Shifty's War

The rest of the summer of 1944 passed as if in a shroud. Mornings dawned warm, afternoons grew hot, you know, like summer should be, but it was hard for a man to shake his memory of Normandy. A man couldn’t wrap his mind around the horrors of what we’d been through, no matter how hard he tried. Trees still grew, squirrels still chattered as they raced between hedgerows, we still did push-ups and jumping jacks and ran five-milers through the English countryside. But nothing seemed normal anymore.

I knew Normandy was just the start of our fighting. We all did. More battles would come, but we had no idea what sort of action might come next. New replacements, wild-eyed killers who couldn’t even shave yet, climbed off trucks at our camp and brought Easy Company back up to full strength. Orders were barked. Rumors flew alongside the orders. We were going here. We were going there. Word came down more than once that we were going to jump on another operation. France. Then Belgium. Both missions were scrubbed at the last minute because the battle situations changed. Fine by me, you know. Fine by me.

Then we got word to get ready for Holland. No scrubbing the mission this time. The battle would be bigger even than Normandy in terms of airborne divisions involved. They called it Operation Market-Garden, and the plan seemed simple enough. A long road snaked up the middle of the country, see, straight into Germany. Different allied paratrooper outfits would drop at various places alongside the road and wrestle it back from the Krauts. Then, British ground troops would zip up the road with their tanks and heavy machinery and head right into Germany. The war would be over real quick, and we’d all be home before Christmas. It wasn’t going to be an American operation. It was run by the British, see, which meant we’d be catering to them to some extent. Wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I liked fighting for Uncle Sam, you know.

One afternoon just before we jumped I ambled out of the lunch line and shaded my brow to look across the horizon. A familiar figure came limping toward me across the grounds, the smile on his face as big as a pumpkin’s. Popeye was back from the hospital. We shook hands, and he started jabbering away as feisty and fierce as ever. Seemed the Army had told him that if he stayed out of action more than ninety days, well, they was going to send him to another unit when he got well enough. “But goddam it, Shifty,” Popeye said, “if I was gonna let the Army do that to me.” So he busted out of the hospital, even though he was still too sore to sit. That’s how much he wanted to be back fighting with his buddies in Easy Company. You had to admire Popeye.

Sergeant Buck Taylor had just come back. He’d been wounded back in Carentan, too. A grenade had flown over a hedgerow, blown up, and caught him in the leg. Wasn’t that bad of a wound. He probably should have been evacuated while we were still fighting in Normandy, but he toughed it out until we got back to England, then went to the hospital on his own steam. They fixed him up and sent him right back. I was happy to have him around again.

Sergeant Carwood Lipton was still healing from the face and leg wounds he got in Carentan. He rejoined the outfit in England as quick as he could. They made him the company’s new first sergeant. He was probably the best NCO in the whole army, and I was glad he was back.

Well, all the upper brass was really gearing up for this new jump, but somehow to me it didn’t feel as big of a deal, you know. Not like the first one. I still felt some butterflies in my gut when the day came and I was heaved into the plane with all my gear. But I was chewing gum this time, feeling loose in my shoulders. Another fella in the stick opposite me read a paperback novel. We were old pros now, heading out with our rifles for another day on the job site.

Our planes took off for Operation Market-Garden on September 17, 1944. I gazed out our plane’s window at blue, cloudless skies. Down below, trees already had those red-raw hints of color, and fall was in the air. This time it was going to be a daylight jump, not like Normandy, and when we neared the drop zone, stood up, hooked up, and bailed out the door, I almost grinned. Wars should always be fought with this kind of fine weather.

It was a big jump, you know, the whole regiment came floating down together. Real easy, too. No wind. No swinging around in the sky. Not much anti-aircraft fire coming up at us. Just nice, soft, plowed fields to land in. Almost felt cushy. I bent my knees as the ground approached, landed, slipped out of my harness, and looked around. In the distance was a windmill, a grove of pine forest, and the spire of a huge church. I spotted orange smoke, our company’s signal to all find each other, and I set off in that direction. Most of the guys were already milling about in the meeting area. Medics were looking after a couple fellas who’d hurt their backs on the jump. Bill Wingett broke his leg when he landed, so he was out, and he was a fine soldier. But those were the only injuries I noticed.

After we grouped up, we hiked down the main road toward a town called Zon. You’d hear a machine-gun blast aimed our direction once in a while, but it wasn’t much. Mostly, we wanted to hightail it to a bridge that spanned the Wilhelmina Canal. That was our first objective, to make sure that bridge stayed safe. For some time all was just the jingle and clump of soldiers hiking down a road. I thought the countryside was a mite quiet. No birds. No wind other than a bit of breeze through the brambles. Maybe too quiet.

One Lung McClung tramped out in front as our scout. Sometimes it’d be me as scout, sometimes it’d be him, but today it was him, you know. McClung walked a quarter mile ahead of us, his rifle aimed along the sandy road. I kept a clear sight line on him in case he hit trouble. McClung reached the canal and ambled across. As he neared the other side I glanced down at the river. It was shining blue and brown, flowing so peaceful, with little crests rippling up from the breeze. The rest of us were still thirty yards from the bridge.

It felt like the air changed—like a storm had been brewing over the hills, and we walked straight into that storm. My eyes shot back at McClung on the bridge, and my jaw dropped. “Hit the deck!” somebody yelled. We heard a huge kuhBLAM! then blam!— a chunk of firewood landed six inches from my head. Stones and timbers poured out of the sky and thudded in the dust. The Krauts had blown the bridge.

McClung was a goner. A huge lump worked its way up my throat and I fought to press it down. No way he could’ve survived that blast. We stayed flattened until the sky cleared, then stood up and fought to see past the smoke. Doggone, I nearly burst. There was ole McClung, grinning at us from the other side of the river. He told me later he’d flopped down behind a big ole shade tree as soon as he got across. Wanted to take a little rest, you know. That tree saved his life.

Didn’t see no Krauts in the distance. I’m sure they were already running hard by the time the bridge blew. We still needed to get across that river. Gordy Carson jumped into the current, swam to a rowboat in the shallows on the other side, and brought it back. Some engineering-type fellas got in the boat and towed a line across. For the rest of the day we scoured the riverbank for planks to salvage, then built a makeshift bridge. The air turned cool and dusky. We dug foxholes, ate K-rations, and slept in shifts. Next morning, we splashed across. Strike one against us. We were supposed to hold that damn bridge.

Up ahead lay Eindhoven. Our next objective was to make sure the town was secure. All of us in Third Platoon were out in front this time in a flanking position, hiking across open country. A replacement officer named Lieutenant Bob Brewer led the way. He was a big, tall officer and stood head and shoulders above a crowd. Ahead of us lay a stone building, maybe three hundred yards away. A light wind blew from the southeast. Visibility was clear. Bees buzzed. Seemed peaceful, yet a thin trickle of sweat went down my back.

Crack! The side of the building smoked. Lieutenant Brewer was down. We flattened out, worked our triggers, and scanned the building to find the sniper. It was impossible to get a clean shot. Sergeant Taylor sprinted over to Brewer, looking for life, but the sergeant shook his head and shouted at us to keep going. Brewer bled from the throat below his jawline. We advanced at a crouch, still firing. A medic named Al Mampre must’ve not been convinced the lieutenant was dead yet, for he ran over, grabbed some plasma out of his kit, and shoved a needle into Brewer’s vein. A bullet cracked again. Mampre winced. The bullet peeled the flesh off the medic’s leg all the way to the bone. He grabbed his leg above the boot line and dumped sulfa on his wound. We grabbed cover as best we could and shot the hell out of the building. I didn’t see anyone inside. Some Dutch civilians ran out with a ladder and carried Brewer and Mampre to cover.

McClung took over as scout and we continued toward Eindhoven. Private Don Moone walked with him. We came out of the field and reached a road. I heard a rumble in the distance. A German weapons carrier full of soldiers roared around the corner and swung into view. McClung and Moone stood dead center of the road and loaded a rifle grenade. The truck seemed to accelerate as it bore down on them. McClung and Moone fired at the truck from about twenty yards. The grenade blasted against the grill and exploded. A direct hit. The truck swerved, its engine on fire, and crashed into a post. Germans stumbled out and zigzagged up the road. We opened fire and scattered gravel. The soldiers ground to a halt and threw up their hands. We took them prisoner and sent them back to headquarters with a guard.

As we neared Eindhoven, an old Dutchman squinted at our uniforms from where he stood alongside the road. He stepped toward us, his gait stiff, his eyes watery. Fishing deep inside his coat pocket, he took out an orange armband, the forbidden symbol of the Dutch resistance, and strapped it on. “I shall never forget this day as long as I live,” he said in stilted English, and broke into a huge toothless grin.

That was just the start. As we walked into the city, a strange noise filled my ears. It was a mob, but they weren’t angry. I guess the Dutch didn’t much like being under Nazi occupation. They’d been that way since the war began five years earlier. Crowds lined the cobblestone roads, waving and cheering. The Dutch civilians held out trays of food for us—oranges, apples, pears, and honey. Did we want some hot tea? Care for a fresh glass of milk? How’bout a beer? We shook hands and posed for pictures. Young ladies kissed us. We signed autograph books like movie stars. For the rest of that afternoon we were swarmed with people, grateful we had come. We pushed through to the other side of the city, heading northeast.

Some tanks rumbled up, heading to Nuenan. They slowed down long enough for us to scramble aboard. We rode for some time, then it grew dark. Don’t remember where we slept. We got up and kept going, still on tanks.

When we reached the outskirts of Neunan, we scrambled off and hit the ditches. Brief fire broke out real sudden. All was yelling and explosions. Our tanks had a short skirmish with some German tanks. When the vibrations cleared, we started hiking through town, looking for Krauts.

Each house had a backyard. Hedges separated each backyard from another. We moved cautiously, with suspicion, running at a crouch, eyeing anything that moved. Far away, two Germans climbed out of a second-story window and moved across a roof. They were closest to another paratrooper, but the other paratrooper’s rifle didn’t fire. Quickly, he field stripped his rifle on the spot and fixed the problem, but by that time, the Germans were gone. At least now we knew we weren’t alone.

I hiked through a cemetery, jumped over a wooden fence, and hit the ground at a crawl. As I pushed through a hedgerow, I heard a German machine-gun burst a few rows over. Robert Van Klinken was pelted in the chest with three bullets and went down. Those closest to him pulled him to safety, but his face was ashen; he’d soon be dead. I hardly had time to notice when it happened, but later I remembered how I’d talked to him lots of times, and that he was a young mechanic from Washington State. All he wanted to do was go home, get married, and have a bunch of kids. Robert Van Klinken was kindhearted, always laughing, and then he was gone.

Far away, I heard the rumble of more tanks. Johnny Martin yelled to watch out. He’d spotted a German tank hidden in the hay no more than a hundred yards away. Martin ran to an approaching British tank to warn him about the trouble that lay around the corner. The British tank commander stood with his head and shoulders exposed. I saw the tank commander shake his head. The British tank revved up and continued forward. Martin climbed off just in time. Wham! The German tank hit the British tank square on. It caught fire. Most of the crew scrambled out, pulling the commander out with them. The tank commander’s legs had been blown off.

I didn’t have time to think. A machine gun cut loose in front of us, biting into the dirt to my left. More fire to my right came from a rooftop. Still more fire came, but I wasn’t sure from where. I ducked for cover, glanced up, fired my weapon, ducked down, glanced up, and fired again. Nearby chugged a driverless burning tank. It plowed into a power pole, knocked it flat in a shower of sparks, and kept going. I emptied clips, one right after the other. A man went down to my right. Another man ran to help him. He was gunned down. The town seemed ablaze in noise and explosions. From somewhere, an order came to fall back.

We dashed to the outskirts of town, found the backs of some idling trucks, climbed aboard, and rode back toward Eindhoven. Fellas sat with their hands on their knees, panting, spitting. I lit a cigarette, my hands shaky. Four dead, someone muttered, eleven injured. When I looked back at Nuenen, I knew that the Germans had overrun the town. I didn’t like retreating.

Things went from bad to worse. That night, from our foxholes far outside the city, we looked down the road the other direction at a fiery orange sky. The Germans were bombing Eindhoven, the city we’d passed through earlier with so much celebration. It was a very, very bad night.

We picked up and went on. Next came a little town called Veghel; that was a hard day for us, mighty hard. We were on both flanks of the British when the Germans attacked. We fought back with all we had, but the Krauts came at us with all kinds of stuff—half tracks, artillery—I don’t know where they got it all from. We fired and fired, then sprinted into an apple orchard next to a crossroads, dug slit trenches, and took shelter behind trees. That proved a mistake. The Germans shelled us with huge iron blasts. The sky rained jagged pieces of red-hot metal. Shrapnel sliced and burned through branches, and the branches clumped around us. Holes in the ground proved little cover against artillery like that. After six hours of shelling, black craters dotted the earth. Finally the sky grew quiet. I felt helpless and shaky. Dusk hit, the air turned cold, and a light rain began to fall. Our grimy uniforms turned wet. We were cold and miserable.

I guess around then is when things started to become fuzzy for me. What I mean is I never lost my sense of hearing, never lost my sense of eyesight, but I lost a sense of how one day flowed into the next. I’d wake up in my foxhole, eat a K-ration, make sure my rifle was clean, get orders, and go. Sometimes we gained a foothold. Sometimes the enemy did. At night I dug another foxhole, ate another K-ration, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep. Life became a blur of battles. Rain continued to fall, and we all knew the main road wasn’t secured. The British weren’t sailing smoothly up to Germany like we’d hoped. The war wouldn’t be ended by Christmas, that was for sure.

Weeks passed. Nights grew frosty, and the earth was hard in the mornings when we got up. We’d been fighting in Holland maybe six weeks when a jeep came through with a mailbag. I was happy to see my sister’s familiar handwriting, but the first part of her letter nearly stopped me cold.

My brother Jimmy’s carrier, the USS Gambier Bay, had been sunk over in the Pacific, she explained. My sister first found out about the disaster in the newspaper. She didn’t want Mama or Daddy to find out and worry, so she hid the newspaper between the mattress and bedsprings. A few days later, the family was out shopping. When they came home, the postmaster had let himself in the house and propped a telegram against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. The postmaster knew everyone well enough in Clinchco to let himself in like that. Everyone in the family saw that telegram and suspected the worst. I stopped reading the letter long enough to wipe my eyes, then kept reading. Fortunately, Daddy opened the telegram and Mama read it aloud. It contained one line, probably the most beautiful phrase the family had ever heard:

BE HOME ON SURVIVORS LEAVE. STOP. JIMMY. STOP.

I let out a huge lungful of air. He’d spent two days in the open sea before being rescued. My brother was still alive. The letter came as a welcome respite from all that was around me. It had other bits of news in it, too. The basketball scores from the last few Clinchco High School home games. News that Mama had decided to decorate for Thanksgiving anyway that year, in spite of three of her sons being away at war. Home. I read the letter over and over, but day-to-day life on the battlefield continued to blur. They trucked us to this place called The Island. It wasn’t really an island, more a bunch of dikes set up with grassland between them. Lots of fighting there. Lots of patrols. A man never had a chance to change his clothes or take a bath. We all stunk.

You always needed to move after dark in Holland, because it was mostly level country, see. One night, don’t know where we were, a lieutenant said to me, “Sergeant Powers, you get two guys, run across that dike over to the edge of that field, and set up a listening post.” Now, a listening post is so you can hear what the enemy’s doing. If trouble’s afoot you can call back to your unit and let them know.

I got two guys, younger replacements, and we went out in the dark. We scrambled over some barbwire fences, cursed our way through nettles, waded across a ditch filled with scummy water, and got to where we needed. “Watch the bushes, and see that they don’t move,” I told the guys. I sat down only to jump right up again. One of the younger fellas was jumpy and had fired his M1—pow, pow, pow—making a heap of noise. “Where are the Germans?” I asked. He pointed to three bushes. “That’s just bushes,” I said. “Grab your gear.”

We were in trouble now, and ran to the other edge of the field. We jumped into another ditch, and sure enough, the Germans had figured out where the gunfire had come from. They fired a few artillery rounds right where we’d been. I told the fellas to shut up from now on. We patrolled around another two hours or so, but never did see any Germans. So we went back.

Another evening, McClung and me went out on patrol together. We heard some German tanks rumbling around so we decided to get the hell out of there and report back to our outfit. As we hiked along, a German plane came down low, strafing all around. Darkness was setting in, but it was still light enough to see. That pilot took a pass around, and McClung said, “Damn it, Shifty, I’m getting sick of this.” He aimed his M1. The next time the plane came by, McClung shot a bunch of holes in him. Now, an M1’s a fine weapon, but there ain’t no way a man could shoot down a plane with it. Still, I’ll swear to this day that McClung shot down the Red Baron. That was getting one on base for us.

A week or two later we came up to this little town. It was late in the afternoon. The Germans were holding the town, and our aim was to take it back. The officer in charge decided we needed to wait until daylight to do it. It wasn’t absolutely dark yet, and a jeep with two American soldiers busted through our lines on its way to headquarters. Up the road, the Germans stopped the jeep and took those two soldiers prisoner.

I was down in my foxhole when all this happened, and one of my guys came over, explained the situation, and hollered, “Shifty, two Germans are walking down the road holding two Americans. Come get ’em.” So I went up to take a look and oh, it was a turkey shoot, you know, real simple shooting to take out those Germans and set those Americans free.

I lay down on the ground, aimed my rifle, and took a bead on the German on the right. I figured, I’ll shoot him first, then switch over and shoot the one on the left. Then I got to studying the situation. If I shoot those two Germans, the Americans will be out in the open, and the town’s filled with Krauts. They’re bound to hear the shots, see their men down, and they’ll shoot the two American prisoners before they can run to cover. So I just debated and debated, and watched them walk out of sight.

Well, the next day we took the town, and drove out the Germans, killed a few, and got some American prisoners back. I hoped that some of those released prisoners were the two Americans I saw on the road. But I never knew for certain.

A while later it was my turn with my squad to go up on the dike and watch all night. A levee ran between there and the river, and we needed to keep our eyes glued to it to make sure the Krauts didn’t come across. Well, before it got dark, I memorized everything in front of me, left to right. Two willow trees. Three. An old stump. A little shoal of rocks. Five clumps of shrubs, and so on.

Next morning I rubbed my eyes, looked, and looked again. A tree had appeared that wasn’t there the night before. I called back to the command post, and of course they told me to go check things out. So I hiked over real quiet and saw German hobnail boot tracks and a place in the mud where a machine gun had been set. That new tree had been set up to camouflage a German outpost. Fortunately, the Germans had come and gone during the night, so the upper brass decided to let it go. Once the Krauts found out that we knew about it, they weren’t going to come back.

About that time, maybe it was earlier in the fighting, Sergeant Taylor got into a motorcycle accident on Hell’s Highway, that road that snaked up to Germany, and got sent to the hospital again. Along came a new officer to lead us in Third platoon, Lieutenant Ed Shames. Now, some of the fellas didn’t care for the new lieutenant on account of the way he barked orders and liked things kept shipshape. But Lieutenant Shames had received a battlefield commission after Normandy and knew his stuff. We got along okay. Lieutenant Dick Winters got moved up to battalion headquarters right about then, so he wasn’t around as much, which I didn’t enjoy. Lieutenant Fred Heyliger assumed command of Easy Company, but he was shot on Halloween night by one of his own men who mistook him for the enemy. A highfalutin officer named Lieutenant Norman Dike assumed command of Easy Company. The fellas called him “Foxhole Norman” behind his back, because he was gone so much. Him being gone a lot was fine by me.

Must have been a week or two later, Lieutenant Shames said to me, “Sergeant Powers, get your squad and go down this road. A German patrol is supposed to come through here tonight.” So I got the guys ready, took our machine gun, and went out. A squad is normally twelve men, but a few of ours weren’t around. If I remember correctly we had eight men, maybe less. We got to where we were going, set up the machine gun, sat there all night, and never did see any Germans.

It got daylight, but we were too far away to safely make it back to the command post with that cold sunlight making plain our every movement. A big old farmhouse sat in a nearby field, so I told the guys, “We’ll go over there and spend the day, then come dark, we’ll head back.” They liked the sound of that, so we hiked over to the farmhouse, checked things out, and found a bunch of guys in the basement already. They wore American GI uniforms, spoke English, and appeared friendly enough, so it seemed okay.

We spent the day near a wall lined with dusty Mason jars, all empty. There was maybe twelve, fifteen of those other soldiers hiding out in that basement with us. Sort of twitchy guys, I thought. Kept to themselves. Only one or two ever said anything. None sat down, and they weren’t walking around either, pacing, you know, like men would ordinarily do while waiting. My squad was tired after being up all night, so we just sat down, ate K-rations, and dozed.

Come half an hour or so before it grew dark, I was listening closer to the way these fellas shifted their weight as they stood, see, and something didn’t sound quite right about their boots. I nudged my squad. “Let’s go,” I said. One of the fellas asked what the rush was. It wasn’t fully dark yet. I brushed off his question and told them to move quick. I kept my thoughts to myself, but I remembered that Germans were known to capture or kill American soldiers, then dress up in their uniforms so they could hike across enemy lines and see what’s what. Now, I don’t mind fighting a man when he’s across a field from me, but in that little basement with twenty-five men all with rifles, a battle would’ve been a slaughter. Those fellas in the basement with us were Krauts. I’m sure of it.

One day near the end of our stay in Holland, it might have been eleven, twelve at night, and a lieutenant told me, “Sergeant Powers, get nine men and take a combat patrol out in the area. There’s a report of a German combat patrol in the area and they have twelve men. Anybody you see, shoot him.”

Now, I don’t know why that lieutenant figured our ten men was better than their twelve, but that’s the way it was gonna be. It was absolutely black dark, you know, so black I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face. I lined my guys up, and we headed out. I left my M1 back at the command post and took two pistols because I couldn’t see the end of the barrel with the M1.

We walked down this road a way. I was out in front of my squad, and I heard footsteps coming the other way. We all hunkered down on the ground. “Cover me,” I whispered, aimed, and got a bead on where the figure was coming from.

I ignored him and peered closer into the night. The moon was just peeking out from behind the trees, and I could see his outline real clear now. My adrenaline pumped. I steadied my breathing and got ready to shoot. The man’s silhouette came clear. I had a direct sight line to his forehead. The man was taking his time coming close. I said that night’s password out loud, just to give him a chance, but there wasn’t a response. My finger went to move on the trigger.

It was Bill Kiehn. That same boy I almost shot on D-day. He’d been wounded in Carentan and gone to the hospital in England. He’d healed, and they’d put him in a replacement depot where the Army threatened to send him to another unit because he’d been out of action so long, he explained when he got closer up to us. So Kiehn had busted out and gone AWOL and came back to our unit on his own. He had stopped down the road and picked up a box of supplies for us and was walking back to camp. Twice I’d come near a fly’s whisker of shooting Bill Kiehn. I sure did. Both Bill and I were mighty tickled I hadn’t.

The rest of our days and nights in Holland weren’t as happy as that story. Wish I could remember more details, but I can’t. Maybe I don’t want to. I remember that Joe Lesniewski, the replacement who’d been befriended by Skip Muck and Alex Penkala, caught the blast of a German potato-masher grenade while out on patrol. He went to the hospital all bloodied up, but he lived to rejoin us later. Lieutenant Buck Compton, everybody’s favorite officer in the company, took a bullet while charging up a ditch, but he came back to fight another day. My good buddy Jim Alley got blown to the ground by a blast of shrapnel that left thirty-two wounds in his side, face, neck, and arm. He lived, too.

Others weren’t so lucky. I remember their names. Faces. The way a fellow might have told a story and made you laugh. Bill Dukeman didn’t make it. Nor did James Campbell. Vernon Menze died. James Miller. Ray Schmitz. James Diel. Bill Miller. Robert Van Klinken. Dead. We had jumped on September 17 with 154 men. When we pulled off the line on November 25, we had ninety-eight.

I wasn’t sure how I’d clear my blurry head, even as orders came through and we climbed aboard trucks, heading to France for a rest. I tucked my thoughts away to sort through later. Many of the fellas talked about how Operation Market-Garden was a failure. It might have been. Me—as I slouched low in the back of that truck, I looked forward to hot showers and eating real food and not looking over my shoulder every moment, wondering if a bullet was heading my way. Had to shake out the cobwebs. Had to keep going. Maybe a couple nights of good sleep would help. In spite of Operation Market-Garden’s bleak outcome, I was still holding out hope that the war might be truly nearing its end. Oh, I hoped. We bounced around in the back of that truck heading for Camp Mourmelon, but a little twinge down my spine told me that what I hoped for was still a long way off.