Easy Company Soldier (14 page)

You can't blame the laundry lady for not keeping a box score for Easy Company's dead, wounded, and missing-inactions. And it's not like the British weren't paying for this war without some blood of their own. We all got furloughs when we returned to England, and a bunch of us checked into the Regent Palace Hotel in London and headed straight for the Palace Pub, owned by my friend Pat McGrath. Only he wasn't there. Soon after we'd left for Normandy, he'd gotten pneumonia. Had to go to the hospital. One night when the Germans were shelling the city, a buzz bomb—one of those V-2s—found its way into a heating vent, went to the basement, and blew up that hospital, taking Pat with it. So a woman hands you this laundry and you thank her and think, as you're walking away,
What do you do with laundry for guys who aren't ever going to need it?

That's another thing they didn't teach us in the army. You train to kill and avoid being killed, but not what to do when someone you know
gets
killed. When we lined up, later that summer, for a memorial service for guys in the 506th who'd died in Normandy, it was new to us all. Back home, we'd seen our peers be honored at assemblies, graduation ceremonies,
and the like, but, unlike now, never honored when they weren't around to soak it in.

We were bused to regimental headquarters on the estate of Lord Wills at Littlecote, outside Chilton Foliat, and lined up in fields of green, the entire 506th. Two thousand of us. A band played. A chaplain prayed.

General Taylor spoke but we couldn't hear a word he said; a formation of C-47s passed over about that time. But we heard the names of the dead. All 414. I never talked with any of my buddies about that day, but I wondered if we were all wondering the same two things: if the list would ever end. And if, down the road, our names would ever be on it.

While in England, I heard news from the States that Grandmother Malarkey wouldn't be worrying anymore about whether my name was going to be on that list. She had already lost two sons to war and didn't want to lose a grandson. But on D-day, said a letter, she had gone to church and
prayed for the safety of the troops. Then had gone straight to bed—and never gotten up. My aunt Margarita later told me Grandmother Malarkey hadn't died of a heart attack, as the doctor had said. “She died of a broken heart, worrying about that curly-haired grandson of hers at war.”

There were some crazy times down in England the last two months. Crazy good. Crazy bad.

I'd now been promoted to sergeant, and with it came a great perk: me and other noncoms, including Skip, had been given use of a private thatched-roof home on London Road, outside Aldbourne. Not that there weren't still rules, one of which was, no dames. But one time I came back to the house and damned if Bill Guarnere and Gordie Carson didn't have a couple of gals in leopard-skin tights holed up with them. And somehow, the higher-ups caught wind of it and were soon on their way over, in the form of 1st Lt. Thomas Peacock, a replacement officer and a big by-the-book guy.

Compton, who knew what was going on but wasn't about to do anything, called us from company headquarters. “Peacock's coming,” he said.

Bill and Gordie were in a panic, but they found a ceiling entry to a tiny attic and shoved the girls up there. In walked Peacock, who said he'd heard a rumor that some ladies might be on the premises. Guarnere and Carson, like a couple of teenagers hiding half-empty beer bottles, shook their heads.
No, not here, sir.
Peacock, of course, wasn't giving up. Bill and Gordie stood firm. They thought they'd won this stalemate. Then it happened: A single spike of a high-heel shoe punctured the plaster ceiling. I'm not sure what
Carson's punishment was; Guarnere had to do close-order drills in front of imaginary troops. And, as an accomplice, for the first time in my life I got KP duty, along with all the other noncoms in that house.

Some of our fun was a bit more conventional, like me emerging as Easy's dart champion in the British pubs. Or like Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band coming to put on a concert in Newbury. Miller's band was my favorite, and Skip's as well. Not only did I love his music, but I felt a kinship to the man. I'd been a Sigma Nu at the University of Oregon; he'd been a Sigma Nu at the University of Colorado. Each company was allotted six tickets. I went with Skip, Guarnere, Toye, and a few others. The place was packed, largely with well-oiled paratroopers and their English girlfriends, none of whom were particularly on their best behavior.

The first song was “Moonlight Serenade,” which the band charged through beautifully despite a ton of gabbing from the audience. The band followed with the famous “In the Mood.” Latecomers were straggling in and trying to find seats. After about sixteen bars, Miller's baton came down and stayed down. The band stopped on cue, as if somebody had pulled the plug on a jukebox machine.

I was stunned. Miller took the microphone and said if he heard one more sound from late-arriving paratroopers, the band would walk offstage. For good. Furthermore, he hadn't expected to see a bunch of officers hogging the front rows. Generals, colonels, and other officers went to work, turning into enforcers instead of listeners. It worked. Nary a sound was heard the rest of the evening. It was a highlight of my military life.

But soon after came a couple of lowlights. One night, me, Chuck Grant, Joe Toye, and a few others were in our room
on the third floor at the Regent Palace, drinking, when Joe said he needed to take a leak and headed down the hallway. Fifteen minutes later, he wasn't back. With his good looks and boxer's biceps, we figured he might have run into some sweet British girl. But half an hour later, when he still wasn't back, we started getting concerned.

“I'm going looking for him,” I said.

I walked into the lavatory. No Joe. I was turning to leave when I heard a noise outside. One of the windows was slightly open. Strange. I poked my head out. There was Joe, climbing out on the roof of an atrium. It was glass and fortified with chicken wire. It had to be strong, Joe weighed nearly two hundred pounds. It was three stories down off the sides.

“What the hell you doing out there, Joe?”

He froze.

“Please, come on back.”

I wasn't sure if he was drunk, crazy, or a little of both.

“Joe, come on, everybody's worried about you.”

For a moment, I wondered if he wasn't trying to do something drastic. Gradually, I coaxed him back and, when he was safely inside, looked him dead in the eye.

“Joe, what's going on?”

The look in his eye told me the question might have been a bit harsh. Because here's this guy with arms like pistons—toughest guy in the unit, period—and he's looking like he's about to cry. He started going on the way he did at the pub before we'd made our Normandy jump. About his childhood. His dad. Forced into the coal mines at fifteen. His not being able to speak or write as well as he thought he should.

“The hell of it is, Malark, I feel like a friggin' failure.”

“You're no failure, Toye, and you know it. I've seen how
you gobbled up Currahee week after week. I saw how you fought on D-day with no skin on your left arm. And how the guys look up to you.”

“I might have gotten a scholarship, played college football.”

“And wound up right here, Joe, like Buck Compton and the other college football stars. Look, I'm not just blowing smoke when I say this, but you're the most admired man in Easy. Ask any of 'em. They'll tell you.”

He brought his hand up to his face and wiped his eyes.

“Look, Joe, that you didn't go to high school—hell, that's not your fault. You didn't have any choice. We all have things in our past we regret—people we regret—but you can't unring a bell.”

Whether it was the booze wearing off, my words, or his coming to terms with whatever he was wrestling with, he sort of nodded. “Let's get back to the room,” he said. We never spoke of the incident again. And he always remained one of my closest friends, especially after my run-in with Dewitt Lowery.

In Aldbourne, I'd come back to the barracks after a night of pub-crawling and I heard some sniffling coming from the bunk across from mine. In the near dark, I realized it was Lowery, a kid from the South, sitting on the side of his bed. He smelled all boozed up, which, frankly, wasn't uncommon for a lot of us. But as I got closer, I realized he was crying. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Dewitt, are you—?”

He bristled. “Stay away from me, Malarkey,” he shot back, then flipped out his jump knife and stuck it right at my gut. I looked down. The point of the blade was about an inch from my stomach.

That's when it happened. These two strapping arms came
at Lowery from behind, lifted him up, spun him around, pinned him to the wall, and clamped a hand to his throat. It was Joe Toye. It scared the living hell out of Lowery. And, for a moment, me.

“Damn you, Lowery,” he said. “You ever threaten Don Malarkey again and I'll kill you. Got that? I'll kil/you.”

In the morning, Lowery apologized to me. The irony was that what had gotten his dander up was the same thing that had sent Joe Toye into a tailspin that night at the Regent Palace: thinking he wasn't as smart as some of the rest of us. Lowery had apparently taken a lot of harassing that night in the pubs about being from the South, and not well educated, well spoken, or well read. And it festered inside until he exploded, in his case, with a knife to my gut.

That incident, Joe's incident, and one involving me reminded me that all guys really wanted—all
I
really wanted—was a little respect. And when it wasn't there, we all handled it in different ways, some worse than others. One evening, we were at the Red Cross Club when 1st Sgt. Carwood Lipton walked by. Lipton had suffered an arm injury in Normandy, and Don Moone and I let our Irish humor too far out on its leash. “Moonbeam” chided him as Lipton passed in one direction. I got him on the return trip.

“Hey, crip,” I said. “How's it going?”

He grabbed each of us by the collar and lifted us from our chairs.

“You wanna get pulverized together or one at a time?”

We were too scared to speak. Lipton let go. “Hell, I'm sorry,” he said, “but if this arm doesn't heal right, it could cost me my football career.”

Everyone had a story deeper than what you could see—and some of us looked pretty damn foolish for not realizing
that. Some stored hurts deep down, hurts that rose to the surface in some unplanned moment like that. Well, not everyone. I had my wounds. And I knew how to wound others with my selfishness; you could ask Bernice Franetovich about that. But, for now, I'd hidden mine real deep—in the same way the cutthroat trout on the Nehalem would tuck themselves back under a log or back behind an overhanging branch or in the shade. For protection, plain and simple.

Two months after we'd arrived back in England, Easy Company, loaded to the hilt in a C-47, left for a daylight jump into Holland and a whole new chapter of war. The plane, towing one of the hundreds of gliders that were used to drop men, artillery, and more, headed east, passing over London.

Though, after my dizzy spell in that Normandy tree, I'd worried a bit about flying again, it hadn't been a problem; once the rest of the 2nd Platoon had piled in, I wasn't about to stay behind. I kept looking out my window, not easy given that my back was to it and, piled with gear, wasn't exactly mobile. You could see P-47 and P-51 fighter planes on our flanks. We had escorts on this jump.

Training had been light since our arrival back in England. Combat jump after combat jump was planned, but scrapped, largely because General Patton's Third Army troops were moving so fast across France they were blasting right through our planned drop zones. There's no need for air troops when the boys on the ground are taking care of business. We cheered each report of their success; it postponed our return to battle. But nothing seemed to be getting in the way of our Holland drop, which involved none of the secrecy we'd used for the Normandy mission.

We headed over the Strait of Dover, and looking back, we could see the white cliffs. Soon we were over occupied Holland. We were homing in on our drop zone, about twenty miles beyond the front line of the British Second Army, just west of Son. We were to be attached to the British Second Army and be part of General Montgomery's plan to end the war quickly. Our objective was to take control of the north-south road that ran about forty miles from Eindhoven to Ethel to Nijmegen to Arnhem and its many bridges. To open a path for the British XXX Corps to drive through Arnhem and over the Lower Rhine River and into Germany. A massive British tank force was to breech the German lines and move straight to Arnhem on the path cleared by the Airborne. It was to be called Operation Market Garden.

I looked at the dozen and a half guys around me. Some new faces, like Babe Heffron. Lots of familiar faces. Leo Boyle was back in action after his leg wound in Normandy. My pan of the guys stopped on Eugene Jackson, a guy who, in some ways, had no business being here. He'd been seriously wounded in Normandy. Taken a large fragment from a mortar in the side of his head. Left a six-inch gash and took half his ear. But one day he showed up, reporting for full field duty, all wrapped up in bandages, looking like something from a Halloween haunted house.