Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Read online

  We lost a lot of men, but we inflicted more casualties on the Germans than they inflicted on us. In Bastogne, they had three times the men and three times the firepower. I have no idea how we done it. I still can’t believe we won the war.

  The most haunting part by far was Bastogne. But when I think about the war, I don’t think about the battle, I think about the men. I look at an American flag today, and I see the faces of the men I fought with, the ones who lived and the ones who died.

  We were eighteen, nineteen years old when we went in. We knew we wanted to be the best and fight beside the best. Be in the Airborne. Be paratroopers. The uniform alone showed the world you were different and special. You put on those silver wings, bloused up your pants, and you were it. Training was brutal, but we were with guys from all over the country. You faced the challenges together. We spent every minute together from basic training to jump training to combat. We were a family, way before we hit the battlefield. We could predict each other’s every move. We were like a machine. Ready for anything. We figured we’ll get to Europe, knock off the Germans real quick, and come home for Christmas. We had no idea, kid. No idea.

  BABE

  The day I joined Easy Company, the commander, Dick Winters, sent me to see Bill Guarnere, 2nd Platoon sergeant, a fellow South Philly kid. Bill was one of Easy Company’s most respected leaders. He was gruff, and wisecracking, and he had a reputation. The guys called him Wild Bill. He was a tough SOB, and strict, but he took good care of the men. They just returned from fierce combat in Normandy, and newcomers like me had to prove themselves to fit in. Bill and I talked about home and got to be friends, even though he was a sergeant and I was a private, and you never socialized outside your rank.

  After the war, I took a walk down to Bill’s neighborhood and found him shooting dice on the street. We’ve been almost inseparable for sixty years since. We’ve talked on the phone every day, we’ve had breakfast or lunch together every week, we’ve worked together, traveled together, we take care of each other. My daughter recently asked me, “Dad, what are you gonna do if something happens to Uncle Bill?” She didn’t say Uncle Jack or Uncle Jimmy, my blood brothers. She said “Uncle Bill.” Bill and I made a pact that if anything happens to the other one, we’ll go out and get stinkin’ drunk. I can’t explain our friendship, but you can’t explain the bonds you have with the men you fight beside in combat either. For a veteran, that’s the only good that comes from war. That, and knowing what you fought for was worth the sacrifice.

  I never told anyone about my war experiences, not even my family, even though not a day went by that it wasn’t on my mind. When the book Band of Brothers, and then the HBO movie, came out, it opened up old wounds. Some of the memories were painful, and it was hard to relive them. But the fond memories are of your war buddies. I’m grateful to have been among the men of Easy Company, men of the highest caliber. I’d put them up against anyone in the military.

  I want people to know we’re not heroes. We did our duty, just like the sixteen million others who fought in the war. Everyone, including the families, sacrificed in some way. The kids who didn’t come home are the heroes. They’re the ones who gave their lives. Their parents are the heroes, because they gave a child. But if our story can bring more attention to what it means to fight for freedom, then it’s worth telling. A Dutchman in Holland said to me and Bill when we liberated Eindhoven, “Can you define freedom?” He said, “You can’t. You don’t know what freedom is until you lose it.” I never forgot that. He knew what it was to lose it because he’d lived under German occupation for five years, and like another Dutchman told us, “that wasn’t living.”

  Sometimes over a beer, Bill and I talk about the war. We go back every couple years to visit the graves of our war buddies in Normandy, Holland, and Belgium, and visit people we liberated who’ve kept in touch with us over the years. Every June we think of D-day, every September we think of Holland, every December we think of Bastogne. That was Belgium’s coldest winter on record, and we spent it outside in the ground. To this day, every time we see snow, we say to each other, “Thank God we’re not in a foxhole and no one is trying to kill us.”

  I went back to Aldbourne, England, right after the war and returned to the village where I first joined Easy Company, where we ate, slept, and trained. As I walked on our old training field, the strangest thing happened. I could hear plain as day the men counting cadence, double-timing, rifle bolts being pulled back, the guys shouting and kidding each other. I even heard the voices of the kids who never came back. I heard them clearly. I told Bill about it, and he thought I was crazy. He told me I had a screw loose. Then we went back to Aldbourne the following year, and he said, “Babe, remember what you told me about what you heard in Aldbourne? It happened to me, too.” I wasn’t surprised. The memories of the war almost never leave your mind.

  What you don’t know going in is that when you come out, you will be scarred for life. Whether you were in for a week, a month, or a year—even if you come home without a scratch—you are never, ever going to be the same. When I went in, I was eighteen. I thought it was all glory and you win lots of medals. You think you’re going to be the guy. Then you find out that the cost is very great. Especially when you don’t see the kids you were with when you went in. Living with it can be hell. It’s like the devil presides in you. I knew what I signed up for, yes, and I would do it again. But the reality of war—words can’t begin to describe it.

  1

  GROOMED FOR WAR ON THE STREETS OF SOUTH PHILLY

  BILL

  In South Philadelphia, you didn’t survive unless you learned the tricks of the streets. Food was scarce, money was scarce. Everything you got you worked for, or you stole; nobody gave you nothing. I thought stealing was a normal thing to do. I learned later it was wrong, but back then we did it to eat, to survive. Everyone was in the same boat. You were always in survival mode. You lived for today and tomorrow. I had six brothers and three sisters. I was the baby of ten. Think of trying to feed ten kids today. Back then it was a hundred times harder. Have you ever had an empty stomach for three or four days? We weren’t starving, but we went hungry a lot.

  Being the baby came in handy. We had ten kids at the dinner table, some older than twenty, and I’m five or six. Nobody touched nothing till Pop sat down and said the prayer and Mom gave the okay. And boy, you never said, “I don’t like this.” They’d throw you out of the kitchen. You didn’t eat. There would be two donuts left from the night before—two donuts, ten kids. Mom would walk to the light switch and say, “Okay, boys and girls, you ready?” When the lights went out, if you got your hands on that food, it was yours. I stuck my hand in the dish, I got nine forks stabbing me! I thought, I’ll fix these rat finks. When the lights went back on, I cried. They’d say, “Oh, the poor baby,” and they’d give me some. I always got more than everybody else. I got wise real early in life.

  Even as a baby, you were geared to work and to try to earn a penny. Every day I worked—helped Mom clean, did windows, swept streets. For that your parents fed and clothed you. You did it for neighbors, too. You didn’t have to be asked. You noticed something was wrong, you went over there and did it. They handed you an apple or a penny and you were happy.

  There was only one car in our whole neighborhood. No one had telephones. Anytime you got a phone call, you ran to the corner store to Jew Meyers’s and took the call. That’s what we called the store! It wasn’t discrimination back then. It was a term of endearment. There were all nationalities in your neighborhood and you took care of each other. We were a well-oiled machine, the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, and the Jews. All very nice people. You called Italians dagos, you called the Polish Pollacks—it was like a nickname, and everyone had nicknames. There was none of this stuff you hear today. Today, you’ll get arrested if you call someone a dago, or call someone Jew Meyer.

  I was a resourceful kid. Up the street there were five or six auto repair garages, and I would go to
Melrose Diner and fill up a stainless steel thermos that held about ten cups of coffee; it cost me twelve or fifteen cents. I’d take cups with me and sell coffee to people at the garage for a nickel a cup. I’d make a quarter, and give it to Mom, and she’d get so excited. She’d go play the numbers with it, and hope to double it. Times were tough. Even at the garage, sometimes they said, “Get out of here, kid!”

  We played a lot of sports; it kept your mind off what you didn’t have. If you bought a ball for five cents, and it broke in half, you played half-ball. If you didn’t have a football, you got newspapers and wet them and layered them up until you had a football, you put tape around it and you played. We played kick the can. We took big wooden crates like you find in back of the markets, took the wheels off baby coaches and attached them under the box, and we’d make racing cars. Or we made roller coasters with flat wood and parts of roller skates. Sounds silly, but it makes you resourceful in life. You’re always thinking about how simple things can be used. We didn’t go to college like the kids today. Today they push buttons and a machine tells you what to do.

  Sometimes I tagged along with my brother Henry, and hung out with the older kids. He was closest to my age in my family; he was four years older. We played sports, gambled, chased girls. He was a baseball nut. He played baseball and collected baseball cards and sports clippings from the paper. He had a big collection, knew every player on every team.

  Babe says he hung out in Laundromats. We never heard of hanging out in Laundromats. We hung outside on the corner. We’d bring a table out, sit under the lights, play cards all night in the street. Or we’d play craps. Broads didn’t play craps.

  There was a lot of fighting in the streets. You had the kids who were good street fighters. But when you got done, most of the time you shook hands. Everybody fought with each other. That was street life.

  My pop was Joe the tailor. He worked out of our house at Chadwick and McKean. Pop was a tough old bird, came to the United States from Italy in 1891. Spoke broken English. Mom was born here, but she talked Italian, and every time they talked Italian it meant somebody was in trouble.

  When I was five or six, I’d watch the men gamble, drink, play cards, play numbers and bocci ball in the street. It was a den of iniquity where I grew up! There were no cars around, and if there was a car in the street, they’d take the bocci ball and break it right through the windshield. In bocci, you shoot the ball with a mallet to get it close to the beanie ball. Sometimes someone would hit the ball right into the sewer. So they called me: “Billyyyyyy!” I’d run over, my pop would grab one leg, someone else grabbed the other, they dunked me down the sewer to get that ball! Oy, veh. I smelled like a rat. Then they fixed you up and gave you a glass of wine. I’m telling you, kid, I was only five or six years old! Then they said, “You smoke?” I said, “No.” They gave me two cigars. I’m drinking wine and smoking two cigars. That stopped you from smoking real fast. You turned green, red, purple. These were Italian cigars! Other times two players’ balls would get close. They’d call me and say, “Hey, Billy, measure with your fingers.” I’d look at my father’s ball, then my uncle’s ball, and they’d both look at me, like Pick mine or I’ll kill you. I made a few calls and they beat the shillelagh out of me after they checked. After that, I learned. I’d make the call and smack the balls away. Then they gave me a glass of wine. I got exposed to booze at a very young age. I was a good kid—devilish, but a good kid.

  Mom’s name was Augusta. An absolute angel. I spent a lot of time with Mom. We’d make ravioli together. Ever hear of Sophie Tucker? Before movies came out, they had vaudeville. Sophie Tucker was a big, fat mama, short and plump. She sang and smoked. Mom was like Sophie Tucker. Those days there was no worrying about clothes, how you looked, how you dressed, how fat you were, how skinny you were. Nobody could care less.

  I went to junior high and worked for Pop at the same time. Ooh, I was a devil. Here’s a story: Now Pop can’t get none of the older brothers to be a tailor. Along comes Billy the baby. This is the last resort he has. He thinks to himself, I’m gonna make a tailor out of Billy. He’s got me picking up the iron, sewing, doing everything by hand. I’m killing myself. I must weigh about ninety pounds soaking wet. I’m thinking, This ain’t for me! But you can’t say no to Pop. Sometimes you get some smartness in your head, see. So I walked up to Passyunk Avenue, to stores that sold clothing and asked what prices were for tailoring. So I told them I charged a nickel. I’d undercut the other people at the beginning to get the work. After school, I picked people’s pants up and brought them to Pop, he fixed them in an hour, I ran them back. Pop forgot all about me working in the store!

  The summer of 1938, Mom signed me up for Citizens Military Training Camp (CMTC) in Fort Meade, Maryland. You went four summers and then you could become an officer in the Army. They taught you military skills. To get me in, Mom lied and said I was seventeen. I was only fifteen. Henry and Earnest went to CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps. Times were tough, and the camp meant food, clothing, and someone to take care of you. It kept you out of trouble. It was the first time I’d ever been out of my neighborhood, but I adapted real fast. Even then, my leadership abilities came right out. We learned Army basics, but the camp didn’t have much—maybe two trucks, one gun, a couple mops and brooms. We had to share. Even as a kid I could see we weren’t prepared for war. We did mostly garrison duty, cleaning windows, dusting. We did close-order drills, learned some soldiering, learned to shoot guns. I went three summers until they closed it in 1941 when we entered the war.

  The day Pearl Harbor was bombed, I was at 17th and McKean playing craps in the street. One of the guys on our block was stationed in Pearl Harbor, so news got around real fast. With the war coming, I quit high school and went to work in a defense factory called Baldwin Locomotive, making Sherman tanks. I figured the hell with graduation. No one in my family graduated high school. They quit and went to work. But Mom was not happy. She begged me, “You’re the last one, Billy, please, you gotta graduate.” She kept after me. So I asked to work midnight to eight for four or five months. I went to school in the day, worked all night. Got my diploma in 1941. Made Mom the happiest gal in the world.

  The spring of 1942, me, Dino, and Eddie from the neighborhood went to volunteer. I was exempt from the draft because of my job. But everyone was going. You looked like a fool if you didn’t go. Get me in the action, Jackson! I was going to enlist in the Marines—they’re known as the best of the military, but at the recruiting station I saw a big poster, it said, “All New! Paratroopers.” I went to see what it was all about, and I enlisted. The paratroopers were all volunteer. The elite of the Army. If you’re going to combat, you want to fight with the best. You’re accepting something no one else wanted to do. It was new, untested, people thought you would get killed fast. If you volunteer for that, you’re half nuts. Same if you join the submarines—that’s the elite of the Navy—they were just as crazy. The ones who make it through are the toughest, the best, the ones you want to fight beside and trust your life to. I knew I could pass the training because I was in great physical shape. I played a lot of football and basketball and was good at it.

  Dino and Eddie enlisted in the paratroopers, too, but they didn’t make it; they went into the Army as infantry. The neighborhood kids went all over—the Marines, Army, Navy—everyone went their separate ways.

  Most of my brothers were older and married, so only the three youngest were going to war: me, Henry, and Earnest. Earnest joined the Navy; he was the first of us to go, sent to the Pacific. Later he was in the merchant marines and was torpedoed in the Pacific. He was missing for six months and wound up in a leper colony. He served in the Army, the Canadian army, the Black Watch—they wear Scottish kilts—and the Coast Guard. How he did it, I don’t know. He went under different names, different serial numbers. Earnest was all over the place. A true soldier of fortune. I wish I knew his stories. He was never around, never went to school, couldn’t read or write, but he was
smart about life. Henry was sent to Africa and then Monte Cassino, Italy. He was a medic in the 1st Armored Division of the 47th Armored Medical Battalion. Henry and I wrote letters back and forth, but he couldn’t say where he was because of Army regulations. I was accepted into the Airborne and was being sent for training to Camp Toombs, Georgia, in July.

  I hated to leave my girl, Frannie. I met her on the corner when she was thirteen years old and I was sixteen. A beauty. I fell in love with her like I never knew what a broad was. I knew I would marry her. She was nuttier than me, a spitfire, didn’t take no guff from nobody. I liked that about her. I gave her a fifty-dollar diamond ring before I left. Where did I get fifty dollars? I have no idea. She gave me a photo of herself in a grass Hawaiian skirt to carry with me. She promised she’d be waiting for me.

  Before the three of us left, Mom said, “You behave yourselves, you be good boys.” Pop cried and said, “Watch what you do.” He wasn’t worldly. He had no concept of the war. The old people didn’t understand. They didn’t know what happened in their own neighborhood, let alone outside Philadelphia or the United States. Pop knew nothing of Pearl Harbor. He couldn’t have imagined where we were going, or that one of us wouldn’t be coming back.

  BABE

  Growing up poor in South Philly built up my stamina. So did the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was born in a small row house in an alley in South Philadelphia. Christened Edward James Heffron, I was the third of five children in an Irish family. Our house was three stories, one room on each floor. We called those houses “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” If someone asked you where you lived, you said, “up the gut.” That meant the alley. None of us on Wilder Street had any money.