HD Band Of Brothers Documentary - We Stand Alone Together | Currahee! HD

[Music] thanks okay welcome hi thanks for sitting down with us again we appreciate it could you recount again for me the incident in which you were wounded well i was standing on the top of this uh hill at the aid station and a random shell came in it couldn't have gone off more than five or ten feet away from me because all i remember is a tremendous blast in a flash and the next thing i knew i was laying on the ground in the snow and i tried to get up and when i tried to get up i only thing i could see were the broken ends of my legs and i thought my legs were gone i was because that's all my the broken part both femurs were shattered and they were laying down here as i was in my back trying to raise my legs up and i thought i'm dead you know i'm i'm about to die and i said i said my act of contrition because i'm a catholic and then the next thing i thought of was my mother and uh i thought what she what's she gonna say because i was an only child [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] my name is c carwood lipton i was born in huntington west virginia grew up in huntington frederick t heiliger conkin massachusetts was my hometown i was born in a town named insulin washington it's on an indian reservation up in northeastern washington my name is jb stokes i was born close to bonham texas in a rural area called leonard born and raised in columbus ohio my father was a worked for this railroad my mother was a housewife my nickname was babe and my mother she's a little irish bro red hair fiery great woman great woman born and raised in south philadelphia where the times were tough mom had 10 children so you had to work to survive that's what it was it's just survival in the streets of philadelphia it was a real struggle because we came up in the depression sometimes we live on a farm and have pigs and chickens and raise a garden i saw people that really really were hungry and had hard times my father was able to find some kind of employment oh no we never went hungry we lived on a farm at the time it was was poor everybody was poor that was a depression when i got to about 10 i got a paper route you know that five bucks a month i made something like that you know but it was at least something there's a work ethic that the pennsylvania dutch in this particular area are very proud of i was the oldest one so i sort of branched out on my own at an early age i was married when i was 19 years old in 1941. on december 7th of 41 we were in a store and a guy he says the usa is in a war with japan and everything just went silent i said let's go in the army he said hell i don't want to go no army i said well uh you're going to have to go sooner or later something was wrong with you if you weren't in the service in those days it was just what you had to do i wasn't going to be in the infantry i knew that i was going to be in some top kind of a unit or i wasn't going to be in the army [Music] life magazine had run an article on paratroopers sometime in early 1942 and it told about the training that they got and they uh difficult physical requirements and i just got interested in uh and seeing if i couldn't 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 it was proud of our boots we was proud of our shoulder patch and uh we was proud to be paratroopers and uh 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 you will ever know anybody in your life i mean you know right down to the final thing you know and that that comes when you start your training while that that progresses [Music] each man was like a heavyweight champion a world boxer out of 100 you had to hang in there you had to be tough we marched 118 miles in three days the training i got and the men i trained with gave me the confidence to to go into battle we were just a bunch of ordinary kids when we went in most of us [Music] and a lot of the training was to build you up physically and mentally some of them lost as much as 40 pounds but i didn't have nothing to lose i weighed about 130 but i lost 40 pounds i wouldn't been big enough 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 you understand they were good men but they couldn't take that hard training now he had the cream of the cream the cream i had to climb this mountain called curry every every morning run it up and back if you couldn't do it why you'd end up in another unit of course the name currah as i understand it means we stand alone together that's a an indian name it became a symbol of of the camp because it was really rough and tough going up and down a lot of times on especially on a monday when some of the guys would get out somewhere and get them a little drink or so you see them laying beside the road you know going up and coming back you know where they're sick and it didn't matter how hard they trained you and how tired you got you would still go out on your own and run the mountain at night which was ridiculous because when you had to run it during the day all you did was and moan and at night you'd get a couple of 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 going to say this i believe that uh the paratroopers of the 101st airborne division was as well trained as you could get a soldier to be at that time packed our own shoots for the first time nervous as hell getting on a plane you're asking yourself what the hell am i doing here it came time to stand up and hook up we did coming down is great it affects everybody different like a bird flying in the air broke a foot on the first one they're dropping 16 feet a second i can remember just like it was yesterday that morning after breakfast they marched us all out there to the uh the airfield there was a bunch of guys out there that already made their jump and they i was all hollering you're gonna be sorry you know you didn't want to be afraid you know because all these other guys are right there with you and you know your bravado and all that but uh you didn't want to be afraid so you kept that out of your mind you know in those days jumping out of an airplane it's not like today my first flight up i jumped i was years before i ever landed in aircraft and most of the the fellow troopers was the same story well foolishly i didn't think it'd be so tough but uh the first time the first jump you make is not not all that bad you don't know what you're doing just seems like when you step out the door well the shoot just opened right there as i went out the door i was blank i cannot remember leaving the plane until after the chute opened up my god but after that uh it wasn't as bad but it was quite a thrill it was just like going on a roller coaster you get off and you want to go right back on again it was a thrill it was a high as they say these days everybody just seemed to enjoy themselves they went out the landing was the hardest part once i got out and shoot homes i was happy to log you know coming down is great but i was small too and i didn't hurt myself when i hit the ground some of the big ones hit the ground like a tunnel what's his name the thing you worried about most was your shoot did you pack it right then you'd go through that you'd pack it one day and jump the next day you had all night to think about it you know all kinds of ideas of what you might have done wrong or that worked out fine we made five jumps and the third week there and then you were 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 thus we started off for normandy [Music] [Music] when you walk up that gangplank you know you're gone as you pull out a harbor and you pass the statue of liberty will i ever be coming back i don't know [Music] you know you're in the parachute troops you're going to be jumping behind the enemy lines what do you expect you have no idea that'll make anybody stand and search his soul for a few minutes [Music] we were ready we were ready we were stationed in england for about a year before d-day we had a lot of maneuvers and parachutes jumping they put us in a in a camp preparing us for d-day in other words they're just about a week before d-day they put us in and no liberties no nothing you couldn't get out of the camp they had guards around the marshalling 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're going to jump until we were locked in and then they had the briefing to tell you exactly where what your mission was and they took a uh this map and they made a scale model of the features of the land they put in all the little buildings all the bridges all the little knolls all the sand dunes everything was in on that on that layout we knew it by heart we knew exactly where we going to go knew exactly what to do i mean if you could could have 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 and fields of them i had no idea that there was that much hardware so there's no question about it we knew he's going to be paid and that day that uh you know we got the orders to get in the planes this is it we had confidence in our leaders and and all the plans and preparations that had taken place before the invasion saw we were we were confident and and calm [Music] we were all loaded down to the guilds we carried everything that we thought we could carry in the line of personal items plus the necessary things we were assigned to carry and and we were loaded [Music] everybody got in there and a lot of them were very scared i was scared too but uh probably in a different way that other people were as long as i was in that plane and they were going to get me there safely out of that plane that's all that i worried about at the time i had no feeling whatsoever like i said my feelings was for my brother who was killed at that time that that infuriated me to know when and that's when they when i jumped on d-day i swore i saw i was going to kill every damn german i came across and that's why i think they nicknamed me wild bill because i did a lot of killing d-day the sky was pretty clear coming across the channel so since i was jump master i could lie in the door at the door of the plane with my head out and the slip stream looking down and i saw the thousands of craft ships everything from lcis to battleships down there in the channel and i think that's when i first realized how large the invasion was tremendously large the invasion was we rode for about an hour and a half i guess before we got it we went down off the south end of england and then across the jersey islands and then across the sherberg peninsula and that's when the fire work started black was terrible any aircraft is absolutely horrendous it was like a july the 4th celebration 10 times over then it would hit under the wings and body and you could hear it going like gravel hitting on the front of a car you could see tracers all over the place that's why everybody wanted to get out of the plane as fast as they could whether it was high low no matter where we were out they went out the plane they were getting shot up but finally the the pilots i'm just having to read their minds okay we got so much gas and we're going to have to get back to england so what are we going to do with all these guys back here give them the green light sometime get out we're standing there ready to jump there was a certain relief i think when the green light came on and everybody said let's go and i jumped up on a run and hit the static line with the hook and out the door you know and got such an opening blast from the opening shot from the prop blast and it broke his chin strap that we had on his helmet liner and uh that's when i lost his famous leg bag that everybody talks about just from the shock of the opening it just flew right off my foot the british come up with this they call them leg bags they got to be this big and you keep stuffing everything you can get your hands on in them they supposed to weigh 10 15 pounds by the time you get done it's 40 or 50 or 60 pounds everyone that jumped with a leg bag or supplies they lost it most of the power troops that landed didn't have nothing i was one of them it tore right off because we jumped at speeds of 150 miles an hour maybe even higher i don't know and lower than we should have been but that wasn't bad either because you got the ground quicker when it went out the door opened up looked to see if my parachute was open you could see tracer bullets burning holes through the parachute and they told us that 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 there they were right only i was gone out and my leg was in and i was hanging upside down looking at everything down with my leg in the plane and everything all this happened in just a split second and paul rolled me out paul rogers rolled me out i just helped him out i just picked him threw him out i guess uh i had to get out we we just wanted to get out so bad and i come down right behind city hall watched them shoot at me all the way and which wasn't very long and i could see the tracers and they were kind of spraying around in there the uh whoever the machine gunner was down there that was concentrating on me apparently was not a very good shot but they were firing in every direction even in front of your back of you 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 trying to slip to avoid landing on the road and i slipped a little bit and my chute fell across the power lines and i hit that fence and fell into a farmer's garden and that fence had i'll never will forget it it had glass in the top of it and cut me up and everything but that didn't bother me i just i was down and i got down with my gun i hit the ground in a kind of a field and we were way way got to look at my map and we wasn't anywhere close to where we supposed to be we didn't know where we were we just plug off our maps that didn't give us so uh we had to make our way back we knew that the beach was to the east of where we were so we headed that way to get down to the beach to find out where the outfit was my friend from erie was in another plane when i hit the ground i hit about two feet away from him and him and i started 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 i let in a tree i had my trench knife and i raced up and grabbed the hole this big it's a big trunk the tree i swung into it i swear i cut those risers with i think one swipe and i come down that tree like a monkey and then there i was with a trench knife and a canteen and about six candy bars in my pockets ready to fight the german army you know so there's four guys that were with me on d-day who did have nothing but a jump knife when they landed so we had a hope scrounge uh as it worked out for all of us later on we run across somebody who had been killed and you take his weapon and that's how you you get a weapon for d-day brother haphazard we were scattered all over the peninsula practically so it was quite a confused situation but we were better prepared for it than the germans where the germans didn't know where we were whereas on the beach those people coming in on that on those boats those germans had those big guns ain't right at them you know and just waiting on them oh they had it tough they had it tough all right murray winner these guns were pointed and firing right down on the beach and it people under the landing craft were trying to come on to the beach and they were flying right down on this battery of 105s was placed precisely where it should be to protect that causeway any troops coming up the causeway as you sit back years later and i look at it you think oh this was laid out exactly right tactically we thought we knew where every foxhole was in normandy we knew where everything was we knew it cold but on this one the germans had moved in there and camouflaged us so well we didn't know it was there [Music] e-company was the assault company the battalion and we were been trained from special assaults and whatnot special assignments but they weren't aware of what we had and we realized we only had 12 people so we we worked our way down through through the farm area to a hedgerow and lieutenant winners had to set up a firing position and uh went up to scott it for myself crawled out along this hedgerow to get a little closer and look it over and i felt i could see a trench and i thought i knew where our machine gun was winters was a 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 the whatever the problem was i divided the group into two units lieutenant compton was with me i gave him half the men and i took half the men gave instructions i want uh compton malarkey and when to crawl up there and hand grenade that machine gun crawl through the grass and as you throw your grenades i'll charge up with the rest of the guys so 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 i peek i look up my peek through the bushes and i see a couple of germans over here about 30 50 yards away stoking this gun and firing it so i pulled out a hand grenade and i pulled a pin on and i threw it as high and as far as i could throw it in their general direction the damn thing had enough hang time on it about the time it got to them it went off in the air and i got one of them then i jumped up with a couple other guys and we charged so that we all jumped into the first position together they had trenches cut in there where they worked the germans did and they jumped down in them trenches and they worked them germans like a dose of salt 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 transient and i looked and i saw an arm i didn't even see the man was in a camouflaged tent and i didn't even see him and then i saw an arm stuck under their tent and one of those potato masher grenades you know with a stick come over there and and it and i said he's gonna miss me and that thing fell right down in that trench with me and i was trying to scuttle my way out of the way of it and went off and i felt like it blowed my butt over my head and bernier did he's behind the enemy lines on d-day does he haul our help no he's hollers i'm sorry lieutenant i'm sorry i goofed i felt like i kind of let them down but you know that's neither here nor there my god it's beautiful when you think of a guy who's that 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 [Music] i look upon them each man with great respect respect i can't describe each one of them proved himself uh that he could do the job [Music] we've been through normandy we've been through battle and maybe if i had been harder if i'd done a little bit better job there would have been a couple more men going home [Music] i never thought i'd get through d-day let alone the next phase or the next phase i thought i was going to get killed instantly the chances of survival is very very slim extremely thin as the parachute they got that done in edinburgh scotland 1944 me and johnny martin trunk is a skunk well garnier and i decided we'd go to scotland and get a tattoo didn't we didn't figure out a chance come home but uh yeah but we said we thought well hell the war's just starting and christ were 50 not gone now so it's long haul the 101st came back from normandy after about 33 days and we were the replacements for the people who who were killed in action or wounded in the normandy mission there were young kids that came in and for some reason i don't know why they were the first ones killed and i think maybe they were trying to impress the older guys maybe people like me are shifty we were in a lot of them they were wearing infantry badges you know their uniform they had a star and their jump wings they uh they were like heroes to us you know that's how we look at them i don't know why but i got right there to where i didn't want to be friendly with replacements coming in because god i didn't like see him get killed i just it just tore me up and i don't know why but they were the first ones killed my 10-man squad that i was in eight were replacements in the squad leader and the assistant squad leader sergeant mark and corporal pinkela well they've been to normandy we had not there were eight of us hadn't been anywhere about auburn you see so and then we the training got really tough between there and in the holland jump it was training training training and we had a couple of missions scratched we were supposed to jump on a french city of tornai and it got to the sand table part where we all gathered around to see which bridges we were going to who's going to do what and general patton's troops overran the drop zone so that one was called off and we were wondering if we were ever going to get to go and of course it got to be september it was sunday afternoon noon time 70 degrees the drop was perfect it was a mass drop everybody was dropping on the same field daytime drops a lot easier you can see where you're going you can sort of prepare for the landing i saw a plowed field and i slipped right over and i believe i almost landed standing up you know soft a great job the most dangerous part about it was the fact that people are losing continually losing helmets and equipment and all this equipment's raining down and if you get hit with this you're gonna be killed or wounded before i get off the drop zone everybody got together we all assembled very fast we moved out towards uh the wilhemina canal our mission was first to take a bridge over the welomina canal it took us hours to get there and taking hours to get there the few german troops that were to secure 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 150 yards away that it blew up in our faces these rocks and timbers were flying and they're falling all around you and you can't help but think to yourself my god what a way to die in combat to be killed with a flying timber that we were that close it delayed us until the next morning we wanted to get across that night but it took us until the next morning to get across but once we got in the the dutch they it was just marvelous their their reaction they uh they loved americans and still do for uh coming in there and pushing the germans out [Music] they call us angels from the sky which we were i mean you're on the german occupation for four years right it's horrible when you see paratroopers come out of the sky on sunday morning who are they they were angels they loved you their welcome was unbelievable they couldn't restrain their how happy they were to see you and it was hard to even get down the streets because the people were out there swarming all over us trying to congratulate us for being there and all that and they hugged you and kissed you and we didn't mind you know nicely we was young we didn't mind at all and they were really proud to see us and to the point where it was dangerous for us trying to clean out the town because snipers did some damage in a situation like that we had a lot of fighting in that area because we're sitting right on the rhine river and germany's right across the river you know they're fighting like heck to keep us out of germany it's called the island we call it the island and we set up positions there had some substantial battles there they could observe any movement we made during the daytime and at their will they could uh to shell us mortar put water fire on us when they had enough target of opportunity i heard something coming down i knew what it was a a mortar shell and i threw my arm up like that and went down it lit within three feet of near four but it it lets it when it blows it goes up like that and it went through my arm and hit me in the head and i was i was bleeding pretty pretty good well i was picked to go up on a dike so i 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 and no action so i rotted back down put the helmet on and i sort of peeked over when i peeked over i see a hand there with potato masher and he threw it at me i ducked down it hit my helmet and bounced off so when that thing bounced off my helmet i hollered out to the guys below live a grenade if last nightsky hadn't hollered live grenade and i had enough sense to know that that's that grenade that hit my rifle and is laying right in front of me in my face practically i know i either had my head blown off or i would have definitely been blind there's no question about that not anyway because i just got turned just part way and it exploded and then it caught me in the face neck left arm under the arm in the shoulder blade i hollered for them to you know take off i said get that all going back and i had eight grenades so i start taking them off pulling the pins and throwing them over and while the grenades are rolling down or landing wherever they were they were hitting some of the crowds because i could hear screaming hollering crying you know and i think i threw the eight grenades in about four seconds and then i took off running so the doctor that counted the holes in me down at niamegan yeah i'm megan the first doctor that really counted the holes said there was 32 that was our first experience with artillery in large numbers and i can remember sitting there at night a couple of nights listening to the artillery land wham and the 88 was the fiercest uh cannon gun that the germans had and it was the way they used it it was an all-purpose gun it could shoot any aircraft tanks anti-personnel air burst and that was the bad ones when the shell went up over your head i saw a huge mushroom cloud from the show and joe toy stepped out of it and i run up i remember that like it was just i ran up and i grabbed me and he said oh don't touch me i said yo what's my he said i'm hit all over he said i i'm bad i said okay i said i'm going to go see jim he said as bad as he was hurting joe toy he said hephrin i already checked him he's gone jim campbell might be alive today if the agnes said to me everyone you stay here with your gun i'm going up and i never never never i sleep on it i eat on it i i never never forgot that and anybody that went through it i'll tell you the same thing they can't no 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 that 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 at that point that you're only going to be off the line for a few days and you're going to be facing bad stone [Music] this is the last desperate action of the germans to turn the tide of this whole war what it is it is this is the old jacks woods right it is the woods it sure looks different now there ain't no snow these trees might have been replanted look at that i think if the trees look like they did in 44 and 45 we could get a better idea that's it yeah that's the town of four oh this is definitely the area this is definitely well there's a town of four right over there after the empty field where those cattle are grazing half a mile away yeah we had an outpost set up looking right into the tunnel four and they had to watch everything going on because we'd come in here and go to sleep we had our foxholes right over here and the other area and the other area wherever we had to move out and dig in again of course the crowds had plenty of volatility most intense i went to everybody most intense in the world you couldn't believe it you had to be here you just dove in the hole and just pray that's it if it comes in you ain't going to know it you ain't going to know we lost muck and pankella over on this side they were killed instantly shall we correct it right now just made mush mince meat out of them george he was come over and he houred i can't see nothing of them there's nothing there they were all gone just disintegrated unmerciful sheldon really everything i think was shredded yeah yeah shredded right so it's an odd feeling to me it brings a lot of memories memories of the men the times good and bad not our memories [Music] it was the most miserable place i've ever been in my life even today a real cold night we go to bed and uh my wife will tell you that first thing i'll say is i'm glad i'm not investing the germans wanted to get bad stone because of the road network that's why it was such an objective so that's where we had to hold which we did 318 trucks come in around noon time and by that evening everybody was loaded and moving out we were short of equipment we didn't have enough ammunition we didn't have enough warm clothes but we had confidence that our higher military authorities would get to us whatever we needed that 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 and another truck came by with weapons and they pitch out weapons up to the truck you catch a weapon that's what you got until you got the best home as it worked out there's some men actually got on the trucks and left for bastion and didn't have a rifle [Music] when we got there we saw men and singling and twos and threes working their way back some of them even without weapons without equipment they were some of them were terrified they were beating up and every one of them are telling us you know they're going to kill everybody they're running over everybody they couldn't believe when they saw us up there that we intended to set up defensive lines and to stop the germans they said they couldn't be stopped we went down to town we started taking up their weapons and their ammunition asking the guys that's retreating you got any extra ammunition or a hand grenade you don't want you're getting oh yeah you could hear this iron going on up ahead and we're marching towards it with hardly any ammunition we marched through the night and went up to the forward side of bastogne and dug in and then it snowed snow cold up to your rump we didn't have no winter clothing or nothing that's where a third of the dog gone casually was frost bite or trace whatever you want to call it bad move a lot of snow not everything you didn't like good cold blaze at this particular time we it's on top of a kind of a hill and top of the hill had pine trees and we set up our positions around the fringe of the woods in belgium the trees are planted they don't grow like they do in maine they're rows of trees you look down a row and you can see a half a mile and there was on top of this hill there was a ridge tree line we were dug in on that ridge chairman's knew right where we were and they really gave us a shellacking to infantrymen and in wartime the mother earth is your best friend and uh you always dig a hole and get out of sight you know we dug plenty of those you'd be surprised how quick you can get through that hard ground when somebody's shooting at you and them shells are falling now you can make fast work of it we just have to dig that home well we say we became experts on foreign european soil we dug in and two people could dig a better hole in one and the ground is frozen it takes quite a while you just chip it out and by the time you get it done they whistle for you to we're moving out and you go someplace else and dig another one now must understand the germans were we were surrounded the germans were about maybe 100 yards away from us no matter where you looked around the circle you could see artillery flashes so you knew from we knew from that that we were surrounded we went through a couple shellings at bastogne that were earth shaking if you live through them you remember them for the rest of your life and 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 there that i remember vividly i'll never forget it one of the guys got hit in the arm with a piece of shrapnel took his arm off above the elbow and they were going to take him out he said get my wristwatch off my arm and 40 took them out had always stayed with me i mean i calm voiced everything get my wristwatch off my arm [Music] on the 3rd of january we withdrew back to our former positions there uh up the hill from foy and when we got there we could see that the germans had zeroed in artillery there because trees were knocked down branches were knocked out of trees there were holes in the ground it was right at dusk and the germans had this you know this woods of ours zeroed in completely and and as we hit the woods while this tremendous artillery attack came [Music] they knew where we were and they started shooting point-blank 88s into our area they were letting us have it everything everything like in the kitchen snake mortars airflow waffles that's a rocket thing that's a screaming sound it scared that hell i mean i was scared but i think i was petrified then i thought the whole world i thought the whole world was shooting at us at once i jumped into a foxhole that somebody had started and then hadn't finished so i was crouched down in that foxhole but it wouldn't hold all of me so from about my nose up was was above the ground i could see all these shells hitting sergeant garnier lost a leg and joe toy lost a leg in the same place right there on one one hill i remember just this certain instance you know joe got caught not near his hole and uh bill and i were ahead of him and and bill had not been hit and uh he came up out of the out of his hole quickly and we were still under heavy fire joe said jesus christ what what do i have to do to die he got hit real bad the back and the leg and he's out there and how a medic and he couldn't find a medic i went out to see what i could do for him bongo i got it too i went over to garnier he was sitting on the ground his leg was badly mangled he was holding his leg and it was jerking like that and he said lip they got old garner this time he had been hit before but uh they really got him there we got him out of there like baby heifer the nine some others and and uh they brought a a jeep down and we put them on stretchers and and uh i better not talk about them but i'm not talking about they're terrible [Music] we had lost some very good men there toy and garnier 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 are glad that he found peace [Music] we had this uh assistant squad leader named a mallet he was from new york city and i overheard him talking one time this was in bastogne he says i've been through uh normandy and went through harlem and to this day he says i haven't got one scratch he says i'm afraid when i do get it i'm really going to get it and he was right in this little town of foye he got killed so uh i don't think he had any premonition of it he just he just wondered about it you know but i never did wonder never give up much thought you just live from the uh day to day keep your fingers crossed and that was it [Music] i have the honor to present the supreme commander general eisenhower [Music] 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 american army with that tradition therefore will always be associated the name of the 101st airborne division anna bastone 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 audubon 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 [Music] birches garden that's the end of the line it's the retreat that hitler had for himself and he built his eagle's nest this penthouse on top of the alp to i'm sure relax and confer with his staff because they all followed him to berch's garden this was their final retreat and of course this is where they had their their loot as well this was the goal of the french who were on our right flank this is the goal of the british and this is a place to capture this is the one everybody wanted hitler's barcus garden 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 huge gutted rooms and the great window through which the fuhrer gazed out on the alps we took purchase god and made a fifth and no fighting no shooting the only thing i'd seen a purchase gone was a couple dead black uniform 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 [Music] liberated it you might say there was uh obviously um a 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 uh postcards and envelopes that were addressed to hitler go find out that place was full of this big arch you know rembrandt and all those people you know and hanging on the wall you know of course the old soldiers like us we don't recognize a painting when we see it the 101st airborne division uncovers herman gehring's personal art collection hidden in the subterranean chamber twelve hundred artworks worth untold 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 what much whiskey those people don't like whiskey 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 [Laughter] so we stayed pretty well oiled for all that champagne was good i started drinking it one day and i drank it until about midnight that night i went to the box went to sleep i didn't wake up the next day i made a two-day thing out of it and it tasted it didn't taste like it would hurt you it tastes like ginger ale that was the only time that i could ever remember that when i was in service that the whole company fell out in her underwear we didn't even have to dress because everybody was pretty well looped and so we just 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 looting because of the fact that i had come down through germany and i had seen the holocaust and i had seen what the germans had done to the jewish race and i'd seen what they had done to the displaced persons and what they had done in their occupation of france and and what they had done to their occupation in holland belgium so that uh by taking over their homes for a few nights to bed down my men and if they picked up a few trinkets i had no problem [Music] nobody has ever taken their time to tell you how to handle a surrender jeez we'll talk about that when we get there well here we are we got it now how do you handle this the german army was a well-disciplined army and those prisoners that come down out of the alps they came down in formation they marched down they didn't they didn't drag down you know or nothing like that uh they came down as as defeated soldiers i think we thought that the germans were probably the evilest people in the world but as the war went along we found out also that it wasn't the germans for say it was the ss and 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 i could have i looked at it and it was a little catholic prayer book for the mass and all of a sudden i'm faced with the thing hey i haven't got nazis here i've got some catholics and i've got a catholic good enough to stick one of these in his pocket a lot of those soldiers i've thought about this often that man and i might have been good friends we might and we might had a lot in common we might like to fish you know he might like to hunt uh you never know you know of course they were doing what they were supposed to do and i was trying to do what i was supposed to do uh but uh under different circumstances we might have been good friends i have a great deal of respect for them as soldiers they are 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 i was assigned this major and when he walked in he presented me this pistol and offered his personal surrender which naturally 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 that it wasn't until later when he had given me this pistol and i had a chance to look at it carefully that i realized this pistol had never been fired there was no blood on it [Music] that's the way all war should end with an agreement with no blood on it and i assure you this pistol has never never been fired since i've had it and it will not be fair [Music] we didn't come home and and flound ourselves i didn't come home and you know lost the war here or anything i just come on went back to like what we did before one just go to work and live our life i think it was difficult for most fellas coming back they didn't what they were going to do when they got out i didn't had no idea i went to work for a coal company did some bartendering and ran a pool hall and took up course in ornamental horticulture it didn't pay very much but a lot of nice people [Music] i went to work where i was working before the warriors caterpillar tractor company i became an industrial arts teacher and a social studies teacher spring of 46 i took a boat to catch count alaska i went to work for the government a letter carrier for 37 years i built home i wanted construction i went into hard work tedious work i'd done everything you name it i'd done it ended up working on a waterfront and i went with the cia in washington got my degree in 1948. after the war i became a teacher and 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 really everyone's done well i've done well too thank god i want to welcome each and every one of you to our banquet tonight to celebrate the ending of a fine reunion thank you all for coming and i will extend the best wishes to all the men from company 506. i love you god bless you all thank you the purpose the reunions serve is just to give us a chance to get together and talk to each other we relive some of the farming experiences but we have great respect and you might say affection for each other the type of affection that you get when you've lived through many dangerous situations together and have learned that you can rely on each other if you see the people today that monsieur the bond you can't explain soon you see them you know you're thinking of battles and thinking of it you yourself the men stand out amongst each other there's an intimacy develops and uh like nothing that i've ever experienced anywhere not in college not not in any 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 that's the thing that gets me is uh i like brothers i'm back in my youth now when i get to these guys i'm back when i went to service it's fantastic i'd like to make 20 more reunions we had a lot of real good times in there and those are the times that you really remember you know that's a lot of those it's what we're kidding each other about you know these reunions a lot of times and then you had a lot of bad times my family didn't know anything about it and i would just didn't tell them i just you know figured it's something that uh didn't need talking about it was done over with we didn't know shifty the way the men knew shifty you know so but we he started talking about it just in the last five or six years last five i'd say it was like he that was another life you know as he was another person and we weren't aware that the stuff he went through things he'd seen i didn't you know it didn't even dawn on me that he'd killed people i i really i really admired my dad my daddy he's like he's a good guy he's a real strong guy we travel a lot and we've been to to france into that cemetery it's just incredible there's crosses up and crosses open crosses and just lined up perfectly as far as the eye can see and then there's a cliff you know and then the ocean these weren't just anonymous statistics these were people that i knew and these were and i told my daughter i said this guy here died at age 19 or 20. a whole life never lived no family nothing no children no no opportunity to have some satisfaction of building a life nothing when i went there i said dad my gosh daddy we're so lucky and he looked at me and he said yeah very lucky and he started crying these guys have been with each other in the absolute base experiences of human existence they were there with each other knowing you're gonna die or thinking you're gonna die or seeing people dying all around you and there they went day after day and i admire that and held my father even on his tombstone as sergeant joe toy 506 pir on her first airborne division that's what he wanted on his tombstone it meant that much to him [Music] how it happened that uh those various individuals happen to end 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 think about the god more than anything else think about most of them every day something is itched in your memory i guess you'll never leave either am i a little proud of having once served in that outfit you bet your life i wore that eagle on my right shoulder for 18 years probably the proudest thing in my whole life having been an 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 work system and we thank god we got back alive so how would you like to be a mother or a father son never come back the son and the mother and father are the heroes of the second world war i think isaac come home let me say this i don't believe there's very very very few heroes that came back from the war they're still over there [Music] do you remember the letter that mike rouney wrote me do you remember how i 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 i served in a company up here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The History Explorer

Views: 626,379

Keywords: ww2tv, easy company, band of brothers, British army, airborne, airbourne, Pegasus, p company, royal marine, commando, leadership, parachute regiment, ww2, ww1, fitness, military, military history, army, marine corps, us army, usa, mil sim, airsoft, milsim, hunting, coffee, 101st airborne, 82nd airborne, hbo, 'the history underground, 'ww2tv, assault, attack, ranger, rangers, brecourt, d day, normandy, omaha, utah, juno, sword

Id: VPqeCv3xVJU

Length: 75min 56sec (4556 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022