Filthy Thirteen

by Richard Killblane

  So someone picked him up and stood him up against the doorway of that building with this outstretched hand up against the door jam. Then this guy hung the German’s rifle over the crook of his arm. Someone else found a silk hat and put it on him. They just left him standing there. After regiment set up this command post, a chaplain came in and boy he began to raise Cain like you never saw in your life. He started talking about respect for the dead and what the Geneva Convention said. Of course he never did find out who did it.

  Brown took that town four times but never gained full control of it. The fourth time the Germans took it, they held it. But during the last time they took that town someone shot Browny with an M1.

  He was evacuated to a hospital back in England where they were going to operate to take that bullet out. The division, however, came across a safe over there that they thought might have a lot of important German army documents that they wanted to get out. Of course, nearly anyone in the demolition platoon could have blown it open. We had been blowing safes open ever since D-Day. Everytime we found a safe, that was the first thing we attacked. But Browny was awful good at demolitions. We would have just blown up that safe and everything in it. So someone called the hospital over in England and said, “Release Captain Brown. We have need of him.”30

  The hospital said, “You don’t have need of this man and you’re not going to get him. He is in need of attention. He is not fit for combat duty.”

  So they jumped it right on up through channels and so forth clear up to Maxwell Taylor who was commanding general of the whole corps. He verified the absolute need for having that officer. He sent them orders to release Browny immediately and he would have him back to the hospital for surgery upon completion of the assignment. They flew him back from England just to blow up a safe for them and then they flew him right back. I do not think they found anything of importance, because Browny laughed about it. He joked mostly about what was not in there. Brown was a good man.

  VICK UTZ’S WATCH

  Vick Utz was one of the finest men I ever met in my life. He had been All-American out of Rutgers. He was full-blood German and spoke the language just like a native. Because of the language he worked in intelligence.

  In Bastogne his arm was shot off right at his shoulder. He just had enough of a stub left that he could grab in order to cut off the bleeding. The aid station was only about a hundred and fifty yards from him. He walked in and there were men in every stage of dying. So Vick just waited his turn. One of the aid men put a tourniquet on his arm and then he waited until they could dress it.

  He was engaged to a little ole girl named Dotty whom he would marry and raise four children. Vick asked Chaplain Maloney, “Captain will you do me a favor?”

  He said, “Sure.”

  Vick said, “My fiancée sent me a beautiful gold watch. She sent that to me for Christmas and it means a lot to me. It’s on my arm. I couldn’t manage to get it and hold this stub. My arm’s laying up there in the snow bank, right in the corner of this field.”

  Maloney said, “Sure, I’ll go get it.”

  So he made a mad dash up there and came back very shortly and said, “Vick, your arm is laying there right where you told me but there was no watch on it.”

  Well, I knew they had shot his arm off but I was not aware his watch was missing. After the war, the first time that I had gotten all the guys together in Nashville, Chaplain Maloney and Gene Brown and his wife invited Martha and me out for dinner.

  Chaplain Maloney said, “I had a problem with Vick.”

  I asked, “You did. When?”

  He said, “There at Bastogne.”

  I said, “That kind of amazes me. Vick was not the kind of guy you would hardly have a problem with. I just would not believe that he would be the creator of a problem.”

  He said, “Well, it was not that, Jake.” Then he told me about being in that first-aid station when Vick asked him to go up and get his watch. He said, “I went up there and the arm was laying there with no watch. Some paratrooper had stolen his watch.”

  I said, “Let me inject just a little bit of reason and logic into this thing. You know how everyone from corporal up was issued a watch?”

  He said, “Yeah.”

  I said, “They were very valuable to coordinate attacks or withdrawls or strikes. They were very essential to a good operation. If my rifle blinked out or I ran out of ammunition, the first thing I did was grab ammunition or a gun off of a guy who had been killed. If I had found that arm there with a gold watch on it, I would not have cared if it was gold or brass or tin foil. I would have taken it to use as an instrument of war. If I had a thousand dollars in my pocket, I would not mind throwing it on a bunk and leaving it and going on about my business. If I was going to be gone two or three days, it would not have been bothered. I never saw a paratrooper steal one thing off of another paratrooper, unless it was food, whiskey, or women. Paratroopers did not steal from one another. Let’s put you in the boots of the guy who found the arm with a beautiful watch. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to grab this arm and start running around all through the area asking, ‘Whose arm have I got? Here, you left your watch on it.’”

  Ole Captain Brown was sitting there and he kind of grinned and said, “Hell, Maloney. If I’d have found it I would have taken it.”

  Maloney then said, “Well, that makes me feel better. I really had not thought of it in that fashion.”

  I said, “Boy, a watch was a valuable instrument of war over there. When you are few and far between like you often were in paratroop units, you establish times and places where you will strike and where you are going to meet. They are very valuable. No one was stealing his watch. They did not know who in the hell’s arm it was.”

  HERB PIERCE

  By the time we got out of Holland, we only had one of those eight teenage kids left. All the rest of them had been killed. Kid Pierce was the only one still alive. Ole Top Kick Miller was a great man. He loved his troops. Boy, he really did. Top Kick told me about when they got ready to load on those trucks to go to Bastogne, “I just could not take that last kid in, Jake. I had eight of them kids and already got seven of them killed. So I just assigned Herb to rear echelon detail. He was so mad at me, he could have killed me.” So Herb never did go to Bastogne.

  All around Bastogne were pretty tall pine trees and firs. The Germans would try to kill us with those trees. They did not have good artillery air bursts. They did not have time detonation that would go off in so many seconds at such and such altitude. Theirs were not that sophisticated. So what they did was fire into those trees with point detonation. It was just like standing in a rainstorm of shrapnel and grenades. So they completely obliterated a number of growths of timber around Bastogne.

  They had a big ceremony over there about fifty years after the war. Herb was over there. When the veterans all gathered in there, the citizens of Bastogne took their names and forged brass plates with the name of every paratrooper and his rank on them. They took these saplings and replanted this forest, then they put the nameplates on the individual trees. So when they came to Herb, he said he would not let them put his name on a tree out there because he had not been involved in the battle. They said they would like to anyway but he said, “No, I was not here. I am not going to name one of those trees.”

  A lady was there from Son, Holland, where the 506th had landed. She was kind of impressed with his act. She asked if Herb and his wife, Elaine, would come and spend a week with them. So they returned by Holland and greeted her. When they arrived in Holland, the lady had placed a twenty-foot tree out there with his nameplate on it. They had three bands out there and the mayor just for Herb, him alone.31

  WAITING

  Our division stayed in there about seven days until Patton pulled through with the 4th Armored.32 Of course the Germans had about all they could take. They were out of gasoline and nearly everything else. They could not do anything further without having taken Bastogne with i
ts communication and road and railroad networks. So that is why Bastogne was considered very important for their operation. The 101st then helped push the Germans back out of the Bulge.

  They moved my two Pathfinder sticks back down to France near an air base. We were supposed to fly back to England the next morning and we were all packed up waiting in this Quonset hut. We just had our war gear. Some air force person came in and said, “The flight’s off. We’re weathered in.”

  So we took our gun belts off and hung them on the bed posts. We laid there all day and piddled around. The next morning at eight o’clock someone stepped in there and said, “The flight’s off, boys.”

  Jake McNiece in Ponca City, Oklahoma, in late fall 1942, having finished basic training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, and jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was home on leave before going on to extensive training and maneuvers as a demolition saboteur in Regiment Headquarter Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. The 506th PIR was the first regiment that trained as a regiment for parachute duty.

  Jack Agnew (served in 101st Airborne and Pathfinders), John Dewey (served in 101st Airborne and Pathfinders), Charles “Trigger” Gann (captured as POW in Bastogne).

  Littlecote Manor House, the home of Sir Ernest Wills. This photo was taken by Jack Agnew during a trip back for the 35th or 40th anniversary of D-Day. The 506th was stationed on the estate in 1943-44.

  Regimental Headquarters Company Demolition Platoon at Littlecote Manor in England: Standing: Hayford, Bogerhausen, Armando Marquez, Tom Young, Burl Prickett, Frank Kough Kneeling: Steve Kovacs, John Mohr, Mike Marquez, Milo Kane, Stacey Kingsley Laying: John Klack

  Some of the Filthy Thirteen and other members of the Regimental Headquarters Company gang are shown on this and the next three pages.

  Back row (l to r): Andrew E. “Rasputin” Rasmussen (wounded in Normandy)

  Jake McNiece

  Joe Oleskiewicz (died in Holland)

  George Baran (wounded in Normandy)

  Front row (l to r): Jack Agnew

  Charles “Trigger” Gann (captured in Bastogne)

  Chuck Plauda

  Back row (l to r): William “Piccadilly Willy” Green (died over Normandy)

  Joe Oleskiewicz (died in Holland)

  Jake McNiece

  George Baran (wounded in Normandy)

  Front row (l to r): George “Googoo” Redeka (died in Normandy)

  Thomas E. “Old Man” Lonegran

  John F. “Peepnuts” Hale (died in Normandy)

  Back row (l to r): Frank Kough, Clarence Ware (wounded in Normandy), Mike Marquez, Thomas Lonegran, Tom Young (wounded in Holland), Jim Davidson (died in Holland).

  Front row (l to r): Joe Oleskiewicz (died in Holland), Herb Pierce, Frank “Shorty” Mihlan, Steve Kovacs (wounded in Holland).

  Roland R. Baribeau (died in Normandy)

  Back row (l to r): George “Googoo” Radeka John “Dinty” Mohr Leach

  Kneeling (left): Andrew E. “Rasputin” Rasmussen

  Sitting (middle): Thomas E. Lonegran

  Hayford, John F. “Peepnuts” Hale, and William “Piccadilly Willy”

  Probably taken at Chalgrove Airforce Base outside Oxford, England, in February 1945, this photo is of men at the Pathfinder school at Chalgrove. Those men whose names are marked below with* were in the first plane, and those marked** were in the second plane of Pathfinders that flew into Bastogne.

  Note the three hash marks above the cuffs of most of the men. The 506th sailed for England in September 1943, and each hash represents six months service overseas.

  Back row, from left to right

  Lt. Shrable Williams*

  ? White

  John (Jack) Agnew*

  Lockland Tillman**

  Charles Parlow**

  James Benson

  Front row, from left to right

  Richard Wright

  Irving Shumaker**

  James (Jake) McNiece*

  George Blain*

  A glider approaching a drop zone marked by the Pathfinders at Bastogne between December 23–26, 1944.

  This picture shows the field where the Pathfinders landed on December 23, 1944, with the cemetery, church building, and Bastogne in the background. (Photo was taken in 1990s.)

  The famous brick pile at Bastogne. Pathfinders are seen operating their CRN-4 set. Jack Agnew is on top of the brick pile.

  Supply drop at Bastogne, December 1944.

  This was the group that made the practice jump at Zell-am Zee on July 4, 1945, trying out the new quick-release parachute harness. The landing in the middle of Zell-am-Zee was a very cold one!

  Back row from left to righ t:

  Lt. Robert Haley

  Lt. Ed MacMahan

  Lt. Sterling Horner

  Lt. Leo Monoghan

  Lt. John Stegeman

  Kneeling, from left to righ t:

  Jake McNiece (Path finder)

  Harold Anderson

  Leonard Cardwell

  Ed Borey

  Stacey Kingsley

  John Dewey (Path finder)

  Raymond H. McNiece, captain in U.S. Army Air Corps, and James E. (Jake) McNiece, Pvt. in U.S. Army Paratroopers. Photo was taken in Ponca City in December 1943 while both men were on leave.

  Note the Third Army patch on Jake’s shoulder. After Jake returned from this leave the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was attached to the 101st Airborne Division. Jake was proud of the fact that he never rose above the rank of private.

  Raymond ended up in the China/Burma/India Pacific theater flying supplies, etc. He made many trips over the “Hump,” flying supplies to China for Allied bases in southern and southwestern China until those bases were taken by the Japanese. Raymond attained the rank of lieutenant colonel before discharge after the war.

  Well, we were again all ready to go back to England. On the third day when they canceled it, ole Whitey reached down and grabbed his forty-five, jacked one in it and jammed it against his helmet. I was real close to him. As I was reaching for him, he pulled that trigger and it knocked a hole as big as a half dollar through that tin roof just above his head.

  I slapped that gun out of his hand and asked, “What in the world are you doing? You idiot!”

  He said, “I wasn’t trying to blow my head off, Jake. I was just disgusted but I knew my pistol was empty.”

  I asked, “How did you know it was empty?”

  He said, “Because when we got back here and had no more fighting, I took the clip out of it and threw it away.”

  Agnew was standing there and grinned. “Whitey, I was walking up the aisle there the other day and I noticed you had lost your clip. So I had some extra and I just put one in it.”

  Whitey said, “I don’t know what in the world happened. I was not about to shoot myself. I would rather a German do that, but just before I squeezed the trigger, something said, ‘Get it away from your head.’ Then I just flexed my wrist.”

  MORE PATHFINDER MISSIONS

  REWARD

  So we finally flew back to Chalgrove and waited until needed again. Some officer recommended that all the men on the operation receive the silver star because of the danger. It had not been any different from anything else I had ever done. Colonel Sink said, “Aw hell, that’s just normal activities for paratroopers. Give them another bronze star.”

  So we all received the bronze star for that action in addition to one for the inserted entry. In total we earned two bronze stars at Bastogne. Colonel Sink also found out that none of us had been killed. That is why he had sent us into the Pathfinders to begin with. So he sent a cablegram over to our company commander: “You send those six men out of Regimental Headquarters Company back to me. Evidently, I can kill them quicker than you can!” He actually did this. He was a rough old coot. He did not mind laying it out on the line.

  That Pathfinder company commander sent him a letter back: “You can have five of them but you can’t have McNiece. I’ve got the highest prior
ity there is in Europe and he is essential to this operation.” I was the guy they were wanting to get rid of all the time. So he sent the others back. I stayed with Pathfinders another two months and made one more jump.

  We conducted regular infantry training along with our Pathfinder training. We studied patterns of panels and various levels of infrared lights so that the Germans could not see them from the ground. We had unlimited passes. The guys would go into London anytime they liked. I just told the guys to show up for training. We had a ball.

  PRUME JUMP

  February 13, 1945

  The Americans were just getting ready to cross at the Remagen bridgehead and penetrate German soil. So they figured that they might need some Pathfinders. They took nine of my 101st sticks and strategically placed them behind objectives where they thought they might need pathfinding services. There were three of us in my ten-man section—Lockland Tillman, George Blain, and myself—who had three combat jumps. One and a half was the average life expectancy of a combat paratrooper. So in order to do us a favor, they held us in reserve and did not station us at any one of the strategic points.

  We were standing there watching the others load up. Lockland said, “I feel sorry for them poor bastards.”

  I asked, “Why?”