A Company of Heroes

by Marcus Brotherton

  When my uncle first went to volunteer for the paratroopers, the waiting room was filled with soldiers all hoping to get in. The recruiter went through his list, then told the men, “It’s all filled up this month, come back next month.” Next month when my uncle came back, the captain again looked through his list and said to my uncle, “Sorry, you can’t join. You’re a Jew.”

  “What of it?” my uncle said.

  “You can’t be in this outfit,” the recruiter, a captain, said. “Jews don’t have enough guts.”

  My uncle was furious, grabbed the recruiter from behind his desk, punched him, and knocked him down. He was immediately called into the general’s office. The general really ripped him up and down and said, “Don’t you realize that you can be put in Leavenworth for the duration of the war, and even worse, for striking a superior officer during wartime? If you had been on the battlefield, you’d be shot!”

  My uncle didn’t say anything. The general calmed down and added, “Privately, I admire what you did, so I’m approving your papers, and I’m sending the captain off to be reassigned someplace else.”

  Ambrose was actually crying after I told him this. “My God,” he said. “Fighting his way to get in—this is the kind of people we had back then!”

  The original story was told by newsman Walter Winchell on his Sunday night radio broadcast. A Philadelphia area women’s group picked up the story and decided to honor my grandmother for her son, who had the courage to fight his way into the outfit.

  It was good to talk with Ambrose. I asked him why I was so obsessed with finding out information about my uncle. Was it just me, or did others feel the same way?

  “We’re all this way to one degree or another,” Ambrose said. “It’s a staggering thing to find out the last words, the last thoughts, the last breath, of someone who’s disappeared so far away in combat. Of course you’re going to wonder about your uncle. All men ultimately want to know two things—‘To whom do I owe thanks that I should live in such opportunity?’ And, ‘Will I have the courage when the time comes?’ Knowing about your uncle helps you answer those two questions.”

  On the Plane Home

  The heart-wrenching story about my uncle is that he actually survived being shot in combat. After he was wounded, he was all set to return to the States and pick up with his wife where they left off.

  He had met his wife, Joanne, when the men marched from Toccoa to Fort Benning, Georgia. She was stationed in Atlanta as part of the Red Cross. Her job was to welcome the troops when they arrived in the city. He met her there at the end of the hike, and they fell in love.

  Herbert Sobel was my uncle’s best man. I don’t know what type of relationship he had with Sobel, but evidently it was good enough. Sobel gave them a forty-eight-hour leave. My uncle and his new wife were together for two weeks. Then he was shipped overseas.

  I’ve spoken with my uncle’s widow. She resented my grandmother for not allowing her the possibility of having any children with George. My grandmother convinced her to use birth control. They were only married for two weeks before he left, but at least it would have been possible for them to have conceived. She later remarried.

  My uncle was shot just outside Carentan in the early morning of June 12, 1944, immediately prior to Easy Company attacking the town. The men were taking a break, and my uncle went to relieve himself. Colonel Strayer noted that George was out of position. A colonel observes the attack, and my uncle should have been next to the colonel, far away, observing the battle. But George apparently wanted to be as close to his buddies in Easy Company as he could. He was taking a crap in a field between E Company and F Company when a German sniper shot him in the butt. Ambrose notes the hour, that my uncle was hit just before six a.m., and the whereabouts, a field near the last one hundred or so meters of the road by the T junction leading into Carentan.36

  My uncle was taken to England to recuperate. He was going to live, but evidently it was a serious enough wound that his fighting days were over. Then, flying back to Bangor, Maine, the Red Cross hospital plane he and twenty-one others were on was shot down, somewhere off the coast of Nova Scotia. You can imagine the emotions my family went through—hearing that he’s been shot, which was a shock enough, but also a relief that he’s still alive, then not being able to visit him when he’s in the hospital in Europe, then the joy at hearing he’s coming home, then the horror that his plane is lost over the Atlantic on the way home. It’s like he was lost twice.

  Newspaper articles describe the exhaustive search for the plane that followed. The wreckage was never found. It was the only Red Cross plane lost during the war. Authorities believe the plane was shot down by a German U-boat. Eventually it was discovered that a U-boat in that area had a habit of sending SOS signals. Planes would fly down low to see if they could help, then the U-boat would shoot them out of the sky. The date of my uncle’s death is listed as July 26, 1944. There was a memorial service held for him back in America.

  Living on Through Freedom

  In 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-day was being held in Normandy, and a big spread was featured in the Boston Globe that showed where all the allied troops had landed. I saw the spread, and it was like a light bulb went off for me.

  Right away I went to my father and said, “Let’s go find the place!” But my father was still reticent to sift through the past. I decided to go anyway. I went over to France to the village of Carentan, found the town’s mayor, and talked with him. With me, I had Ambrose’s book that shows the picture of the town the morning Carentan was taken. The caption underneath reads, “Winters led the men down the road coming in from the left in a frontal assault against a German machine-gun position in the building to the right.”37 It was key for me to find that same scene in the present day. If I found that road, I could walk back from the town and find the field where my uncle was shot.

  We were all standing in the lobby of the Hotel du Ville in Carentan when I showed the mayor the picture. Others were looking at the picture as well. They were mostly young people, and they said, “Oh, this is not Carentan, this picture. You see the name on this wall? This is St. Sauveur du Ville.” (The conversation was all in French.)

  I was heartbroken. I really wanted to find as close to the exact location he was shot as possible. But then someone got an idea and said, “Let’s call in a man who was here the day the Allies came.” So they called a man in who must have been in his mid-eighties. He came over to the hotel dressed up in a suit and tie. Someone said he dressed up just to come to talk with me. He looked at the picture and said, “No, no, this is here. We wrote ‘St. Saveur du Ville’ on the buildings to fool the Germans. We didn’t want them to know what town they were in.” He pointed to buildings. “You see those three smokestacks? Those are the same three smokestacks on the road that leads into Carentan.”

  I thanked him, jumped into my rental car, and headed down to the road he pointed out. Sure enough, the three smokestacks were still there, just like in the picture. I walked the length of the road and touched very near the same place where my uncle had fallen. It chokes me up even today when I think about it.

  Several years after I visited Carentan, I was invited to Normandy with the Band of Brothers. I was on Utah Beach with many of the survivors, and met many of my uncle’s friends, including Moose Heyliger, Richard Winters, Colonel Strayer, and John Martin—they all remembered my uncle and remembered his voice. They told me that he was generous, good, strong, and kind.

  He wasn’t buried because they never found his body, but his name is listed on a plaque in Westminster Abbey as missing in action. There’s another plaque that the Boy Scouts have made for him that says, “George Lavenson, March 26, 1917-July 26, 1944. Freedom Lives, and through it, he lives in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.”

  That phrase means much to me, to think that he lives on in freedom. I guess I simply don’t want my uncle to be forgotten, like I don’t want any of the veterans killed in the war to be forgot
ten. I placed a small sign in his honor on the front of Camp Kennebec that reads, “The George, Jim, and Jay Lavenson Canoeing Camp,” after my father and his two brothers. It’s not an official name change; it’s just one small way I’m keeping the memory alive.

  One more thing: To this day I carry around his clicker, that one that the men used to identify themselves in Normandy. I’ve got it right here in my pocket. I click it often, and I’m still waiting to hear the return.

  24

  WARREN “SKIP” MUCK

  Interview with Eileen LaFleur O’Hara, niece With additional information from Ruth Muck LaFleur, sister,38 and Richard Speight, actor

  It’s hard to talk about Warren “Skip” Muck, even today, more than sixty years after his death. He was my uncle, the brother of my mother, Ruth Muck LaFleur. So many people loved him, and he had so much potential—he must have been really incredible. I miss the man I never met.

  For a long time our family didn’t know much about the circumstances surrounding his death, so, naturally, when we began to meet the other veterans from Easy Company, we wanted to know as much as possible. But, it’s funny, whenever my sister and I talked to the veterans about Skip, they would tear up. Even just being introduced to us seemed upsetting to them. I know Don Malarkey has a difficult time talking about Skip. He’s always overcome by emotions. So even after we’ve discovered so much, we still don’t know all we’d like to know.

  It’s not only his fellow veterans either. Tonawanda, where Skip grew up, is a fairly small town where a lot of people know each other. Years after his death, as I also was growing up in Tonawanda, if anyone found out I was Skip’s niece, the first thing anyone said was how much they loved him. People couldn’t speak beyond that one phrase. It was that way with anyone I met. Everybody simply loved Skip Muck.

  Swimming the Niagara

  As a little kid, Warren Muck never walked anywhere. He was a cheerful boy who found joy in the simplest of activities—like moving from point A to point B. Whenever he moved, he skipped. That’s how he got the nickname. It stuck into his adult years.

  Despite his sunny disposition, it wasn’t like his family didn’t have any problems. Skip’s dad was a traveling musician and virtually abandoned his family for the sake of his career. Skip was the middle child of three children. He had an older brother, Elmer, and a younger sister, Ruth, and, as a natural leader, Skip assumed the role of man of the family from an early age.

  He was especially close to his little sister, Ruth, who grew up to become my mother. She was eighteen months younger than Skip, and he was always good-hearted toward her. He worked two part-time jobs to bring in extra money for the family: delivering papers throughout the week and selling hot dogs at a stand downtown on weekends. If ever his little sister needed a few extra dollars, Skip always shared. He bought toys and roller skates for her when she was young.

  Skip’s older brother was different. Skip fought all his older brother’s battles. One day Elmer came home from school all bloody.

  “Where’ve you been?” Skip asked.

  “I was in a fight,” Elmer said. “Some bully beat me up.”

  “Well, where is he?” Skip asked.

  Elmer told him. Skip went out, found the older bully, and beat him up on his brother’s behalf. That was the last time the bully ever messed with Elmer.

  Skip attended St. Francis of Assisi grade school, and then Tonawanda High School. He was very smart and skipped seventh grade. He loved sports, particularly football. In high school he played wide receiver and was also on the swim team. He was on the smaller side, maybe five-ten and 135 pounds as a senior in high school, but always athletic, and when he played football he was at his happiest—even when it hurt. Once, he got a concussion and came home with his head bandaged.

  “You are never playing football again,” said his mother.

  “Ah, this is nothing,” Skip said. He kept playing football.

  It’s mentioned in the series that Skip was Irish, but that’s a mistake. The family was German, actually, and both Skip’s grandparents spoke German at home. His grandparents immigrated to America and ran a dairy farm where Skip and his brother and sister spent summers while growing up. The kids were fluent in German, but no one’s ever mentioned that about Skip, so he might have kept that quiet when he was in the service. It’s one of those unanswered questions. I’m sure a complex set of emotions emerged for the family. My mom used to say that everyone stopped speaking German as soon as the war broke out. Whenever she visited her grandparents during the war years, they only spoke English.

  During Skip’s teen years, his sister used to cover for him whenever he broke curfew. The house’s front and back doors had bells attached that would wake his mother, so his sister would wait up for him, then help haul him in through a bedroom window. They had a lot of friends in common and often double-dated. He always made sure she had a new dress for each dance. She made a point of ironing all his clothes “just right,” as he was fussy about his appearance.

  Once, his sister brought a new formal dress that was quite low cut in front. Skip was going to the same dance. When Ruth came down the stairs, their mother announced that there was no way she was going to the dance dressed like that—the dress was too low cut. Skip whispered to his sister, “Put on a damn jacket.” She did, then when they got out on the porch Skip said, “Now, when you get to the dance, take the damn thing off.”

  Skip dated a cheerleader named Faye Tanner from a nearby high school. He wrote to her during the war that he hoped to marry her when he returned.

  In the series it mentions briefly that Skip once swam the Niagara River. That’s true. It was part of an initiation to get into a fraternity, which they have even in some of the high schools around here. The river, as you can imagine, is very wide, and the current is extremely strong, even ten miles up from the falls, where Skip swam it. There’s a certain place in the Niagara called the “point of no return,” where, if you or your boat get to that point, there’s no saving you. The current is too strong and you’ll go over the falls. Skip crossed the river at night, and the river carried him almost two miles downstream before he made it across.

  When Skip’s mom found out, she really hit the roof, and his sister was also alarmed. Skip tried to calm them by saying that his friends had put a rowboat in the river in case he got into trouble—like that would have done much good. Skip’s sister’s comment was “I don’t care if the entire $%#@ Coast Guard flotilla was in the river. Don’t ever do that again!”

  Skip went to Mass regularly and was a man of sincere faith. Growing up, he was an altar boy, and even in the service went to Mass whenever he could. The series shows actor Richard Speight (who portrays Skip) carrying a rosary in the pocket of his uniform. That was authentic, and veterans confirmed it with Richard. Today at the museum in Bastogne, they show a newsreel where one small scene shows several of the men kneeling in the snow to receive communion. The altar boy serving the communion is Skip. It flashes by so fast it’s hard to see, but other veterans have confirmed it was Skip.

  War Years

  If you saw the movie Saving Private Ryan, you may have heard that the movie was based on a true account of the Niland brothers, four American soldiers from Tonawanda, New York, who served in World War II.

  Of the four, two actually survived the war, (Robert and Pete Niland were both killed on D-day), but for some time it was believed that only one, Frederick “Fritz” Niland, had survived. Fritz was located in Europe and sent back home to the States to complete his service, which is featured as the main plot of the movie. Only later (in real life) did the family (and the military) learn that one other brother, Edward, was actually being held captive in a Japanese POW camp in Burma and still alive.

  Well, Fritz Niland, the real “Private Ryan,” was Skip’s best friend in high school. They grew up five doors away from each other and did everything together, including joining the Airborne. Skip was seventeen when he graduated from high school. He wasn’t o
ld enough to join the paratroopers at first, and his mother didn’t want to sign for him. They haggled back and forth for a few weeks. Then Fritz joined, and Skip said, “I’m going, too.” She signed.

  In Ambrose’s book, he tells the story of Fritz, Skip, Don Malarkey, Chuck Grant, and Joe Toye getting passes to London on combat leave, where they met up with Fritz’s brother, Bob Niland of the 501st PIR.39 Ambrose later tells of Fritz finding Skip and Malarkey on the line near Carentan to explain why he was going home.40

  Skip wrote to his sister with a story about Fritz. When they were practice jumping over England in 1943, Fritz got blown off course, and landed on the thatched roof of an English cottage. He landed hard, went right through the roof, and ended up sitting on the dining table of an English couple. Not missing a beat, they stood up, introduced themselves, and invited Fritz to join them for tea. He introduced himself, too, politely responding that he needed to return to his outfit, got out of his chute, and walked out the door unharmed.

  A Foxhole in the Snow

  Over the years I’ve attended several Easy Company reunions, and, despite their reticence to talk, the men have told me little things about Skip. These little things mean a great deal to our family. Don Malarkey said, “He was my best friend from day one at Toccoa.” Johnny Martin described him as “totally real—he protected and took care of all the men in his squad.” Les Hashey said simply, “We all loved him.” Pete Toye, the son of Joe Toye, told me that his father admired very few people, but my uncle was one of them. Burr Smith has passed away, but his daughter, Susan Smith Finn, showed me where her father had written in his journal, “[Skip] had a magnetic personality that just drew people to him.”