they had ever been in their lives. They had only their jump boots and battle dress with trench coats. No wool socks, no long underwear. Runners went into Bastogne and returned with flour sacks and bed sheets, which provided some warmth and camouflage. In the foxholes and on the outposts, men wrapped their bodies in blankets and their boots in burlap. The burlap soaked up the snow, boots became soggy, socks got wet, the cold penetrated right into the bones. Shivering was as normal as breathing. The men looked like George Washington's army at Valley Forge, except that they were getting fired upon, had no huts, and warming fires were out of the question.

  Col. Ralph Ingersoll, an intelligence officer with First Army, described the penetrating cold: "Riding through the Ardennes, I wore woolen underwear, a woolen uniform, armored force combat overalls, a sweater, an armored force field jacket with elastic cuffs, a muffler, a heavy lined trenchcoat, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, and combat boots with galoshes over them—and I cannot remember ever being warm."1

  1. Ralph Ingersoll, Top Secret (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946).

  For the men of Easy, without decent socks and no galoshes, feet always cold and always wet, trench foot quickly became a problem. Corporal Carson remembered being taught that the way to prevent trench foot was to massage the feet. So he took off his boots and massaged his feet. A German shell came in and hit a tree over his foxhole. Splinters tore up his foot and penetrated his thigh. He was evacuated back to Bastogne.

  At the hospital set up in the town, "I looked around and never saw so many wounded men. I called a medic over and said, 'Hey, how come you got so many wounded people around here? Aren't we evacuating anybody?' "

  "Haven't you heard?" the medic replied. "I haven't heard a damn thing." "They've got us surrounded—the poor bastards." General McAuliffe saw to it the wounded had booze for comfort. A medic gave Carson a bottle of creme de menthe. "I didn't even know what it was, but to this day I have liked creme de menthe." The Luftwaffe bombed the town that night. Carson remembered to get on his hands and knees for the concussion. He got sick. "Thank God for that helmet. I had already had about half that creme de menthe. It was all green in my helmet."

  For the most part, all the men of Easy had to eat was K rations, and not enough of those had been distributed back at Mourmelon. The company cooks tried to bring a hot meal up after darkness, but by the time they reached the men in the foxholes, the food was cold. Mainly it consisted of white navy beans which, according to Sergeant Rader, "caused gastronomical outbursts that were something to behold." Cook Joe Domingus found some shortening and cornmeal, which he turned into corn fritters, also stone cold by the time they arrived. The men mixed the lemonade packet in their K rations with snow to make a dessert.

  On the line, the days were miserable, the nights worse. The shelling was not continuous, the machine-gun fire directed at the Americans was sporadic, but snipers were active through the day. At night, the ominous silence would be broken by the nerve-racking hammering of enemy mortars, followed by cries from the wounded and calls to man the positions in preparation for an attack. Then another ominous silence.

  Every two hours, the platoon sergeants would wake two men in a foxhole and lead them to the outpost (OP) position, to relieve the men on duty. "The trip out to the OP was always eerie," Christenson remembered. "You eyed all silhouettes suspiciously, skeptical of any sound. Reluctantly, you approach the OP. The silhouettes of the men in their positions are not clear... . Are they Germans? The suspense is always the same... then finally you recognize an American helmet. Feeling a little ridiculous, yet also relieved, you turn around and return to the main line, only to repeat the entire process in another two hours."

  In the foxholes, the men tried to get some sleep, difficult to impossible given the cramped conditions (usually 6 feet by 2 feet by 3 or 4 feet deep, for two men). At least lying together allowed the men to exchange body heat. Heffron and Pvt. Al Vittore did manage to get to sleep the second night out. Heffron woke when Vittore threw his heavy leg over his body. When Vittore started to rub Heffron's chest, Heffron gave him a shot with his elbow in his belly. Vittore woke and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Heffron started to give him hell in return; Vittore grinned and said he had been dreaming about his wife.

  "Al," Heffron said, "I can't help you, as I got combat boots, jump pants, and my trench coat on, and they are not coming off." In other foxholes, men talked to relieve the tension. Sergeant Rader and Pvt. Don Hoobler came from the same town on the banks of the Ohio River. "Don and I would talk all night about home, our families, people and places, and what the hell were we doing in a predicament like this?" Spina recalled discussing with his foxhole mate "politics, the world's problems, plus our own. Wishing we had a drink or a hot meal, preferably in that order. We talked about what we were going to do when we got home, about a trip to Paris in a couple of weeks, go to the Follies. Mainly we talked about going home."

  Sergeant Toye, back from hospital, didn't like the silence at night between mortar attacks. To break it, he would sing. "I'll Be Seeing You" was his favorite. Heffron told him to cut it, that the Krauts would surely hear him. Toye sang anyway. According to Heffron, "Joe was a hellu'va better soldier than singer."

  Sitting in front-line foxholes was bad, being on OP was worse, going on combat patrol looking for a fight was the worst. But it had to be done. It was the inability of VIII Corps to patrol aggressively, due to insufficient manpower, that had led to the December 16 surprise when the Germans attacked in far greater force than anyone anticipated.

  On December 21 Lieutenant Peacock sent Sergeant Martin to the various foxholes of 1st Platoon. At each one holding a sergeant or a corporal, Martin announc
ed, "I want all N.C.O.s back at the platoon CP—now."

  The men gathered. Lieutenant Peacock, the platoon leader, as tense as ever, stopped the grumbling: "At ease. Battalion wants a platoon to go on a combat patrol, and we have been elected to be that platoon." He paused. No one spoke. Peacock went on, "We know the Krauts are in the woods in front of our MLR, but we don't know how many, or where their MLR or OPs are located. It's our job to acquire that information, and to capture some prisoners, if possible."

  Questions came in a torrent. "What's the plan of attack?" Sergeant Christenson, leader of 1st squad, wanted to know.

  "How will the squads be positioned?" asked Sergeant Muck of the mortar squad.

  "What happens when we lose contact in those woods?" wondered 2nd squad leader Sergeant Randleman.

  Peacock did not have any ready answers. "You'll know more of what you're going to do when we reach the woods," was all he could think to say. Son of a bitch, Christenson thought to himself. This is going to be another SNAFU operation, with not enough information to fill a peapod.

  "We move out at 1300 hours," Peacock concluded.

  Damn, was Christenson's thought. We are being led by Mister Indecision himself; to infiltrate into the German lines without a good plan is a tremendous, bungling, tactical error. But when he met with his squad, he kept his thoughts to himself. He told the men to draw ammunition and be ready to jump off at 1300.

  At 1200, 1st platoon fell back a few meters from the MLR and gathered around Father Maloney, who had his Communion set out. He announced that he was giving a general absolution. After the men who wanted one received their Communion wafer, he wished them "Good luck."

  Just before 1300, the platoon assembled in the woods behind the MLR. Peacock looked to Christenson "like a frightened rabbit." He had no special orders to give, offered no clarification about a plan. He just announced, "All right, men, let's move out."