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-Okay. -Welcome.
Hi.
Thanks for sitting down with us. We appreciate it.
Would you recount for me the incident where you were wounded?
Well, l was standing...
...on the top of this hill at the aid station...
...and a random shell came in.
It couldn't have gone off more than 1 0 feet away...
...because all I remember is a tremendous blast and a flash.
And the next thing l knew, I was on the ground in the snow...
...and l tried to get up.
And when I tried to get up, l....
Only thing l could see were the broken ends of my legs.
And l thought my legs were gone. I was--
Because that's all-- Both femurs were shattered.
They were laying down here as l was on my back, trying to raise my legs up.
And l thought:
"I'm dead," you know, "I'm about to die."
And l said--
I said my Act of Contrition, because l am a Catholic.
And then the next thing I thought of was my mother.
And l thought, "What's she gonna say?"
Because I was an only child.
My name is C. Carwood Lipton.
I was born in Huntington, West Virginia. Grew up in Huntington.
Frederick T. Heyliger. Concord, Massachusetts was my hometown.
I was born in a town named Inchelium, Washington.
It's on an lndian reservation.
My name's J.B. Stokes. I was born close to Bonham, Texas...
...in an area called Leonard.
Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
...my dad worked for the railroad. My mom was a housewife.
My nickname was Babe. And my mother...
...she was a little Irish broad. Red hair. Fiery.
Great woman.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, where times were tough.
Mom had 1 0 children, so you had to work to survive.
It was just survival in the streets of Philadelphia.
We came up in the Depression. Sometimes we'd live on a farm and have...
...pigs and raise a garden.
I saw people that really were hungry and had hard times.
My father was able to find employment. We never went hungry.
We lived on a farm. Everybody was poor. That was the Depression.
When I got to about 1 0, I got a paper route.
I made $5 a month. Something like that. But it was something.
There's a work ethic the Pennsylvania Dutch in this area are very proud of.
I was the oldest one, so l sort of branched out on my own at an early age.
I was married when I was 1 9 years old in 1 941 .
On December 7 of '41 ...
...we were in a store, and a guy, he says:
"The U.S.A. is in a war with Japan."
And everything just went silent.
I said, "Let's go in the Army." He said, "l don't want to."
I said, "You're gonna have to go sooner or later."
Something was wrong with you if you weren't in the service.
It was what you had to do.
I wasn't gonna be in the infantry. I was gonna be in some...
...top kind of a unit, or l wasn't gonna be in the Army.
LIFE magazine had run an article on paratroopers...
...sometime in early 1 942.
And it told about the training that they got...
...and the difficult physical requirements, and l got interested...
...in seeing if I could become a paratrooper.
Nobody forced you to do this, you volunteered.
And it was the notion...
...that you wanted to do something. You wanted to be with the best.
But once you got in there, you was proud to be.
We was proud of our boots, and our shoulder patch.
And we was proud to be paratroopers.
And we was proud to be working with the guys we were working with.
You know these people that you're in service with....
You know those people better than anybody in your life.
You know them right down to the final thing.
And that comes when you start your training, while that progresses.
-Each man was like a championship boxer. -Out of 1 00% , only 1 0% made it.
-l thought l'd die. -No holding back.
-You had to hang in there and be tough. -We marched 1 1 8 miles in three days.
The training l got and the men I trained with...
...gave me the confidence to go into battle.
We were just a bunch of ordinary kids when we went in.
The training was to build you up physically and mentally.
Some of them lost as much as 40 pounds.
But l didn't have nothing to lose. I weighed about 1 30.
If l lost 40 pounds, I'd have been too small to stay.
You know, they weeded out so many.
They'd be there one day, and they'd be gone the next.
They couldn't keep up with it. They couldn't take that hard training.
You had the cream of the cream of the cream.
We had to climb this mountain called Currahee every morning. Run up and back.
If you couldn't, you'd end up in another unit.
The name Currahee means "We stand alone together."
That's an Indian name. It became a symbol of the camp...
...because it was rough and tough, going up and down.
A lot of times, when some of the guys would go and get them a drink or so...
...you'd see them laying on the road, where they were sick.
It didn't matter how hard you trained and how tired you got...
...you would still go out on your own and run the mountain at night...
...which was ridiculous because during the day...
...all you did was bitch and moan.
At night, they'd get a couple guys and go up and do it on your own.
We learned how to be soldiers at Toccoa...
...as a group, all of us coming in...
...from no experience in the Army at all...
...coming in directly from civilian life.
I'm gonna say this, I believe...
...that the paratroopers of the 1 01 st Airborne Division...
...was as well-trained as you could get a soldier to be at that time.
-We packed our own chutes. -Nervous as hell.
You're asking yourself, "What am I doing here?"
-Coming down is great. -lt affects everybody different.
-l broke my foot. -You're dropping 1 6 feet a second.
I can remember just like it was yesterday.
That morning after breakfast...
...they marched us all out there to the airfield.
There were guys that already made their jump.
And they were all hollering, "You're gonna be sorry!" You know?
You didn't want to be afraid, you know...
...because these other guys are there with you. Your bravado and all that....
You didn't wanna be afraid, so you kept that out of your mind.
Jumping out of a plane wasn't like today. My first flight up, I jumped.
That was years before I landed an aircraft.
Most of the troopers was the same story.
Foolishly, l didn't think it'd be so tough, but....
The first time-- The first jump you make is not all that bad.
You don't know what you're doing. When you step out...
...the chute just opened right then.
As l went out the door, l was blank.
I cannot remember leaving the plane...
...until after the chute opened up. My God.
But after that, it wasn't as bad.
It was a thrill. It was like going on a roller coaster.
You get off and want to get back on.
It was a thrill.
It was a high, as they say these days.
Everybody enjoyed themselves. Landing was the hardest part.
Once that chute opened, I was happy as a lark.
You know, coming down is great.
I was small too, and I didn't hurt myself when I hit the ground.
Some of the big ones hit like a ton of-- What's his name?
You worried most about your chute. Did you pack it right?
You'd pack it one day and jump the next day. You thought about it all night.
You had...
...ideas of what you might have done wrong, or....
But it worked out fine.
We made five jumps in the third week there.
Then you were a qualified paratrooper. Got your wings pinned on...
...and became one of the elite members of the parachute regiment.
We were thoroughly prepared.
The men were...
...trained, hardened...
...physically and mentally.
And they were ready to jump.
That's how we started off for Normandy.
When you walk up that gangplank, you know you're gone.
As you pull out of harbor, and you pass the Statue of Liberty....
"Will l ever be coming back? I don't know."
You know you're in a parachute troop.
You're gonna be jumping behind enemy lines. What do you expect?
You have no idea.
That'll make anybody stand...
...and search his soul for a few minutes.
We were ready.
We were stationed in England for about a year before D-Day.
We had a lot of maneuvers and parachute jumping.
They put us in a camp...
...preparing us for D-Day.
At just about a week before D-Day...
...they put us in. No liberties, no nothing. You couldn't get out of camp.
They had guards around the marshaling area...
...so nobody could leave.
That's when you felt that, "This is it."
We did not know which day.
We did not know where we were gonna jump until we were locked in.
And then they had the briefing...
...to tell you exactly what your mission was.
And they took this map...
...and they made a model of the features of the land.
They put in all the buildings, the bridges, the knolls...
...all the sand dunes. Everything was in on that layout.
We knew it by heart. We knew where we were going.
We knew exactly what to do.
I mean, if you could've been there at the time to see...
...where the planes were lined up and all the gliders hooked up to the planes.
Tanks and trucks and fields and fields of them.
I had no idea that there was that much hardware.
No question, we knew it was gonna be big.
And that day...
...that we got the orders to get on the planes.... This is it.
We had confidence in our leaders...
...and all the plans and preparations that took place before the invasion.
We were confident and calm.
We were all loaded down. We carried everything we thought we could...
...in the line of personal items...
...plus the necessary things we were assigned to carry.
And we were loaded.
Everybody got in there...
...and a lot of them were very scared. l was scared too...
...but probably in a different way that other people were.
As long as l was in that plane...
...and they were gonna get me there safely...
...that's all that I worried about.
At the time, I had no feeling whatsoever.
My feeling was for my brother, who was killed.
That infuriated me.
And that's why, when l jumped on D-Day, I swore....
I swore l would kill every damn German I came across.
That's why they nicknamed me Wild Bill. l killed a lot on D-Day.
The sky was clear, coming across the channel.
Since I was jump master, l could lie at the plane door with my head out...
...in the slipstream, looking down.
And l saw the thousands of craft ships...
...everything from LCIs to battleships...
...down there in the channel. I think that's when I first realized...
...how large the invasion was. Tremendously large, the invasion was.
We were out for 1 1/2 hours before we-- We went down the south end of England...
...and then across the Jersey islands...
...and then across the Cherbourg peninsula.
And that's when the fireworks started.
Flak was terrible.
Anti-aircraft was absolutely horrendous.
It was like...
...a July the 4th celebration, 1 0 times over.
Then it would hit under the wings and body...
...and you could hear it go...like gravel hitting a car fender.
You could see tracers all over.
Everybody wanted to get out of the plane fast.
Whether it was high, low, no matter where we were. Out!
They were getting shot up.
Finally, the pilots-- I happened to read their minds--
"Okay, we got so much gas...
...and we're gonna have to get back to England.
What do we do with all the guys back here?
Give them the green light. Get out."
We're ready to jump.
There was a relief when the green light came on, and we said, "Let's go."
Well, l jumped up on a run...
...and hit the static line with the hook and out the door...
...and got such an opening shock...
...from the prop blast, that it broke this chin strap...
...that we had on this helmet liner.
And that's when l lost this famous leg bag that everybody talks about...
...just from the shock of the opening. It just flew right off my foot.
The British call them leg bags.
They gotta be this big, and you stuff everything you can into them.
They're supposed to weigh 1 5 pounds. By the time you're done, they're 60.
Everyone that jumped with a leg bag, they lost it.
Most of the paratroopers that landed didn't have nothing.
I was one of them.
It tore right off...
...because we jumped at speeds of 1 50 miles an hour...
...maybe even higher. l don't know.
And lower than we should've been.
That wasn't bad either, because you got to the ground quicker.
When we went out the door, l looked to see if my chute was open...
...and l saw tracer bullets burning holes in the chute.
And they told us all you'll have to do is shuffle up to the door...
...throw that leg out, prop blast will hit it, and you're gone.
Well, they were right.
Only I was going out, and my leg was in...
...and l was hanging upside down...
...looking at everything down with my leg in the plane.
All this happened in a split second. Paul rolled me out.
Paul Rogers rolled me out.
I just helped him out. l just picked him up and threw him out, l guess.
I had to get out. We wanted to get out so bad.
And l come down right behind city hall...
...watched them shoot at me all the way, which wasn't very long.
I could see the tracers. They were kind of spraying around in the air.
Whoever the machine gunner was down there that was concentrating on me...
...apparently was not a very good shot.
They were firing in every direction.
You don't know which way to go.
The next thing is that you are getting close to landing...
...and you're saying, "There's some trees. There's a road.
Try and slip to avoid the trees. Try and slip to avoid landing on the road."
I slipped and my chute fell across power lines, and l hit a fence...
...and fell into a farmer's garden.
I'll never forget that fence. It had glass on top of it...
...and cut me up, but that didn't bother me.
I just-- l was down, and l got down with my gun.
I hit the ground in a field, and we were way-- l got looking at my map...
...and we weren't close to where we were supposed to be.
We was plumb off our maps that they'd given us.
So we had to make our way back. We knew that the beach...
...was to the east. We headed that way to find out where the outfit was.
My friend from Erie was in another plane.
When I hit the ground, l hit about 2 feet away from him.
And him and l start walking around looking for more of our troops.
And we were running into Germans everywhere, but we had to hide.
You know, because if we didn't, we were dead meat.
And l laid in a tree. I had my trench knife.
And l reached up...
...and grabbed hold-- lt was a big trunk, the tree, and I swung into it.
I cut those risers with, I think, one swipe.
And l come down that tree like a monkey.
And then there l was with a trench knife and a canteen...
...and about six candy bars in my pocket...
...ready to fight the German army, you know.
So there's four guys that were with me on D-Day...
...who didn't have nothing but a jump knife when they landed.
So we had to hope, scrounge.
As it worked out for all of us...
...later on, we'd run across somebody who had been killed...
...and you'd take his weapon.
And that's how you get a weapon for D-Day.
Rather haphazard.
We were scattered all over the peninsula...
...so it was quite a confused situation...
...but we were better prepared than the Germans were.
The Germans didn't know where we were.
Whereas on the beach, those people coming in on boats...
...those Germans had guns aimed at them, waiting on them.
They had it tough. I admire every one of them.
These guns were pointed and firing right down on the beach.
People on the landing craft were coming onto the beach and were being fired at.
This battery of 1 05s was placed precisely where it should be...
...to protect any troops coming up that causeway.
As you sit back years later, you think:
"This was laid out exactly right, tactically."
We thought we knew every foxhole in Normandy.
We knew where everything was. We knew it cold.
But on this one, the Germans had moved in there...
...and camouflaged it so well, we didn't know it was there.
E Company was the assault company of the battalion.
We were trained from special assaults and whatnot, special assignments.
They weren't aware of what we had. They didn't realize we only had 12 people.
We worked our way down through the farm area...
...to a hedgerow. Lt. Winters had us set up a firing position.
And l went up to scout it for myself...
...crawled out along this hedgerow...
...to get a little closer, to look it over, and I felt l could see a trench.
And l thought l knew where our machine gun was.
Winters...
...was an exceptional leader.
And he was able to size up, all through the war...
...size up combat situations and decide quickly...
...and correctly the best way to take care of whatever the problem was.
I divided the group into two units. Lt. Compton was with me.
I gave him half the men, and l took half.
I gave instructions, "I want Compton, Malarkey...
...and Wynn to crawl up there and hand-grenade that machine gun.
Crawl through the grass, and as you throw your grenades...
...l'll charge up with the rest of the guys."
I had the two machine guns set up...
...to give him covering fire while he crawled up there.
I get out to this hedgerow...
...and l peek-- I look out, and l peek through the bushes...
...and l see a couple of Germans over there, about 30, 50 yards away...
...stoking this gun and firing it.
I pull out a grenade and pull the pin...
...and l threw it as high and as far as l could throw it...
...in their general direction. It had enough hang time on it...
...that by the time it got to them, it went off in the air.
I jumped up with other guys, and we charged...
...so that we all jumped into the first position together.
They had trenches cut in where they worked, the Germans did.
They jumped down in them trenches...
...and they worked them Germans like a ghost assault.
Three Germans broke off from this position...
...to run across the field, which was the wrong thing to do...
...from their viewpoint.
We cut them down.
I was in a trench, and I looked, and l saw an arm.
I didn't even see-- The man was in a camouflage tent...
...and l didn't see him. Then I saw an arm stuck out of that tent...
...and one of those potato-masher grenades...
...you know, with a stick come out of there.
I said, "He's gonna miss me."
It fell right down in that trench with me.
I was trying to scuttle my way out of the way, and it went off...
...and l felt like it blew my butt over my head, and it pretty near did.
He's behind the enemy lines on D-Day.
Does he holler, "Help"?
No.
He hollers, "I'm sorry, lieutenant. I'm sorry. I goofed."
I felt like l kind of let him down, but that's neither here nor there.
My God.
It's beautiful when you think of a guy who's...
...so dedicated to his company, to his buddies...
...that he apologizes for getting hit, but that's the kind of guy he was.
That's the kind each one of them was. They were all the same.
I look upon them, each man, with great respect.
Respect I can't describe.
Each one of them proved himself...
...that he...
...could do the job.
We've been through Normandy, through battle. Maybe if l had been harder...
...if I had done a little bit better job, more men would've gone home.
I never thought I'd get through D-Day...
...let alone the next phase. I thought I was gonna get killed instantly.
The chances of survival is very slim.
There's the parachute.
I got that done in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1 944.
Me and Johnny Martin.
Drunk as a skunk.
Guarnere and I decided we'd go to Scotland and get a tattoo.
We didn't figure we had a chance to come home.
But....
Yep.
We thought, "Well, hell...
...the war is just starting, and Christ, we're 50% gone now.
So it's a long haul."
The 1 01 st came back from Normandy after about 33 days...
...and we were replacements for those who were killed...
...or wounded in Normandy.
There were young kids that came in...
...and for some reason, I don't know why...
...they were the first ones killed.
And l think maybe they were trying...
...to impress the older guys, maybe people like me or Shifty.
We were in awe of them. They had infantry badges on their uniform.
They had a star on their jump wings. They....
They were our heroes. That's how we looked at them.
I don't know why, but I got right there to where...
...l didn't want to be friendly with replacements coming in...
...because, God, l didn't like seeing them get killed.
It just tore me up, and....
I don't know why, but they were the first ones killed.
My 1 0-man squad that l was in, eight were replacements.
The squad leader and the assistant squad leader...
...Sgt. Muck and Cpl. Penkala had been to Normandy. We hadn't.
The eight of us hadn't been anywhere but Aldbourne.
The training got really tough between there and the Holland jump.
Training, training, training.
We had missions scratched. We were to jump on...
...a French city of Touraine.
And it got to the sand-table part...
...where we gathered round to see who was gonna do what...
...and Patton's troops overran the drop zone, so that was called off.
We were wondering if we'd ever get to go, and then it got to be September.
It was a Sunday afternoon, noontime, 70 degrees.
The drop was perfect.
Everybody was dropping on the same field.
Daytime drops are a lot easier. You can prepare for the landing.
I saw a plowed field, and l slipped right over it.
I believe l almost landed standing up, you know, soft. A great jump.
The most dangerous part about it was that people were...
...losing helmets and equipment, and all this equipment's raining down...
...and if you got hit with this, you're gonna be killed...
...or wounded before you got off the drop zone.
Everybody got together. We all assembled very fast.
We moved out towards the Wilhelmina Canal.
Our mission was, first, to take a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal.
It took us hours to get there.
And taking hours to get there, the few German troops...
...that were securing this bridge had plenty of time...
...to set their charges to blow the thing up.
And just as we got to it, I was maybe 1 50 yards away...
...it blew up in our faces.
Rocks and timbers were flying and falling all around you...
...and you can't help but think, "My God, what a way to die in combat...
...to be killed with a flying timber."
We were that close.
It delayed us until morning. We wanted to get across that night...
...but it took us till the next morning to get across.
But once we got in, the Dutch--
It was just marvelous, their reaction.
They loved Americans, and still do...
...for coming in there and pushing the Germans out.
They called us "angels from the sky," which we were.
I mean, you're under German occupation for four years, right?
It's horrible, and you see paratroopers come out of the sky.
Who were they? They were the angels. They loved you.
Their welcome was unbelievable.
They couldn't restrain how happy they were to see you.
It was hard to get down the streets...
...because the people were swarming over us...
...trying to congratulate us for being there.
They hugged you and kissed you, and we didn't mind.
Naturally, we was young, We didn't mind at all.
And they were really proud to see us in there...
...to the point where it was dangerous for us...
...trying to clean out the town because snipers did damage...
...in a situation like that.
We had a lot of fighting because we're on the Rhine River...
...and Germany is across the river.
They're fighting like heck to keep us out of Germany.
It's called "The Island." We called it The Island, and we set up...
...positions there.
We had some substantial battles there.
They could observe any movement we made during the daytime...
...and at their will...
...they could just shell us. Mortar-- Put mortar fire on us...
...when they had a target of opportunity.
I heard something coming down.
I knew what it was...
...a mortar shell, and l threw my arm up, like that...and went down.
It lit within 3 feet of me, 4.
But when it blows, it goes up like that:
It went through my arm and hit me in the head. l was bleeding pretty good.
Well, l was picked to go up on a dike.
So, of course, when you get to the top, you don't expose yourself.
I took my rifle and put my helmet on it...
...and put it over, even with the road, on a dike.
No action, so I brought it back down, put the helmet on...
...and l sort of peeked over.
When I peeked over, l saw a hand with a potato masher, and he threw it at me.
I ducked. lt hit my helmet and bounced off.
When that thing bounced off my helmet, I hollered to the guys below:
"Live grenade."
If Lesniewski hadn't hollered, "Grenade"...
...and l had enough sense to know that that's that grenade...
...that hit my rifle and is right in front of my face, practically...
...l'd have either had my head blown off...
...or l'd have definitely been blinded. There's no question about that...
...because I just got turned, just part way...
...and it exploded, and it caught me in the face, neck...
...left arm, under the arm, in the shoulder.
I hollered for them to take off. I said, "Get the hell back."
I had eight grenades, so l had taken them off...
...pulled the pins and threw them over.
And while the grenades were rolling down or landing wherever they were...
...they were hitting some of the Krauts...
...because I could hear screaming, crying.
I think I threw eight grenades in about four seconds.
And then I took off running.
So the doctor that counted the holes in me down at Nijmegen....
Yeah, Nijmegen.
The first doctor that really counted the holes...
...said there was 32.
That was our first experience with artillery in large numbers.
I can remember sitting there a couple of nights listening to artillery land.
And the 88 was the fiercest cannon that the Germans had.
It was the way they used it, an all-purpose gun.
It could shoot anti-aircraft tanks, anti-personnel, airburst.
That was the bad ones, when shells went up.
I saw a huge mushroom cloud...
...from the shell...
...and Joe Toye stepped out of it.
I run up. I remember that like it was yesterday.
I run up, and l grabbed him. He said, "Don't touch me."
I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "I'm hit all over." He said, "l'm bad."
I said, "Okay." I said, "I'm gonna go see Jim."
He said, as bad as he was hurting, Joe Toye, he said:
"Heffron, l already checked him. He's gone."
Jim Campbell might be alive today if he hadn't said to me:
"Heffron, you stay here with your gun.
I'm going up."
And l never, never, never-- I sleep on it, I eat on it--
I never, never forgot that.
And anybody that went through it...
...will tell you the same thing. They can't--
It's just...
...so bad all your life, you gotta remember what one guy did...
...because he thought it was his job to do, and he took a shot for you.
The exhaustion on these men, the physical exhaustion...
...affects their endurance to be able to cope.
You don't realize it at the time you come off the line...
...from living in the mud and being absolutely miserable...
...for 70 days straight.
You didn't realize that you'd only be off the line...
...for a few days, and you're gonna be facing Bastogne.
This is the last desperate action of the Germans...
...to turn the tide of this whole war.
What it is, it is Bastogne. lt is--
-This is Bo Jack's woods, right? -lt is the woods.
Sure looks different now. There ain't no snow.
These trees might've been replanted.
I think if the trees look like they did in '44 or '45...
...we could get a better idea.
-That's it. -Yeah.
That's the town of Foy.
Oh, this is definitely the area. This is definitely.
There's the town of Foy, after the empty field, where those cattle are grazing.
About half a mile away.
Yeah, we had an outpost set up looking right into the town of Foy.
They had to watch everything because we'd come in here and sleep.
We had our foxholes right over here, and the other area and the other.
Wherever we had to move out and dig in again...
...because the Krauts had artillery.
Most intense l ever went through here, shelling.
Most intense in the world. Couldn't believe it. You had to be here.
You just dove in the hole and prayed, and that's it.
If it comes in, you ain't gonna know it.
We lost Muck and Penkala over on this side. They were killed instantly.
The shell went down, direct hit right in the hole.
-Made mush out of them. -Luz come over and hollered:
"I can't see nothing of them, nothing there."
They were all gone, just disintegrated.
Unmerciful shelling, really.
Everything out here was shredded. Yeah, shredded by it.
I tell you, it's an odd feeling.
To me, it brings a lot of memories, memories of the men, the times...
...good and bad, a lot of memories.
It was the most miserable place I've ever been in my life, even today.
On a real cold night, we go to bed...
...and my wife will tell you, I'll say, "l'm glad l'm not in Bastogne."
The Germans wanted Bastogne because of the road network.
That's why it was such an objective.
So that's where we had to hold, which we did.
31 8 trucks come in around noontime, and by that evening...
...everybody was loaded and moving out.
We were short of equipment.
We didn't have enough ammunition or enough warm clothes.
But we had confidence that our...
...higher military authorities would get to us whatever we needed.
When we got up there, we didn't know what we were getting into.
There was very little information...
...only that the Germans had broken through.
We went down, loaded on the trucks. Another truck came by with weapons...
...and pitched weapons. You catch one, that's what you got until Bastogne.
As it worked out, there was some men who actually...
...got on the trucks and left for Bastogne that didn't have a rifle.
When we got there, we saw men singly and in twos and threes...
...working their way back, some of them without weapons...
...without equipment.
Some of them were terrified.
They were beat to a nub. Every one of them were saying:
"They're gonna kill everybody. Running over everybody."
They couldn't believe, when they saw us up there, that we intended...
...to set up lines and stop the Germans.
They said they couldn't be stopped.
We went in and started taking up their weapons and ammunition.
Asking the retreating guys, "You got any extra ammunition or grenades?"
You could hear the firing going on up ahead, and we're marching...
...to it with little ammunition.
We marched through the night, went to the front of Bastogne and dug in.
And then it snowed.
Snow, cold up to your rump.
We didn't have no winter clothing or nothing.
A third of the doggone casualties was either...
...frostbite or trench foot, whatever you want to call it.
Bad move. A lot of snow...
...a lot of everything you didn't like.
It was a cold place.
At this particular time, we was on top of kind of a hill...
...and the top of the hill had pine trees.
We set up our positions around the fringe of the woods.
In Belgium, trees are planted. They don't grow like in Maine.
There are rows of trees.
You look down a row and can see half a mile.
On top of this hill, there was a ridge with a tree line.
We were dug in there.
The Germans knew right where we were, and they really gave us a shellacking.
To an infantryman...
...in wartime, the mother earth is your best friend.
You could always dig a hole and get out of sight, you know.
We dug plenty of those.
You get through hard ground quickly...
...when someone's shooting, and shells are falling.
You can make fast work of it. We just have to dig that hole.
We say we became experts on foreign European soil.
We dug in, and two people could dig better than one.
In ground that's frozen, it takes a while. You just chip it out.
By the time you finish, they whistle to you, "We're moving out."
And you go someplace else and dig another one.
You must understand, the Germans were--
We were surrounded. The Germans were maybe 1 00 yards away from us.
No matter where you looked in a circle, you could see artillery flashes.
So we knew from that that we were surrounded.
But we went through a couple of shellings at Bastogne...
...that were earthshaking.
If you lived through them, you remember them for the rest of your life.
I'm not sure you're the same for the rest of your life...
...after you live through them. You never forget them.
There was one moment I remember. l'll never forget it.
One guy got hit in the arm with shrapnel...
...took his arm off above the elbow.
They were taking him out, he said, "Get my watch off my arm."
Before they took him out.
That always stayed with me.
I mean, calm voice and everything, "Get my watch off my arm."
On the 3rd of January, we withdrew back to our former positions...
...there, up the hill from Foy. And when we got there...
...we could see that the Germans had zeroed in artillery there.
Trees were knocked down. There were holes in the ground.
It was right at dusk, and the Germans had this....
This woods of ours zeroed in completely.
And as we hit the woods, this tremendous artillery attack came.
They knew where we were...
...and started shooting, point-blank, 88s into our area.
They let us have it. Everything, the kitchen sink...
...mortars, a rocket thing with a screaming sound.
It scared the hell-- I was scared, but I think I was petrified then.
I thought the whole world was shooting at us at once.
I jumped into a foxhole somebody had started and hadn't finished.
So l was crouched down in that foxhole, but it wouldn't hold all of me.
From about my nose up was above the ground.
I could see all these shells hitting.
Sgt. Guarnere and Joe Toye each lost a leg...
...in the same place, right there on one hill. l remember.
Just this certain instance.
Joe got caught not near his hole, and Bill and I were ahead of him...
...and Bill had not been hit.
He came up out of his hole quickly. We were still under heavy fire.
Joe said, "Jesus Christ...
...what do l have to do to die?"
He got hit real bad in the back of his leg.
He's out hollering, "Medic," and he can't find a medic.
I went out to see what I could do for him...I got it too.
I went over to Guarnere. He was sitting on the ground.
His leg was badly mangled.
He was holding his leg, and it was jerking like that:
He said, "Lip, they got old Guarnere this time."
He had been hit before, but they really got him there.
We got him out of there, Babe Heffron and l and some others.
And they brought a jeep down, and we put him on stretchers.
I better not talk about him.
It was terrible.
We had lost some very good men there.
Toye and Guarnere had lost their legs there.
A number of other people were killed. It was a difficult situation there.
When a man was wounded, we felt glad for them...
...we felt happy for them.
He had a ticket to get out of there, and maybe a ticket to go home.
And when we had a man who was killed...
...we found that he was at peace.
And he looked so peaceful.
And we were glad that he found peace.
We had this...
...assistant squad leader, name of Mellet.
He was from New York City.
And l overheard him talking one time...
...this was in Bastogne, he says:
"I been through...
...Normandy and went through Holland...
...and to this day, I haven't got one scratch."
He says, "I'm afraid when l do get it, I'm really gonna get it."
And he was right.
In this little town of Foy, he got killed.
I don't think he had any premonition of it. He just wondered about it.
But l never did wonder.
Never give it much thought. You just live from day to day.
Keep your fingers crossed, and that was it.
I have the honor to present the supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower.
It is a great personal honor for me to be here today.
To take part in a ceremony that is unique in American history.
Never before has a full division...
...been cited by the War Department...
...in the name of the president for gallantry in action.
This day marks the beginning of a new tradition...
...in the American Army.
With that tradition will always be associated the name...
...of the 1 01 st Airborne Division and of Bastogne.
Good luck and God be with each of you.
The Germans had started to surrender. They still had their arms...
...but as you're going down the autobahn...
...there was almost a solid line of German troops coming north.
And our job is to get to the end and get to the heart of it.
Berchtesgaden, that's the end of the line.
It's the retreat that Hitler had for himself.
And he built his Eagle's Nest...
...his penthouse on top of the Alp...
...to, I'm sure, relax and confer with his staff...
...because they all followed him to Berchtesgaden.
This was their final retreat.
Of course, this is where they had their loot as well.
This was the goal of the French, who were on our right flank.
This was the goal of the British.
And this is the place to capture. This is the one everybody wanted.
Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat...
...burned by SS troops in the war's last days.
The chalet from which he hoped to rule the world now lies in ruins.
American Air Force's pictures show the gutted rooms...
...and the great window through which the führer gazed out on the Alps.
We took Berchtesgaden May the 5th, no fighting, no shooting.
The only thing I seen of Berchtesgaden was a couple...
...dead SS troopers laying on the road as we were going up.
It was beautiful country. He knew how to pick out a good spot for a house.
We took over his house...
...and liberated it, you might say.
There was, obviously, loot of all kinds...
...that the men were looking for, such as guns....
There was money that they were looting.
I was a pack rat anyway. I picked up a lot of German items...
...including some post cards and envelopes addressed to Hitler.
Come to find out, that place was full of big art...
...Rembrandt and all those people hanging on the wall.
Old soldiers like us, we don't recognize a painting when we see it.
The 1 01 st Airborne Division uncovers Hermann Goering's art collection...
...hidden in a subterranean chamber.
Twelve hundred artworks worth millions are included.
The treasures will go back to rightful owners in pillaged nations.
We found a warehouse full of gin and vodka and stuff like that.
Wasn't much whiskey. Those people don't like it.
And we took it all and set up a bar.
Had seven truckloads of champagne and cognac...
...out of the wine cellars out of the Eagle's Nest.
So we stayed pretty well oiled for a while.
Oh, that champagne was good. Oh, that was good.
I started drinking it one day, and l drank until about midnight that night.
I went to the back and went to sleep. I didn't wake up the next day.
I made a two-day thing out of it.
It didn't taste like it would hurt you. It tasted like ginger ale.
That was the only time I remember, when l was in service...
...that the company fell out in their underwear.
We didn't even have to dress, you know.
Everybody was looped, and so we fell out in line formation in our underwear.
They're enjoying themselves. They're at peace with the world.
They have a big, happy, satisfied grin on their face.
It was a paradise for a soldier to move into.
I had no problem with the looting, because l came down through Germany.
And l had seen the Holocaust.
And l had seen what the Germans had done to the Jewish race.
And l had seen what they had done to the displaced persons...
...and what they had done in their occupation of France.
And what they had done to their occupation in Holland, Belgium.
So that by taking over their homes for a few nights...
...to bed down my men....
And if they picked up a few trinkets, l had no problem.
Nobody has ever taken their time to tell you how to handle a surrender.
We'll talk about it when we get there. Here we are. How do you handle this?
The German army was a well-disciplined army.
Those prisoners that come down out of the Alps...
...they came down in formation. They marched down.
They didn't drag down or nothing like that.
They came down as defeated soldiers.
We thought the Germans were the evilest people in the world...
...but as the war went along, we found out also, it wasn't the Germans...
...per se, it was the SS and the special troops.
They were the ones that could kill their own people...
...and the regular German soldier was not that way.
One of those prisoners handed me this little book...
...and it was a Catholic prayer book for the Mass.
And l realized, "Hey, l haven't got Nazis here. l've got some Catholics."
And l've got a Catholic good enough to stick one of these in his pocket.
I've thought we might've been friends. We might've had a lot in common.
We might've liked to fish. He might've liked to hunt. You never know.
They did what they were supposed to, and l did what l was supposed to.
But under different circumstances, we might've been good friends.
I have a great deal of respect for them as soldiers.
They were very good soldiers.
But they're still enemy...
...so they must be controlled as prisoners.
When it reached the level of surrender for company...
...and smaller units...
...l was assigned this major...
...and when he walked in...
...he presented me this pistol...
...and offered his personal surrender...
...which, naturally, I accepted gratefully.
So that would be the end of the war for his men...
...and this is basically the end of the war for my men.
And the significance is...
...it wasn't until later, after he gave me his pistol and l had a chance...
...to look at it carefully, that I realized this pistol...
...had never been fired.
There was no blood on it.
That's the way all wars should end...
...with an agreement with no blood on it.
And l assure you, this pistol has never, never been fired...
...since l've had it, and it will not be fired.
We didn't come home and flout ourselves.
I didn't come home and say I was a war hero.
I came home and went back to it like we did before war. Just go to work...
...and live our life.
I think it was difficult for most fellows coming back.
They didn't know what they were going to do when they got out. l didn't.
Went to work for a coal company.
Did some bartendering and ran a pool hall.
Took up a course in ornamental horticulture.
It didn't pay very much, but I met a lot of nice people.
I went to work where I was working before the war.
It was Caterpillar Tractor Company.
I became an industrial arts and social studies teacher.
The spring of '46, l took a boat to Ketchikan, Alaska.
I went to work for the government, a letter carrier for 37 years.
I built homes. l was in construction. I went into hard work, tedious work.
I'd done everything. You name it, l done it.
I ended up working on the waterfront.
I went with the ClA in Washington.
Got my degree in 1 948.
After the war, l taught for almost 30 years.
Got a job working for Nixon Nitration Works.
I was making $75 a week.
We've never become wealthy in life...
...but we have a lot of other wealth that means more than that.
Everyone done well, I done well too, thank God.
I want to welcome you...
...to our banquet tonight to celebrate the ending of a fine reunion.
Thank you all for coming.
I want to extend the best wishes to all the men from company E506.
I love you, God bless you all. Thank you.
The purpose the reunions serve...
...is to give us a chance to get together and talk to each other.
We relive some of the Army experiences.
But we have great respect...
...and, you might say, affection for each other.
The type of affection you get when you've lived through...
...many dangerous situations together...
...and have learned that you can rely on each other.
If you see them today, that bond's there. The bond you can't explain.
Soon as you see them, you're thinking of battles, thinking of it to yourself.
The men stand out amongst each other.
There's an intimacy develops and like nothing that l've ever experienced...
...not in college, not with any other group of people.
We're a strange bunch of dudes, as far as I'm concerned.
To be this close after all these years, that's the thing that gets me...
...is we're like brothers.
I'm back in my youth now.
When I get to these guys, I'm back when l went in the service.
It's fantastic. I'd like to make 20 more reunions.
We had a lot of real good times in there.
Those are the times you really remember, you know?
A lot of those is what we kid each other about at these reunions a lot.
And then you had a lot of bad times.
My family didn't know anything about it...
...and l just didn't tell them.
I just, you know, figured it was something...
...that didn't need talking about. It was done, over with.
We didn't know Shifty the way the men knew Shifty, you know.
He started talking about it just in the last five or six years.
Last five, l'd say.
It was like he-- That was another life, you know.
He was another person, and we weren't aware of the stuff he went through...
...things he had seen.
It didn't even dawn on me that he had killed people.
I really admire my dad, my daddy.
He's a good guy. He's a real strong guy.
We travel a lot, and we've been to France and to that cemetery.
It's incredible. There's crosses upon crosses lined up perfectly...
...as far as the eye can see, and then there's a cliff and the ocean.
These weren't just anonymous statistics.
These were people I knew, and l told my daughter, l said:
"This guy here died at age 1 9 or 20."
A whole life never lived.
No family...
...nothing.
No children...
...no opportunity to have satisfaction in building a life, nothing.
When I went there, I said, "Dad, my gosh, you were so lucky."
He looked at me and said, "Yeah, l'm very lucky."
And he started crying.
These guys have been together in the absolute base experiences...
...of human existence. They were there with each other...
...thinking you're gonna die or seeing people dying all around you.
And there they went day after day...
...and l admire that and held my father, even on his tombstone...
...as Sgt. Joe Toye.
506 PIR 1 01st Airborne Division.
That's what he wanted on his tombstone. It meant that much to him.
How it happened that those various individuals...
...ended up in E Company, I don't know.
But as you know, every Army unit thinks it's the best...
...but we knew we were the best.
I think about the guys more than anything.
I think about most of them every day.
It's something that's etched in your memory, l guess.
It'll never leave either.
Am l proud of having served in that outfit? You bet your life.
I wore that eagle on my right shoulder for 1 8 years.
Probably the proudest thing in my whole life...
...was having been in Easy Company 506.
The heroes had crosses over their heads...
...the ones that are buried in the cemeteries.
Those are the true heroes, not us.
We're just part of the works.
And we thank God we got back alive. That's all.
How would you like to be a mother or a father to a son never come back?
The son and the mother and the father are the heroes of World War Il...
...not the guys that come home.
Let me say this...
...l believe there's very, very few heroes...
...that came back from the war. They're still over there.
Do you remember the letter that Mike Ranney wrote me?
Do you remember how he ended it?
"I cherish the memories of a question my grandson...
...asked me the other day when he said:
'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'
Grandpa said, 'No...
...but l served in a company of heroes."'
Joe Toye. Oh, there was a big mick.
And we used to have a few beers at night, and I'd sing.
Guarnere would come over and sing.
He'd say to Guarnere:
"Guarnere, you're ltalian, you don't know this song."
Guarnere could sing it better than he did.
"Bridget O'Flynn."
How's it go?
Now, that's the song Toye liked, and that's what we sang.
You only needed a sisal of beer. Two beers you were drunk...
...because you were in great physical condition.
You were too piqued, you know...
...and two beers you were as high as Georgia pine, you know.