[Series begins here.]
Listening to the "Band of Brothers" panel, featuring three veterans from the famous 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Easy Company, was like trying to follow a verbal kaleidoscope, fragments of the same story seen from different perspectives. Even within the individual stories of each veteran, perspective and subject shifted, as they followed the threads connecting 65-year-old memories. They had so much to say that the words and phrases tumbled over one another, as the speaker’s thoughts seemed to race ahead of his ability to spit out the words. It took careful attention to follow the details of their stories, but such vivid stories they were!
The panel consisted of Colonel Edward Shames, current president of the Band of Brothers Association; Amos "Buck" Taylor, an original member of Easy Company and very active in reunions; and Herb Suerth, who was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Bulge and spent 18 months in the hospital.
One thing that stood out from this panel was the immense respect they seemed to have for each other. One of the first things Suerth did was mention three of his fellow veterans, about whose activities he said he could tell little other than that they continued lives of service after WWII—“served the American government for their lifetimes in very strenuous capacities” and did so to this day. He spoke of them with the deepest respect and nearly a reverential tone.
Ed Shames continued the theme of mutual respect, calling himself the new guy and saying that those who joined the unit later always had tremendous admiration for those who had been a part of it from the beginning. He described them as a “special group,” and said the newbies always deferred to them because they had gone through things during training that the new guys couldn’t do. The training had been “diabolical,” he said with a mixture of awe and horror.
Shames also took on the role of historian, proudly outlining the history of the unit. The 506th Parachute Infantry had been an experiment by the Pentagon to see if an entire unit could be made up of civilians converted to military personnel and kept together for the duration—most of the 506th members never served in another unit before or after. Accord to Suerth, the idea was openly laughed at by people in the Pentagon, and most expected it to fail.
The training unit began with 7300 men, then reduced by attrition through six months of grueling training to about 2300. The standards were high and extremely demanding. “Just a stumble climbing a hill could get you thrown out,” Shames recalled. He later noted that all that training resulted in “an unbelievably efficient killing machine.”
Despite his obvious pride in his own unit, Shames was quick to note emphatically that there were many others who had done similar extraordinary things and fought with courage and valor throughout the Pacific and European theatres of war. The movie Band of Brothers “depicted the story of thousands of other units,” he said. “We were just lucky to have our story told.”
At one point, Shames apologized for the rather low-key demeanor of the panel, especially in comparison to the energetic presentation by Mogadishu veteran Keni Thomas right before theirs. He praised Thomas’ presentation, saying he had so vividly portrayed the experiences of combat that “some of us shuddered because it was so real.” His comment was another reminder of the bonds shared across generations, that although the methods of warfare change, the core of the experience of men in combat doesn’t.
Another similarity across the generations was the attitude toward the enemy. Comments throughout the conference seemed to show particular clarity on this among both WWII veterans and those of the current battle, an unapologetic honesty about their feelings toward the enemy and their thought of the need to kill that enemy. While on one hand, there were events and experiences that reminded these veterans of a shared humanity between the fighters (and most seemed to truly regret the loss of life on both sides even though they believed it necessary under the circumstances), they saw the enemy as simply something bad that needed to be defeated.
As Shames talked about his experiences in WWII, he used the word “Krauts” in reference to the Germans he fought and was unapologetic for using that word that some feel is derogatory or even racist. He stopped to explain by telling the story of how after the war he had been corrected by a teacher when he referred to the Germans in WWII as Krauts. “Don’t make ethnic slurs,” he was told. He had nodded and then said, “My name is Suerth [a German name] and I’m German and I used to kill Krauts.” As with America's honorable veterans of all wars, he distinguished very clearly between the enemy and the everyday citizen caught in the middle (mere citizenship or heritage does not determine a person’s ideology or value).
Suerth then proceeded to talk about killing those Krauts in a way that some might describe as cold-blooded. A sense of anger or even hatred hovered at the edge of his words, but to my mind it seemed more anger at the situation and regret about what was required of him, combined with that armor one must often wear when talking about such things.
“On Christmas Day in Bastogne, I buried a 15-year-old,” said Suerth in a sudden change of topic, “and then I ate his lunch. He was a blond-haired, blue-eyed perfect Aryan...I was cleaning up the mess they made,” he said, gesturing to the men sitting at the table to his right. They nodded their heads. A group of fourteen to seventeen-year-old Germans had attacked and 28-32 of them were killed. Suerth said it was an ugly mess, alluding to gruesome things he’d seen, that mental armor firmly in place. The other panelists who had been there that day added their own memories of what they’d seen and the enemy they’d buried. The ground had been hard and cold, and Suerth make a dark joke about all the hard work he’d had to do to bury that German boy, and how the other men at the table had left him to do it.
In a somewhat strange turn, Suerth went from saying how hungry he’d been at Bastogne, to arguing (perhaps with a little pride) that “people say Patton saved us, but in a way we weren’t all that bad off.” They’d survived, he said, “and so that was good, even though we were low on ammo and food.” He spoke with a kind of sad pride about it all… the triumph of someone how has overcome, combined with the sadness of knowing what it took to do so.
The conversation then took another abrupt turn. Perhaps thoughts about the horrors he had seen made his mind turn to what had helped him and his brothers cope with those memories. He talked about how they meet each year, how much it means to them to do that, and how every year there are fewer in their ranks. “Each time we say goodbye, we don’t know if we’ll see each other again. It’s very emotional.”
Suerth went on to reiterate his theory that staying in touch with one's fellow veterans plays a huge role in emotional health after combat, as he’d mentioned the night before. He looked pointedly at the uniformed military personnel in attendance and said with fierce intensity, “The most important thing you can do when you come home is stay in touch with the guys you served with,” telling them that healing comes from talking about shared experiences, from laughing and joking together even about things that are gory or disturbing. “Half of battling the demons is talking about it,” he said.
Suerth then sat back in his chair. The torrent of words had reached a powerful resting point.
Buck Taylor began by talking about the Normandy invasion, recalling a lot of tension but not a lot of fear. Everyone was mostly “gung ho,” he reported, explaining that they were anxious to fulfill their mission. “This is what we had trained for” (another seeming universal of military service across the generations: the desire to see the logical endpoint of challenging training, and effectively answer the call the country makes to its young men in times of distress).
At Normandy, Taylor was the last of 18 men out of his plane. His platoon officer, who was a recent replacement and whom he’d never met, went out first. They never saw him again, nor ever found out what happened to him.
The plane had dropped to get under the cloud cover, but that put them at about 300 feet above ground level. Taylor said he was on the ground literally seconds after he jumped. Fortunately his parachute had deployed effectively and he’d landed in an area with no enemy forces. The jump had dispersed the unit over a very wide area, and they expected to have to go a long distance to find each other.
As they moved out Taylor and another soldier from his plane paired up and soon stumbled across a jeep that had been dropped. It had landed funny and the glider that carried it had pushed up under the front end of the jeep. They tried to use a very little bit of plastique to blow up the glider but failed to take into consideration the fact that there might be some other damage to the jeep, such as a gas leak. Oops! Not only did they blow up the glider, they incinerated the jeep! Taylor laughed and grinned as he said no one ever found out what they’d done.
The two of them continued toward their mission objective, which was a road to Utah Beach where they were to set up a roadblock to keep the Germans away. In the meantime, they encountered the roadblock of another unit and as they were identifying themselves, a German troop truck rolled up behind them. Fortunately the unit had set up an overwatch with a bazooka handy, which took out the truck. Taylor said with a laugh that he could see that he and his buddy were about to be tasked with what he called “clean up” and guard duty of the surviving Germans, so they hurried off. It was three or four days before they found their unit, a relief for all involved—Taylor warmly recalled his captain’s joyous greeting upon finding them alive and safe.
Of the actual battle, Taylor said little, merely that they fought for 12 or 13 days before pushing out the Germans. It was then one month before their unit was relieved. He added that they lost no one to battle, though his company first sergeant was wounded and Taylor took over the position. It was unclear whether this abbreviated report was due to Taylor perhaps not wanting to revisit those memories too closely, or merely a desire to shorten his story to allow others to talk.
Richard Falvey spoke next. Though he was one of the original members of Easy Company—and thus looked up to by the “newbie” on the panel—his first words after listening to the stories of those who had preceded him on the panel were, “I’m greatly honored to be here.” His statements were more compact than the others, filled with passion and a kind of emotional immediacy that was powerful. He also was a bit more disjointed. “So many thoughts run through my head,” he said, by way of apology. More than any of the others, his presentation was a flash of vignettes, a verbal slideshow. It seemed that listening to his brothers speak had set off a cascade of memories that he wanted to shared before they slipped away.
As an original member, Falvey vividly recalled the training. “They trained us hard and long. It never seemed to end,” he said, sounding tired just thinking of it. On the subject of Normandy and their attitude about it as they flew to the drop points, he sounded like many a soldier I have talked to headed to his first deployment: “We had longed for it, the opportunity to prove ourselves.”
As he spoke, Falvey at first used the term “men” to describe the soldiers of Easy Company, then corrected himself.” I say men, but we were boys.” The majority of them were 19 years old or younger. In a controlled but emotional tone, Falvey detailed three points that he felt defined his life as one of those boys: a birthmark, a song, and a famous quote.
The birthmark on his cheek meant he was teased mercilessly. When he was very young, his mother would hold him at such times and say, “Pay them no attention; you’ve been kissed by Angels.”
Dare to be a Daniel (a reference to the Biblical Daniel in the lion’s den), was a song which he said he mother would often point him to:
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose true,
Dare to make it known.
The final defining idea Falvey pointed to was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech to the 1936 Democratic National Convention, entitled “Rendezvous with Destiny.”
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
“I’ve been all those things,” said Falvey, his voice intensifying with drama and perhaps shaking a bit with emotion. “I have been kissed by Angels, I have dared to be a Daniel, and I have had a rendezvous with destiny.”
On the subject of Normandy, Falvey was largely in awe of it all. “The logistics were absolutely incredible!” Though things didn’t go quite as planned, he believed that the wide dispersal of the parachute jumpers ultimately contributed to the mission’s success, making it impossible for the Germans to take out large sections of the invading force at any one time.
Falvey recalled how he had expected that as soon as they crossed into Normandy in the planes they would be met with a barrage from the German forces, but to his surprise there was “nothing for the first 1 or 2 minutes, then all hell broke loose. It was unbelievable!” During a dramatic scene from Band of Brothers about the Normandy invasion, which had been shown to set the stage for the panel, he had quipped "That's how it was!" Now he described his feelings about standing at the door that day with his parachute on. He had seen two planes just like his get hit and go down just while waiting to jump. He prayed, “Dear Lord, let me out of this plane! I prayed for that green light [jump indicator] to come on!”
For Falvey, the worst day in WWII was the 13th of June. “The Germans threw everything they had at us. I thought the shelling would never stop,” he recalled.
On the subject of Bastogne, he vividly remembered the hunger. “It was the only time in my life I thought I was starving,” he said. On Christmas Day he put some food in his coat to save as “a present for the men. Merry Christmas—here’s a piece of bread.” His voice softened as he recalled, “It was a wonderful thing to have…”
Apparently recognizing how little time was left for the panel, Falvey came to an abrupt stop, though still full of memories. “I have a million stories—I don’t know where to start or stop,” he apologized with a touch of exasperation in his voice. The audience would certainly not have minded had he continued.
During the question and answer period, most questions came from the Junior ROTC members in attendance, some as young as eight years old. The first one asked “How did joining the military affect your life?” Taylor said emphatically, “Turned it around 180 degrees. I never regretted it.” Falvey was more philosophical: “It was something that had to be done. I became a better man for it.” He zeroed in on the younger people and admonished them to “be yourself. Cream will rise to the top.” Suerth added, “I’m glad I did it.” He was particularly proud of having enlisted rather than been drafted.
The next questioner inquired about their emotions upon returning home after the war. Taylor jumped in with a grin. “I had a sweet little girl waiting for me so I was very happy.” Falvey spoke next, as passionate as always. “There was never anything more wonderful,” he said, his voice full of emotion and wonderment at the memory. “I choke up just thinking about it.”
The younger questioners also wanted to know about any fear the veterans had experienced. “How scared were you and how did you handle it?” The answers of these WWII veterans were similar to what is heard across the generations: Fear is normal; it’s how you deal with it that matters. “The task is there. It has to be done, and you do it.”
An ROTC candidate stood and asked what became the perfect closing question: If you had to do it all again, would you? The responses were instant and emphatic.
Falvey: “In a minute.”
Suerth: “I would.”
Tayler: “Absolutely.”
As the audience stood and clapped at the end of the panel, the panelists remained seated… with the exception of Falvey. He stood at the end of the table and clapped as he looked at his two brothers. I recalled his opening sentence: “I’m greatly honored to be here.”
I suspect his audience felt the same way.
Update: Part IV (The Seabees)
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