The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II (3 page)

The company, along with Dog, Fox, and Battalion HQ Companies, made up the 2nd Battalion of the 506th PIR. The battalion commander was Maj. Robert Strayer, a thirty-year-old reserve officer. The regimental commander was Col. Robert Sink, a 1927 West Point graduate. The 506th was an experimental outfit, the first parachute infantry regiment in which the men would take their basic training and their jump training together as a unit. It would be a year before it was attached to the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. The officers were as new to this paratrooping business as the men; they were teachers who sometimes were not much more than one day ahead of the class.  The original NCOs were Old Army. “We looked up to them,” Pvt. Walter Gordon of Mississippi remembered, “as almost like gods because they had their wings, they were qualified jumpers. But, hell, if they knew how to do an about-face, they were ahead of us, we were raw recruits. Later, looking back, we regarded them with scorn. They couldn’t measure up to our own people who moved up to corporals and sergeants.”

The first privates in Easy were Frank Perconte, Herman Hansen, Wayne Sisk, and Carwood Lipton. Within a few days of its formation, Easy had a full complement of 132 men and eight officers. It was divided into three platoons and a headquarters section. There were three twelve-man rifle squads plus a six-man mortar team squad to a platoon. A light infantry outfit, Easy had one machine gun to each of the rifle squads, and a 60mm mortar in each mortar team.  Few of the original members of Easy made it through Toccoa. “Officers would come and go,” Winters remarked. “You would take one look at them and know they wouldn’t make it. Some of those guys were just a bowl of butter. They were so awkward they didn’t know how to fall.” This was typical of the men trying for the 506th PIR; it took 500 officer volunteers to produce the 148 who made it through Toccoa, and 5,300 enlisted volunteers to get 1,800 graduates.  As the statistics show, Toccoa was a challenge. Colonel Sink’s task was to put the men through basic training, harden them, teach them the rudiments of infantry tactics, prepare them for jump school, and build a regiment that he would lead into combat. “We were sorting men,” Lieutenant Hester recalled, “sorting the fat to the thin and sorting out the no guts.” The only rest came when they got lectures on weapons, map and compass reading, infantry tactics, codes, signaling, field telephones, radio equipment, switchboard and wire stringing, and demolitions. For unarmed combat and bayonet drills, it was back to using those trembling muscles.  When they were issued their rifles, they were told to treat the weapon as they would treat a wife, gently. It was theirs to have and to hold, to sleep with in the field, to know intimately. They got to where they could take it apart and put it back together blindfolded.

To prepare the men for jump school, Toccoa had a mock-up tower some thirty-five feet high. A man was strapped into a parachute harness that was connected to fifteen-foot risers, which in turn were attached to a pulley that rode a cable.  Jumping from the tower in the harness, sliding down the cable to the landing, gave the feeling of a real parachute jump and landing.  All these activities were accompanied by shouting in unison, chanting, singing together, or bitching. The language was foul. These nineteen- and twenty-year-old enlisted men, free from the restraints of home and culture, thrown together into an all-male society, coming from all over America, used words as one form of bonding. The one most commonly used, by far, was thef -word. It substituted for adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It was used, for example, to describe the cooks: “those f—ers,” or “f—ing cooks”; what they did: “f—ed it up again”; and what they produced. Pvt. David Kenyon Webster, a Harvard English major, confessed that he found it difficult to adjust to the “vile, monotonous, and unimaginative language.” The language made these boys turning into men feel tough and, more important, insiders, members of a group.  Even Webster got used to it, although never to like it.  The men were learning to do more than swear, more than how to fire a rifle, more than that the limits of their physical endurance were much greater than they had ever imagined. They were learning instant, unquestioning obedience.  Although the British army had been in somewhat better shape than the American army in 1939, and although by the time Easy Company began to take shape Britain had been at war for two and a half years, it was not much better off. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force (RAF) had been engaged in an all-out struggle, but except for Eighth Army in the North African desert and some engagements in Greece and Crete, the British army had seen no action against the German army.  Even in North Africa, the struggle had not yet taken on the all-out ferocity it would later assume, as Col. Hans von Luck of the German army was discovering.  Luck had been in the van in the drive to the Channel coast in May 1940, and again in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the fall of 1941 he had led his reconnaissance unit across the Leningrad-Moscow canal, and thus become the only German officer to get east of Moscow. But he had been compelled to withdraw, and then was called to North Africa by his old mentor, Gen. Erwin Rommel of Afrika Korps. He found that the fighting there against the British was very much different from what he had experienced fighting the Red Army in Russia.

In North Africa, Colonel Luck was fighting in the only war he ever enjoyed. He commanded the armed reconnaissance battalion on Rommel’s extreme right (southern) flank. He thus enjoyed a certain independence, as did his British opposite number. The two commanding officers agreed to fight a civilized war.  Every day at 5P.M. the war shut down, the British to brew up their tea, the Germans their coffee. At about quarter past five, Luck learned that the British commander would communicate over the radio. “Well,” Luck might say, “we captured so-and-so today, and he’s fine, and he sends his love to his mother, tell her not to worry.” Once Luck learned that the British had received a month’s supply of cigarettes. He offered to trade a captured officer-who happened to be the heir to the Players cigarette fortune-for one million cigarettes. The British countered with an offer of 600,000. Done, said Luck. But the Players heir was outraged. He said the ransom was insufficient. He insisted he was worth the million and refused to be exchanged.

One evening an excited corporal reported that he had just stolen a British truck jammed with tinned meat and other delicacies. Luck looked at his watch-it was past 6P.M. -and told the corporal he would have to take it back, as he had captured it after 5P.M. The corporal protested that this was war, and anyway, the troops were already gathering in the goods from the truck. Luck called Rommel, his mentor in the military academy. He said he was suspicious of British moves farther south and thought he ought to go out on a two-day reconnaissance.  Could another battalion take his place for that time? Rommel agreed. The new battalion arrived in the morning. That night, at 5:30P.M. , just as Luck had anticipated, the British stoletwo supply trucks.  Back in England, among the elite units, there were no high jinks, but the essential problem of too many drills, too many parades, and no action remained.  Throughout its ranks the British army still suffered from the humiliation of Dunkirk in May 1940. In no way was it ready for the challenge of going back to France. But it contained leaders who were determined to get it ready.  Throughout the British army at home, boredom reigned. The so-called phony war was from September 1939 to May 1940, but for thousands of young men who had enlisted during that period, the time from spring 1941 to the beginning of 1944 was almost as bad. There was no threat of invasion. The only British army doing any fighting at all was in the Mediterranean; almost everywhere else duties and training were routine-and routinely dull. Discipline had fallen off, in part because of the boredom, in part because the War Office had concluded that martinet discipline in a democracy was inappropriate, and because it was thought it dampened the fighting spirit of the men in the ranks.  Many soldiers, obviously, rather enjoyed this situation and would have been more than content to stick out the war lounging around the barracks, doing the odd parade or field march, otherwise finding ways of making it look as if they were busy. But there were thousands who were not content, young men who had joined up because they really did want to be soldiers, really did want to fight for King and Country, really did seek some action and excitement. In the spring of 1942 their opportunity came when a call went out for volunteers for the airborne forces.

Britain had made a decision to create an airborne army. The 1st Airborne Division was being formed up. Maj. Gen. F.A.M. “Boy” Browning would command it.  Already a legendary figure in the army, noted especially for his tough discipline, Browning looked like a movie star and dressed with flair. In 1932 he had married the novelist Daphne du Maurier, who in 1942 suggested a red beret for airborne troops, with Bellerophon astride winged Pegasus as the airborne shoulder patch and symbol.

Pvt. Wally Parr was one of the thousands who responded to the call to wear the red beret. He had joined the army in February 1939, at the age of sixteen (he was one of more than a dozen in D Company, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry-Ox and Bucks-who lied about their age to enlist). He had been posted to an infantry regiment and had spent three years “never doing a damn thing that really mattered. Putting up barbed wire, taking it down the next day, moving it.  . . . Never fired a rifle, never did a thing.” So he volunteered for airborne, passed the physical, and was accepted into the Ox and Bucks, just then forming up as an air landing unit, and was assigned to D Company. After three days in his new outfit he asked for an interview with the commander, Maj. John Howard.  “Ah, yes, Parr,” Howard said as Parr walked into his office. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to get out,” Parr stated.

Howard stared at him. “But you just got in.”

“Yeah, I know,” Parr responded, “and I spent the last three days weeding around the barracks block. That’s not what I came for. I want to transfer from here to the paras [paratroopers]. I want the real thing, what I volunteered for, not these stupid gliders, of which we don’t have any anyway.” “You take it easy,” Howard replied. “Wait.” And he dismissed Parr without another word.

Leaving the office, Parr thought, I’d better be careful with this fellow.

In truth, Parr as yet had no idea just how tough his new company commander was.  Howard had come out of a background that was as working class as any of the Cockneys in his company. He started as an enlisted man, earned a commission, and by 1941 was a captain with his own company, which he trained for the next year.  At the beginning of 1942 he learned that a decision had been taken to go airborne with the Ox and Bucks, and that his battalion would be gliderborne troops. No one was forced to go airborne; every officer and trooper was given a choice. About 40 percent declined the opportunity to wear the red beret. Another 10 percent were weeded out in the physical exam. It was meant to be an elite regiment.

The sergeant major came to the Ox and Bucks specially posted from the outside.

Wally Parr made the man’s overpowering personality vivid in a short anecdote.  “That first day,” said Parr, “he called the whole bleeding regiment together on parade. And he looked at us, and we looked at him, and we both knew who was boss.”

Howard himself had to give up his company and his captaincy to go airborne, but he did not hesitate. He reverted to lieutenant and platoon leader in order to become an airborne officer. In three weeks his colonel promoted him and gave him command of D Company. Shortly after that, in May 1942, he was promoted to major.  By July, Howard was pretty much on his own, allowed by his colonel to set his own training pace and schedule. Initially, he put the emphasis on teaching the men the skills of the light infantryman. He taught them to be marksmen with their rifles, with the light machine gun, with the carbine and the pistol, with the Piat (projector infantry antitank) and other antitank weapons. He instructed them in the many types of grenades, their characteristics and special uses.  Most of all, Howard put the emphasis on learning to think quickly. They were elite, he told the men; they were gliderborne troops, and wherever and whenever it was they attacked the enemy, they could be sure the premium would be on quick thinking and quick response.

Howard’s emphasis on technical training went a bit beyond what the other company commanders were doing, but only just a bit. All of Howard’s associates were commanding top-quality volunteers, and were volunteers themselves, outstanding officers. What was different about D Company was its commander’s mania for physical fitness. It went beyond anything anyone in the British army had ever seen before. The regiment prided itself on being fit (one officer from B Company described himself as a physical-fitness fanatic), but all were amazed by, and a bit critical of, the way Howard pushed his fitness program.  D Company’s day began with a five-mile cross-country run, done at a seven- or eight-minute-to-the-mile pace. After that the men dressed, policed the area, ate breakfast, and then spent the day on training exercises, usually strenuous. In the late afternoon Howard insisted that everyone engage in some sport or another. His own favorites were the individual endeavors, cross-country running, swimming, and boxing, but he encouraged soccer, rugby, and any sport that would keep his lads active until bedtime.

Those were regular days. Twice a month Howard would take the whole company out for two or three days, doing field exercises, sleeping rough. He put them through grueling marches, until they became an outstanding marching unit. Wally Parr swore-and a number of his comrades backed him up-that they could do twenty-two miles, in full pack, including the Brens (light machine guns) and the mortars, in five and one-half hours. When they got back from such a march, Parr related, “you would have a foot inspection, get a bite to eat, and then in the afternoon face a choice: either play soccer or go for a cross-country run.” All the officers, including Howard, did everything the men did. All of them had been athletes themselves, and loved sports and competition. The sports and the mutually endured misery on the forced marches were bringing officers and men closer together. Lt. David Wood was exceedingly popular with his platoon, as was Lt. H. J. “Tod” Sweeney, in his own quiet way, with his. But Lt. Den Brotheridge stood out. He played the men’s game, soccer, and as a former corporal himself he had no sense of being ill at ease among the men. He would go into their barracks at night, sit on the bed of his batman (aide), Cpl. Billy Gray, and talk soccer with the lads. He got to bringing his boots along and shining them as he talked.  Wally Parr never got over the sight of a British lieutenant polishing his boots himself while his batman lay back on his bed, gassing on about Manchester United and West Ham and other soccer teams.