Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends

by William Guarnere

  I wasn’t nuts about the idea of jumping out of an aircraft at first, but once I did, I found it to be exhilarating. I loved my first jump. I wasn’t scared at all. Once you left the door and you went under the tail of the plane, you saw the tail go over you, that’s when your body would tumble under the plane in a somersault, and your chute would pop. And that was great. We were supposed to count to ten and then the chute would open, but I never counted, never met a guy that did. One guy said, “I say a Hail Mary, what the hell is counting gonna do?!” I knew when I went under the tail and it went over my head, and if I didn’t hear it pop after I tumbled, I was in big trouble.

  Once your chute opens, you look around and see the greenery of the earth against the blue sky. As I looked at the landscape, I always thought about the beauty of God’s work. You saw colorful patterns of green and brown and blue. The air is soft and light. Nothing can hold a candle to the scenery. I always wished I was jumping in Pennsylvania, because the state is so full of natural beauty. As you start to come down, you think about not getting hurt and making a good landing. You stay away from water. You also want to come in front forward, because a lot of guys come in on their backs. I was lucky; I always landed right, in nice, open fields. But jumping out of planes wasn’t for everyone. Some guys quit jump school after that first jump.

  Night jumping I didn’t like because you never knew where you were going. All you could see were dark patches of trees. The air was heavy and thick. But also, you relied too much on one man—the pilot. If he’s on a bad decision day, you’re going to be dropped in the wrong place. Sometimes a pilot got lost in his coordinates. You only had to go thirty to forty seconds off the drop zone to land somewhere dangerous. Maybe woods or water. If it’s in combat, you’re going to end up in German hands.

  On the night of our last jump, the first plane up crashed, and all sixteen men on board were killed. An Italian fella from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, got the soldier’s medal because when they found the plane and the bodies, he had his hand on the guy jumping out of the plane, which meant he tried to get the guy out before he went out himself. The soldier’s medal is the only Army decoration you can get stateside. The rest are combat awards.

  They cancelled jumping for the night when the men were killed, and we were transferred to Camp Mackall for our final jump. Most of us had never been on a plane before we got to Benning, which was probably pretty obvious to the crew. As soon as we got airborne, one of the guys was looking out the window and hollered, “Hey, is the plane on fire?” We all got scared because it was just a two-engine job, a C-47. The crew chief told us it was just the exhaust from the motor—at night it looks like a flame.

  I said a couple prayers. When it hit me that I was in a dark plane up in the sky at one a.m. getting ready to be dropped into the pitch black, I thought to myself, What the hell am I doing up here? I could be back home on the corner in South Philly having a goddamn beer, or going to a dance.

  One of the kids, Murray, from Boston—he lost part of his family in the Coconut Grove fire, the worst fire in Boston’s history—he broke a leg, an arm, and his back. He thought he was landing over water, but it was fresh cement and the minerals were shining in the moonlight.

  We got our wings in March, and that was a great day. I was quite happy. I was proud. I was finally a paratrooper. I would rather have the wings than any other decoration. It was hard work. You had to have strength to maneuver the chute at times, and I still had that trouble with my hands, they would curl up and be in awful pain, but I did it. I got away with it. So I was happy.

  We stayed in Camp Mackall, North Carolina, then went to Fort Bragg and back to Mackall. The training for combat intensified. We worked on night problems, we had fifteen-mile hikes in full combat gear. We had mock wars, and we’d send out a patrol and a point. Whatever had to be done in combat, we did it exactly the same way in training, and we did it over and over. We did a dry run and we found out what we did wrong, or who wasn’t quick enough, and worked on resolving problems. We became a tight group.

  At night when we weren’t out on problems or maneuvers, we talked about home. Very seldom did we talk about the training. We cursed and hollered a bit about what we went through, but when we sat down to talk it was always about home. Everybody wanted to know where everyone was from, or the latest news from home, or about who was new to the outfit. The most popular state in the union was Pennsylvania, where most of the guys were from. If a guy said Philly, we’d ask where in Philly. He’d say Easton. We’d say, “There ain’t no goddamn place named Easton!” Easton was on the outskirts of Philly, but you’d say “Philly” because everyone knew where it was. We antagonized each other a lot, but it was in fun.

  In our downtime, we usually sat in the barracks and drank and played cards. Or we’d field strip our machine guns, or our M1s, or we’d do some cleaning. If we were inactive, that usually meant it was raining like hell out. Though if you had a bad officer, he’d have you marching out in the rain. But usually you got to stay inside, clean your weapons, listen to lectures, take tests. Like nomenclature of weapons; someone would call out a piece on your gun and you had to name it.

  When it was time to head out overseas for combat duty, we were transferred to Camp Shanks, New York, on the Hudson River, and given one last weekend pass home. I came down my street and saw my mom on the pavement with the other women. I said, “Hi, Mrs. Gugan, Mrs. Daily, Mrs. Thompson.” Just then turning the corner comes a Western Union guy on a bicycle. That usually meant a KIA. All the women watched him and seemed to be in unison: “Keep going, you son of a bitch, keep going.” Nobody wanted him to stop at their house. I thought, Oh, Jesus. I had three brothers in the war. When he rode by, my mother went, “Whew.” I said, “Boy, I got scared.” She said, “Babe, this is all the time!”

  We had mild spring weather, and I sat around with my family and a group of neighbors and had a few beers. Back then, even if you were underage, you drank beer. But also, nobody cared if you drank because nobody knew if you were coming home. People said to me, “Oh my, you’re in the paratroopers? Oh my, that’s bad.” I heard it enough that I didn’t have much confidence in coming home. People thought if you didn’t get killed in combat, you’d surely get killed jumping out of an airplane! On one of my passes home, my mother said, “Edward”—she always called me Edward when she wanted something or she was mad at me—“why don’t you go see Sister Mary Edna? She’s been asking about you four boys and none of you have visited her.” She was the nun we had in first grade, and we were all scared to death of her. I didn’t want to go see her because even when you walked around in your own neighborhood, Army regulations said that you had to keep your uniform on; you couldn’t dress in civilian clothes. When I walked around in uniform, I felt like I was flaunting it, like I thought I was some kind of hero, when I’d never even heard a shot fired. But to make my mom happy, I went and saw Sister Mary Edna in her classroom. “You know, children,” she said to her students, “this fella and his three brothers were so scared of us nuns, they used to be shaking in their boots. Would you believe now he’s dropping out of airplanes?” When I heard Sister Mary Edna thought jumping out of airplanes was such a big deal, I realized what I was doing was worse than I thought! She must have figured I was a little nuts. Really, we were all a little nuts.

  I had a broad named Doris, and I didn’t see her that last weekend. I had seen her the week before when I came home on a weekend pass, just after we arrived in New York. It was the most boring few hours I could’ve spent. I wasn’t much for the broads anyway, never one for sitting and holding hands. I liked hanging out with the guys more than anything else. My brothers and friends were home on leave, and I didn’t know if I’d see those guys again, so I wanted to hang out with them. Everyone asked me where I was headed, but we were told not to talk about any troop movements, and everyone understood. They only knew I was leaving the next day. I got a good night’s sleep, and didn’t make a big deal saying good-bye. You said good-bye
at the door and you left. You didn’t want a big deal.

  It was the end of May 1944 when we left for England on the Queen Elizabeth. We were packed in like sardines. The boat was pretty well done in by the GIs. Everybody had carved their initials with their bayonets into the railings. We passed the Statue of Liberty, and that was the last lady I’d be seeing for a year. The ride was pretty smooth and all I recall about it is that when we went to eat, we had to go four decks down and stand in line. That was the big challenge of the day.

  When we arrived in Liverpool, we learned that the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had just jumped into Normandy. We loaded onto trucks and then took a train into Chester, England. They pulled all the curtains down on the train so nobody would know it was a troop movement. When we got there, they assigned us to our units. There were about five thousand of us, and it didn’t matter who you trained with, they broke us up and sent us to different regiments, battalions, and companies. I got assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne, and was sent to regimental headquarters. Colonel Sink and his headquarters were at Littlecote House. It was an old castle. They let us flop there while they waited for the boys to come back from Normandy and they could see where replacements were needed. The little old lady who owned the castle owned Woodbine cigarettes. She would come out in the morning and I would be on sentry duty, and she’d say, “I’d say there, soldier, it’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?” She always had a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth.

  As soon as the guys were back from combat, I was transferred to 2nd Battalion, Easy Company. The good news was that my jump school buddies, J. D. Henderson and Johnny Julian, were assigned to Easy Company, too. You want to go in with a buddy or two if you’re joining a unit that’s been together in combat. We figured we better stick together.

  3

  D-DAY: WILD BILL’S REVENGE

  Normandy, June 6 to Mid-July 1944

  Everyone was quiet for the flight over the English Channel. The motors were loud and drowned everything out. The guys were praying, thinking, smoking, scared as hell. It was a two-and-a-half-hour ride, and our stomachs and bladders were working overtime. We trained and trained for this for two years and still didn’t know what we were in for. I was praying. I said, “Dear God, help me get out of this goddamn plane alive and let me do what I have to do.” I was thinking of my family and praying not to mess things up when I got there. Most of the guys were half asleep. I was wide awake thinking about Henry. I was obsessed. I was a madman. You never want to feel that kind of rage. I was burning to get at those goddamn Germans. I would kill every one of them. I didn’t care if they killed me, I was taking them down with me. Everyone knew what I was thinking.

  I didn’t forget I was a sergeant, I had a squad to lead, and there was a larger mission at stake. I was still thinking clearly about the men. I looked around at their faces and thought, I hope everything goes right for these guys. They were like brothers to me, too. We had an unexplainable bond. We ate together, slept together, trained together every day for two years. But I couldn’t guarantee what I was going to do when I got there. It became personal. I was ready to go in, kill a thousand krauts, and be dead by the end of the day. I didn’t want to get anyone else killed, so I prayed to the man upstairs. A million thoughts go through your mind at a time like that.

  There was fear on everyone’s face. We all looked around, probably thinking the same thing, wondering who the hell’s going to get out alive.

  Around midnight, we were getting close to Normandy, and you could see thousands of ships below. The Allied invasion fleet was heading for Omaha and Utah Beaches. An amazing sight. You already knew how big this thing was, but that was a sight to behold. Made you more nervous, but proud, too. Just over the coast, we hit fog and clouds and couldn’t see a damn thing, we lost sight of the planes in our formation. We were told to stand up and hook up. I stood up and fell right back down on my ass. My leg bag was loaded and weighed a ton, it sat on my legs for hours, and they fell asleep. We started getting a lot of flak, the antiaircraft fire was horrendous. Every third or fourth round was tracers. There was fire all over the sky, behind us, in front of us. The plane sped up and started going up and down and veering side to side. Your only thought was, Get me the hell out of this plane! The sky looked like ten thousand Fourth of Julys—bright orange and red lights and continuous bursts of gunfire. Planes were trying to dodge the fire and were flying haphazardly and I figured we’d crash even before we got there. We couldn’t blame the pilots, they wanted to drop us and get the hell out. We had no time to think about our jump. We were too low. We weren’t in the drop zone, but we didn’t care. We just wanted out. We got the order to jump even though the plane was moving too fast. Compton went out the door, and my leg was still on pins and needles, so I dove out headfirst. Toye was right behind me. After I jumped, my leg bag fell off, and my leg woke up real fast.

  Making it through the jump alive was a feat. Your heart’s pounding. The sky’s chaos. The planes are dumping men from Cherbourg all the way to Paris. All in the wrong places. Thousands of troopers coming down from the sky, it was like a duck shoot for the krauts. On top of that, planes are getting hit, shells are flying past your head, equipment and bundles are coming down all over the place. You prayed your parachute opened, you didn’t get tangled with another trooper, you didn’t land on the fires you saw burning on the ground, or get hung in a tree, or land on a German, or on something that would kill you. Put that all to chance!

  I fell like a ton of bricks, thought I broke every bone in my body. Things were dropping from the sky, people, ammo, parachutes, you had to look up instead of looking down, because the big bundles could have killed you. They were attached to the bottom of the planes; they were filled with supplies, medical equipment—they had everything in them.

  I had no idea where the hell I was, but it turned out to be Ste. Mere-Eglise, a few miles from the drop zone. We were lucky. Some of 3rd Battalion landed close to our drop zone and the Germans were waiting for them, killed them all. I landed in the 82nd Airborne’s drop zone, just before they landed. If you saw the movie The Longest Day, I came down near the church where John Steele’s parachute got caught on the steeple.

  I twisted out of my chute in about three seconds—two and a half seconds!—damn right. My adrenaline was pumping. Dead troopers were hanging in the trees. Their chutes got caught, and the krauts shot them. My only thought was, Get ready to fight. All bets were off. I didn’t feel any fear. The Germans had to be more scared than us because we were all over the place. Everywhere they went—bing—there was a paratrooper. All the chaos was beneficial to us. We learned that after.

  I didn’t have a gun, no cricket either. Everything went flying off me when my chute jerked open. I had a knife and a bent carbine. We all had a knife attached to our boots, and one in our jumpsuits. Dead soldiers were all over, Germans and Americans, you could scrounge up a gun. Keep your eyes and ears open, that’s all. I grabbed my knife and went to look for a gun. It was chaos, and your senses were intensified. I don’t remember running into a kid from Fox Company when I landed, but he remembers running into me. He was tied up in his chute, and he remembers me coming out of the shadows, holding him to the ground, pushing my knee into his chest and a dagger to his throat, and asking him over and over what side he was on. He said I was crazed. Damn right. I wasn’t taking chances. I did that to a lot of soldiers. Hitler could have been there for all I knew. When I figured out he wasn’t a kraut, I cut him out of his chute with my knife.

  I went looking for a gun, and found a Thompson submachine gun. I also took a German MG-42 off a dead kraut and started shooting it, but the gun made a noise that was distinctly German. The German gun went brrrrrrrrrt. The American guns went bap-bap-bap-bap-bap. Every time I started shooting it, the Americans started shooting at me! I got shot at by a dozen or so of our own men. I threw it the hell away. You learn fast or you get killed. I grabbed an M1 instead.

 
The first thing I saw was a bucket brigade. German soldiers were watching French civilians passing buckets of water to put out the fires. We passed right by each other. They saw me. Hell, yes, they saw me, but they didn’t do nothing. I felt like I didn’t have to do anything, they were just putting out fires. I figured I better get out of there, find my men.

  I had to backtrack on the stick. If you’re the first one out of the plane, your stick is behind you, so you backtrack. If you’re last out of the plane, your stick is in front of you, you go forward. No one was where they were supposed to be. Nothing was like what we prepared for. Everything we learned was out the window, it was one big mess, period. Nothing resembled what we studied in the marshaling area. But we were trained for surprises.

  Right away I found Toye, Popeye Wynn, Malarkey, Compton, and Mike Ranney. We had blue metal crickets from the five-and-dime to identify each other. You pressed it, and it went click-clack, and the other guy clicked back. It was loud and high-pitched, you knew right away you were safe. If you lost it in the jump, a lot of men did, you used a password. The first person said, “Flash” and the reply was, “Thunder.” You were so nervous, you’d forgot the password, and then you just yelled, “Hey, you son of a bitch, I’m from Brooklyn, don’t shoot!” As soon as you heard Indiana or California or something American, you stopped and checked the guy out.