Band of Brothers (29 page)

Toye yelled for help; he wanted someone to drag him into his foxhole. Sergeant Guarnere got to him first and began dragging him over the ground.

The shelling resumed. The Germans had planned well. As they anticipated, the pause had brought men out of the foxholes to help the wounded. A shell burst over Guarnere’s head. Shrapnel tore into his right leg, mangling it. After a few minutes, the shelling ceased.

Lipton came out of his foxhole. Lieutenant Dike called out to him. “I can still hear him with that deep voice of his,” Lipton recalled. “He was about 25 yards away, without his helmet or a weapon. ‘Sergeant Lipton,’ he yelled to me, ‘you get things organized here, and I’ll go for help.’ And with that he left.”

Lipton began rounding up the men who had not been hit. “Some of them were close to breaking, some were amazingly calm.” He sent some to tend to the wounded, others to organize to receive the infantry attack he was sure was coming. Then he went to check on Guarnere and Toye.

Lipton looked down at Guarnere. Guarnere looked up and said, “Lip, they got ol’ Guarnere this time.” Malarkey joined them. Guarnere and Toye, as he recalled, were conscious and calm, no screaming or yelling. “Joe says, ‘Give me a cigarette, Malark.’ And I lit the cigarette for him.”

There was a pause in our interview. I urged him to go on. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Malarkey said. Another pause, and then he continued: “Joe smoked, looked at me, and asked, ‘Jesus, Malark, what does a man have to do to get killed around here?’
 
”

Stretcher bearers got to Guarnere first. As he was being carried away he called out to Toye, “I told you I’d get back to the States before you!”

Lt. Buck Compton commanded 2d platoon. He was very close to his men, too close in the opinion of the officers. “Compton was a close friend of mine,” Malarkey said. “He didn’t like the status symbol in the Army. He was more friendly with enlisted men than he ever was with officers.” He was especially close to Guarnere and Toye.

When he came out of his foxhole, Compton saw carnage all around him. The nearest wounded were his friends Guarnere and Toye, their legs dangling from their bodies, their blood turning the snow bright red all around them.

Compton started running to the rear, shouting for medics, or help of some kind. He finally calmed down at the aid station; it was found he had a severe case of trench foot. He was evacuated.

Compton had won a Silver Star at Brécourt Manor on June 6, 1944. He had been wounded later in Normandy, and again in Holland. He had stood up to everything the Germans had thrown at him from December 17 to January 3. But the sight of his platoon being decimated, of his two friends torn into pieces, unnerved him.

·    ·    ·

Peacock gone, Dike taking a walk, Compton gone, one replacement lieutenant who had turned himself in to the aid station with trench foot (which by this time almost every member of the company had) and another who was suspected of shooting himself in the hand — the battalion commander had to be concerned with the problem of the breaking point. Winters related his feelings in an interview: “I had reached that stage in Bastogne where I knew I was going to get it. Sooner or later, I’m gonna get it. I just hope the hell it isn’t too bad. But there never was a fear in me that I was gonna break. I just felt that I was going to be hit sooner or later. But as far as the breaking point, no.”

After a reflective pause, he went on, “But you don’t see people getting hit around you every day, every day, every day, continuing on and on, and — not knowing how long this was going to go on. Is this going to go on forever? Am I ever going to see home again?”

For the officer, he continued, with the additional burden of making decisions constantly, under pressure, when there had been a deprivation of sleep and inadequate food, it was no wonder men broke.

It was the policy of the U.S. Army to keep its rifle companies on the line for long periods, continuously in the case of the companies in infantry divisions, making up losses by individual replacement. This meant that replacements went into combat not with the men they had trained and shipped overseas with, but with strangers. It also meant the veteran could look forward to a release from the dangers threatening him only through death or serious wound. This created a situation of endlessness and hopelessness, as Winters indicated.

Combat is a topsy-turvy world. Perfect strangers are going to great lengths to kill you; if they succeed, far from being punished for taking life, they will be rewarded, honored, celebrated. In combat, men stay underground in daylight and do their work in the dark. Good health is a curse; trench foot, pneumonia, severe uncontrollable diarrhea, a broken leg are priceless gifts.

There is a limit to how long a man can function effectively in this topsy-turvy world. For some, mental breakdown comes early; Army psychiatrists found that in Normandy between 10 and 20 percent of the men in rifle companies suffered some form of mental disorder during the first week, and either fled or had to be taken out of the line (many, of course, returned to their units later). For others, visible breakdown never occurs, but nevertheless effectiveness breaks down. The experiences of men in combat produces emotions stronger than civilians can know, emotions of terror, panic, anger, sorrow, bewilderment, helplessness, uselessness, and each of these feelings drained energy and mental stability.

“There is no such thing as ‘getting used to combat,’
 
” the Army psychiatrists stated in an official report on
Combat Exhaustion.
“Each moment of combat imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure … psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare.… Most men were ineffective after 180 or even 140 days. The general consensus was that a man reached his peak of effectiveness in the first 90 days of combat, that after that his efficiency began to fall off, and that he became steadily less valuable thereafter until he was completely useless.”
¹

By January 3, 1945, Easy Company had spent twenty-three days on the front line in Normandy, seventy-eight in Holland, fifteen in Belgium, a total of 116. Statistically, the whole company was in danger of breaking down at any time.

·    ·    ·

There was no German infantry follow-up attack that night, nor in the morning. The medics cleared out the wounded. The bodies of the dead stayed out there, frozen, for several more days. Lieutenant Dike reappeared. Things got back to normal.

On January 5, E Company was pulled back to regimental reserve south of 1st sergeant of E Company, thought about the same problem, the officers of that company.

As Winters put it, “I look at the junior officers and my company commanders and I grind my teeth. Basically we had weak lieutenants. I didn’t have faith in them. What the hell can I do about this?” He knew that if he were lucky enough to get some additional officers, they would be replacements just over from the States, after completing a hurry-up training program. As to the company commander, Winters stated flatly: “Dike was sent to us as a favorite protégé of somebody from division HQ, and our hands were tied.” Winters saw no quick solution. In the meantime, he decided, “In a pinch, talk to your sergeants.”

His 1st sergeant wanted to talk. Lipton asked for a private conversation. Winters said to meet him in the woods behind battalion CP that night.

They met, and Lipton expressed his concern about the company commander. He described Dike’s actions, or lack of them, with damning detail. He ended by saying, “Lieutenant Dike is going to get a lot of E Company men killed.”

Winters listened intently, asked a few questions, kept his own counsel.

Replacements came in. “I could not believe it,” John Martin confessed. “I could not believe that they were going to give us replacements and put us on the attack. I figured, Jesus, they’ll take us out of here and give us some clothes or something. But, no, they get you some replacements, and ‘Come on boys, let’s go.’ And then that’s when we start attacking.”

He was right. The woods form a U around Foy, with the village smack in the middle. In the attack of January 3, the Americans had taken control of the right-hand portion of the U. Next would come an attack on the left-hand portion.

On January 9 the company participated in the clearing operation in the woods west of Foy. Resistance was light. The company reached its objective and dug in.

Suddenly a shell burst in the trees, then another and another. They kept coming. Cpl. George Luz was caught out in the open. He began racing toward his foxhole. Sergeant Muck and Pvt. Alex Penkala called out to him to jump in with them, but he decided to get to his own and with shell bursts all around, splinters and branches and whole trees coming down, made it and dived in.

Lipton was sharing a foxhole with Sgt. Bob Mann, the Company HQ radio man. The Germans sent over some mail. A shell that was a dud hit just outside their foxhole. Lipton looked at it. Mann lighted a cigarette. Lipton had never smoked, but he asked for one, and that night had his first cigarette.

Luz went to check on Muck and Penkala, the men who had offered to share their foxhole with him. The hole had taken a direct hit. Luz started digging frantically. He found some pieces of bodies and a part of a sleeping bag.

·    ·    ·

The 101st now held all the woods that encircled Foy from the east, west, and south. But Foy, down in its little valley, was not the objective; Noville and the high ground was. General Taylor had wanted to carry on the January 9 attack right into Noville, but for that he needed tank support, and as the tanks could only operate on the road, he had to have Foy. The village had already changed hands four times.

The 2d Battalion of the 506th got selected to take Foy. It was pulled out of the line west of Foy and put back in south of the village. Winters picked Easy to lead the assault. It was a simple, brutal operation. Charge across an open, snow-covered field of some 200 meters in length down into the village, where every window could be a machine-gun post, where every German had brick-and-mortar protection, that was all there was to it. No subtlety, no maneuvers, just charge and get close enough to the enemy to use grenades to root them out of rooms. The key was to get across the field quickly. If the men pressed the attack, if the cover fire was heavy enough, it should be simple. If they paused, it could be costly.

Division ordered the attack to kick off at 0900. Winters did not like the timing. He argued for a first-light start, to reduce exposure, but was turned down.

Winters was watching as Easy formed up for the attack. Standing behind him was a platoon leader from Dog Company, 1st Lt. Ronald C. Speirs.

·    ·    ·

Speirs was an officer with a reputation. Slim, fairly tall, dark hair, stern, ruggedly handsome, he cultivated the look of a leader, and acted it. One of his fellow D Company junior officers, Lt. Tom Gibson, described him as “a tough, aggressive, brave, and resourceful rifle platoon leader.” His nicknames were “Sparky” (among his fellow officers) and “Bloody” (with the enlisted). He had led a bayonet attack and won the Silver Star in Normandy.

There were stories. The rumor mill swirled around Lieutenant Speirs. No one ever saw “it” happen with his own eyes, but he knew someone who did. They may be just stories, but they were believed, or half-believed, by the men of E Company.

One story was about the time in Normandy when Speirs had a major problem with drinking in his platoon. He put out a blanket order. No more wine. None. The next day he ran into a drunken noncom. He gave an order, the noncom back-talked him, and he took out his pistol and shot the man between the eyes.

The conclusion to the story goes like this: “And he never had any trouble with drinking after that.”

Then there was the day in Normandy when Speirs was walking down a road by himself and passed a group of ten German P.O.W.s. They were under guard and were digging a roadside ditch. Speirs stopped, broke out a pack of cigarettes, and gave one to each P.O.W. They were so appreciative he jumped into the ditch and gave them the whole pack. Then he took out his lighter and gave each one a light. He stepped back up on the road and watched them inhale and chat.

Suddenly and without warning he unslung the Thompson .45-caliber submachine-gun he always carried and fired into the group. He continued raking back and forth until all the P.O.W.s were dead. The guard was stunned. Speirs turned and walked away.

Tom Gibson, who related this story to me (I heard it from many other sources, although no one saw it happen), commented, “I firmly believe that only a combat soldier has the right to judge another combat soldier. Only a rifle company combat soldier knows how hard it is to return his sanity, to do his duty and to survive with some semblance of honor. You have to learn to forgive others, and yourself, for some of the things that are done.”

Gibson said he had told the story often over the years, never naming names, but using it as an example of what can happen in war. He continued, “We all know war stories seem to have a life of their own. They have a way of growing, of being embellished. Whether the details are precise or not there must be a kernel of truth for such a story to ever have been told the first time.”