Shifty's War

Back in 1992, a book had been written about Easy Company by this historian named Stephen Ambrose. He’d called me on the phone a few times and we’d talked. That was the input I had in the book. Seemed like a friendly enough fella, and after that book came out he mailed me a copy. Well, I read it, scowled, and mailed it right back. I never fussed to anybody in particular about it, but Mister Ambrose had gotten things dead wrong. Not everything in the book, mind you, just one important section. Important to me, anyway. I don’t know exactly who had given him wrong information, but in his book it said that when it was real cold and miserable out there in Bastogne, Lieutenant Shames had given me an order to go out on a patrol, and I’d plumb refused to go.

To an old military man like me, that was a slap in the face. I’d never disobeyed an order. Not even in the worst conditions. I might have grumbled a bit, but I always did my duty. Well, I called up Lieutenant Shames and asked him if he’d seen the book, and he told me he didn’t like it either and he’d never said anything like that fool story about me to Mister Ambrose. So somewhere lines had gotten crossed, and I understand how that can happen in a book when an author is talking with a lot of fellas. But still, I wasn’t happy.

My daughter, Margo, wrote to Mister Ambrose and asked him to change things. I think Herb Suerth, the president of the Men of Easy Company Association, did that, too. I heard he told Ambrose I was the best noncom in Easy Company. Well, I don’t know about all that, but I guess Mister Ambrose checked things out more and agreed to take that wrong section out of the book. He called me up and explained things, and we had a good talk. He said the section would be removed in a later edition. And it was.

Well, some years passed, and that phone call came, the one that made me much more happy. It came one day out of the blue and was from Playtone Studios, a movie company out in Hollywood. Seemed that two famous fellas by the names of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg had read Mister Ambrose’s book, and they’d liked it a lot. They figured that enough time had passed since World War II that a lot of folks who maybe hadn’t been around then might want to know what had gone on during those years, and they liked the idea that the book traced the story of only one company of soldiers. Plenty of other books about the war had been written, see, but those other books were more about the generals, the higher-ups, the strategy at the upper-brass level. Mister Ambrose’s book talked about war from the common man’s point of view. That was us.

The fella from the studios wanted to know if they could fly out to Clinchco and interview me. They wanted to hear my words and record some of them for a documentary part of the movie. The idea tickled me. Imagine, someone making a movie with me in it. So I said yes, and they flew out with a camera crew and an interviewer, and we had ourselves a good time. They were real nice folks from Playtone, and I showed them my garden and my rifles, and I let them shoot my M1 off my front porch, like I often did. They asked me all sorts of questions about the war. I knew they wouldn’t use all the material, and that didn’t matter. I just tried to answer the questions as best as I knew.

I wasn’t a complete stranger to moviemaking ways, mind you. A few years earlier a movie had been made, which they called Saving Private Ryan. It was a fictional story, but based on true events that happened around Normandy. Mister Ambrose had also written a few paragraphs about the true events in his book Band of Brothers. The real “Private Ryan” was a fella named Fritz Niland. He grew up in Tonawanda, New York, about five doors down from Skip Muck. Fritz was in the 101st, but in a different outfit, so he came around every so often to visit Skip when we were in Europe. Don Malarkey and Joe Toye became friends of his, and they met up for beers a few times. Anyway, the interesting thing about that movie was that they’d based one of the characters in it on me—the sniper in the group who looks for Private Ryan. At least that’s what was said, but I don’t know how close the connection was. I saw the movie and liked it fine, although it showed the sniper fella using a scope on his rifle. I never used a scope. None of us did. I wouldn’t say we even had a real sniper in our outfit. McClung, Sergeant Taylor, and me were about the three best shots in the company, but we always just aimed our rifles at whatever we needed to, then hit whatever we needed to hit. Still, I wouldn’t fault the movie none for showing a scope on a rifle. It was a really well made picture show. It was.

Well, a while after the folks from Playtone visited, a nice young actor named Peter Youngblood Hills phoned me up and asked if he could also come by for a spell. He was going to play me in the Band of Brothers miniseries. From him, I learned this wasn’t going to be just one movie, but a lot of different episodes they were going to show on a cable channel called HBO. I said sure, I’d like to meet Peter. It also tickled me to think that some fine-looking young fella was going to play my character on TV.

Peter flew over from London, where they were working on the series. He spent a day and a night with us in our home, and asked me all sorts of questions about my life, about how I did things, how I said things. I showed him how I carried my rifle and what kind it was. Lot of guys used the carbine, you know, and some guys used Thompsons, but I always liked the M1 Garand best. Even though I couldn’t see very well, I still knew my way around Dickenson County, so I drove Peter up to Cumberland Gap where you can see several states from this one point. All the while he asked about little mannerisms I had. How I said certain words. He was practicing the way I talked, you know. I told him I talked like everybody else, you know, but he was studying hard to get my accent down, I reckoned that’s what they call it. I didn’t believe I have an accent, and I told Peter exactly that. He just grinned. Well, Peter was a fine boy, and we were all getting along real swell. I joked to Peter that Dorothy and me might want to adopt him as one of our own. But then we went to town one night and took him to eat. My, that boy could attack a plate of food, and afterward I said, “You know, Peter, you better forget about that adopting business—I can’t afford to feed you.”

In 2001, the Band of Brothers miniseries was all set to come out. HBO flew all of us in Easy Company who were able over to Normandy for the premiere. That was real nice of them, and I hadn’t been back to Europe since the war. We were driving to the premiere at Utah Beach, and one of the producers turned around in the van and said, “You know, in about ten minutes your life is going to change forever.” None of us old-timers had any idea what he meant. Some of the men were rattled when they saw the showing, but that wasn’t what the producer was getting at. We’d still need to find that out for ourselves. Now, I liked the show real fine. It was only a movie after all, close to the real thing, but only close. You could never truly show how scared a man was, how hungry and cold he truly was. You could never explain it. You just had to live through it to understand.

After the miniseries, we all went back home, and life did indeed start to get different. Folks would stop you on the street and say, “Hey, Shifty, I saw you on TV last night.” That was the beginning of what the producer was talking about. Those comments felt okay to me, you know, I was the same as I’d always been. In fact, I was happy at what the series was doing. After the war, I just came back to the States and lived my life without talking to anybody, you know. But Band of Brothers was serving a greater purpose. It was the first time that things about World War II had been publicized in a big way. For years and years, the war and all the veterans who’d fought in it had gone unrecognized. After the miniseries came out, there was a new sense of gratefulness—for veterans everywhere, not just those who served in World War II.

Now, some folks wondered why all this fuss was being made over Easy Company, and I thought they had a point. We knew our outfit had been well trained. We were one of the best companies the American Army had at the time, and we were proud of that. Sure. But we also knew that we weren’t the only company to do good things or suffer losses. Easy Company became sort of a symbol for all other elite outfits, I guessed. But I wished somehow that all the outfits could have had all the recognition that Easy Company started to get.

About a year went by, and I guess that Band of Brothers mini-series did real well on HBO, for soon we got news that it had been nominated for a bunch of Emmy Awards. In 2002, HBO flew us out to Hollywood to take part in the awards show. I had to slap my knee when I saw a bunch of old soldiers all decked out in tuxedos, riding in limousines. There was One Lung McClung, Moe Alley, Hayseed Rogers—all the guys who’d once shared foxholes together were now strolling down the red carpet.

I shook hands with David Schwimmer, the fella who played Captain Sobel in the series. He was a real nice fella and we talked for a while. I thought he did an excellent job of portraying Captain Sobel and I told him so, although the first thing I said to him was, “I think I want to knock the shit out of you.” He got the joke and laughed. I wasn’t really aggravated. Not after all those years. Captain Sobel wasn’t all that bad. I knew all his hard training helped get us through the war.

For the actual awards show, Major Winters stayed in the auditorium for the telecast, but they took the rest of us over to the St. Regis Hotel nearby, so they’d have enough seats for us all. That was fine. The plan was that when the nominations and winners were announced, they were going to combine shots of us with Major Winters and what was happening on stage, split-screen style. I started studying that and thought, You know, I’d like all my hillbilly friends back in Clinchco to see that I’m really here in Hollywood on TV. So I asked the boy in charge if I could move my chair up a few rows. He said okay. But then I got seated up in the front row, and that boy behind the camera was swinging the camera over only so far, and it didn’t look to me like he was gonna get me on camera after all. So I pulled him aside, and he recognized my name and that I was known as the sharpshooter in the series, so I said, “I’m noticing that you’re not bringing the camera down to where I’m sitting. If you don’t move that camera, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.” He had a good chuckle, and then, during the ceremony, the cameraman looked over at me. The camera still wasn’t on me, so I gave him a stone-faced glare and tapped my finger right between my eyes. I guess that boy got the message, for he brought the camera on over and it showed me on screen.

After the Emmys were over and Band of Brothers won five or six awards, we all went to this fancy restaurant in Hollywood called Spago to celebrate. Tom Hanks was milling about over there, and Mister Hanks and I had a real fine talk. We were passing around the Emmy statue he’d won, and he asked me what I might do with it. I said I might take it home and fix it to the hood of my jeep. He had a good laugh.

Well, we all went home from Hollywood after that, but what that producer said to us in the back of the van about our lives never being the same started coming true rapid-fire. I started getting mail. Lots of mail. Fan mail. Folks wanting books signed, pictures, hats. I tried to answer all the mail, sign whatever I could, but it was hard because I wasn’t able to see so well. Fortunately, I got to be good friends with a fella named Johnny Sykes, the postmaster at the Clinchco post office. I developed a routine where I’d come to the post office every day at the same time and say, “Hello post office,” and Johnny Sykes would take a break and talk with me. He’d read all my mail out loud to me, and help me sign where things needed to be signed. We talked all the while, about politics, taxes, fishing, whatever. Johnny Sykes became a real good friend over time. My fishing days were pretty much over by then, but he’d often catch a mess of fish and bring me some.

I’d get phone calls, too. And I didn’t mind speaking to people on the phone. Sometimes folks wanted to come meet me. A fella came with a camera one day and walked up on the porch where I was sitting having a cigarette. I stood to shake his hand and the first thing he said was, “Well, holy cow. You’re really real.”

We had a couple from Rome, Italy, call us and ask if they could come meet us. We said sure, so they came over and we invited them to spend a day and night at our home. Never knew them before or anything, they just called and wanted to know if they could come on over. So we had a good time.

I started getting asked to come speak to schools and different functions. I went to a couple colleges, some high schools, a couple elementary schools. I found that the kids in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades were the most interested of anyone. You could hear a pin drop when you went in, and they could ask you some tough questions, too. I’d often fly to different events, different states, different countries overseas to speak. Sometimes other men from Easy Company would come on those trips, and we always had a good time meeting up again. Once I went on a USO tour; my son, Wayne, went with me. It was real good. We did other trips where we visited soldiers stationed in South Korea and Japan. Sometimes it came close to startling to see the reception the men of Easy Company had when it came to visiting soldiers. I guessed Band of Brothers had made a real impression on a lot of them. They’d stand in long lines to shake our hands and have us sign books and hats and pictures. Someone said we’d become the rock stars of the military world.

On the Korean trip, we were walking into a place to eat, four Easy Company men and four of the actors who played us in the series, and they had up one of those movie poster cutouts like they have for race car drivers at the grocery store. Well, we went and looked at that poster, and it was me. Peter Youngblood Hills, anyway, the actor who played me. That was strange, you know, seeing that. But it made me grin.

About the only problem I ever had was that sometimes when I was up on stage during all those tours, I needed to use the bathroom on account of my prostate problems. They’d have us all sitting there in a row for a long time, asking us questions, and it was hard for me to get up. So I developed this signal with Wayne. If I put one hand over my nose and pumped my other in the air like I was blowing a train’s whistle, well, that meant it was time, you know, because I needed help getting to where I was going. That signal worked out fine.

It was real good meeting all those folks when we were on tour. One fall, it was just me speaking over at Mountain Empire Community College, and a woman stood up during a question and answer time and introduced herself as Jacqueline Havaux Bowers. She explained that when she as a little girl, she lived in Bastogne, Belgium, when it was under Nazi occupation. She was one of those kids we’d see every so often, coming round and asking GIs for cigarettes and chocolate. From where she stood, out on the floor of the auditorium, she said something that really put a lump in my throat. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for us,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here at all, my family wouldn’t be here at all, if it wasn’t for soldiers like you.” Then she came up to the podium and gave me a great big hug. That put things into perspective for me, you know. All those years ago. To think here was someone who’d been helped by what we did.

Well, I found I wasn’t feeling low at all anymore. After the series came out and after all those speaking events came our way, I had a new reason to get up every morning, sick as I was some days. But most days I was feeling real good. Anytime the phone rang, I’d answer it. Often it was a request to do something, and most often than not, I’d say yes.

In 2004 we went over to Normandy again, for the sixtieth anniversary of the D-day invasion. That was a real good time, seeing all the guys again. Plenty of other veterans came to that event, too, and it was great to see so many veterans get to talk about what they had done and where they had been. The weather got mighty hot over at the dedication, but they passed out water and cookies and things like that. So it was okay.

My oldest grandson, Jake, along with his wife, Dawnyale, took me back to visit Toccoa. Jake wanted to run the mountain, and that sounded good to me. Toccoa looked different than I remembered. They’d smoothed the road out. Trees were a lot bigger than when we’d been there. Jake and Dawnyale ran up Currahee, and I ran a bit of it with them. Oh, maybe a couple hundred yards or so. We drove through the town, and it didn’t take more than ten minutes until word got out and newspapers showed up. They ran a story with a headline that said, “Grandson Follows Grandfather’s Footsteps.”

Staff Sergeant Robert Rader was a good friend of ours. He died back in the late 1990s, then some years later they named a bridge in his honor out there in Paso Robles, California, where his family stayed. Eight or nine of the Easy Company guys went down for the bridge dedication, including me and McClung. It was a good time, and I was glad we could honor Bob Rader that way. On the way back to wherever we needed to be, all the fellas were in this van together and got thirsty. So we stopped in at a bar in this little town we were driving through. McClung went in to see if it was a suitable establishment. He came out after a minute and said, “This is our kind of place, boys. The bartender’s got two black eyes.” So we all piled out and went in, laughing.

In late 2006, McClung and me and several of the guys from Easy Company went back to Bastogne for the first time since the war. We hiked through the woods in the snow, saw the old foxholes that were still there, and met some former German soldiers who, way back when, had been shooting at us from the other side of the road. It sent a shiver up my spine being back in Bastogne. I can’t say that I liked being there again, even for a tour. But the trip brought to me a sense of closure, you know. The war was truly over. Finally I could shut the book. We shook those old German soldiers’ hands, and they shook ours. And through an interpreter we shared some stories. We were even able to swap some jokes. None of us were fighting anymore.

Well, we went home and I started studying the last few years since the series had come out, and I felt so thankful for the good reception we’d all received. I never could have imagined things would have turned out as good as they did, but I felt like I could do things again, you know. A remembered confidence was coursing through my veins, though this time I felt at peace, like all along I had done what I was supposed to do. I didn’t need to explain the things I’d seen in the war. The things I’d done. I was Shifty Powers again, standing side by side with the best friends I’d ever known. I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

That confidence worked itself out in some peculiar ways. Once, right around then, Dorothy and me were back at our house in Clinchco all alone, when all these motorcycles rumbled up and parked next to the river, a little distance away. It was growing dark and I started thinking they were going to have a wild party down near our house. Well, I didn’t want them raising Cain on my property, so I went and talked to a neighbor down the lane and said, “You keep your gun on me. I’m going down there to tell those guys to shove off.”

The neighbor agreed, so I hiked to the corner of my property, and, sure enough, all these young fellas had started drinking and carrying on. I walked into the center of those bikers, took a stick, and knocked out their fire. We had a few words along the lines of what I reckoned they’d understand. Then I started walking back to my house. About five minutes later, sure enough, they started up their motorcycles and roared out of there.