We Who Are Alive and Remain Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE - A Future That Nobody Could Prepare Us For

  CHAPTER TWO - Young Lions, East

  CHAPTER THREE - Young Lions, West

  CHAPTER FOUR - The Day Everything Changed

  CHAPTER FIVE - Cutting Teeth at Toccoa

  CHAPTER SIX - How the Rest of Us Trained

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Aboard the Samaria, Toccoa Men

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Atlantic Crossings, Replacements

  CHAPTER NINE - Aldbourne: Calm Before the Storm

  CHAPTER TEN - A Bad Day for a Lot of Young Men

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Fighting in Normandy

  CHAPTER TWELVE - The Battle of Carentan

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - R&R in England

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Fight of Our Lives in Holland

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Defending the Island

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Respite in Mourmelon

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Frozen Hell

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Blood

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - Enemy Across the River

  CHAPTER TWENTY - Meeting a Defeated Aggressor

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Toasting Victory

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Last Duties in Austria

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Coming Home

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Lives in Freedom

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Thoughts on Heroism

  EPILOGUE

  Memories of My Father

  APPENDIX I - Easy Company’s Campaigns 1944-1945

  APPENDIX III - Understanding Easy Company’s Placement: Easy Company, 506th ...

  APPENDIX IV - Known Members of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, ...

  APPENDIX V - Killed in Action, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, ...

  INDEX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  This book is an original publication of the Berkley Publishing Group.

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  Copyright © 2009 by Marcus Brotherton

  All rights reserved.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brotherton, Marcus.

  We who are alive and remain : untold stories from the band of brothers / contributors, Rod Bain . . . [et al.]. p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05056-9

  1. United States. Army. Parachute Infantry Regiment, 506th. Company E. 2. World War,

  1939-1945—Personal narratives, American. 3. World War, 1939-1945—Regimental histories—

  United States. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Western Front. 5. United States. Army—

  Parachute troops. 6. Soldiers—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  D769.348506th .B76 2009

  940.54’12730922—dc22

  2008047668

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  CONTRIBUTORS

  Rod Bain

  Don Bond

  Roy Gates

  Forrest Guth

  Ed Joint

  Joe Lesniewski

  Dewitt Lowrey

  Clancy Lyall

  Al Mampre

  Earl “One Lung” McClung

  Norman Neitzke

  Ed Pepping

  Frank Perconte

  Darrell “Shifty” Powers

  Frank Soboleski

  Herb Suerth Jr.

  Amos “Buck” Taylor

  Ed Tipper

  Bill Wingett

  Henry Zimmerman

  With the families of:

  George Luz Sr.

  Robert Burr Smith

  Herbert Sobel

  The contributors wish to dedicate this book

  To the men of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division,

  many of whose acts will never be known

  To those who made the supreme sacrifice and never came home

  And to the men and women of the American Armed Forces, all generations,

  who have served, and continue to serve, to uphold our freedoms

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have come to light had it not been for author Robyn Post, who, while completing her book about Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron, began to contact men to discuss another project about the remaining members of Easy Company. Simultaneously, Robyn was busy researching a different book. She knew the clock was against the Easy Company project’s success, so she phoned my agent, Greg Johnson, knowing he had championed Buck Compton’s and Don Malarkey’s memoirs, and asked if he knew a writer who would be able to develop the project. I had just worked with Buck Compton on his book and jumped at the chance.

  Editor Natalee Rosenstein at the Berkley Publishing Group saw the strength of this project immediately and contracted the book based on a simple, five-page pitch sheet, which I’m ever grateful to her for doing. Thanks are also due to assistant editor Michelle Vega, who was her usual terrific self in keeping things organized and smooth, and to all the team at Penguin, including Peter Horan and Catherine Milne.

  When the project began, I had three men who wanted to tell their stories, with hope of four others. I knew their stories would be intrinsically valuable even if the book was only about seven men, yet because the war chronology of Easy Company had been covered already in several books and the Band of Brothers DVD series, I wasn’t certain how this book would be unique.

  Over time, my vision for this book began to form. I didn’t want to create another book that focused on what the company did as a whole. Rather, I wanted to spotlight the men as individuals: who they were when they were young, why they enlisted, what situations each encountered in combat, what lives they made for themselves after the war. I knew the stren
gth of the story would emerge as readers imagined sitting down in living rooms with these men, listening to their stories, hearing their voices, grammar, and word choices, experiencing living history firsthand.

  I contacted Herb Suerth Jr., president of the Men of Easy Company Association. He liked the idea, particularly the angle of giving voice to the men who hadn’t told their stories yet. Through Easy Company rosters, my agent and I began to cold-call and write letters to the men asking if they were interested in participating.

  Some of the men were hesitant at first, even skeptical. A few phoned Buck, wondering if I was legit. Humility also played a role in the men’s decisions: the men didn’t want to talk about themselves. Health and age prevented several from participating. Over time, trust won out.

  I was helped and encouraged by several of the adult children of Easy Company members. Thanks go to Susan Finn, George Luz Jr., Lana Luz Miller, Donna Bain Farquhar, Dr. Nancy Crumpton, Garry and Grace Alley, Tracy Compton, Syndee Compton, Tracy Gordon Goff, Michael Sobel, Gary and Marcy Carson, and Ann and Bruce Winegarden. Thanks also go to Janet Jacobsen, Rod Bain’s sister.

  At the end of this book, I invited three adult children of deceased Easy Company members to tell about their fathers. Many similar essays could be written, yet I felt that Herbert Sobel, Robert Burr Smith, and George Luz Sr. comprised a good cross representation of the company. They are key in understanding more about the men: Sobel, because he continues to be a controversial figure; Smith, because of the life of adventure he led after the war; and Luz, because he was so universally admired.

  I was privileged to talk with many of the wives of the Easy Company men. Renee Soboleski was fabulous in organizing her husband’s materials. Thanks also go to Grayce (Peg) Wingett, Donelle Bain, Patricia Bond, Lucille Clark, Sally Joint, Phyllis Lesniewski, Isabel Lyall, Virginia Mampre, Rose Maynard, Jean McClung, Lucille Neitzke, Dorothy Powers, Monna Suerth, Elaine Taylor, Rosalina Tipper, Mildred Zimmerman, Delvina Luz, and the late Harriet Guth.

  Rich Riley, a World War II 101st Airborne historian and friend of Easy Company, proved a great resource. Thanks go to historian Jake Powers for his dedication to Easy Company, and to attorney Vance Day, who cares deeply for the troops.

  I gratefully acknowledge that this project stands on the shoulders of those who first brought Easy Company to light, including Stephen Ambrose and Ronald Drez, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Merav Brooks at HBO (the men all speak highly of you).

  Thanks extend to Major Dick Winters and Colonel Cole Kingseed, the late David Kenyon Webster, Larry Alexander, Don Malarkey and Bob Welch, Christopher Anderson, Forrest Guth and Michael de Trez, and many other authors, writers, and historians for faithfully chronicling Easy Company and the 101st throughout the years. Included in this list are Donald Burgett, George Koskimaki, Charles Whiting, Mark Bando, Michael Haskew, Lance Jones, Robin Sink McClelland, James D. Sutton, John Taylor, Arthur Northwood Jr., and Leonard Rapport. Special thanks extend to Ross S. Carter, author of Those Devils in Baggy Pants (504th PIR, 82nd), a truly exceptional book.

  Thanks go to the administrators of tribute Web sites who work to preserve the history and community surrounding Easy Company, including Peter van de Wal in Holland, Valor Studios, www.majordickwinters.com, www.wildbillguarnere.com, www.frankdeangelis.com, www.carwoodlipton.com, www.davidkenyonwebster.com, www.menofeasycompany.com, www.joetoye.com, and more.

  Gratitude is expressed to the late Walter Gordon, a neighbor of Stephen Ambrose’s. Gordon is credited with being the vital link in birthing the current renown of Easy Company. Much credit goes to Bill Guarnere, the catalyst behind organizing company reunions for so many years and compiling and maintaining rosters.

  I am ever grateful to my wife, Mary Margaret Brotherton, for her strong support in this project and her love always, to journalists Dorothy Brotherton and H. C. Jones, my readers on this project, to intern Ty Johnson from Seattle Pacific University, and to David Kopp, my mentor and friend.

  PREFACE

  An Elite, Experimental Fighting Unit

  Someone had driven a bulldozer up the side of Mount Currahee, the three-and-a-half-mile-long incline at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. In the bulldozer’s wake lay a jagged swath of gulley. Rocks and furrows pressed up into the cut. Whenever rain fell, which wasn’t often in the summer heat, a creek gushed down Camp Toccoa’s newest running track.

  One company of soldiers—about 140 men—grunted up the path early one morning in August 1942, led by Captain Herbert Sobel, Easy Company’s commander. The men jogged in formation, one behind another, equidistant from each other side to side. If a rock reared up in a man’s path, he was not allowed to swerve. He leaped over the obstacle, muscles taut, hoping he didn’t roll his ankle or bloody his shin.

  Private Ed Tipper, a young Irishman from Detroit, ran Currahee that morning. He gasped with the other recruits, sides aching, legs pounding, wondering if he had the necessary stuff to make it into the paratroopers. Ahead of him ran one of the senior citizens of the bunch, Jack Ginn, already an old man at twenty-five. Ginn had been out drinking the night before and stank, Tipper reported. As the sweet, ugly smell wafted back, Tipper felt a strange sense of determination. Ginn continued to run, hangover and all, and Tipper figured that if Ginn could make it to the top, boozy as he was, then certainly he would be able to make it, too.

  In that same pack ran a Virginia coal kid named Shifty Powers. A fabulous rifle shot since his days in the Clincho backwoods, he dreamed of making it into the Airborne. The paratroopers were simply the best. It was an all-volunteer program. A man could quit any time he wanted. The majority of men didn’t withstand the arduous training and washed out into other military branches. Sixty-six years later Powers described the hope: “At the time the army didn’t have specialist units like they have now. The paratroopers were the best-trained soldiers America had. We were the equivalent of today’s Green Berets or Navy SEALs. All the training we had—you got so you knew what the guy next to you was going to do—and he knew what you were going to do.”

  Powers noted that the army was trying something new at Toccoa. Until then, men went to basic training first, then were sent to various units. But the army decided to lump the 101st’s basic training and paratrooper training into one place and time, and train the entire division together. The end result, so army officials hoped, would be to produce a group of men unparalleled in their cohesiveness. The paratroopers of the 101st would be deadly, efficient, unmatched on the battlefield. “So that’s what we did,” Powers said. “We started together in Toccoa, and went all the way through the war together. And at the end, those of us who were left, we were still together.”

  In that same pack ran Rod Bain, the son of a World War I veteran. Ask Bain to describe Easy Company today and he thinks for a moment: “Average age, probably twenty. Very young, very eager to do well in combat. We trained constantly in the Deep South, then in England, always training to be one of the army’s first-class units. We trained from August 1942 until we jumped into France twenty-two months later. We received far more training than the average soldier. As a unit we were together almost two years before entering combat via parachute.”

  Running up Currahee at Toccoa was just the start of Easy Company’s adventures. In the years to come, they would sweat and struggle and live and bleed together. Some men’s war ended on June 6, 1944, during the jump into Normandy. Others met their fate in Operation Market Garden, September to November 1944, the Allies’ failed attempt to liberate Holland and force an early end to the war. The men huddled together in foxholes in Belgium, December 1944 to January 1945, during one of the coldest winters on record. They lobbed shells at the enemy across the river in Hagenau, fought their way through France and Germany, liberated concentration camps, and drank a toast to victory in April 1945 at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s posh hideout in the Alps.

  The group developed its cohesiveness in stages. Not all Easy Company men were present at Toccoa in early 1942. Replacements and transfers jo
ined the company throughout the war. A Pennsylvania wildcat named Ed Joint joined the company at Camp Mackall, North Carolina. Joint caught the vision for being a paratrooper right away and carried it fearlessly through the war. “Our job was to jump out of a plane and hit the ground ready to fight,” Joint says. “We were used to being surrounded by the enemy. That didn’t bother us none.”

  An engineering student from Marquette University named Herb Suerth Jr. joined the unit at Bastogne. He had initially signed on with a company of engineers but soon applied to the paratroopers, completed training, and joined Easy Company. Bastogne is where he saw firsthand the result of his decision to transfer to the 101st: “On my first day going up to the line at Bastogne,” Suerth says, “we got out of the truck, it was just getting light. As we climbed out, all of a sudden everyone fell into combat intervals, columns of two by the side of the road. Guys went out in the woods to scout. All this happened with no commands—it just happened automatically. The men very suddenly turned themselves into combat machines. I saw this and said to myself, ‘Whoa, this is a real combat outfit. They know what they’re doing.’ That’s when I knew why I wanted to be with Easy Company and not with a bunch of deadbeats who wanted to shoot themselves in the foot.”

  It’s been noted that soldiers in premodern eras sometimes went unnamed. A man was more efficient, so it was thought, if he was simply known as soldier—one of the many. But modern soldiers have names. Although the men of Easy Company functioned as a group during the war, all were individuals. They grew up in various places all over America. They had brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. They had jobs, loved women, and dreamed of careers if and when they returned from battle. To help us start to get to know these men, two chapters near the beginning of the book are devoted to the individual histories of the men of Easy Company.