Filthy Thirteen

by Richard Killblane

  He said, “Well, you know they are going to use some of them. You cannot have this big of an operation without any pathfinding service.”

  I said, “Yeah, I realize that Lockland, but I will tell you what. I bet you a good bottle of whiskey that you and I jump before they do.” I really did not know. I was just trying to shake his confidence.

  He said, “Oh no, Jake. They’re holding us in reserve because we’ve already got three combat jumps.”

  I said, “Okay, let’s sit down and just kind of figure this deal out logically as to what’s going to happen. Now they’re telling generals and commanders where these guys are. You’ve got a general up there and he’s got two hundred thousand men under his command and divisions and artillery and this and that. He’s a pretty busy boy. He knows that Chalgrove Air Force Base in England is the headquarters of Pathfinders. If he needs one quick, that’s where he is going to go. He is not going to go to all these emergency spots. Every general in Europe knows where Chalgrove Air Force Base is and that there is immediate help there for anything. That’s what is going to happen. They’re going to get their tail in a crack and they are going to call right here and say, ‘Get a stick in the air right now.’”

  He said, “Oh no, I don’t think so Jake.”

  I said, “Well, I do. Bet you a whiskey.”

  He said, “Naw.” I had already planted the seed of doubt in his mind. I had drawn down his great sense of humor. “Naw, I won’t bet you, Jake.”

  Well it was just three days later when the 90th Division got cut off in there at Prume, Germany. Earl Robins was in one of those cavalry units of the 90th Division. They would rush through areas and if they just intercepted small-arms fire, light resistance, they did not even fool with it. They just kept going, kept going, and kept going. Then of course the column followed them. The Germans let them run clear through St. Vith and up into the middle of the Siegfried Line before they opened up on the 90th from every direction and really started eating them up. The 90th had been in such a rush and covered so much distance in a short time that they were out of everything. We loaded up and jumped into that Siegfried Line. That was our fourth combat jump for the three of us. The date was Friday, February 13.

  The jump was uneventful. We could reach up and grab two risers on one side and pull them down. That would let that air shoot through the panels so we could control the direction of our descent. There was a hedgerow with tall slender poplar trees. So we started slipping and that wind caught us and blew us right over that hedge of trees on the other side of a pillbox. We landed about a hundred yards from it. After that we began to maneuver on down to our objective. Of the ten men I took in, I think I only lost one. I reversed the percentages of Pathfinder casualties. They had been losing eight out of every ten and I got in there with nine out of ten men.

  As I was running across the field I saw one lung lying there in that snow. It was bleached out as white as paper. There was not a drop of blood anywhere around it. There were not any animal tracks. I could not see signs where people had been engaged in any fighting. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I could only figure that a plane had been blown apart over that area. That thing just fell down there.

  The 90th Infantry Division gave us quarters on the third floor of a building right close to the CP. We had one kid named Malcolm. He whistled and hummed all the damn time. This building we were in was shot up pretty bad. The rails were busted off the stairway. He walked out there to the wrong side of it. When he stepped out, there was nothing there. He plunged down three floors and hit his chin on the edge of one of those stairways. It drove his front teeth clear up into his gums and lips.

  So I sent him down to the aid station and they patched him up. When he came back, he could hardly talk. He did not have any diction. George Blain said, “Well, you son-of-a-bitch, you won’t be whistling all day around here anymore.”

  When we came back from Prume, all opportunity for airborne operations on a mass scale was just out of sight. That is when they returned me to my demolition platoon.

  RETURN THROUGH ST. VITH

  I do not remember exactly why but they gave me a two-and-a-half-ton truck to take my stick of Pathfinders back to Luxembourg. They had a big air base there where these shot-up C-47s and B-24s would limp back to set down for repairs before they were sent back to their assigned bases in England. So we left for Luxembourg where we would request passage back to England.

  We drove through this little old town of St. Vith and did not see anything. It did not have a brick over a foot high anywhere throughout. I mean it was just flat. Not a house had been left standing. They blanket bombed it starting west of town in the middle of the cemetery and the craters overlapped one another clear through.

  I looked at it and thought, “I don’t see any military importance or essence to this town.” There was not high ground or any elevated area, but I did see where a few tanks had been knocked out. We drove through that town with great difficulty because of all the rubble. I just wondered why they would have that kind of melee there.

  After the war, Earl Robins worked for the bank in Ponca City and had taken some tours back over to Europe with his 90th Division. I asked him one time, “Say Earl, tell me something. Did you fight through St. Vith?”

  He said, “I just drove through it Jake, we did not meet any resistance in it.”

  I asked, “What’s the story with it? Do you know? That place was blanket bombed.”

  He said, “Jake, there is kind of a funny story about that. I’ll show you a picture of it from when I was over there on this tour. What had happened was that the German high command had contacted Patton and told him that the little old city of St. Vith had great sentimental value for various reasons to the German people. They would appreciate it very much if he would just bypass it, just go through it and not destroy it. They told him there would be no resistance there and all that cock and bull. So Patton did. His people went through, the light infantry and the cavalry and all that. Then when they got into it with a column of heavy tanks, the Germans opened up on them from every side. Boy they killed them by the hundreds, knocking out tanks, trucks, and armor.

  “Patton told the air force, ‘I want that thing blanket bombed, east to west, north to south.’ And so they did it.”

  Earl then showed me the picture. It showed a pedestal in the middle of that town with a statue of Jesus Christ standing on it and across the base it said, “THOU SHALL NOT LIE!”

  THE TRUTH COMES OUT

  We were sitting around at a “get together” one day and this guy asked, ‘Where did you get four bronze stars on your wings? What jumps did you make?”

  I said, “Well, I jumped into Normandy. That was an arrowhead deal. I made the invasion of Holland. That was considered an invasion, an arrowhead jump. After that I volunteered for pathfinder parachute duty.”

  Captain Brown was sitting there and said, “What do you mean you volunteered for it? I shanghaied you into that.”

  I said, “I have been waiting years for you to tell the truth about this and it finally came out. You dirty rat. You shanghaied me into pathfinding service to get me killed, and in seven days you all were burning the wires up, begging and pleading for them to send McNiece in there to save the DIVISION!”

  He then said, “Well, that’s not true. I did not shanghai you in there. All I had to do was tell you something was going to be exciting and pretty tough and you would say, ‘I’ll try that.’ That’s what happened. I did not shanghai you.”

  I said, “You already said you did, Browny. So don’t hem-haw around.” He laughed.

  I said, “I made a jump into Bastogne after Normandy and Holland. After I got back out of Bastogne, it was just a little while before Patton had his 90th Division cut off and encircled in the middle of the Siegfried Line at Prume, Germany. I jumped in there on Friday, February the thirteenth. So I’ve got four.33

  He asked, “And you’re still a private?”

  I laughed, “Yes,
still a private. I would almost be ashamed to be anything but a buck private. I would not even want to be a PFC because people start classifying you with that group.” We all laughed.

  6

  END OF THE WAR

  LEACH’S PATROL1

  Hitler had engaged twenty of his divisions during the Battle of the Bulge for his last thrust of the war. After that failed, the Germans had little else to fight with. By then it was all but over. The Allies just used the 101st as shock troops driving down through southern Germany and Austria.

  While I was still in the Pathfinders, the division had moved into Haguenau, France. They still had some pretty heavy fighting. Across the Rhine lay Germany. They could hardly get across that river in rubber boats because the Germans would just eat them up. It was pretty tough in there at first but the Germans kept pulling out. Eventually it got to where the paratroopers would cross the river of an evening and find no Germans. Once in a while they might encounter some light resistance, but as long as it was light they would just keep rowing. If they ran into any concentrated fire, they would drift with the stream down to our own lines. It finally got to where the men who went over at night would get drunk. They would be over there with these frauleins2 drinking all night instead of fighting.

  Leach had not been in the S-2 very long before Colonel Sink moved him up to the S-3 and promoted him to major. He was supposed to issue orders and keep track of all troop movements so that if anything drifted in front of our men, shortly after the time a patrol went out, then it was considered friendly. Any other time, they should shoot it out of the water.

  Around about the time they were closing the Ruhr pocket, Leach decided he would finally lead a patrol. I guess he wanted to earn some medals. He took with him Frank Pellechia, Alfred Tucker, and three other guys. Tucker was also in the S-2 section.3

  Well, Dog Company had relieved G Company that night. So their outposts had changed. For some reason, the word did not get down to Dog Company that there would be a crossing attempted at such and such an hour. The patrol ran into just light resistance but Leach said, “Let’s go down the river.”

  When they drifted out in front of a boy with a BAR,4 he just ate them up. He killed four or five including Leach.5 I think Tucker was the only one who survived. He had been a very pleasant and quiet fellow but the war really got to him. He went home and became a total alcoholic. He would later call Top Kick Miller and talk as long as two hours, drunker than nine hundred dollars. He would not tell him where he was.

  Top said, “I don’t know how he was doing it. He may have been wiring a line of his own because I would try to trace the call and couldn’t.”

  Leach’s dad had money galore and contacts, too. He wrote some of the highest ranking officers in the United States and asked them to recommend his son for the Medal of Honor. They wrote back, “No dice.”

  For the Pathfinders nothing much happened after the Rhineland jump. On March 7, 1945, the Americans had established a bridgehead across the Rhine River at Remagen. As the Allies started pushing out from the bridgehead and through the Siegfried Line, the Germans began to pull back. That just eliminated any further need for Pathfinders so they returned us to our outfits.

  I asked a lot of different guys after the war, “What unit were you in?”

  One would say, “I was in the 45th to begin with.” He may be able to name one or two officers in the 45th. “But I left there and went over to the 2nd Armored. I stayed there so long, then I got shot and they sent me to a Repo Depot, then I joined the 90th Division or something.” They were in anywhere from two to three different units and they really never learned the names of their officers. They would have a first sergeant for a month or so, then he would be transferred, then they had a new first sergeant.6

  I had gone into Regimental Headquarters Company, Demolition-Saboteur Platoon in September 1942. I had the same first sergeant clear through the war and never moved out of the Demolition-Saboteur Platoon except to go into Pathfinders. We had a lot of lieutenants killed and so forth, some of whom I have forgotten. We had five or six different company commanders in that period of time. I knew all of them by name and just about where and when they were killed.

  In April, the army gave us transportation back to our units. I had the hundred Pathfinders from the 101st with me. I went back and rejoined the 506th Regimental Headquarters. I met up with my regiment just before they reached Lansburg. After we reported in, the regiment returned us to our original companies. My company put me right back in charge of my old section. I think Keith Carpenter returned to his old section. There were hardly any of the original men left but those who were were glad to see me because they knew they would be fed good. By that time there was very little fighting going on.

  The 506th had pushed down into the Austrian Alps. Herman Goering had a castle as his headquarters over on the Koenig Sea. His place presented a tactical problem because of its location. His castle was back in the end of a canyon which opened onto eight miles of lake. That attack was where I rejoined my regiment. We borrowed Goering’s boats to storm the castle and capture him. It was a little tough. Those SS and blackshirt boys defended him. I did not approach the castle, but set up right at the dam in case it became necessary to blow it and drain his lake. But our boys took his headquarters pretty easily.

  We then went down to the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden. It was Hitler’s headquarters down there in the Alps. We also took that pretty easily. The SS had two-story barracks up there in Berchtesgaden. The living quarters for two soldiers was as big as the living room of a house. Between every third barracks they had an ammunition storage box filled with arms and ammunition. It was there for them to use whenever they wanted. We had fun with it instead.

  We hauled out of both Goering’s castle and the Eagle’s Nest two- and-a-half-ton truckloads of the best whiskey, cognac, and wine that you ever saw. Goering was also a great lover of horse flesh. I will bet he had two hundred racehorses he had stolen from all those countries Germany invaded.

  From the time the division headed south it met light resistance all along the way unless we ran into a concentration camp or something run by the SS boys. We would then go in there and kill their asses. The German army did not have any fuel left. Nearly all of their transportation was horsedrawn. When we tied in with a group of them, the first thing we did was kill their horses so they could not maneuver or move equipment around.

  By that time we fought little ole kids, twelve and thirteen years old, and old men of seventy-five to eighty. So we picked out their SS officers and noncommissioned officers and killed them. It was very easy to observe who was an SS man, because those old men and kids were not doing any fighting. They were trying to find the biggest and deepest hole they could get into. The kids would be crying and the old men would be in shock. We just took those old men and little kids and stripped them of their knives and grenades and guns and ammunition. We laid their rifles on a curb, then ran back and forth over them with a truck to bust them up. Then we just told them to go on home. We did not have any transportation to handle POWs.

  ZELL-AM-SEE

  That was about all the action we saw in April and May. We finally ended up as occupational troops in the city of Zell-am-See, one of the biggest resort towns in Austria. It had nice big, plush hotels and a lovely lake. Colonel Sink pulled Jack Agnew off to be his boat man.7 We began living high on the hog.

  VE Day came on the 8th of May 1945, but we did not hear about it until the tenth. Everybody was thrilled to death, especially the officers. We immediately went GI just like back in training. We set up separate messes for the three grades: officers, noncoms and privates. I usually ate with my guys instead of with the NCOs.

  One day I came into the mess hall and someone said, “I guess you’ll not be eating with us.”

  I asked, “Why?”

  He said, “They have hot bread and butter in the sergeants’ mess.”

  I said, “I think I’ll go in there and get me some of that.
” So I went in there with all those sergeants sitting around. I reached down and picked me up some of that hot bread and butter and started eating it.

  This one sergeant asked, “Soldier, do you see anything else on this table that you want?” He knew I never ate with them.

  I said, “The army pays the same amount a day for rations for all soldiers. Every soldier has the same right to this food. If I want any of it, I’ll help myself to it.”

  He started to push back his chair to get up when Top Kick said, “You keep your ass glued to that chair. If McNiece wants it, you can believe he’ll take it.”

  MOPEY

  Zell-am-See was full of Northern Pike. We took all the boats and recreation vehicles in town. I made a fish run every day. I still had plenty of demolitions. I would rig a three-pound block with a three-second time fuse and drop it in the lake. The explosion would give the fish a concussion. We would then gather up into the boat all the fish that floated to the surface. We traded them for whiskey and cognac and other necessities that were hard for us to come by.

  Troy Decker of the communications platoon had a little dog named Mopey. He called it Mopey because it just moped around. He had been shot up in Normandy and had not recovered enough to jump with us into Holland. He and Top Kick had been watching us load the planes when this English woman who was also watching asked Troy if he wanted a puppy. Her cocker spaniel had just had a litter. Well, she gave him the runt of the litter. When he and Top Kick were brought into Holland, he had that two to three-week-old puppy in his musset bag. He kept it with him all through the war and it grew up to be a beautiful cocker spaniel.

  It always went with Troy and me when we went fishing with explosives. It had fun. We would throw Mopey out in the lake and he would swim back and shake that water off on us. That dog always stood right beside me and watched my every move. It had the routine down. After the explosion it would stand on that gunwale and as soon as it saw fish it started yipping.