Beyond Band of Brothers (20 page)

One last observation on combat fatigue: When you see a man break, he usually slams his helmet down and messes up his hair. I don't know if it's conscious or unconscious, but a soldier goes to his head and massages his head, shakes it, and then he's gone. You can talk to him all you want, but he cannot hear you. When he reaches that point, the best thing for everybody is just to let him take a walk. Combat exhaustion occurs instantaneously. You don't plan to become a combat fatigue casualty.

How do you prevent combat fatigue? You talk to your troops and make some excuse to pull a soldier off the front line. Of course, pulling a soldier off the front line increases the stress of those who remain, but it is a necessary tradeoff. I often asked a soldier whom I saw on the verge of a breakdown, “How about coming back with me to the CP to help out for a couple of days?” In this manner, you invent a reason for pulling a guy from the line without damaging his psyche. T/5 Joseph D. Liebgott was a case in point. Liebgott was a very good combat soldier who had proven himself in Normandy and Holland. At Bastogne, the stress began to catch up to “The Barber,” so I brought him back to my command post to be my runner for a few days, to let him rest up, to get away from the tension of being on the front. After a few days, he wanted to return to the line and join his buddies. Apparently he needed communication with his comrades more than he needed my company. The tension was still too much for him, so we sent him to division headquarters where he was assigned to the S-2 (intelligence) section to make use of his ability to speak German. This, in my judgment, was a
huge mistake. Liebgott was Jewish and had an understandable hatred of Germans. He had also earned a reputation for demonstrating that hatred against prisoners, which created an entire new category of problems for Liebgott's commanders.

Though Colonel Strayer technically remained in command of the battalion, I operated the tactical command post approximately seventy-five yards behind the front line. This location facilitated daily contact with the forward elements of the battalion. Strayer was an exceptionally competent officer, but he always needed someone at his side. He ensured battlefield success by surrounding himself with equally exceptionally talented officers. Strayer and I had little conversation during the battle. The circumstances surrounding his absence were consistent with his performance in Normandy. As commander, Strayer delegated decisions to his operations officers: first Hester, and then Nixon. When I became executive officer, nothing changed. Colonel Strayer's express purpose in allowing me to direct combat operations was to give me the opportunity to operate a battalion in combat. Consequently, I automatically found myself making the tactical decisions. To find out what was required of 2d Battalion, Nixon traveled to regimental headquarters, then reported to me. He and I also took turns walking the line and checking on the men on a regular basis. Based on what we found, Nixon then ensured that we maintained the proper communications between regiment and the battalion. Since 2d Battalion was initially in defense, our task was not very complicated. Once we had established the main line of resistance, we merely maintained it.

My daily routine was to shave every morning and then to inspect the line. In retrospect, shaving in the bitter cold was pretty ridiculous, but the practice originated with one of my first meetings with Colonel Sink. At Toccoa, Sink had required us to shave every morning. He said, “You shave every morning for the men and if you want to shave every evening for the women, that is up to you. But I want you to set an
example.” He was absolutely right. I remember one morning when we prepared our attack on Foy, I got up in the middle of the night to shave before getting something to eat. In the process, I cut myself up pretty badly. I must have looked like hell. When Colonel Sink arrived to check on us before the attack commenced, he took one look at me and had a huge smile on his face. I realized later that he was laughing at me for shaving on that bitterly cold morning. But that was one of the things I did to set an example for the men—shave in the morning and once in a while I would strip to the waist and give myself a “French wash”—a routine that also caught everyone's attention. I did this for one reason and one reason only—to get the men's attention and to let them know that I was going to be around for a while and that this wasn't as bad as they thought it was going to be. Make the best of it.

Meanwhile 2d Battalion maintained their defensive positions and awaited yet another German attack. On the morning of December 24, the battalion received a small attack on our right flank, which we quickly repulsed. Later that morning the Germans aggressively patrolled our sector, but they withdrew after suffering four killed and four wounded. Christmas Day found 2d Battalion defending the line from the railroad underpass on the Foy Road-Bastogne-Bourcey Railroad to south of Foy. Enemy contact remained relatively light the following day due to breaks in cloud cover that permitted tactical air support to disrupt German patrols and troop concentrations. In spite of the sunshine, life in the forward foxholes remained extremely uncomfortable. After a week in the snow and cold, all the while being constantly probed by the enemy, 2d Battalion held firm and denied the enemy any tactical advantage that they otherwise might have gained had the Germans pressed their attacks more vigorously.

One might ask how the men maintained their morale and their defensive positions. They held because they were paratroopers and because Dog, Easy, and Fox Companies contained men who refused to abandon their buddies for the comfort of the rear echelon ranks. If all the men who had a legitimate reason to go back to the aid station at
Bastogne had taken advantage of their position, there just would not have been a front line. Our forward positions would have been held by a series of outposts, not a main line of resistance. In recalling the tenacity of the American paratrooper, a number of soldiers immediately come to mind. I remember Don Malarkey trudging through the snow with blankets wrapped around his feet and legs in a futile attempt to ward off frostbite. After his buddy Sergeant Warren “Skip” Muck was killed by a direct hit by an artillery round on his foxhole, I offered to bring Malarkey back to the battalion command post for a couple days. He respectfully declined because he refused to leave his buddies in Easy Company.

First Sergeant Carwood Lipton was struck on the arm by shrapnel from a German 88. He had the medic bandage his wound and he stayed on the line. Later in February his commander and I recommended Lipton for a battlefield commission, which was immediately approved by Colonel Sink. Another noncommissioned officer, Staff Sergeant Steve Mihok from battalion headquarters company, was always first to volunteer. You always asked for volunteers before issuing the final orders. Mihok volunteered every night to go on a patrol. What a guy! If I live to be 100 years old, I'll never forget that little trooper standing there with his tommy gun slung over his shoulder, dark circles under his eyes which told me just how dead tired he was, answering, “I'll go.” He later earned two Bronze Stars—it should have been a dozen.

Sergeant Joe Toye was wounded four times: in Normandy, Holland, and twice at Bastogne. On January 2, Toye was hit by a piece of shrapnel from a bomb during a German air raid. His platoon sergeant then sent Toye to the aid station in Bastogne for medical treatment. Later that same day, I looked across the field to our left flank, and there was Joe Toye walking up the road and across the field, his arm in a sling, heading back to the front line. I walked out to meet him and asked, “Where are you going? You don't have to go back to the line. Take a few days off.” Not Joe Toye. He informed me that he had met another lieutenant at the aid station who was suspected of shooting
himself in the hand to escape front-line duty. Joe would have none of that. He was a squad leader and his place was on the line. War had become old to Sergeant Joe Toye, and he was good at it. The lives of his squad depended on his ability to master his craft. In a sense, Toye and his platoon sergeant Bill Guarnere had become what Ernie Pyle termed “senior partners in the institution of killing” and caring for their men. Rather than remain in the rear, Toye hitched a ride with Father John Maloney and returned to the front. Toye told me, “I want to go back with the fellows.” I knew he should not be on the line, but I so admired his devotion to his squad that I stepped aside. Sergeant Joe Toye was an American hero of the first order.

The next day Sergeants Toye and Guarnere were caught in an artillery barrage. They say that you never hear the shell that hits you. I'm not sure that's true, but the closer they hit, the less time you have to hear them. In the artillery bombardment that struck Easy Company at Bastogne, Guarnere lost a leg and Toye's right leg was so mangled that the doctors originally amputated it below the knee. Later, back in the States, they realized the knee was so badly damaged that he would never be able to use it again, so they amputated a second time, above the knee, at the England General Hospital in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

And then there was Corporal Walter Gordon, his head wrapped in a large towel, his helmet sitting on top. Walter sat on the edge of his foxhole behind his light machine gun. He looked like he was frozen stiff, blankly staring ahead at the woods. I remember walking by Gordon without any recognition from him. I stopped and looked back at him, and it suddenly struck me. “Damn! Gordon's matured! He's a man!” Walter was hit during the German attack at 0830 hours on Christmas Eve.

The grim determination that characterized the American paratrooper at Bastogne was not just confined to the enlisted ranks. Lieutenant Harry Welsh almost received his million-dollar wound while a group of us were standing around a fire at the battalion CP on Christmas Eve. We had decided to take a chance and start a fire in order to
stay warm. Lo and behold, the Germans picked it up and fired a mortar round in our direction. I don't know if they were lucky or not or whether they were just that good, but the shell exploded in the middle of our group. As I picked myself up from the ground and looked over to Welsh, I could see that look of terror on Harry's face as he tore off his pants to see where he had been hit. He wasn't castrated, but it was too close for comfort. Sometimes the difference between life and death was a matter of centimeters. Welsh was immediately evacuated and operated on in Luxembourg, Paris, and England. No sooner had the doctors removed the stitches, than Harry went AWOL and returned to 2d Battalion. After almost losing Welsh, the rest of us were scared to death. And that was Christmas Eve at Bastogne.

On December 22 the commander of German forces that had encircled Bastogne called upon Brigadier General Tony McAuliffe to surrender the 101st Airborne Division “to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation.” McAuliffe, a superb combat commander from the old army, was temporarily in command of the Screaming Eagles while General Taylor was in Washington, D.C., on official business. McAuliffe issued a monosyllabic reply: “Nuts!” to the enemy's demand for unconditional and immediate surrender. For those of us along the main line of resistance, we took quiet pride in McAuliffe's tough stance. I, for one, was happy that McAuliffe and not Taylor commanded the defense of Bastogne. While Taylor was always immaculately attired and had a regular retinue of aides and reporters in his wake, McAuliffe was a soldier's soldier who understood ground combat at the grunt level. As such, McAuliffe commanded my utmost respect.

The soldiers of 2d Battalion and Easy Company spent Christmas on the front line. Headquarters distributed a message from General McAuliffe, in which he extolled the virtues of the 101st Airborne Division and reminded us that we had held the line against impossible odds and that our tenacious defense was making headlines in the United
States. Colonel Sink also paid a personal visit to the battalion command post to give us an up-to-date report on the situation. We greatly appreciated that effort on his part.

Some of the men made an attempt to remember Christmas in their own way. Sergeant Bob Rader and Corporal Don Hoobler decided to man the forward outposts themselves rather than sending a couple of troopers or a squad to the forward positions. Hoobler and Rader, along with Shep Howell, had entered the army together and remained best friends. It was unconventional that two noncoms would man the same outpost, but their platoon sergeant approved this unorthodox arrangement considering the special circumstances. Hoobler and Rader then spent the next several hours whispering back and forth, talking about their families back home, what they were doing, and wondering if their families were going to church. Hoobler and Rader represented the best of Easy Company. On Christmas Eve, both risked their lives to give their comrades a little more peace. Regrettably, it was the last Christmas that they spent together. It wasn't long after that night that Hoobler died from a wound inflicted by a Luger that he was carrying and accidentally fired, severing an artery in his leg. Hoobler had jumped with me in Normandy and his loss was deeply felt throughout Easy Company.

The siege of Bastogne was finally broken on the afternoon of December 26 when Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, commanding the 37th Tank Battalion of Patton's Third Army, penetrated the German lines and marched into Bastogne. His arrival was a belated, albeit joyous, Christmas present. Behind Abrams was a large fleet of ambulances and supply vehicles. For the first time in a week, trucks rolled into Bastogne, bringing us food, ammunition, and other supplies. After unloading the supplies, the most critical of our wounded, including Easy Company's Walter Gordon, were the first to be evacuated. By the end of the day on December 27, 652 wounded had been moved back by the 64th Medical Group to army hospitals. By December 28, the last stretcher case of trench foot and walking wounded
reached the rear. This brought the total of American wounded to over 1,000 troopers.