A Company of Heroes

by Marcus Brotherton

  One Hundred Ways to Say Hello

  Dad returned home and went to college at the University of Ottawa in Canada for two years, then switched to Maryknoll Seminary in New York, still thinking about entering the priesthood. That’s when his younger brother, Mike, died. There are various family theories as to why Pat decided against the priesthood. Most likely it was because after Mike’s death Dad was the only remaining son in the family. Dad earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the State University of New York.

  After university, he returned to his hometown of Northampton and did odd jobs, but felt stifled there, so he moved to California in the late 1950s where he worked as a civilian for Edwards Air Force Base, a type of work that became his life’s career. He was a position classification specialist, a type of personnel manager. In 1968, our family moved from California to Washington, DC, where Dad continued similar work spending most of his career at the Pentagon. Dad lived in Rockville, Maryland, from 1968 until his death.

  He had many more interests besides his career and job. Mostly he just loved his family. Although working for the government, whenever people asked him who he worked for, he said, “I work for my wife and kids.”

  Dad married our mom, Gloria Lopez, in 1961. He was thirty-five when he got married. She was twenty-seven. My mom is Mexican-American, and came from a family with eleven children. She grew up in La Junta, Colorado. Her oldest brother, Edward Lopez, had been killed in WWII when she was in elementary school.

  When Dad met Mom, she was a junior high school English teacher at Edwards Air Force Base. They met at church. They were married quickly, less than a year after first meeting. They had two children, a boy, Kevin, and a daughter, me, Kris. Kevin grew up to be an Army military intelligence officer in Panama in the 1980s during the Noriega years. He was commissioned by Colin Powell. Later, Kevin worked as an ATF field agent in Miami, and later at the ATF headquarters in Washington, DC. I have a master’s degree in special education and work in mental health.

  Dad was a wonderful father. As a very little girl I remember not wanting to go to sleep. He held me and walked around singing this old Irish lullaby, “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra.” He could be a lot of fun, too. Sometimes my brother and I watched scary movies, and Dad hid behind the couch to scare us.

  He always told these stupid jokes. His favorite was:Did you hear about the three holes in the ground . . . ?

  Well, well, well.

  My dad cracked up whenever he said it, like we had never heard it before.

  He was always doodling, a bit of a dreamer. He worked complex math problems just for fun. He played a banjo, mostly in our backyard. He collected oddly shaped rocks.

  Dad attended all of our school events, athletic games, piano recitals, and swim meets. He coached basketball and soccer, his son’s best sport. Dad was a voracious reader and a regular at the Aspen Hill Library. He read several books each week, everything from historical fiction, to detective novels, to books about ancient languages, cave drawings, and early civilizations. He kept a bookcase at home in the bathroom downstairs—that’s how much he loved reading.

  Dad’s faith involved more than going to church. He saw his spirituality as a guiding force throughout his life. It affected how he saw things and treated people. Several times I remember asking him for advice, and Dad instructed me to discern what God wanted me to do. I remember feeling a sense of purpose, that God had an overarching control of all things, of hope, that I would see God in Heaven after death, and of security, that God accepted and loved me. All of Dad’s children and his three grandchildren, Brian, Alexandra, and Ella, are very involved with church today.

  Dad loved to meet people everywhere he went and learn little bits of different languages. He wasn’t a super-social type of person, but he could talk very easily to strangers. He credited that to his war experiences, how the travel overseas had expanded his world view. He was always trying to learn about other countries, people, groups, and customs. Before the subway was built in DC, he took buses to work, and met all kinds of people on his commute. He always tried to meet and befriend as many people as he could. He learned to say, “Hello, how are you,” in more than one hundred different languages.

  He retired in 1986, just after he turned sixty, the same year I graduated from college. They were getting computerized at work, and he decided he didn’t want to go through the hassles of learning the new system. Dad made a great retiree. He was still young and active. Many days he met with other retired friends and veterans at a McDonald’s in town to swap war stories, politics, and current events. Dad always wore his Airborne cap and smoked a pipe.

  After Ambrose’s book came out, and then the miniseries, he exploded as a local celebrity. There were news stories about him. He spoke to schools and community groups about his war experiences. Young fathers brought their kids to McDonald’s to get his autograph. I think it almost made some of the other guys jealous that he got all this attention.

  Dad seldom talked about his war years with us, but whenever he watched the evening news and a story came on about another war, Dad shook his head sadly and said, “You know, WWII was supposed to be the war to end all wars.”

  Dad absolutely loved going to the Easy Company reunions. He was closest with Clancy Lyall, Chris Christensen, Tony Garcia, Shifty Powers, Bill Guarnere, Babe Heffron, and Don Malarkey. I remember him talking about those men quite a bit. Dick Winters and Dad corresponded. Winters still sends bits of news to my mom.

  One Last Jump

  In Dad’s later years, he got arthritis in his feet and that slowed him down a lot. But he still loved to walk down by Rock Creek, and found it very peaceful there. He always mentioned different animals he saw down by the creek.

  In the spring of 2002, Dad got very sick and they had a hard time diagnosing him. He had a lot of tests done, including one at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, to figure out if he had picked up some sort of strange infection during the war. But he hadn’t. Finally they diagnosed him with two types of cancer, bladder cancer and a type of lymphoma. Dad had been a cigarette smoker his whole life. He had switched from cigarettes to pipes a few years before the diagnosis.

  In spite of the diagnosis, doctors didn’t know how to treat him. In August 2002, I was visiting, and Dad was really down. His weight had dropped considerably and he was barely moving off the couch. All he ate was vanilla ice cream, because he said nothing else tasted good. Doctors were suggesting various plans for treatment, but Dad wasn’t being cooperative at all. “It’s my time to go,” he kept saying. “I survived the war, but this is my time to die.”

  During that visit, he received an invitation in the mail to go to the Emmys in California with all his Easy Company friends. He perked up when he saw that. “You know,” he said, “I really want to go to that.”

  It sounded great, but I wanted to make sure. “You think you’re well enough to fly cross-country?” I asked.

  “I’m going to tell the doctors that they need to get started on me, and that I need to be well enough to go,” he said.

  Dad met with his oncologist immediately. “Do whatever you need to do,” he said. “Start the chemo.”

  About six weeks later, in September, we went to the Emmys. My mom had her fiftieth high school reunion in Colorado the same weekend, so she asked me if I could go with Dad. He was so excited. He didn’t seem as sick as he really was. He was trying to eat regular food again, and he could often eat a little bit.

  HBO treated us royally. We flew first class and were put up in a great hotel. After the Emmys, everyone went to the restauant Spago for a celebration. Dad was in a wheelchair then, and Tom Hanks was at the restaurant, too. Dad couldn’t get in the line where everybody was talking to Tom, but Tom came over to Dad and bent down to his level. They had a good talk.

  When we came home, Dad finished his course of chemo and radiation, but grew sicker. He was in and out of the hospital during the next few months. We spent a very enjoyable Christmas together where all the fa
mily was together one last time. By the first week of February 2003 his body grew very weak.

  We got the call on a Wednesday that Dad had grown very sick. We travelled to be with him, and my brother flew in from Florida. My mother and brother and I spent the day with him in the hospital. It was snowing heavily, and we went home that night. I’ve heard this from several wives of paratroopers before, that sometimes their husbands will jump out of bed in the middle of the night, like they’re dreaming of parachuting again. Dad was extremely weak, but the next morning when we went back to the hospital, a nurse told us that Dad had jumped out of bed during the night. I like to think he was dreaming of one last jump.

  On his last day alive, he was in and out, not talking, just resting. As I sat by his bed, I held his hand and prayed. I had this strange spiritual experience; I can’t quite explain it. I saw somebody come into the room—I could just barely see movement in the air—and it was like some sort of spirit moved Dad’s body up to a standing position. I think it was an angel coming to get Dad. I couldn’t actually see anybody, but I could see motion in the room—I don’t know how else to describe it other than that.

  When Dad died, we were all in the room with him holding his hands. Again I felt this strange presence, it’s hard to describe, but it was like I touched Heaven when I was holding his hands. I was feeling Heaven through him.

  Dad didn’t fear dying. He felt like he had lived a long life and done what he wanted to do. He felt that death was simply going home to be with God.

  He passed away on Saturday, February 8, 2003. At his funeral we had two photo displays of him, one with his family, the other with his war buddies. We played the Band of Brothers CD in the lobby for the wake. People told us how beautiful it all was.

  The next day at his Mass, we played a song called “On Eagle’s Wings,” based on Psalm 91, that talks about how God will lift you up on eagles’ wings and make you shine like the sun. Then a friend played “Amazing Grace” on the flute. I wouldn’t call the funeral sad. I would call it joyful, like Dad would have wanted it to be.

  Dad’s body was transported to Gate of Heaven Cemetery, where he was buried, and an Army representative came out and played “Taps”. It was a very cold day, it had just snowed, and the sound of a single bugle filled the air. The day was extremely clear, and as the sound rang out across the snow, it seemed to resonate forever.

  5

  GEORGE L. POTTER JR.

  Interview with Daniel Potter, son

  I was never quite positive that the stories my father told me about the war actually happened. At least from my perspective as a young boy, they didn’t seem real. We’d watch war movies with Dad, and he’d talk about all these far-flung places and horrific action scenes with familiarity, saying things like, “Yeah, that looks about right,” or “I was nearby there when that happened.” His stories seemed so extraordinary. I just couldn’t fathom how my dad—how anybody—had actually gone through all those experiences and lived.

  Dad didn’t help us understand much, either. If I ever asked Dad a question about his combat experiences, he wouldn’t say anything in return. He’d grunt or look away or make it clear somehow that he wasn’t going to answer any questions about the subject. Whenever he talked about the war, it was on his terms, and he talked mostly about the funny parts. I believed those more. He’d have a drink in his hand and tell stories about life in the barracks, his friends, and the good times they had, poaching deer in England, avoiding the officer of the day while stowed-away British girls fell through the attic of the barracks, things like that.

  My father, George L. Potter Jr., was one hell of a man. He lived creatively and intensely and was an innovator in his industry. He also died broken and bitter. Those were his life’s contradictions. He did much more than most men ever dream of doing, and he made it through the war physically. But psychologically, I don’t think he ever really survived the war. I think that’s the best way to put it.

  And what about me believing his war stories?

  Everything changed the night before the D-day museum opened in New Orleans. I was over there at the time and met someone by chance who put everything in perspective for me.

  At the museum opening, a woman named Lies Staal was introduced as a guest. She had been a fifteen-year-old girl living in Eindhoven at the time of the Market-Garden jump. The night before the opening we had a banquet. After the meal was over, I wandered over to her table to ask her a few questions. I was curious about what it was like to live under Nazi occupation. She told me all about it, how her father was in exile in the UK, and how she and her brother needed to walk to the town of Sonne to pick potatoes out of a field. They had heard there was some food there, and that’s what they ate to survive.

  This girl had witnessed the Allied parachute landing for Operation Market-Garden, and she and her brother had made their way back from the potato field to Eindhoven. The next day, when the troops came through, her mother had allowed her to stand in front of their house as the troops walked by. She had asked several of the troops to sign her autograph book. Years later, she had brought this book with her to the banquet, and she let me look at it.

  On the very first page was unmistakable handwriting. It was my dad’s signature: George L. Potter. It completely stunned me—when you think of the coincidences—it still chokes me up today. Dad had obviously made the jump into Holland. He needed to have walked down the correct side of the street where she was standing. That book needed to survive the bombing of Eindhoven a few days later. The woman needed to care for that book all of those years, and then hear about this D-day museum opening, and then bring the book to the banquet. Then I needed to go over and talk to her, and she needed to show me the book. What are the chances?

  Seeing Dad’s signature brought everything together for me. The piece of paper was tangible and the handwriting was his own, the scrawl that was so familiar to me. His stories and experiences were validated in my mind. I had no doubt that he had told me the truth all those years. His stories were horrific and far-fetched and fantastic—and it’s true. Real men actually lived through those extraordinary experiences.

  On a Motorbike in Swindon

  From moment one, my father was a military man. He was born in 1923 at Fort Benning. His dad was an officer from WWI and had fought in Europe with the 5th Infantry regiment. Later, my grandfather went into the ministry, which was quite a change from his previous career. After my dad was born, the family moved around from Fort Benning to Long Beach then to Arizona—Tombstone, Mesa, and Winslow—working at different churches in those cities, then to Spokane, Washington, then to Hood River, Oregon. That’s where my dad lived in 1942 when he turned eighteen and enlisted.

  When Dad enlisted, he came home and told everybody. His mother was really upset. But his dad said, “Well it’s not too bad. At least he’s enlisted, so he’ll be with a good group.” Then he asked what unit my dad had enlisted with. “The paratroopers,” Dad said. My grandfather shook his head and immediately hauled him back to the recruiter, trying to get him transferred out. But he was unsuccessful, and Dad stayed with the paratroops.

  When Dad enlisted he was still attending Hood River High School where he was a good athlete and track star. He held the state record for the quarter mile. He went into the military his senior year and received his diploma as part of his enlistment.

  Dad wasn’t one of the original Toccoa men. He was one of the very first replacements in Easy Company. He went through boot camp at Camp Roberts in California (Vandenberg Air Force Base today), and later joined the company February 22, 1943, while they were still training either in North Carolina or across the river at Benning. I’ve got Dad’s records. Captain Herbert Sobel initialed all the lines.

  Dad was never happy about joining Easy Company late. He was one of the original guys in many ways, but he always felt a bit slighted by the original Toccoa men for being a replacement.

  Although Dad seldom talked about combat, we’ve confirmed that he made
the Normandy jump with Easy Company. He was in Stick 69. He lost his rifle on the jump because the aircraft was traveling too fast and it flew out of his hands. He landed on the roof of a farmhouse near Ste. Mère-Église. He heard lots of shooting going on, so he slid off the roof into a walled yard where he found another trooper from another company. They both made it to safety and found weapons soon.

  We have a photo that shows a group of Easy Company men standing across a road outside Carentan. All the troopers have been identified except one, who we think is Dad. He looks just like Dad and is standing much like Dad stood at times. Next to this man is Don Hoobler with his arms crossed, and tipping his helmet is Bill Dukeman, who were both known to be friends of Dad’s.

  We have another group photo of Easy Company men where we have confirmed that Dad is in the group. Dad is standing with his arm on Dukeman and on the other side of him is Vernon Menze, both killed in action in Holland.

  As a kid, Dad would show us the official 506th scrapbook and point out pictures of himself in that book. There’s a photo of troopers marching in Ste. Marie-Du-Mont. He’s in that photo. When I visited Europe so many years later, I went to the mayor’s office in Ste. Marie-Du-Mont, and there’s a big blowup of that picture.

  I can remember Dad talking about his records. The military said he never officially made the jump into Holland, although that’s where he was wounded and why he received his Bronze Star, although the medal was given to him in 1949. It seems that Dad had stolen a motorcycle to go to a pub in Swindon with some of the guys—borrowed maybe, but the word he always used was “stolen.” On the way back to Aldbourne he crashed the bike and was put in a cast, so the rosters show him in the hospital. Dad heard that the jump into Holland was coming. He didn’t want to miss it, so he broke the cast off his leg, went AWOL from the hospital, and made it back to the airfield in time for the jump. He was wounded within a few days of the fighting in Holland, sent back to another hospital, and his records never caught up with him. So there’s no record of him ever being on the Holland jump.