Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends

by William Guarnere

  I was officially promoted to staff sergeant when we got back to Aldbourne. Jimmy Diel was made officer and sent to Able Company. Once I was promoted, I had three more squads to lead. A big responsibility, but it came naturally to me to look out for the men. I would do it without a promotion. I reported to Buck Compton. He was 2nd lieutenant, oversaw all three of Easy Company’s platoons. We had two lieutenants that oversaw the company, Compton and Winters, then Winters was promoted to company commander in Normandy, and Compton became 1st lieutenant.

  A lot of promotions after Normandy. Burr Smith became a staff sergeant. Muck and Malarkey were made sergeants. Leo Boyle was promoted to staff sergeant and put in headquarters company. He was a good sergeant, but could not handle men and lead them in combat. In combat, the leaders stand right out. Someone may be a leader in training, and then they can’t handle leading in combat. It happened sometimes. When it came to responsibility, most men turned it down. Your actions can kill people. That was on your mind at all times. Leo was a very nice kid, quiet, just didn’t have leadership quality, but he was a good sergeant. He was in charge of our gas training back in the States. When we jumped on D-day, all our clothing was gas-impregnated. The Germans found out that if they use gas on us, we have much more of it, and there would be one big mess. Thank God they never used it.

  Lipton became 1st sergeant of the company. He wanted to be an officer. He had the moxie, he could use his brain. He was my mentor; I looked up to him. He was calm, and he would discuss any situation you got into. We had brains between us. No quick reactions—he thought things out. Like Winters, but you didn’t have too much time with officers, so Lipton was the guy you went to. I trusted him with my life. We were both senior sergeants, and a lot of the men looked up to us.

  We were training six days a week in Aldbourne. We went over the problems we had in Normandy, and figured out the who, what, why. We got smarter and trained harder. Replacements came in, and we had to train them, too. You learned in Normandy, replacements come in, you don’t learn their names. Before you know it, bang—this one’s gone, that one’s gone. Someone would say, “Oh yeah, he come in about a week ago.” Nobody ever knew them. As quick as they came in, they were gone. We tried not to get to know them. You’re not out there to socialize anyway.

  Winters sent me a new replacement from Philly. It was Babe. He came into the barracks, and he walked like a penguin, side to side, like a duck. He did the South Philly shuffle. You couldn’t miss it. We started asking each other who we knew back home. I thought he was as goofy as I was. He liked to have fun; I liked him right away, the dirty rat. I told him he was on the machine gun, sent him to Joe Toye, 1st squad sergeant. I knew Toye would take good care of him. Now I think back, How did I make a machine gunner out of him? He was a midget, five-foot-four! The gun was bigger than he was. These guns are not like machine guns you carry. These are 30-caliber jobs, about twenty-nine pounds. Like a small cannon.

  BABE

  The Easy Company barracks were converted wooden horse stables in Aldbourne, a little English village just like you’d imagine an English village to be. Cobblestone streets, little stone houses with gardens, a corner bakery. Easy was stationed right in the middle of it. We walked in and met Captain Winters, and he assigned us to our platoons. Julian was sent to 1st Platoon, J. D. to 3rd Platoon, and I was sent to see Bill Guarnere, 2nd Platoon sergeant. Winters told me he was from Philly. I walked into the barracks and threw my bags down, and Bill Guarnere said, “You from Philly?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “What part?” I said, “South.” I found out he lived at 17th and McKean; I lived at 2nd and Wilbur. We lived so close we could walk to each other’s houses. Our birthdays were eighteen days apart—he was born April 28, 1923, I was born May 16. It was good to meet someone from the neighborhood.

  Bill made me a machine gunner. Back in Fort Eustis, I taught machine guns, 30s and 50s, to officers in officer candidate school. He sent me to Joe Toye’s squad, and I met some of the guys—Eddie Barnett and Eddie Joint, both from Erie, Pennsylvania, Mike McMann, Al Vittore, and Stephen Grodski. All good guys. Our squad was in horse stables. They were pretty private because they only had six bunks.

  I learned pretty quickly you couldn’t just come in and expect to be one of the guys. You’d hear someone say, “Oh, he’s one of those replacements.” The Toccoa men were together for a long time, and they were combat veterans. They had five weeks of fighting in Normandy behind them and they were tight. They didn’t want to be sent into combat with any damn replacements. Some people say it was easy to get in with them, but I can tell you it wasn’t easy. The Toccoa vets were not overly friendly, and they made you feel like you weren’t worth getting to know. I heard Earl “One Lung” McClung say they didn’t want to get to know replacements because they’d be the first to be killed. I don’t believe that for a minute.

  For three weeks, I thought, Boy, I wish I made that Normandy jump. I wanted to be where the veterans were. It really burned me up that I didn’t get to jump into Normandy. I hated being on the outside, feeling like I had to prove myself. Some guys like Joe Toye and Chuck Grant didn’t care nothing about who was a replacement and who was a vet. They took care of everyone. Chuck Grant even gave me a nickname—Jigger—because I called everything a jigger.

  Right away you knew who took care of the guys and who the respected veterans were. Buck Compton, he was a quiet and compassionate guy, an enlisted man’s officer, took things to heart, and worried about us guys. You didn’t find many like him. Then there was Guarnere, they called him Wild Bill because he went nuts in Normandy killing Germans. He was tough on everybody, strict, didn’t take no guff. You did what he said or else. He’d say, “You want to make it home? Then do it right. If you want to die, don’t listen.” He was just trying to get us all home. As gruff as he was, you could tell he loved the men, took good care of everyone. The same with Chuck Grant, Joe Toye, and Ken Mercier.

  I was raised on the streets, so I didn’t care how they treated me, I just did my own thing. If I didn’t like a sergeant, I stayed away from him, or just didn’t go out of my way. For guys like Toye, Grant, Guarnere, Mercier you did extra.

  Outside of Bill, I didn’t get close to sergeants. They were on their own planets. If you hung out with one, it looked like you were brownnosing. You could think the world of someone, but you didn’t try to be friends with them if they were in a different rank. I was accepted a little faster than the others because Bill was looking out for me. But I knew my place. The replacements stuck together and just tried to fit in. I stuck with my buddies, J. D., John Julian, and Jim Campbell. We were all in the same boat, we came in after the Normandy jump, and didn’t yet rate. We knew we had to prove ourselves.

  I found the most well-liked guy in the platoon was George Luz, one of the Toccoa guys. He was the company comedian. He could imitate people, and he was always telling jokes. Good jokes, not like Bill Guarnere’s jokes! Luz was actually funny. He always told me I reminded him of his parish priest. He was a great soldier, all-around 100 percent great American. Serious when he had to be, but he kidded with everyone he liked. He knew who could take a joke and who couldn’t.

  I thought training would intensify when we got to Aldbourne, but it wasn’t any tougher than it was in the States. Winters had us train with real ammo, but we were used to that; we did it at Camp Mackall and Fort Bragg. They used live rounds. We kept our backsides down and crawled as low to the ground as we could. They fired high enough above your head to give you the leeway. If you stood up, you were a dead man. The machine guns were fixed in place, locked in, we found out later. The replacements didn’t know it, the rookies didn’t know it. You wanted to survive, so you listened closely. If you’re not listening, you’re in trouble. You did what they told you.

  My machine gun was a light 30 shoulder type, and it weighed twenty-eight pounds. Your assistant carried a bipod for it, and the ammo weighed seven pounds. I used to be six-foot-two. Now I’m five-foot-four-and-a-half. That’s wha
t being machine gunner can do to you!

  I got to talk casually whenever I could to Bill—in the woods, in training. We’d say, “I wonder what’s going on in South Philly?” We had a couple guys from Philly. If a new guy came into the outfit, we’d always ask where he was from. Everybody always wanted to talk about home.

  Speaking of home, a few weeks after I got to Aldbourne, I got a letter from my girl Doris. A “Dear John” letter. She was breaking up with me because she met another guy. She was a nice girl, but I didn’t care all that much. I didn’t even visit her before we were leaving for England.

  BILL

  We ran through the training over and over, again and again. There were mistakes made in Normandy, the ones that made them got killed. The officers saw those mistakes and set out plans to correct them. We went over them in Aldbourne and drilled them into the replacements, too. We started training with live ammo, it was good for the kids who were never in combat. When you see bullets flying, you learn to crawl as low as possible, to move on the ground like a snake. We trained on different types of terrain, trained at night, during the day, in all kinds of conditions. All kinds of exercises, over and over.

  You’re always on edge, even when you’re not on the battlefield. You can get called any minute. Weekend passes to London became the highlight of our time there. You had a change of scenery and felt like the war was behind you for a little while. The guys got to enjoy each other more, too.

  We all loved London. You saw so many different people, Englishmen, Scotsmen, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians. So many different uniforms—air force, sailors, marines. Lot of women in uniform, too. The English women in the military never left England, they did all the work on their home turf.

  Babe was into jitterbugging with the girls. We went to a lot of dances together, well-known dance places with the limey broads, like Charing Cross and the Cove and the Gardens, right near where we stayed. Babe was an expert jitterbugger, danced all night with the broads; they lined up to jitterbug with him. He won contests, too. We went to a joint that was a bomb cellar. You couldn’t even stand up. It’s called the Windsor Dive. You go down all these steps, and when you get to the bottom, it’s a big, round, stone cave. One way in, one way out.

  We used to take double-decker buses to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is a big attraction in London. Like Times Square in New York. That’s where all the girls of the night used to hang out. We’d go there at night, and it was always blacked out, so when you go walking around, you can’t see people unless you light a light in their face. We had some money on us, we had our Zippo lighters, and when we ran into a broad, we flipped the lighter on, put it in her face, and she says, “Ten pounds, Yank.” So I said “Ten pounds! I come to save your ass, not buy it!” We called them Piccadilly Lilies. Oh boy. Don’t even ask about those broads. They were all over us, aggressive. It was a den of iniquity, is all I’ll say. That was a favorite spot for the GIs. If you got half crocked, it rocked. Johnny Martin would say, “Let’s go visit Gonorrhea’s clap house.” Johnny gave me the nickname Gonorrhea as soon as we got overseas. Guarnere, Gonorrhea, they sounds alike. I have no comment at present!

  One time I had a girl in the barracks, and we had morning inspections, so I hid her in the storage area. Lieutenant Peacock, our 1st lieutenant, came around snooping. I was holding my breath. I never liked Peacock either. He went by the book. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t drink. Wasn’t a soldier’s soldier. He looked around, everything looked good, clean, proper. All of a sudden a leg came crashing through the ceiling. He said, “What’s that?” I said, “It looks like a broad’s leg to me. I have no idea what it is.” He looks at me, “Do you know what’s going on?” I said, “Nooooo, I have no idea what’s going on.” Then the girl came down, and said, “Oh, Billie…” and my goose was cooked. I had two broads up there. Peacock said, “Who’s got the other broad?” It was Gordy Carson’s broad, but I didn’t tell him. Then he’d go raise holy hell with Carson. I said it was only me, I had two broads. He threw them out and gave me holy hell and I got KP, kitchen police. We all hated it. I had to peel potatoes. While I was on KP, the men were given a night march. There they were, all lined up, equipment on their backs, and I’m sitting there peeling potatoes. They were cursing me out, and I was laughing. I said, “Where you goin’ fellas?”

  I had fun, but I never forgot I was a sergeant. I spent a lot of time anticipating what we had to do next. I was always looking ahead, looking forward, wanted to be one step ahead of the game. I studied a lot of manuals, and just like before Normandy, I kept up training myself on the guns, artillery, ammo, tanks. I was nosy. I tried to find out where we were going, what we were doing. Snooping all the time.

  We didn’t get much downtime, but I played baseball, football, basketball, craps. We played for money. I played Jew Pinochle with Babe. I knew the game well because at home we played Pinochle or rummy under the streetlights until four, five in the morning. We put the table in the middle of the street. Growing up we watched the adults. You stood behind the players and you watched and learned. You knew to keep your eyes and ears open, but you didn’t speak, or you’d get whacked. By the time I got into the Army, I knew how to play real well, but I didn’t win much. Malarkey was the one who won all the time. Malarkey liked money. He was as tight as Kelsey’s nuts.

  We listened to the propaganda on the radio for fun, too. There was Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Lord Heehaw—he was a limey that was a British spy. It was so goofy. Everybody had propaganda, the Americans, British, French. All kinds of pamphlets were thrown around, it was all a bunch of baloney. You didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. We just knew we had to kill the Germans. We didn’t care about Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose. I think Tokyo Rose was from Chicago.

  In August, we were getting ready for a jump outside Paris. Eisenhower came to inspect us. It got cancelled because General Patton’s Third Army overran the drop zone, they liberated the towns before we could jump in. Patton was one of the most feared military commanders the Americans had, the Germans were afraid of him. His army moved fast, like a whirlwind, captured entire divisions, probably killed more Germans than any other unit. He was nuts.

  We didn’t think about it at the time, but after the war’s over, you start to look at the context of things. All the politics. Like, who was going to liberate Paris? You’ve got ten to twelve Allied nations—America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, even Spanish troops, all different nationalities, and all the generals up there deciding who is going to do what. There’s de Gaulle, there’s Montgomery, there’s Eisenhower. If anyone is going to liberate Paris, be the first ones there, it has to be the French. The rest of us were right behind them but they had to be first. And Patton overran it. Those are the politics you find out after the war. When we were in it, we didn’t care if we jumped on Paris or Hitler’s head.

  BABE

  You learned pretty quickly what the British had to deal with from the krauts. One night I was in a pub in Bristol with my buddy J. D. and all of a sudden we heard an explosion, it cracked a mirror on the wall, and me and J. D. hit the floor. A German V-1 hit nearby. The Brits looked at us and laughed. They figured we were scaredy-cats. We were taught to take cover, but in the pub, it seemed a little ridiculous.

  That place went through a lot of hell. The destruction in a place that was once beautiful, it was a bad scene. They didn’t like us to go on leave in London, because you never knew when the Germans were coming over. The British and American air forces had control of the skies, but the Germans would send over the V-1s, the buzz bombs. They were guided missiles that looked like rockets, they had a flame shooting out the back, and if the flame went out, they crashed and exploded, and they were fully ammoed, so they caused a lot of destruction. It happened every day and the Brits just got used to it.

  The GIs still had a good time there. Not long after we got to Aldbourne, I went on a weekend pass in London with two of my buddies, Jim Campbell and John Julian. J
immy was a rugged-looking guy and John was a handsome, quiet kid from Alabama. We went to Piccadilly Circus, and ended up on Archer Street at an after-hours club called the Bow and Arrow. As we sat upstairs where the piano player was, and all the action was, a buxom lady who weighed about four-hundred pounds said, “Hey, Yank, give us a fag, will ya?” Fag is slang for cigarettes in England. As she lit up, she said, “How ’bout I sing a song for you Yanks.” She sang “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and believe me, toots, this broad could sing! Everybody in the club had a tear in their eye. My mother always said that fat ladies could sing, and she was right. I went back there as often as possible when we were on pass. London became my favorite place in the world.

  One of my favorite spots was a dance club in back of the Strand Plaza called the Cove and the Gardens. They had two big dance halls, one on the left and one on the right, and live bands. We would jitterbug all night there. But I’ll tell you, nobody could jitterbug like the girls from South Philly. That’s a fact!

  When the night was over, when you were on weekend pass, you hoped you had a girl to go home with. Sometimes one or two of you had a girl, and whoever didn’t was on his own. You looked for a place to sleep. You had very little money left because you blew it at the clubs.

  I went with Bill to Piccadilly Circus a couple times. We called those girls Piccadilly commandos, that’s what they call the girls of the night. I tell people today, that’s the only group we never got decorated from. Every country decorated us, but the Piccadilly commandos never gave us nothing. We spent enough time with them they should have gave us something!