A Company of Heroes

by Marcus Brotherton

  Dad had never talked about the war to us when we were growing up, or at least very seldom. About all we knew was that he had been a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne. He never went to any of the reunions. He was one of those “lost” men of Easy Company you hear about. There was one other veteran from Easy Company, George Luz Sr., who also lived in Rhode Island near where we lived, and he and Dad met together once after the war. About all Dad ever talked about from his combat days was an incident about a soldier he had been with in Bastogne who had accidently shot himself in the leg and bled to death. Dad never mentioned him by name, but we found out later it was Don Hoobler. The experience is shown in the miniseries.

  HBO wanted to bring the veterans over to France for the premiere of the miniseries. At first, my father was reluctant to go. But he couldn’t give any really good reasons for not going, so eventually we convinced him. My mother went also, along with my wife and me. It was the first time in fifty-seven years that Dad had met up with those guys.

  First thing in Normandy, Dad caught sight of Dick Winters. He had always thought highly about Winters. He was really happy to see him. Back during the war, Winters and the rest of the men had given Dad the nickname “Frenchy” because he could speak French. Winters used him for an interpreter back in the war, then also relied on his language skills again at the premiere. We thought that was a good connection to make again.

  All in all, I think Dad was glad he went to the premiere. When he came back he started getting phone calls and letters from fans of the Band of Brothers. Dad always said, “I don’t understand why people want my signature.” He was proud of his service, but never bragged about it. He always told people that he was not a hero but merely did his duty for his country.

  First Platoon Man

  My father was born in Rhode Island on May 19, 1925. He was the youngest of thirteen children. Some of my aunts and uncles were born in Canada, but Dad was born in the States.

  My grandparents were French Canadians and had immigrated in the 1920s to America from Quebec. They came to New England primarily to work in the mills because there was no work for them in Canada. My grandparents only spoke French at home, and Dad picked up English from friends in the neighborhood and at elementary school.

  Dad grew up during the Great Depression. There wasn’t much money for the family in spite of the millwork. My grandfather also worked as a farmer. I think everybody grew food back then. The family depended on income brought in from the older children to buy the food for the rest of the family.

  Times were hard all around, and Dad quit school to work. He never reached high school. He joined the service in 1943 when he was just 17. My grandfather needed to sign for him to get him in.

  Dad wasn’t one of the original Toccoa men. He trained in Georgia at Fort Benning, then was sent to Aldbourne, England, where he was assigned to E Company as a rifleman in February 1944. He was eighteen when he got to England. He turned nineteen on May 19, 1944, then jumped into Normandy two weeks later on June 6. He was one of the youngest men in the company.

  Dad was assigned to the first platoon. We have a roster dated May 1, 1944, that shows Dad, along with privates Van Klinken, Miller, and Webb (who went to company headquarters), all in the fourth squad. Dick Winters was the platoon leader then, and Harry Welsh was assistant platoon leader. Dad was in Winters’s plane when they jumped in Normandy.

  Dad told me that when he first got into the company he was kind of frowned upon by the older guys, even though none of them had been through any combat yet. If you weren’t one of the originals, you weren’t part of the company—that’s how some guys felt, anyway.

  Once in a while he told us some funny thing about what happened in the service. For instance, because of his language skills, the older guys in the company had him line up the French girls and prostitutes for them when they were in France. I guess that’s how he became friends with them. After they found out he could get girls for them, they became his buddies.

  When we went to France in 2001, we met Carwood Lipton, whom Dad always respected a great deal. My father started talking to Carwood. He said, “You remember that time I brought some French girls to the barracks, and you came in and yelled at me, ‘Frenchy, get those whores out of here!’” Carwood and Dad had a good laugh over that.

  When Dad jumped into Normandy, he landed in an apple tree near the outskirts of Ste. Mère-Église. He had a map but no idea where he was, so he sat in the field awhile and watched other soldiers dropping in. He could see tracers hitting people, and men getting killed. When it became light the next morning he spotted a farmhouse nearby. He took the map to the farmhouse and asked the farmer in French where he was and where he should be heading.

  Dad met up with a few other guys and they headed out to where they were supposed to meet up with Easy Company. He was separated from E Company for about thirty-six hours after landing. He was finally able to rejoin the company and fought in the battle of Carentan. He survived all of that fierce fighting. He never got hurt, not that he told me.

  Dad made it through Normandy, then jumped again in Holland for Operation Market-Garden, then went on to Bastogne. That was the roughest part of the war for him, he said.

  Bastogne was his last full-fledged battle. Sometime in January 1945, his feet grew really bad from trench foot. Then he got bronchitis so bad he could hardly breathe. So they took him out of Bastogne and sent him to a hospital in England where he recuperated.

  Then they sent him back to Easy Company when they were in Austria, just before the end of the war.

  He was one of the very few members of Easy Company who never got wounded. I used to kid him, “You must have been hiding pretty good.” He laughed at that. He was discharged from the Army in December of 1945 and returned to Rhode Island.

  One of the Guys

  When my father first got home from the war he started doing odd jobs, then he found work in the mills. He married my mother, Rita, in April 1947. I was born in October 1948. Eleven months later, my sister, Susan, was born. We’re the only kids in the family.

  Growing up, we lived in a small town in Massachusetts, right near the border of Rhode Island. As a hobby, he liked to play cards with his friends. His favorite card games were poker and blackjack.

  Dad worked in mills for most of the rest of his career, but at one time he had his own business, a small machine shop, and ran that for a while. Sometimes, as kids, we worked for him part-time if he needed us to help out. Mostly, he made parts for machines in the lace industry, which is big in Rhode Island. He retired in the late 1980s.

  He was a good father. Sometimes he was even more like a friend than a father. When I was a teen, my friends liked to come over to the house. Dad often sat down and played cards with us. In some ways, I think my father had lost his youth because he went into the service so young. So, as I was growing up in my teens, he was often like one of us. He took us fishing, bowling, different things like that. He was never mean or anything. He was just another one of the guys. At times he had that paratrooper cockiness about him and he liked to tease a lot. Undoubtedly when he was in Easy Company he caught the brunt of a lot of teasing himself for not being one of the originals and being one of the youngest in the company.

  Though Dad talked about the funny things in the service, he never talked about the killings or anything, though I’m sure he saw a lot of action. For some reason, the war didn’t seem to burden him as much as it did some of the others. I think that when he got out, he was just happy he made it out alive. Once he got out, he was out of it, and he went on living his life—that’s how he saw things.

  Or maybe he adjusted well because he had all those brothers and sisters praying for him. My grandparents were very religious, and Dad was religious, too. He went to church every Sunday. We were Catholics. St. Joseph’s Church in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, was the last parish he was involved with.

  In mid-January 2005 Dad and Mom left to go on vacation in Florida. On their way back home they were b
ringing the car back to the rental place at the airport. He pulled the car off the road, passed out, and died. My mother was with him. That was it. He didn’t really suffer or anything. He had been a little bit overweight and had some problems from that, and he had some problems with chronic bronchitis. I think that came from smoking over the years.

  My mother is still living here in Rhode Island. She is doing pretty well for her age. She doesn’t drive anymore, but we look after her and try to take her out once a week. Mom and Dad were married for fifty-seven years. They have two children, four grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. All of us miss him a lot.

  4

  PATRICK O’KEEFE

  Interview with Kris O’Keefe, daughter

  In his memoir, Parachute Infantry, Easy Company veteran David Kenyon Webster described my father as “one of our younger and more gentlemanly replacements.”8 Both parts of that description seem to fit my father well: young, and gentlemanly.

  My father’s name, Patrick O’Keefe, is perhaps best associated with a scene in the miniseries where he and Frank Perconte are talking while on guard duty in Germany. It’s toward the end of the war, and my father has just come in as a replacement and is eager to see action. Frank has already seen two years of fighting by then and doesn’t want to be bothered by a greenhorn’s enthusiasm. Frank is trying to read a paperback while my father snaps together his machine gun and hums, “She’ll be coming round the mountain.” Frank tells my dad to relax and calls him by the wrong last name—O’Brien—for the second time. When my dad corrects him—I told you, it’s O’Keefe—Frank tells him to shut up, then launches into a tirade about how no one cares what his last name is anyway, because there are too many replacements showing up all gung ho for the war who will soon be shot and wounded, screaming for a medic, begging for their mamas.

  In several other places in the miniseries, my father is epitomized as one of the younger, greener replacements. He’s seen looking very shocked, in contrast to the other more experienced men who smoke and relax, as they travel in the back of a truck while French soldiers shoot German prisoners in the head by the side of the road. Then he’s seen looking nervous while patrolling with his squad right before they find the concentration camps. Bull Randleman asks him why he’s so jumpy, and says that he can hear his heart pounding in Arkansas. Someone has even assembled a video about my dad that’s posted on YouTube about how many times he needs to correct the men about his last name.

  My father was indeed young when he fought with Easy Company. He was only seventeen when he went into the service. He was a paratrooper who made all his qualifying jumps and had his wings but never made a jump into combat. Years later when I met many of the men at the Emmy awards, they were still teasing Dad about being a kid. And Dad was good naturedly taking it. “Yeah, I’m just this green kid,” he said, though he was well into his seventies.

  That shows his personality. He was always known for his good nature, his kindness, and for a life well lived after the war.

  Living on Purpose

  Patrick O’Keefe was born April 3, 1926, in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was one of the youngest of the Band of Brothers.

  His parents had both been born in Ireland and had married after moving to the states. His father, Cornelius O’Keefe, worked as a policeman in Northampton and was referred to by the nickname “Connie Keefe, the Cop.” His mother cleaned houses for professors at nearby Smith College. Family members described Northampton as a beautiful, safe, small town, an ideal place to grow up.

  Dad had two older sisters, Ellen and Breeda, a younger brother, Mike, and two younger sisters, Mary and Johannah. They all liked to ride their bikes up to Look Park in Northampton. The O’Keefe kids hung out at the library and at Smith College. They played kick the can, hide-and-seek, and different kinds of ball. Dad was a Boy Scout.

  Everyone in the family was a devout Catholic. Life revolved around the church. Pat was an altar boy and always attended Sunday Mass and First Friday seven a.m. Mass, even when it was cold outside in winter. A younger sister remembers Pat walking her to seven a.m. Mass one time and pointing out Venus in the early morning sky. The family went to no-vena, special prayer meetings held on nine consecutive days. As a child, Pat heard that missionary priests were needed in China and thought that might be his calling.

  Dad went to St. Michael’s Catholic High School. He was on the basketball team but was a substitute, not one of the regular players or big stars. During the big championship game versus the next town over, he got his big break. He was put in the game for the last thirty-seven seconds and scored five points, which prompted a championship win for his team.

  Dad worked for the city of Northampton’s recreation department while he was in high school, coaching young students in track and field. His sister, Mary, was one of the kids he coached.

  His younger brother, Mike, was a strong athlete. He played baseball and was scouted by the pros. At age eighteen, he went into the Marines near the end of the war but was never sent overseas. Tragically, Mike died at age nineteen of a heart attack.

  His brother’s death affected Pat a lot. He often wondered why he was the one to live when his younger brother died. He continually vowed to make something of his life because his brother didn’t have the chance. He vowed this again after the war. Why had others died when he had lived? Again, he vowed to live purposefully in their honor.

  The Irish Replacement

  Toward the end of high school, Dad figured he’d go into the priesthood. But he felt he also had a duty to serve his country, so he enlisted while still in school. He graduated at seventeen, started college and took civil engineering college courses, then went through jump school, and shipped out from New York on the Queen Elizabeth in late January 1945.

  In a radio interview right around when the book Band of Brothers came out, Dad described his first jump. “I was scared at first, but once the chute opened, I remember saying what a grand and glorious feeling, a spectacular way of getting to the ground.”

  Years after the war he wrote friends of his, describing his first jump. It says as much about his character as it does about the jump.

  On the day of my first parachute jump at Ft Benning, Ga as I approached Lawson Field aboard a C-47 for my first airplane ride, I suddenly felt scared and a prayer popped into my head: “O Holy Ghost, spirit of truth and holiness, enlighten my mind and strengthen my will to shun evil and to do good.”

  Lo and behold I calmed down and went through my first jump without a hitch. In the long haul any good accomplishment can be laid at God’s feet.

  After his first jump, Dad said he always prayed the Magnificat anytime before he jumped or headed out on duty. Some of the text of the prayer is taken from Luke 1:46-55.

  Being Irish was extremely important to Dad, and he talked about his heritage all the time. He never actually visited Ireland. On the boat ride over the Atlantic, he passed by Ireland but fell asleep for that part of the voyage. That was as close as he ever got to Ireland. He always kicked himself for that.

  Dad described joining Easy Company in France. From a replacement depot, he came to camp about eight o’clock at night. It was cold and blustery. The replacements came off their truck, were told simply to find a cot, and were sent to a tent. When Dad went inside the tent he saw a group of the men playing cards. Although most were around twenty-one or twenty-two, to Dad they looked “tough, old, and grizzled,” and he said to himself, “I think you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, O’Keefe.” He was assigned to 1st platoon, under Lieutenant Jack Foley and Sergeant Pat Christenson.

  The book talks about how on his third night in Mourmelon, Dad went out on a night problem at midnight. As the men walked in the dark in single file, Dad lost sight of the man in front of him. He tensed, looking around. A quiet voice from behind him said, “You’re okay son. Just kneel down and look up and you can catch sight of them against the sky.” Dad did and caught sight of the troops.9 Only later he learned that the voice had b
een from Major Dick Winters, then battalion staff, who had come back and was leading an all-night exercise for an outfit now full of replacements, which speaks highly of Winters.

  Once in France the men were all hungry and went looking for something to eat. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out all he had—thirty-five cents. It wouldn’t have bought much. Then he saw a church and decided to put his last money in the collection box for the poor. He believed that God would provide for him and the men. There was no immediate miraculous provision of food, but the men kept going and eventually found some food somewhere. Dad said he wasn’t seeking a miracle; what mattered was that he was trusting God and giving all he had.

  Dad rode into Germany with the outfit where they saw little fighting. Mostly they were involved in occupation duties. In his interview with HBO, Dad mentioned that at the end of the war he saw a dead German soldier on the ground still holding a Catholic missal (prayer book). It struck him how alike they all were, young men just doing their jobs.

  On May 8, the last day of the war in Europe, he and Harry Lager went to a storage space to look for eggs. When they kicked in the door, two Italian deserters were inside. They jumped up, and Dad and Lager pointed their rifles. There was a bottle of champagne on the table and one of the Italians said, “Pax,” and they drank a toast to peace.

  On the way back to camp, Dad and Lager met a German officer with a bum leg who had been in the North Africa campaign. He invited them in for wine and they toasted the end of the war. “It was the best thing they could do,” Dad said, “to all say yes, that darn war was finally over.”