Behind Hitler's Lines (25 page)

Gintjee and his mucker of button fame were probably known to Joe but lost in his slow-healing head, as are most memories from XII-A and IV-B except for his twenty-first birthday, celebrated with a sugared lump of dough baked on the hut stove, a cigarette for a candle. The Germans had a present for him too, a few weeks later, when “Beyrle” was read out at roll call for transport to another stalag. Hundreds of Americans were joining him (but neither Rosie nor Gintjee), many unhappy to leave the tolerable routine of IV-B, but not Joe, who felt bridled by a chain of command that seemed reluctant to bring a rash Yank into their escape plans, if there were any.
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They reminded him of the pilot of his Lysander, war-weary, war-wise, and willing to wait for war's end. Joe had been a .400 hitter in high school, but oh for two against the Germans. He wanted another at bat, and not with a cricket paddle.

Joe hadn't found a really kindred kriege (his IV-B muckers had been shuffled several times), and it was accepted practice not to ask personal questions because they could ignite short tempers and end in fights, which burned up scarce energy and satisfied only the authorities, who never ceased trying to turn krieges against one another. Nonetheless IV-B had been an education for Joe, thanks mostly to what he'd learned from two Rangers who'd been captured at Dieppe in the summer of 1942. They were the senior American krieges but didn't transfer with the others because the Germans had permanently classified them as Canadian. Joe can't remember then-names. Names didn't matter much; men went by monikers like King Corporal and Hockey Shorts. Joe's was Spud because he was always scrounging potato peels.

The two crease-faced, stubbly Rangers did a lot to clear his head and bring it to the most practical level, the only one that could sustain any other level. Their patient instruction reminded him of Saint Joseph's basketball coach, who first
showed him which foot to pivot on, what pass to look for, which teammate was in the best position. Fundamentals, essentials:

At XII-A and IV-B Joe was never made by the MOC mafia but now, from what the two Rangers had taught him, he felt ready to step up in an American camp. Early in the afternoon his name was called again and he was sent to a table where kriege dog tags were checked against POW records that had begun at XII-A. For the first time Joe saw his mug shot, now on the cover of this book.

Ditty bags were inspected for contraband, then there was a personal patdown, which did not uncover Joe's shiv (won in craps), a sharpened fragment from a truck shock, an all-purpose tool used mostly for opening Red Cross cans. He had tucked the shiv into a jump boot that stunk so much the Germans wouldn't examine it. The transfer began with a two-mile march to boxcars at a siding. The krieges groaned to see them, forty-or-eights again, likely to invite air attack.

But Allied fighters had not been seen much lately because they were concentrating above the Netherlands, as Joe would soon learn. A guard noticed his jump boots and asked which Airborne division he'd been in. When he answered the 101st, the guard said they had jumped again. Joe's buddies were back in the war for the first time since Normandy, on a date famous in Screaming Eagle history—September 17,1944— the same day as his funeral mass in Muskegon and also the day in 1943 when he landed in England. September 17 is the only day of the year when Joe reads his horoscope.

BY SEPTEMBER 17, 1944, ED ALBERS FELT FULLY INTEGRATED
into Joe's old company, what was left of I Company after Normandy. Duber was still around, and though his crossbow was never fired in France, he continued to practice. One day he took aim at a royal oak that shaded the bus stop in Rams-bury. The bolt shattered bark, shaking the tree as well as the folks waiting for a bus. This time Duber was identified, for there were no other crossbowmen of any nationality in the county. His weapon was confiscated, the only instance Albers can remember of Duber being punished for anything. A prewar army man, thirty-eight years old when he became Airborne, Duber had the guile to disappear for a whole day undetected. Albers wondered how he had done in Normandy. The originals said fine: Duber dodged and defied the Germans as easily as he had his officers.

Third Battalion officers now included the recently promoted CO, Major Shettle, who had saved the day on D+1 by seizing and holding the Douve bridges with fewer than a hundred men. Commanding I Company was Captain Fred Anderson, a platoon leader in Normandy. His family, like Wolverton's, resided in Charlotte, North Carolina. That state was overrepresented in the Airborne, probably because it had been born there and the first wave of volunteeers were local. The Anderson and Wolverton families didn't know each other,
but at war's end Anderson paid a call of respect to Wolverton's widow, a visit that led to their marriage.

Albers's platoon sergeant was the redoubtable Alex Engel-brecht from Syracuse, New York. Like the Beyrle family, his had spoken German at home, and he reveled in pouring profanities on SS POWs in their vernacular. Albers's squad leader was Ted Dziepak, a Polish-American from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Not that there was ever much question, but Dziepak didn't have to be told what he was fighting for.

Fighting spirit was quiescent among the Screaming Eagles during the latter days of summer. The pre-D Day “can't wait to drop on the Wehrmacht” attitude had been replaced by memories from the invasion. New men like Albers soon comprehended from the veterans that Airborne recruiting posters delivered one message, combat quite another. Consequently, the troopers would get ready but were not raring to jump back into the fight. This was a temperament that somewhat discomfited hard-charging commanders like Sink, but they understood and in various degrees felt it themselves.

So the 101st cheered on Patton's Third Army as it drove across France, overrunning one planned Airborne objective after another. Sixteen division-size drops were planned, several to reach the stage where jumpers went into their marshaling area only hours from enplaning, but each time Patton beat them to the drop zones. The Screaming Eagles were like pinch hitters watching the regular lineup run up the score: Go, team! We're ready if needed but won't be disappointed if you keep circling the bases.

While the troopers waited to return to action, decorations for feats in Normandy came down. Three Blues received the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism: Captain Shettle, Donald Zahn and George Montilio. The latter two crossed the Douve under fire and held off a company-size counterattack. There was a glitch in Zahn's paperwork: his medal had not yet been fully processed before the ceremony at which General Omar Bradley presented the decorations. As soon as Montilio received his DSC he took it off, refusing to wear it till Zahn got
one, which he consequently did, along with a battlefield commission. Montilio was promoted to sergeant, but in late April 1945 he became one of the last Screaming Eagles to be killed in action.

The third Currahee to win the DSC was Private Lee Rogers, a tree-topper from Aberdeen, Washington, who would become famous as “Ike's corporal.” With the 506th formed up on Wiltshire County's most impressive parade ground, Rogers's feat was read out by Sink's adjutant. Even in reserved official language the citation was awesome: how the private, after his leaders were killed, had rallied a few men, leading them to destroy a machine-gun nest and a score
of Falls chirmjagers.

Eisenhower listened with eyes that began to glisten, attached the medal on Rogers's jacket, then shook his hand more slowly than he had those of the other heroes. As Rogers returned to ranks, Ike turned to General Taylor and asked softly why such an intrepid leader was no more than a buck private. Would Taylor permit the supreme Allied commander to promote Rogers and do it on the spot? Taylor's answer was of course affirmative, so Rogers marched away from the parade ground with the DSC and two more stripes than he had worn.

Sink, never one to shun publicity for his Currahees, pinned new chevrons on Rogers in front of the press. Soon pictures appeared in
Yank
and
Stars & Stripes
as well as stateside newspapers, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Rogers's fame, alas, then plummeted to infamy. A superb performer in combat, he was equally inept in garrison and soon took leave of it without authorization to celebrate his uniquely bestowed rank. He did so in London pubs, where praise and pints went to his head. Leg MPs returned him to regimental control— disheveled, disreputable, and reeking of Guinness.

Sink was away when Rogers was hauled in. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Chase, the deputy commander, took one sniff and look at yesterday's hero, then demoted Rogers to buck private as summarily as Ike had promoted him. When Chase briefed the CO on this outcome, Sink pushed back his hat, lit a cigarette, and exhaled with exasperation.

“Charley, you can't bust Ike's own corporal!” To which Chase replied with dignity, “Sir, I wasn't aware that General Eisenhower intended for the rank to be hereditary.”

Taylor related Rogers's volatile rise and fall to Ike, who reddened with laughter, promising to never again intervene in promotions. Rogers, perhaps sobered by his vicissitudes, jumped back into the fight to rise from buck private to buck sergeant, a rank he earned and kept in what Screaming Eagles remembered as Holland.

THE NAME GIVEN TO
the second of the 101st's three great rendezvous with destiny was a misnomer. Holland is not the province of the Netherlands the Screaming Eagles dropped on as part of history's biggest airborne operation—that province is actually North Brabant. Holland is up around Amsterdam and Rotterdam, north of the Rhine and near its mouth.
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The objective of benignly named Operation Market-Garden was to establish a bridgehead on the north bank, not at its estuary but at the industrial city of Arnhem, where there was a bridge, one that would become known as “too far.”

Blue chips were again on the table, almost as much so as on D Day. A mighty Airborne formation had been assembled the largest of all time, named the First Allied Airborne Army and consisting of the U.S. 101st, 82nd, and 17th Airborne Divisions, the British 1st (“Red Devils”) and 6th Airborne Divisions, plus an air-transported infantry division, along with the Polish Parachute Brigade. Despite a huge airlift capability, not all those units could be dropped on the enemy at one time; there simply were not enough transports in the world.

Ironically and increasingly, Eisenhower was fast running
out of manpower on the ground while at the same time holding this vastly potent force of elite warriors ready to alight into the fight. There had been nowhere for them to attack while Patton galloped across France, but then his and all five Allied armies dashed like impotent waves against the breakwater of the Siegfried Line, the most formidable fortification in the world. It was a stalemate, and perhaps even trench warfare loomed unless Eisenhower came up with a good idea for how to commit the First Allied Airborne Army, ideally to vertically envelop the Siegfried Line.