We Who Are Alive and Remain (25 page)

When I got ready to go back to the company, the war had ended. I wrote a letter to Captain Speirs to get me back, but he said, “Don’t you worry, they’re over here getting drunk and killing each other.” So I waited at Fort Benning, where I helped train new recruits, all the time thinking we’d go to Japan. But the war ended there, too. Of course, we all felt relief. But it was a big disappointment when I couldn’t go back to the guys.

I joined Easy Company in Hagenau. It was just before my nineteenth birthday. We celebrated in the cellar of a house with one candle going. We were stationed in a three-story house near the river with the Germans right across the river from us. Mostly we did guard duty and went on patrols. Being in a house, we were fairly comfortable at that time. The Germans sent over artillery once in a while—that was about it. Did the guys get me any presents for my birthday? No [laughs]. The Germans missed us with their artillery—that was present enough.

I didn’t know much about Easy Company at the time. Most of the fellows were very good soldiers, concerned about what was going on and what we needed to do. We replacements listened to the old-timers. That gave us a lot of assurance—they knew a lot more about war than we did, that’s for sure. They spoke in generalities about what had happened in Bastogne, Holland, and Normandy. As replacements, we were very much in awe of the old-timers: Pat Christenson; Jim Welling; Lieutenant Jack Foley; our squad leader, Tex Coombs; Bob Rader; Clancy Lyall; Don Malarkey. I was assigned to the 2nd Platoon.

The old-timers had mixed emotions toward replacements coming in this late in the war. Some were very helpful. Others appeared concerned at our presence. After a while I figured out why: They had gone through three campaigns. A bunch of new replacements coming in was an indication that the unit’s strength was being built up again, which meant they needed to be ready for another campaign. So there was concern.

In some ways, Easy Company was a company of replacements by then. There were certainly a lot of us. Many of the old-timers had been wounded, killed, or were in the hospital. Some were able to rejoin the unit. The old-timers made a very good core. We were proud to know them.

One night we were told to make a patrol across the river to get some prisoners for interrogation. I provided backup on guard duty. I lost a pair of good, heavy underwear because one of the boats tipped. The guys all came back with wet clothes. I had an extra set of underwear, so I loaned it to a guy. I never got it back. That’s how it went. I didn’t mind.

In our courtyard we kept a 75mm howitzer. Our guys would lob a few shells over the river to keep the Germans on their toes. We got some coming back at us, too. The first time I saw that, I couldn’t figure out why our guys shot so fast, then ran down to the basement. Then the German shells came over, so I figured out why pretty quick.

The Germans had a big railroad gun from World War I that went off on us quite a lot. It was camouflaged pretty well and we couldn’t find out where it was. But we always had a good feeling whenever our P-47 fighter planes flew over to look at the Germans. Nobody would be shooting the railroad gun from the German side then, because the Germans didn’t want to be spotted. It was always a relief to see our planes overhead.

For guard duty you challenged anybody who came down the line. I gave them the password, and they were supposed to give me the password back. One time I was guarding on a road in front of a building and heard some fellows coming toward me. I gave the password, but they didn’t give the password back. I did it again. Again, no answer. I thought, “Uh-oh.” So I took the safety off my rifle. Right about that time a shell came in, and we all went down. Then I heard the guys come up cussing in English, so I knew they were on our side.

I pulled guard duty two hours on, two hours off, ’round the clock. I never had a chance to sleep very well, but it could have been worse—we could have been sleeping in foxholes. We slept inside the basement of a house. It rained a lot in Hagenau, so being inside was pretty comfortable.

We manned another guard post in a three-story building. We were on the second floor, set up with machine guns on top of a table with sandbags around. From there we watched with binoculars and could see if anybody was coming across the river. You imagine a lot of things when you’re up there.

Once in Hagenau, I had been out for two days scrounging around for food. I had gathered several rabbits, three or four pigeons, and a turkey. Behind the place where we were set up was a tennis court that was all enclosed. I put our food in there and went out again, looking for something to eat. This time I found a bunch of canned food—peas, carrots, even a little bit of canned meat. So I came home to cook it up, and my goddam cage was empty.

I searched around, asking questions, and found that the 2nd Battalion officers’ mess had all my stuff. I found where they had hid it and took the stuff back. The only thing I didn’t find was the big bird. I went back down and put it all into a nice pot of stew—the whole damn thing. Me and my buddies ate. Was 2nd Battalion ever mad! They had probably been bragging around about what a meal they were going to cook.

In Hagenau I got to know Private First Class Antonio Garcia, a replacement, another real great guy. We were billeted in the same house. I got to know him better after the war. He brought his daughter to a couple conventions, and he’d take her out on the dance floor. Man, that sonuvagun could jitterbug.

In Hagenau we looked for things to eat. We found goats and rabbits, anything that was good eating, skinned it, and cooked it over an open fire.

We were the first group of replacements to join a paratrooper outfit on line. The 101
^st
had taken so many losses in Bastogne they were short-handed.

Hagenau had been a pretty good-sized town, about twenty thousand civilians before most of them left. The city lay on the banks of the Moder River, a tributary of the Rhine. The river was fast-flowing, maybe fifty yards wide, maybe more—too big to throw grenades across, anyway. Things were run pretty smoothly in Hagenau by the time we replacements got there. You just did what they told you to do and you were all right.

Three cobblestone streets ran together there at a big intersection. One of my jobs was to make sure phone lines were laid in okay and working right. Mortars came along every so often and messed them up. I went out with the message center chief a lot when the lines got messed up; he knew what to do. He went out and came to where the line was blown in two and spliced it together. You’ve got to be careful. One day a line was blown in two right in the middle of that three-way intersection, mortars had been landing there most of the day. So we went out there, knelt down, spliced the line, and checked it to make sure it was fixed. We ran back under the doorway. We had just got back when the Germans hit that exact spot with about eight mortars, just
boom, boom, boom
. A second or two earlier and we would have got it.

I didn’t go on the patrol across the river. I just took the men who went over to a house near the river where Captain Speirs and I had gone earlier to black out windows. The men stayed in the house until it got completely dark, then they went over in rubber boats. I came back to company headquarters alone.

I’ve never told this story to anybody until years after the war: Earlier, when Speirs and I went to check out houses, we looked at several to pick out the best one. It was dark and we had tape, paper, and candles with us. Finally we decided on the best house across the street from the canal-bank. Now, it was critical to the patrol that no noise be made in that area, but when Speirs and I were blacking out the house a mongrel dog nearby eyed us and started to bark. That’s a dangerous situation. It can really draw mortar fire or machine gun fire from the enemy—both on us and on the men who later did the patrol. We hushed the mongrel as best we could. He shut up but every once in a while he barked. I could see Speirs shake his head. We finished our job of blacking out the house. The dog let loose into another long bark. Old Speirs pulled out his .45 and let him have it.

While we were in Hagenau, there were rumors that the Germans had broken through at Alsace. Easy Company was told to go fill the gap. We went by truck through many villages to Alsace-Lorraine. I was promoted by Speirs to a buck sergeant and assigned seven men. I had to find quarters for my men and myself. On the way there, we came to a house and a woodshed. I walked up to the door and knocked on it with the butt of my rifle. Out came an old man, older than my dad, with a big, sweeping mustache. His hands were in the air and he motioned by pointing to the woodshed and shaking his head. I assumed he didn’t want to have to leave his house. I felt sorry for the old guy and pointed my finger at my chest and then away from his house.

He motioned toward his mouth with his thumb, meaning he had nothing to eat. We gave him some of our rations; then I got a better idea. I make the sign of deer antlers and jumping. He shook his head no, so I motioned rabbit ears and hopping. He pointed to my gun and nodded his head but indicated he had no shells. He led me around a hedgerow and pointed to large rabbits. They were red Belgium hares. I shot one, and he took it in to his wife. They cooked it with potatoes and shared it with us. We moved out the next morning, still traveling toward Alsace.

I was on guard duty one evening, and another guard from another checkpoint came over to get me. He had an old lady with him who carried a gunny sack but wouldn’t let him look in it. I asked her in Polish,
“Sho ta miash?”
(What is that?), pointing to the bag. She answered,
“keat.”
Sure enough, she pulled two smoked cats out and held them up. She motioned with her hand that she had small children to feed by showing how tall each one was. I gave her as much of our food as she could carry.

After about two weeks we traveled back to Hagenau.

One day in Hagenau, things got quiet for a while and I happened upon a dappled-gray horse. I got my buddy to drive me alongside the horse in a jeep while I lassoed him. I noticed he had numbers on his hooves. He must have been a Polish cavalry horse, because he was so well trained I could do anything on him. I rode into town and someone threw me a purple top hat so I put it on my head. At a reunion in Atlanta in 2006, my wife and I ran into Easy Company member Jim Alley in the hall of the hotel. The first thing Jim said was, “Hey, Frank, where’s your dappled-gray horse and purple top hat?” That sure brought back memories from sixty-two years ago.

On February 20, 1945, Easy Company went into reserve and was sent back to Mourmelon. On March 15, while in Mourmelon, the 101st Airborne received a reward after a division parade before the most brass we had ever seen. General Eisenhower was there, along with General [Maxwell] Taylor; Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan; Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton; President Roosevelt’s secretary, Stephen Early; and Major General Matthew Ridgway. They drove past the whole division, then climbed up on a reviewing stand to give speeches. General Eisenhower announced that the division had received a Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for its performance in Bastogne, the first time in the history of the army that an entire division had been so cited. Each man was given the commemorative medal representing the Presidential Citation with cloverleaf.

Meeting a Defeated Aggressor

From Hagenau we went to Mourmelon for a few weeks. It was nice to get away from the front. On a sunny day you could look at the sunshine and not be concerned that anybody was shooting at you.

Nothing much happened in Mourmelon. While there, the 17th Airborne was supposed to jump over the Rhine into Germany. We were supposed to be their backup. Their jump was a success and we were not needed.

From Mourmelon we headed into Germany. We rolled through France and Belgium. All this time we saw a lot of American flags on the road. Then we rolled into an area where there were no American flags. That meant we were in Germany.

We had some hard-core Nazi troops that kept firing at us, but the majority of German soldiers we met were giving up in droves. They knew the war was just about over.

When our men found the concentration camps I was in the group that went to get food. We found a cheese factory nearby and loaded all these cheese rounds on a truck; they looked like spare tires. But then our company surgeon stopped us and said that if we distributed food too quickly the people would die, they had been starving for so long.

We moved into Germany on foot, on tanks, in DUKWs [amphibious vehicles], and over pontoon bridges, moving swiftly. All along the way the Germans created pockets of resistance to hold us back and hold some ground so they could regroup and retreat. There were too many smaller battles to count.

Constantly, we took prisoners and sent them to the rear for interrogation. They came out of the hills, seven abreast in endless columns, no weapons, tearing off any insignias they had so as not to be recognized as any specific unit when they surrendered in large numbers. There were so many of them at a time that it actually scared us. We were really outnumbered at times.

One night a small group of us were warming up K rations in a burned-out building next to a river. On the other side of the river were more burned-out buildings. Behind that was a house still intact. The officer in charge decided we should get a rope across the river at dusk and pull a small rubber raft over to see if there were any Germans in that house. They asked for someone who could swim. I volunteered and stripped to my underwear. The men greased me down with axle grease to keep out the cold, and I slipped into the water, almost as cold as Rainy Lake on the Canadian border back home. I swam across and tied the rope to a piling that had been part of a warehouse. As several of the men pulled the raft over to the other side, one German soldier about fifty years old and two about sixteen years old came out of the house with their hands up. Not a shot was fired. There were no more Germans around. When the older German saw me he said, “I could have shot you anytime when you were swimming over. I didn’t because I’ve never fired this gun. I didn’t want to be a soldier. I had no choice, but I knew from the beginning we wouldn’t win this war. Everything was too fast and we were too spread out without enough supplies.” He spoke pretty good English. They were all glad it was over and they could go home. We sent them to the rear as prisoners and were on our way again.