Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends Read online

  My street was like the League of Nations, people of all nationalities, and we all got along well. The neighbors would chip in for backyard beer parties. Extra money meant we could have a bottle of whiskey. My family came from strong Irish stock and we were reared to work hard for whatever we wanted in life. I think this is where I learned the philosophy I live by: If you work hard, do what’s right, if you’re good to people, then it will all come back to you in the end. I’ve had very good fortune that way.

  My father, Joseph, was a prison guard. The neighbors would come by and ask him to take cigarettes or books to friends and relatives in the prison. He had a weakness for betting on the ponies and, in his later years, could always be found on the couch, Camel in hand, perusing racing forms. Dad wasn’t an emotional or affectionate person. He never gave any of us a hug. A kiss was out of the question. When my brothers and I came home after the war, he shook our hands and said, “Glad you’re back.” We knew we were loved. Dad just couldn’t bring himself to show it.

  The greatest gift ever given me was my mother, Anne. She was a fiery redhead with big blue eyes that could look right through you. She always knew when one of us was fibbing. She was the most loving, caring woman I’ve ever known. There were plenty of nights we had little or no food on the table and Christmases with nothing under the tree. Mom made it not so bad to have an empty stomach or be forgotten by Santa Claus.

  My parents had five children from 1921 to 1936: Joseph, James, me, John (we called him Jack or Jake), and Anna Margaret. We went to Sacred Heart Catholic School from first to eighth grades and went to Mass every Sunday.

  There was a sense of community and loyalty in those days. Even with the cops. When I was about twelve, my cousin Jim asked me to buy him a “loosie,” a cigarette they sold individually for a penny. My cousin told me, “You can light it and take a couple of drags, but don’t steam it up.” So I did. Just then, a cop walked up behind me, took me and the cigarette to the station house two doors away. There was another cop there I knew. He said, “I know all of these kids. They’re good kids. This kid’s dad ain’t going to like this.” They sent a police car down to the Lyric Theater at Second and Morris to get my father. When I got home I got the belt and was kept in the house for two weeks.

  We hung out on street corners, or in the local candy store, or the Laundromat. My friends and I ranged in ages from eleven to fourteen. Everyone had nicknames. I got my nickname, Babe, when I was an infant. My older brother, Jimmy, heard my mother call me the baby and he tried to say “baby” and said “babe” instead. Jimmy’s nickname is Shad, just like the fish because his mouth is always open, shouting and hollering. There was also Skip-a-Beat Nelson; he had a heart condition. Rubber-nose Morris could push his nose all over his face. Anthony “the Brain” Cianfrani became the most educated of all of us. One of my oldest and dearest friends is Tony “Save you for Wednesday” Cirigilo. He got that name in grade school auditioning for the choir. He sang a few bars of “Ave Maria,” and the nun said, “That’s okay, Tony, we’ll save you for Wednesday.”

  We hung out inside Laundromats so the nuns wouldn’t see us and put us to work. That’s where we put together our first football team, and called it Damp Wash, A.C. As we got older, we’d replace older men on the Corsac team. That’s Latin for “sacred heart,” part of our parish church’s name.

  We played rough football on the cinders at Heron Prep. A black eye or broken bone wasn’t unusual, but one day, my hand and my fingers contracted to the wrist, and curled under, and I was in excruciating pain from my wrist all the way up my arm. I couldn’t open my hand. I had to walk away for a few minutes. It kept happening whenever I used my hands too much, and always to both hands at once. I didn’t know then, but it would stay with me for decades. I never told anyone. My mother would have made me stop playing football, and I didn’t like that idea! If you wanted to be one of the guys, you took your pain, and that was it. I used to sit in the parlor and my mother would come in and see the pain on my face, and she’d say, “Babe, your back bothering you again?” I’d say, “Yeah.” A backache was common. But you never went to a doctor in those days. There was no money, and there was no charity then; if anyone tells you there was, they are full of hooey. Once or twice a year a doctor would visit the school, and they just looked at you and gave you a clean bill of health.

  Most of the neighborhood kids went to Catholic school. The nuns were strict, but they weren’t as hard on the girls. The boys would be extra good on Fridays because if we weren’t, the nuns would make us clean the convent after school and make us come back on Saturday! We thought cleaning was a girl’s job. But you didn’t complain to your parents. If the nuns said you misbehaved, that was good enough for them. And if they found out you got a beating from a nun, they figured you deserved it, so you got another beating!

  The neighborhood had its share of problems, too. On Christmas Eve 1936, the local grocer, Mr. Katz, was killed in a robbery. Mr. Katz was a wonderful man who ran a book, which meant that if a housewife didn’t have the money to pay, she could take the groceries she needed and pay him when she could. The entire neighborhood was lost in grief.

  My parents couldn’t continue to afford to send us to Catholic school, so for high school I was sent to South Philadelphia High; we called it Southern. It was like I had been released from prison! But I dropped out during my third year to help the family with money. It was during the Depression, and my old man had to go months at a time without pay because his employer, the city of Philadelphia, was broke. Betting on the horse races became one of my hobbies, and I started taking numbers on the streets, going from house to house to see if anyone wanted any “action.” They picked three numbers and if they hit, they gave you 10 percent of their winnings. Some days I made as much as three dollars, a lot of money considering that many men were making eighteen to twenty dollars a week. I gave everything to my mother.

  To make money, the neighbors on Wilder Street held a crap game every Sunday morning, right after Mass. The guy who ran the game would post a lookout on each corner. Each housewife would make sure the front door was unlocked, so if the cops came by, you could run home to sanctuary.

  The kids would watch the adults play or find their own fun on Sundays. My friend “the Brain” got an idea to rent a room above a garage, and a group of us got together—fixed the electric, the plumbing, the floors—and made ourselves a dance hall called the Shindig. For a ten cents admission fee, anyone could come to the Shindig, and we got a full house on Sundays.

  We were all there on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. I left the dance hall to get a soda at the candy store at 2nd and Wharton. A Jewish fella we called Old Man Marker owned it with his brother—good guys, they took care of us kids. I asked for a Pepsi, the new soda then, and Old Man Marker said, “You better enjoy that one. Did you hear the news?” He said, “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.” I said, “Where the hell’s Pearl Harbor?” He said “You’ll find out. We’re all gonna have to go.” I went back upstairs and everyone was dancing and laughing and having a good time, and I shut the jukebox off. Everyone started hollering. I said, “I got some bad news. The Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor.” Of course nobody knew where it was, but I told them it was somewhere in the Pacific. The girls started to cry and were hugging the fellas they were going with.

  My brothers and I and a bunch of the guys went straight from the dance hall to Chestnut Street to enlist. The place was mobbed. The line went from 2nd Street to Chestnut to Market, and at seven p.m., a guy came out and said they had their quota, come back tomorrow. The next day, we decided to tell our parents first, and let them have their say. About one o’clock in the morning my father called the four of us downstairs. Maybe he didn’t want my mother to hear what he had to say. He told us that we had to fight for our country and for the freedom of those less fortunate than ourselves. He made it clear he wouldn’t accept a slacker for a son and that he was expecting us to do our part. He fought in World War I when he was se
venteen, so he knew what he was asking of us. I thought about the problem I was having with my hands, and knew I’d have a problem in combat. But I knew the Army doctors wouldn’t find it, and when I enlisted in the Army, I didn’t tell them. I wasn’t about to stay home.

  My mother took it pretty bad. With all four sons marching off to war, she cried often. She took each of us aside and gave us rosaries and scapula to wear, so we would be watched over. I put mine on and never took them off. My father would fill up with emotion, and just when we thought he might cry, he would walk away. For Mom’s sake, we made sure not to enlist at the same time.

  All the talk in the neighborhood was about who was going where. My best buddy Cianfrani joined the Airborne to be a paratrooper, just for the thrill of it. He told me all about the paratroopers—they were all volunteer, the best of the Army, they jumped out of airplanes, and they were paid pretty well. If you’re athletically inclined, that’s the kind of outfit you wanted to be in. I seen a couple paratroopers on leave in the neighborhood, and they looked great. I figured if I go in the Army, that’s what I want to be. When Cianfrani went off to Camp Blanding, Florida, for training, I wanted to go, too.

  I enlisted in the Airborne the following August, just after my oldest brother, Joe, was drafted into the Army. Jimmy and Jake signed up for duty in the Navy. Jimmy was on a destroy and rescue, chasing submarines and convoys. Jake served on the San Jacinto, the same ship where George Bush Sr. was a pilot when he got shot down in the Pacific. Joe, who was in the 83rd Infantry Division in training down south, ended up being medically discharged. He’d had his share of troubles at home—he had twin boys and one died, and then while he was in training, his wife gave birth to twin girls. It happened that just before deploying overseas, they found he had two perforated eardrums and discharged him.

  I waited months to be called for duty, and when I finally got called in November, I was sandblasting cruisers that were being converted into aircraft carriers at New York Ship, in Camden, New Jersey. The company liked my work, and I never told them I enlisted. One afternoon the boss handed me a 2B slip. A 2B slip meant you were exempt from the war, because your job assisted the war effort. I tore it up immediately and told the boss that I wasn’t going to shrink from my duty to my country. If my brothers, neighbors, and friends were all going, I wasn’t about to stay behind.

  2

  EARNING THOSE COVETED JUMP WINGS

  BILL

  July 1942 to September 1943

  I boarded a train at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia with three other kids from Pennsylvania. It was July 1942. We were headed to Camp Toombs, Georgia. What a hell of a name that was for kids getting ready for combat! It was an old training base named after a Confederate general. After we got there, the commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Colonel Robert Sink, renamed it Camp Toccoa.

  The place was a sloppy mess, all muddy, red clay. The barracks and buildings were under construction, dirt and mud everywhere. We slept in tents on cots and when it rained your cot floated away. But where do you think you’re going, to a resort? Roughing it ain’t the word for what it was. There were bugs, mosquitoes, rats, mice, everything. It’s out in the woods. But the war was on. And the generation that came there, we didn’t have nothing to start with. Times were hard. If you got a slice of bread or an apple, you were thankful. Now if you came from a rich family and went to Toccoa, you’d go nuts.

  I was assigned to the 506th PIR, which was an Army experiment. Usually you got into a paratrooper regiment in jump school at Fort Benning. Kids came from basic training camps all over, qualified for their wings, got into a regiment, and got split up by the time they got to combat. They might not know anyone they were fighting with. The 506th was the first regiment to be together for basic training, jump training, combat training, and combat. Same units, same men, qualifying together, and staying together from start to finish. By the time we were done, we’d know each other’s thoughts. They took ordinary kids and were going to turn us into the best soldiers the Army ever had.

  The 506th had three battalions, plus headquarters. Each battalion had three companies plus a headquarters company. 1st Battalion had Companies A, B, and C; 2nd Battalion had D, E, F. They had names, like Able, Baker, Dog. I was assigned to E Company, or Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Platoon. The company had three forty-eight-man platoons plus headquarters. My platoon sergeant was Dick Winters, from Pennsylvania; our commanding officer was Cap. Herbert Sobel, from Chicago.

  Kids from all over filtered in. I got there early, but kids were still coming in September. I can still see their faces now. Their eyes were bigger than the moon. When you got a bunch of teenage boys from all over the country, one is dumber than the next. Not stupid, just in awe of everything. It’s all new. I had more life experience than most of them, from growing up on the streets and from the CMTC. Those three summers in the garrison army taught me the ins and outs. When I got among these kids I stood out like a sore thumb, but I never told them about my Army experience. I kept my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut. That’s what I learned growing up in South Philly. You want to get educated? You observe, but you don’t say a word.

  We had three cadre men from the regular Army teaching us. We had drill instruction, learned commands, salutes, line formations, learned how to fall in and fall out, turn, about-face, as a unit. We got it down pretty quick, but they try and instill fear in you when you’re new. These guys were the same guys I was with in the CMTC, and I wasn’t taking any guff from them. My first day there, I got into a fight. I asserted myself early. If they trained you properly, no problems, but when they tried to pull things not right, I took them in the back of the barracks for a fight. I didn’t care who they were. I was out of line, but back then you could get away with it. Today, the world is too politically correct for its own good. You wind up in jail for exercising your rights, standing up to people who are no good. I took anyone on. People got to know me right away because I was very fiery.

  I made friends real easy. The kids that didn’t know what was up or down thought, Hey, this guy knows more than I know, and they learned from me. I would help the kids myself, on the side. The rest of the guys, I watched. I sized them up, learning real fast who I could trust, who I couldn’t, who was good, who was a goldbricker. I had good intuition about people, I was good at remembering things and collecting info in my head—names, backgrounds, stories. I got along with everyone, but if anyone did anything bad, I spoke up. Everyone saw I wasn’t a pushover, and I knew a thing or two, so they kind of respected me right away. Like one of the sergeants would say, “We’re starting an E Company fund, buy this or that, and donate to the fund.” I knew the fund was in their own pocket. So I’d say, “Hey, you’re not going to pull that on us.” Sometimes I got into fights over it. I could have wound up in jail, but we never had any trouble.

  Camp Toccoa was only about one thing: weeding out the weaklings. Our training schedule was brutal, and the training was brutal—all physical conditioning, led by Captain Sobel. Sobel didn’t look like an officer. He was kind of awkward, and all he did was scream. He was high-strung, ranted and raved, criticized everything, a mean son of a bitch. He’d punish you for the hell of it. He was a chickenshit. Any GI knows what chickenshit is. A tyrant, takes authority to an extreme, the type that would get their ass kicked if the situation was reversed!

  Every day we did calisthenics, push-ups, pull-ups, a timed obstacle course. We climbed walls, through tubes, jumped hurdles. And we did it over and over until we could barely stand up. Every day we ran up Currahee, a three-mile-high mountain at Toccoa. Currahee is Cherokee for “stands alone.” That was the 506th motto—“We stand alone together.” We started out walking up Currahee, and Captain Sobel would increase the speed a little every day, and about a week in, we were running the six miles up and down it. We ran shirtless in our little blue shorts and white socks and boots, did cadence, sang songs, cursed Sobel under our breath, huffed and puffed, some guys puked, some
dropped, but you better keep going. If you couldn’t take it, you were out. Men who were in good shape didn’t make it. I never thought I’d make it, either. One day Sobel sent us up Currahee after a big spaghetti dinner. He tricked us, told us no runs that night. We were in the middle of eating, he blew the whistle and out we went. We were cursing, we wanted to kill him. On our way up, everyone threw their guts up. We were so sick. He said, “Keep running; you drop out, you’re done.” Sobel pushed you to the limit, beyond what you thought your body could take. But you made your body do it if you wanted to be in the paratroopers, that’s all. The man was training us to be killers. The thing that kept me going was that Sobel was right up in front doing it with you. He ran like a duck. We called him the Black Swan. We also called him other names I won’t mention. I thought, If he can do it, I can do it. Every day, men were ousted from the company, new ones brought in. You couldn’t keep up, you were out. You made one tiny mistake, out. The guys that stayed there with you, you respected them for making it past Sobel.

  Whatever my first impressions of the individual guys were, I kept to myself. But I tried to get to know more about them. In the beginning we were a bunch of blabbermouths. Told each other our life stories. This one’s from Texas. That one’s from California. He’s married, he has a girl back home. Most of the guys were from Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, and New York. I liked Carwood Lipton right away, I could see he was a good, smart kid, very conscientious, used his brain. Joe Toye, he was tough as nails, looked out for the others. Chuck Grant, Ken Mercier, Salty Harris, all smart, took care of the other men. They ended up sergeants. They were all good. I liked Johnny Martin, too. He was a loner, he didn’t get along with others, he was a force to be reckoned with, and he was a goldbrick (but not when it came to combat—he became sergeant of 1st Platoon). I thought he was as smart as me. He could get out of doing anything. He’d beg, borrow, and steal to get what he wanted. They called him the Scrounger. You needed a truck, he got you a truck. You need a tank, he’ll get you a tank. You need eggs, he’ll bring in the chickens. We became good friends right away. He got married that summer to a girl named Pat and I was his best man.