Beyond Band of Brothers (8 page)

With the invasion now only weeks away, I refocused my efforts for the task at hand. Whether or not I wanted to admit it, the past few months had been a battle of nerves and nobody was any the worse for wear than I. I found refuge in church, having only missed services three times in over eight months. Life with the Barneses also provided a pleasant respite from military duties. I was happy to be an officer, but I wrote one friend back home that it was not all that it was cracked up to be. The social life, for one thing, seemed my principal roadblock to future advancement. I had no desire and I absolutely refused to join in the parties and social gatherings in which most officers participated. Despite the fact that I had been an executive officer for fifteen months, and that I was the only officer left in the company who had started with the unit at Toccoa, I still wore the rank of a 1st lieutenant. But that was okay because I knew my job, my company, the men, and I felt confident that under fire, I had the right answers. Which gets me to the point: I was a “half-breed.” An officer yes, but at heart an enlisted man. I worked hard and did my duty as I should, but when it came to play, I was in a bad position and only in athletics with the men did I truly enjoy myself. The happiest days of my army career had been at Camp Croft: good barracks, pretty warm temperatures, and the washroom in the same building. Of course I was only making $21 a month, yet I always had a little money at the end of the month for personal pleasures. Even though I had traveled more and had done more in the past two years, never had I had more fun than during those first few months in the army. Those days seemed as if they had happend in another lifetime.

With the reflection of sixty years, I can say that I was not too concerned about the invasion. I truthfully never wavered as to whether or not I would succeed in combat. I was far more concerned for the safety of the men entrusted to my command. Any success I had as a battlefield commander was based on character, detailed study, and taking care of those troopers. In one letter I painted a beautiful, pathetic, and touching portrait of what leadership consists of. Picture if you will, a small
unit exercise in the English countryside on the eve of the invasion. Along a roadside on a cold damp morning sits a private with his machine gun. He has been on the march and fighting for just about twenty-four hours without stopping and sleeping. He is tired, dead tired, so tired his mind is almost a blank. He is wet, hungry, and miserable. As his buddies sleep, he keeps watch, a difficult job when he is so exhausted and knows that when the sun comes up in another half hour, he will once again be on the move. What does he do? He pulls out a snapshot of his girl, who is over 3,000 miles away, and studies her picture. In a state of inner tranquillity, he dreams of days when he can once again enjoy the kind of life she stands for. Down the road comes an officer—it's me. Nobody else would think of being up at a pre-dawn hour. “How's it going, Shep [Howell]? What are you doing?” Then together, we study and discuss his girl's good features and virtues. He asks me to promise that I will ensure he survives the upcoming battle—a promise I cannot make in good faith since I don't know what the final outcome of the battle will be. I can only tell Shep that I will do my best to ensure he comes home safely—a promise that I kept.

When you think about kids like that, and you realize the weight of your responsibility and do something about it, you soon become old beyond your years. In three years, I had aged a great deal. Still only twenty-six years old, I felt that the simpler times of my college experience and the days of civilian life when I did as I pleased, were long past. It must have been a dream, a small and short but beautiful part of my life. Now all I did was work—work to improve myself as an officer, work to improve my soldiers as fighters, and work to develop them as men. The result was that I was old before my time; not old physically, but hardened to the point where I could make the rest of them look like undeveloped high school boys; old to the extent where I could keep going after my men fell over and slept from exhaustion, and I could keep going as a mother who works on after her sick and exhausted child has fallen asleep; old to the extent where if it was a decision or advice needed, my decisions were taken as if the wisdom behind them
was infallible. Yes, I felt old and tired from training these men to the point where they were now efficient fighters. I hoped that the effort would mean that more of them would return to those girls in the States than otherwise would have made it back to the comfort of their families and friends.

Now that the invasion was near, higher headquarters suddenly became concerned that our airfields were very vulnerable to German parachute commando-type raids on our lanes and equipment. Steps were taken to organize teams of paratroopers to visit these Air Corps bases and give the pilots basic infantry training. Several Easy Company troopers participated in these visits. Their reports were not always encouraging. On the visit to the 9th Parachute Battalion (British), the evaluator noted that although the individual British Tommie was highly proficient on his assigned weapon, “the general reaction of the British toward us at first was generally expressed in an indifferent attitude.” It was not until the American paratroopers took over a major component of the training program, which gave them the opportunity to demonstrate to the British that the American soldiers “knew their stuff,” that the British accepted us as their equal. One battalion officer noted that although the British were quite methodical in their training, they were too much on “spit and polish and not quite enough on scouting and patrolling.” My job was to teach unarmed combat. My impression of the Air Corps personnel with whom I worked was very poor. If I was going into combat, I was thankful that I was in the 101st Airborne Division. I felt far safer in the company of my paratroopers than with any of the pilots and support personnel.

May 16 was Mother's Day and I made it a special point to order Mom a dozen roses. I also bought a handbag for Mrs. Barnes. She had been like a mother to me for over eight months and she seemed almost like my own mother. I was flat broke for the remainder of the month after these purchases—just like old school days and those days at Camp Croft. While I attended church services the following week, the congregation celebrated what the British called Witsun, or Children's Day.
It sure was enjoyable to watch those kids get up and recite, then recall how I used to be in the same shoes not so many years ago. One little girl about four years old, with a pretty little pink dress and white bonnet-shaped hat, stole the show. She was up and down, yawning, stretching, singing with her music upside down, waving to friends in the audience, and then fussing with her new dress, hat, and shoes. Quite a show! When it was over, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not I would live to share another Mother's Day or Witsun with loved ones. Would I see flowers bloom again the following spring?

On the verge of a major deployment, it was important to hold on to something from home. In my free moments, I often reminisced about life in the States prior to our deployment overseas. That past seemed so distant now. Still, I would not trade anybody back home or anyone in England for tickets for the “big show” [D-Day]. I had worked long and hard for these tickets and now, I was not going to part with them. We were ready.

On May 29, the company marched to the trucks lined up in the village center. Half of Aldbourne turned out to bid us farewell. We were appreciative of our English hosts and had formed a strong attachment to them over the course of the preceding eight months. Due to security, I couldn't say anything to anyone about where we were going, but the residents of Aldbourne knew we were pushing off. The Barneses bade me farewell, knowing without being told that this was the real thing. My own parting with the Barnes family was tearful, but it was time to move toward the departure airfield. As we went down the road in trucks, I can still see my British “sister,” Elaine, walking ahead of us and turning to wave goodbye as we drove by. Rumors naturally abounded as to the time and place of the invasion. Lieutenant Meehan and I had actually determined the approximate location of our projected drop zone. While sitting around in our tent one evening, we used our imagination and discussed our previous flight times and course changes. Taking a map and placing a string on Uppottery, we then extended the string and discovered that the pencil crossed the Cotentin
Peninsula in Normandy. If we could figure this out, we wondered if the Germans could do the same thing.

A column in
Stars and Stripes
stated that theaters, ball games, and nonessential business establishments in the United States would close and people would be asked to attend church and pray for us on D-Day. That announcement, coupled with the size and the magnitude of a united feeling like that we experienced when we left Aldbourne, sent chills up and down our collective spines. At home a soldier does not usually think beyond his local acquaintances. Go to another part of the country and it is one's home state, and anyone from your hometown is a buddy. Once overseas, the situation changes dramatically and anybody from the United States is your buddy. So when we felt that way and thought that all those people were sending their best wishes and prayers, you could not help but feel good. As for myself, I wrote my final letter home and told my friend that every night at taps I would meet her at the North Star. The old North Star is a soldier's guiding light when he is lost, alone, and feeling mighty funny in the pit of the stomach. What makes him feel good is when he can look up and know that there is somebody else looking up at the same star.

Easy Company closed on our marshalling area near Exeter, in Devonshire in the mid-afternoon of May 29. Our camp lay in an open field beside the airstrip at Uppottery in southwestern England, approximately ten miles from the coast. Easy Company was billeted in pyramidal-shaped tents. The next day Sink briefed the regimental officers, and the troops spent the day caring for and cleaning their equipment. Ammunition was issued and weapons were checked by ordnance. A band played in each battalion area during the evening.

During our first evening in the marshalling area, the company officers received our initial briefings on our D-Day mission from my friend Nixon, who was now serving as 2d Battalion S-2 (intelligence officer) and Captain Hester, a former Easy Company officer, who was the battalion operations officer. We examined sand tables, routes of advance and egress to the objective areas, and received briefings on the
enemy situation and pending weather conditions. I listened closely, but concentrated on the general concept of the operation rather than all the specifics because it was more important to be able to think on my feet than it was to memorize every excruciating detail, most of which would never withstand the initial clash with the enemy. Personally I did very little briefing. I just couldn't seem to get enthusiastic, but I had the situation well in hand.

The 101st Airborne Division's mission on D-Day was to drop in the vicinity of Ste. Marie du Mont and to seize four causeways behind Utah Beach on the Cotentin Peninsula. In all, there were four causeways that connected Utah Beach with the solid ground of Normandy. The concept of operation called for the 502d Regiment to secure the two northernmost exits to facilitate the passage inland of the amphibious forces, principally from the 4th Infantry Division, while Colonel Sink's 506th PIR secured the two southernmost exits. Sink, in turn, planned for 1st and 2d Battalions to land on a drop zone just to the west of Ste. Marie du Mont, which put it about as close to the western approaches of the two lower causeways as was tactically possible. As rapidly as it could complete its assembly, 2d Battalion was to move toward causeway No. 2. Exit No. 2 led from the beach through Houdienville to Ste. Marie du Mont. Securing that causeway was the responsibility of Easy Company with an attached demolition team. This specific causeway was built to a height of an average six feet above the marsh, which was an initial barrier to the westward advance of the forces landing on Utah Beach. The regimental intelligence report noted that over most of the adjoining area, the marsh could be waded, but the entire region was crisscrossed at many points by drainage canals, which though narrow, ran to a depth of eight feet or more. The presence of these streams presented a very real danger. If the force coming by sea was denied the use of the causeways, many hours would pass before the amphibious forces could link up with the airborne forces. The time thus lost might determine the fate of the invading forces at Utah Beach.

On June 1, General Taylor arrived in our area in early afternoon
and delivered an inspirational speech to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Taylor told us to ���just give me three days and nights of hard continuous fighting and by then we will have done our part.” The following day we assembled the men in the briefing tent and instructed them on the precise details of the impending night jump. On June 3, the officers received Eisenhower's D-Day message and Colonel Sink's order of the day. General Eisenhower reminded us that we were about to embark upon “a Great Crusade to which we have striven these many months.” Colonel Sink referred to our impending departure as “the night of nights” and urged us to “strike hard. When the going is tough, let us go harder. Imbued with faith in the rightness of our cause . . . let us annihilate the enemy where found.” Both messages were stenciled and packed in bundles of eighteen and were to be delivered to the men at take-off time. We also received $4 worth of “invasion money” and all our British currency was exchanged for French francs. We would not need British pounds where we were heading. Each of the men was also given a dime store cricket—one
click-clack
to be answered by two in the Norman darkness—and the challenge,
Flash
, to be answered by the password,
Thunder
.