Colonel Sink was so delighted with the successful patrol, he ordered another one for the next night. In the meantime, however, it had snowed, then turned colder. The snow was frozen on top, crunchy, noisy. The cold air had cleared out the sky and the moon was shining. Winters thought a patrol under such circumstances was suicidal, so he decided to disobey orders.
Sink and a couple of staff officers came to 2nd Battalion CP to observe. They had a bottle of whiskey with them. Winters said he was going down to the river bank to supervise the patrol. When he got to the outpost, he told the men to just stay still. With the whiskey working on him, Sink would soon be ready for bed. The patrol could report in the morning that it had gotten across the river and into German lines but had been unable to get a live prisoner.4
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.
Some of the men wanted liquor too. Cobb and Wiseman went out on a daytime scrounging mission, even though orders were never to show yourself in daylight. They found a cellar filled with schnapps. They grabbed two bottles each and, shot at by German snipers, ran down the street like schoolboys with stolen
apples.
Wiseman got hit in the knee. He stumbled and fell, breaking his bottles. Cobb saved his. The two men ducked into a cellar and started enjoying the schnapps. "You take a bunch of G.I.s," Martin pointed out, "there is no such thing as just taking a shot of schnapps. You have to drink the whole goddamn thing before you quit." Wiseman and Cobb drank a bottle each. When they got back to 1st platoon HQ, roaring drunk, Cobb got into a fight with Marsh.
Lieutenant Foley separated the men. He chewed out Cobb for being off-limits, disobeying orders, being drunk and disorderly, and so on. Cobb became enraged and began mouthing off. He ignored Foley's direct order to shut up. Instead, he charged Foley. Two men grabbed him and threw him down. Sergeant Martin pulled his .45 pistol. Foley told him to holster his weapon, ordered Cobb arrested, and had him taken back to regiment for lockup.
Wiseman, meanwhile, loudly rejected Medic Roe's order to evacuate. He said he was staying with his friends.
Foley got his platoon settled down, then went to regimental HQ to write up court-martial papers for Cobb. It took him several hours. He took the papers to Colonel Sink and told him the details. As Foley was leaving, Sink said to him, "Foley, you could have saved us all a lot of trouble. You should have shot him."
Wiseman, still drunk, refused any aid for his wound. He said he would talk to Sergeant Rader, no one else. Rader tried to talk some sense into him, without success. He too was court-martialed. "This ordeal was another blow to my mind," said Rader, "after Hoobler died and Howell was injured at Bastogne."
On February 20, Easy went into reserve, as the 3rd Battalion, 506th, took over its position. Within hours of Easy's departure, the Germans scored a direct hit on OP 2. Winters got his promotion to major that day. On February 23, the 36th Division relieved the 101st. The airborne division moved to Saverne, in the rear, in preparation for a return to Mourmelon.
The 101st had seldom been in a rear area. What the men saw there made them wonder how any supplies ever reached the front line. Twice in Haguenau they had received a beer ration of three bottles each. The cigarettes they got were Chelseas or Raleighs, much despised. No soap, an occasional package of gum, once some toothpaste—except for C and K rations and ammunition, that was all that reached the front lines. Being near a supply depot in the rear, the men learned why. The port battalions unloading the ships coming from America got their cut, the railroad battalions helped themselves to Milky Way candy bars and cases of Schlitz beer, chalking it up to "breakage," the truck drivers took the cartons of Lucky Strikes (by far the favorite brand), and by the time division quartermaster and regimental and battalion S-4 skimmed off the best of what was left, the riflemen on the front line were fortunate to get C rations and Raleigh cigarettes.
Shifty Powers got a new M-l. That was a mixed blessing. He had been using one issued to him in the States. He loved that old rifle. "It seemed like I could just point it, and it would hit what I'd pointed it at. The best shooting rifle I ever owned. But every time we'd have an inspection, I'd get gigged because it had a pit in it, in the barrel. You can't get those pits out of those barrels, you know. It's pitted in there." He got tired of being gigged, turned it in and got a new M-l. "And I declare, I couldn't hit a barn with that rifle. Awfulest shooting thing there ever was." But at least he wasn't being gigged any longer.
Colonel Sink 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 battlehardened 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!' "
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 wa
s 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 jump suits, 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 assignments 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 2nd 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 2nd Battalion. Lieutenant Welsh, recovered from his Christmas Eve wound, became 2nd 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 2nd 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 (2nd), Amos Taylor (3rd) 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 tr
ick 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.
Band of Brothers Page 27
