We Stand Alone Together - Band of Brothers Documentary

We Stand Alone Together. HBO 2001, from series Band of Brothers.

-okay.
-welcome.

Hi.

Thanks for sitting down with us.
We appreciate it.

Would you recount for me
the incident where you were wounded?

Well, I was standing...

...on the top of this hill
at the aid station...

...and a random shell came in.

It couldn't have gone off
more than 10 feet away...

... because all I remember
is a tremendous blast and a flash.

And the next thing I knew,
I was on the ground in the snow...

...and I tried to get up.

And when I tried to get up, l....

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--
Both femurs were shattered.

They were laying down here as I was
on my back, trying to raise my legs up.

And I thought:

"I'm dead," you know,
"I'm about to die."

And I said--

I said my Act of Contrition,
because I am a Catholic.

And then the next thing
I thought of was my mother.

And I thought,
"What's she gonna say?"

Because I was an only child.

My name is C. Carwood Lipton.

I was born in Huntington, west Virginia.
Grew up in Huntington.

Frederick T. Heyliger. Concord,
Massachusetts was my hometown.

I was born in a town named
lnchelium, Washington.

It's on an lndian reservation.

My name's j.B. Stokes.
I was born close to Bonham, Texas...

...in an area called Leonard.

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...

...my dad worked for the railroad.
My mom was a housewife.

My nickname was Babe.
And my mother...

...she was a little lrish broad.
Red hair. Fiery.

Great woman.

Born and raised in Philadelphia,
where times were tough.

Mom had 10 children,
so you had to work to survive.

It was just survival
in the streets of Philadelphia.

We came up in the Depression. Sometimes
we'd live on a farm and have...

... pigs and raise a garden.

I saw people that really were hungry
and had hard times.

My father was able to find employment.
We never went hungry.

We lived on a farm. Everybody
was poor. That was the Depression.

When I got to about 10,
I got a paper route.

I made $5 a month. Something like that.
But it was something.

There's a work ethic the Pennsylvania
Dutch in this 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 7 of '41...

...we were in a store,
and a guy, he says:

"The U.S.A. is in a war with japan."

And everything just went silent.

I said, "Let's go in the Army."
He said, "l don't want to."

I said, "You're gonna have
to go sooner or later."

Something was wrong with you
if you weren't in the service.

It was what you had to do.

I wasn't gonna be in the infantry.
I was gonna be in some...

...top kind of a unit,
or I wasn't gonna be in the Army.

LIFE magazine had run
an article on paratroopers...

...sometime in early 1942.

And it told about the
training that they got...

...and the difficult physical
requirements, and I got interested...

...in seeing if I could
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.

we was proud of our boots,
and our shoulder patch.

And we was proud to be paratroopers.

And 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
anybody in your life.

You know them right down
to the final thing.

And that comes when you start
your training, while that progresses.

-Each man was like a championship boxer.
-out of 100%, only 10% made it.

-I thought I'd die.
-No holding back.

-You had to hang in there and be tough.
-We marched 118 miles in three days.

The training I got
and the men I trained with...

...gave me the confidence
to go into battle.

We were just a bunch of ordinary kids
when we went in.

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.

If I lost 40 pounds,
I'd have been too small 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 it.
They couldn't take that hard training.

You had the cream
of the cream of the cream.

we had to climb this mountain called
Currahee every morning. Run up and back.

If you couldn't,
you'd end up in another unit.

The name Currahee means
"We stand alone together."

That's an lndian name.
It became a symbol of the camp...

...because it was rough and tough,
going up and down.

A lot of times, when some of the guys
would go and get them a drink or so...

...you'd see them laying on the road,
where they were sick.

It didn't matter how hard you trained
and how tired you got...

...you would still go out on your own
and run the mountain at night...

...which was ridiculous
because during the day...

...all you did was bitch and moan.

At night, they'd get a couple 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 gonna say this,
I believe...

...that the paratroopers
of the 101st Airborne Division...

...was as well-trained as you
could get a soldier to be at that time.

-We packed our own chutes.
-Nervous as hell.

You're asking yourself,
"What am I doing here?"

-Coming down is great.
-lt affects everybody different.

-I broke my foot.
-You'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 airfield.

There were guys
that already made their jump.

And they were all hollering,
"You're gonna be sorry!" You know?

You didn't want
to be afraid, you know...

...because these other guys are there
with you. Your bravado and all that....

You didn't wanna be afraid,
so you kept that out of your mind.

Jumping out of a plane wasn't like
today. My first flight up, I jumped.

That was years before
I landed an aircraft.

Most of the troopers
was the same story.

Foolishly, I didn't think
it'd be so tough, but....

The first time-- The first jump
you make is not all that bad.

You don't know what you're doing.
When you step out...

...the chute just opened right then.

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, it wasn't as bad.

It was a thrill.
It was like going on a roller coaster.

You get off
and want to get back on.

It was a thrill.

It was a high, as they say these days.

Everybody enJoyed themselves.
Landing was the hardest part.

once that chute opened,
I was happy as a lark.

You know, coming down is great.

I was small too, and I didn't
hurt myself when I hit the ground.

Some of the big ones hit
like a ton of-- what's his name?

You worried most about your chute.
Did you pack it right?

You'd pack it one day and jump the next
day. You thought about it all night.

You had...

...ideas of what you might
have done wrong, or....

But it worked out fine.

We made five jumps
in the third week there.

Then you were a 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.

That's how we started
off for Normandy.

When you walk up that gangplank,
you know you're gone.

As you pull out of harbor,
and you pass the Statue of Liberty....

"Will I ever be coming back?
I don't know."

You know you're in a parachute troop.

You're gonna be jumping behind
enemy lines. what do you expect?

You have no idea.

That'll make anybody stand...

...and search his soul
for a few minutes.

We were ready.

We were stationed in England
for about a year before D-Day.

we had a lot of maneuvers
and parachute jumping.

They put us in a camp...

... preparing us for D-Day.

At just about a week before D-Day...

...they put us in. No liberties, no
nothing. You couldn't get out of camp.

They had guards around
the marshaling 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 were
gonna jump until we were locked in.

And then they had the briefing...

...to tell you exactly
what your mission was.

And they took this map...

...and they made a model
of the features of the land.

They put in all the buildings,
the bridges, the knolls...

...all the sand dunes.
Everything was in on that layout.

We knew it by heart.
We knew where we were going.

We knew exactly what to do.

I mean, if you could've been there
at the time to see...

...where the planes were lined up and
all the gliders hooked up to the planes.

T anks and trucks
and fields and fields of them.

I had no idea that there was
that much hardware.

No question, we knew
it was gonna be big.

And that day...

...that we got the orders
to get on the planes.... This is it.

We had confidence in our leaders...

...and all the plans and preparations
that took place before the invasion.

We were confident and calm.

we were all loaded down. we carried
everything we thought we could...

...in the line of personal items...

... plus the necessary things
we were assigned to carry.

And we were loaded.

Everybody got in there...

...and a lot of them were
very scared. I was scared too...

... but probably in a different way
that other people were.

As long as I was in that plane...

...and they were gonna
get me there safely...

...that's all that I worried about.

At the time,
I had no feeling whatsoever.

My feeling was for my brother,
who was killed.

That infuriated me.

And that's why, when I jumped
on D-Day, I swore....

I swore I would kill every damn
German I came across.

That's why they nicknamed me
Wild Bill. I killed a lot on D-Day.

The sky was clear,
coming across the channel.

Since I was jump master, I could lie
at the plane door with my head out...

...in the slipstream, looking down.

And I saw the thousands
of craft ships...

...everything from LCls
to battleships...

...down there in the channel.
I think that's when I first realized...

... how large the invasion was.
T remendously large, the invasion was.

We were out for 1 1 /2 hours before we--
We went down the south end of England...

...and then across
the jersey islands...

...and then across
the Cherbourg peninsula.

And that's when
the fireworks started.

Flak was terrible.

Anti-aircraft was 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 go...Iike
gravel hitting a car fender.

You could see
tracers all over.

Everybody wanted
to get out of the plane fast.

Whether it was high, low,
no matter where we were. Out!

They were getting shot up.

Finally, the pilots--
I happened to read their minds--

" Okay, we got so much gas...

...and we're gonna have
to get back to England.

What do we do with all
the guys back here?

Give them the green light. Get out."

We're ready to jump.

There was a relief when the green
light came on, and we said, "Let's go."

Well, I jumped up on a run...

...and hit the static line
with the hook and out the door...

...and got such an opening shock...

...from the prop blast,
that it broke this chin strap...

...that we had on this helmet liner.

And that's when I lost this famous
leg bag that everybody talks about...

...just from the shock of the opening.
It just flew right off my foot.

The British call them leg bags.

They gotta be this big, and you
stuff everything you can into them.

They're supposed to weigh 1 5 pounds.
By the time you're done, they're 60.

Everyone that jumped
with a leg bag, they lost it.

Most of the paratroopers
that landed didn't have nothing.

I was one of them.

It tore right off...

... because we jumped at speeds
of 1 50 miles an hour...

... maybe even higher. I don't know.

And lower than we should've been.

That wasn't bad either,
because you got to the ground quicker.

When we went out the door, I looked
to see if my chute was open...

...and I saw tracer bullets
burning holes in the chute.

And they told us 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, they were right.

only I was going out,
and my leg was in...

...and I was hanging upside down...

...Iooking at everything down
with my leg in the plane.

All this happened in a split second.
Paul rolled me out.

Paul Rogers rolled me out.

I just helped him out. I just picked
him up and threw him out, I guess.

I had to get out.
We wanted to get out so bad.

And I come down
right behind city hall...

...watched them shoot at me all the way,
which wasn't very long.

I could see the tracers. They were
kind of spraying around in the air.

Whoever the machine gunner was down
there that was concentrating on me...

...apparently was
not a very good shot.

They were firing in every direction.

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. Try
and slip to avoid landing on the road."

I slipped and my chute fell across
power lines, and I hit a fence...

...and fell into a farmer's garden.

I'll never forget that fence.
It had glass on top of it...

...and cut me up,
but that didn't bother me.

I just-- I was down,
and I got down with my gun.

I hit the ground in a field, and we
were way-- I got looking at my map...

...and we weren't close to where
we were supposed to be.

We was plumb off our maps
that they'd given us.

So we had to make our way back.
we knew that the beach...

...was to the east. We headed that way
to find out where the outfit was.

My friend from Erie
was in another plane.

when I hit the ground, I hit about
2 feet away from him.

And him and I start 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 laid in a tree.
I had my trench knife.

And I reached up...

...and grabbed hold-- It was a big
trunk, the tree, and I swung into it.

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 pocket...

... ready to fight
the German army, you know.

So there's four guys
that were with me on D-Day...

...who didn't have nothing
but a jump knife when they landed.

So we had to hope, scrounge.

As it worked out for all of us...

...Iater on, we'd run across somebody
who had been killed...

...and you'd take his weapon.

And that's how you get
a weapon for D-Day.

Rather haphazard.

we were scattered
all over the peninsula...

...so it was quite
a confused situation...

... but we were better prepared
than the Germans were.

The Germans didn't know
where we were.

Whereas on the beach,
those people coming in on boats...

...those Germans had guns
aimed at them, waiting on them.

They had it tough.
I admire every one of them.

These guns were pointed
and firing right down on the beach.

People on the landing craft were coming
onto the beach and were being fired at.

This battery of 105s was placed
precisely where it should be...

...to protect any troops
coming up that causeway.

As you sit back years later,
you think:

"This was laid out
exactly right, tactically."

we thought we knew
every foxhole in Normandy.

We knew where everything was.
We knew it cold.

But on this one, the Germans
had moved in there...

...and camouflaged it so well,
we didn't know it was there.

E Company was the assault company
of the battalion.

we were trained from special assaults
and whatnot, special assignments.

They weren't aware of what we had. They
didn't realize we only had 1 2 people.

We worked our way down
through the farm area...

...to a hedgerow. Lt. Winters
had us set up a firing position.

And I went up
to scout it for myself...

...crawled out along this hedgerow...

...to get a little closer, to look it
over, and I felt I could see a trench.

And I thought I knew
where our machine gun was.

Winters...

...was 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 whatever the problem was.

I divided the group into two units.
Lt. Compton was with me.

I gave him half the men,
and I took half.

I gave instructions, "I want
Compton, Malarkey...

...and wynn 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."

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 out,
and I peek through the bushes...

...and I see a couple of Germans
over there, about 30, 50 yards away...

...stoking this gun and firing it.

I pull out a grenade
and pull the pin...

...and I threw it as high
and as far as I could throw it...

...in their general direction.
It had enough hang time on it...

...that by the time it got to them,
it went off in the air.

I jumped up with other guys,
and we charged...

...so that we all jumped into
the first position together.

They had trenches cut in where
they worked, the Germans did.

They jumped down
in them trenches...

...and they worked them Germans
like a ghost assault.

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 trench, and I looked,
and I saw an arm.

I didn't even see-- The man
was in a camouflage tent...

...and I didn't see him. Then I saw
an arm stuck out of that tent...

...and one of those
potato-masher grenades...

...you know, with a stick
come out of there.

I said,
"He's gonna miss me."

It fell right down
in that trench with me.

I was trying to scuttle my way
out of the way, and it went off...

...and I felt like it blew my butt
over my head, and it pretty near did.

He's behind the enemy lines on D-Day.

Does he holler, "Help"?

No.

He hollers, "l'm sorry, lieutenant.
I'm sorry. I goofed."

I felt like I kind of let him down,
but that's neither here nor there.

My God.

It's beautiful when you
think of a guy who's...

...so 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.

I look upon them,
each man, with great respect.

Respect I can't describe.

Each one of them proved himself...

Each one of them proved himself...

...that he...

...could do the job.

We've been through Normandy, through
battle. Maybe if I had been harder...

...if I had done a little bit better job,
more men would've gone home.

I never thought
I'd get through D-Day...

...Iet alone the next phase. I thought
I was gonna get killed instantly.

The chances of survival is very slim.

There's the parachute.

I got that done
in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1944.

Me and johnny Martin.

Drunk as a skunk.

Guarnere and I decided
we'd go to Scotland and get a tattoo.

We didn't figure
we had a chance to come home.

But....

Yep.

We thought, "Well, hell...

...the war is just starting, and Christ,
we're 50% gone now.

So it's a long haul."

The 101st came back from Normandy
after about 33 days...

...and we were replacements
for those who were killed...

...or wounded in Normandy.

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 or Shifty.

We were in awe of them. They had
infantry badges on their uniform.

They had a star on their
Jump wings. They....

They were our heroes.
That's how we looked 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
seeing them get killed.

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.

The squad leader and
the assistant squad leader...

...Sgt. Muck and Cpl. Penkala
had been to Normandy. we hadn't.

The eight of us hadn't
been anywhere but Aldbourne.

The training got really tough
between there and the Holland jump.

Training, training, training.

We had missions scratched.
We were to jump on...

...a French city of T ouraine.

And it got to the sand-table part...

...where we gathered round
to see who was gonna do what...

...and Patton's troops overran
the drop zone, so that was called off.

we were wondering if we'd ever get to
go, and then it got to be September.

It was a Sunday afternoon,
noontime, 70 degrees.

The drop was perfect.

Everybody was dropping
on the same field.

Daytime drops are a lot easier.
You can prepare for the landing.

I saw a plowed field,
and I slipped right over it.

I believe I almost landed standing up,
you know, soft. A great jump.

The most dangerous part about it
was that people were...

...Iosing helmets and equipment, and
all this equipment's raining down...

...and if you got hit with this,
you're gonna be killed...

...or wounded before you
got off the drop zone.

Everybody got together.
We all assembled very fast.

We moved out towards
the Wilhelmina Canal.

our mission was, first, to take
a bridge over the wilhelmina Canal.

It took us hours to get there.

And taking hours to get there,
the few German troops...

...that were securing 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 1 50 yards away...

...it blew up in our faces.

Rocks and timbers were flying
and falling all around you...

...and you can't help but think,
"My God, what a way to die in combat...

...to be killed with a flying timber."

We were that close.

It delayed us until morning.
We wanted to get across that night...

... but it took us till
the next morning to get across.

But once we got in, the Dutch--

It was just marvelous, their reaction.

They loved Americans, and still do...

...for coming in there
and pushing the Germans out.

They called us "angels
from the sky, " which we were.

I mean, you're under German
occupation for four years, right?

It's horrible, and you see
paratroopers come out of the sky.

Who were they? They were the angels.
They loved you.

Their welcome was unbelievable.

They couldn't restrain
how happy they were to see you.

It was hard to get
down the streets...

... because the people
were swarming over us...

...trying to congratulate us
for being there.

They hugged you and kissed you,
and we didn't mind.

Naturally, we was young,
We didn't mind at all.

And they were really proud
to see us in there...

...to the point where it
was dangerous for us...

...trying to clean out the town
because snipers did damage...

...in a situation like that.

We had a lot of fighting
because we're on the Rhine River...

...and Germany is across the river.

They're fighting like heck
to keep us out of Germany.

It's called "The lsland." We called it
The lsland, and we set up...

...positions there.

We had some substantial battles there.

They could observe any movement
we made during the daytime...

...and at their will...

...they could just shell us. Mortar--
Put mortar fire on us...

...when they had
a target of opportunity.

I heard something coming down.

I knew what it was...

...a mortar shell, and I threw
my arm up, like that...and went down.

It lit within 3 feet of me, 4.

But when it blows,
it goes up like that:

It went through my arm and hit me in
the head. I was bleeding pretty good.

Well, I was picked to go up on a dike.

So, 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.

No action, so I brought it back down,
put the helmet on...

...and I sort of peeked over.

when I peeked over, I saw a hand with
a potato masher, and he threw it at me.

I ducked. It hit my helmet
and bounced off.

When that thing bounced off my helmet,
I hollered to the guys below:

" Live grenade."

If Lesniewski hadn't
hollered, "Grenade"...

...and I had enough sense to know
that that's that grenade...

...that hit my rifle and is right
in front of my face, practically...

... I'd have either
had my head blown off...

...or I'd have definitely been blinded.
There's no question about that...

... because I just got turned,
just part way...

...and it exploded, and it
caught me in the face, neck...

...Ieft arm, under the arm,
in the shoulder.

I hollered for them to take off.
I said, "Get the hell back."

I had eight grenades,
so I had taken them off...

... pulled the pins
and threw them over.

And while the grenades were rolling
down or landing wherever they were...

...they were hitting
some of the rauts...

... because I could hear
screaming, crying.

I think I threw eight grenades
in about four seconds.

And then I took off running.

So the doctor that counted
the holes in me down at Nijmegen....

Yeah, NiJmegen.

The first doctor that
really counted the holes...

...said there was 32.

That was our first experience
with artillery in large numbers.

I can remember sitting there a couple
of nights listening to artillery land.

And the 88 was the fiercest
cannon that the Germans had.

It was the way they used it,
an all-purpose gun.

It could shoot anti-aircraft tanks,
anti-personnel, airburst.

That was the bad ones,
when shells went up.

I saw a huge mushroom cloud...

...from the shell...

...and joe T oye stepped out of it.

I run up. I remember that
like it was yesterday.

I run up, and I grabbed him.
He said, "Don't touch me."

I said, "What's the matter?" He said,
" l'm hit all over." He said, " l'm bad."

I said, " Okay."
I said, " l'm gonna go see jim."

He said, as bad as he was hurting,
Joe T oye, he said:

" Heffron, I already
checked him. He's gone."

Jim Campbell might be alive today
if he hadn't said to me:

"Heffron, you stay here with your gun.

I'm going up."

And I never, never, never--
I sleep on it, I eat on it--

I never, never forgot that.

And anybody that went through it...

...will tell you the same thing.
They can't--

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 it 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
that you'd only be off the line...

...for a few days, and you're
gonna be facing Bastogne.

This is the last desperate
action of the Germans...

...to turn the tide of this whole war.

What it is, it is Bastogne. It is--

-This is Bo jack's woods, right?
-lt is the woods.

Sure looks different now.
There ain't no snow.

These trees might've been replanted.

I think if the trees look
like they did in '44 or '45...

...we could get a better idea.

-That's it.
-Yeah.

That's the town of Foy.

oh, this is definitely the area.
This is definitely.

There's the town of Foy, after the empty
field, where those cattle are grazing.

About half a mile away.

Yeah, we had an outpost set up
looking right into the town of Foy.

They had to watch everything
because we'd come in here and sleep.

we had our foxholes right over here,
and the other area and the other.

wherever we had to move out
and dig in again...

... because the Krauts had artillery.

Most intense I ever
went through here, shelling.

Most intense in the world. Couldn't
believe it. You had to be here.

You just dove in the hole
and prayed, and that's it.

If it comes in,
you ain't gonna know it.

we lost Muck and Penkala over on this
side. They were killed instantly.

The shell went down,
direct hit right in the hole.

-Made mush out of them.
-Luz come over and hollered:

"l can't see nothing of them,
nothing there."

They were all gone,
just disintegrated.

Unmerciful shelling, really.

Everything out here was shredded.
Yeah, shredded by it.

I tell you, it's an odd feeling.

T o me, it brings a lot of memories,
memories of the men, the times...

...good and bad, a lot of memories.

It was the most miserable place
I've ever been in my life, even today.

on a real cold night,
we go to bed...

...and my wife will tell you,
I'll say, " l'm glad I'm not in Bastogne."

The Germans wanted Bastogne
because of the road network.

That's why it was such an obJective.

So that's where we had
to hold, which we did.

31 8 trucks come in around
noontime, and by that evening...

...everybody was loaded
and moving out.

We were short of equipment.

we didn't have enough ammunition
or enough warm clothes.

But we had confidence that our...

...higher military authorities would get
to us whatever we needed.

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.
Another truck came by with weapons...

...and pitched weapons. You catch one,
that's what you got until Bastogne.

As it worked out,
there was some men who actually...

...got on the trucks and left
for Bastogne that didn't have a rifle.

when we got there, we saw men
singly and in twos and threes...

...working their way back,
some of them without weapons...

...without equipment.

Some of them were terrified.

They were beat to a nub.
Every one of them were saying:

"They're gonna kill everybody."

They couldn't believe, when they
saw us up there, that we intended...

...to set up lines
and stop the Germans.

They said they couldn't be stopped.

We went in and started taking up
their weapons and ammunition.

Asking the retreating guys, "You got
any extra ammunition or grenades?"

You could hear the firing going
on up ahead, and we're marching...

...to it with little ammunition.

We marched through the night, went
to the front of Bastogne and dug in.

And then it snowed.

Snow, cold up to your rump.

We didn't have
no winter clothing or nothing.

A third of the doggone
casualties was either...

...frostbite or trench foot,
whatever you want to call it.

Bad move. A lot of snow...

...a lot of everything
you didn't like.

It was a cold place.

At this particular time,
we was on top of kind of a hill...

...and the top of the hill
had pine trees.

We set up our positions around
the fringe of the woods.

In Belgium, trees are planted.
They don't grow like in Maine.

There are rows of trees.

You look down a row
and can see half a mile.

on top of this hill,
there was a ridge with a tree line.

We were dug in there.

The Germans knew right where we were,
and they really gave us a shellacking.

T o an infantryman...

...in wartime, the mother earth
is your best friend.

You could always dig a hole and get
out of sight, you know.

We dug plenty of those.

You get through
hard ground quickly...

...when someone's shooting,
and shells are falling.

You can make fast work of it.
We just have to dig that hole.

we say we became experts
on foreign European soil.

we dug in, and two people
could dig better than one.

In ground that's frozen, it takes
a while. You just chip it out.

By the time you finish, they
whistle to you, "We're moving out."

And you go someplace else
and dig another one.

You must understand,
the Germans were--

We were surrounded. The Germans
were maybe 100 yards away from us.

No matter where you looked in a circle,
you could see artillery flashes.

So we knew from that
that we were surrounded.

But we went through a couple
of shellings at Bastogne...

...that were earthshaking.

If you lived through them, you remember
them for the rest of your life.

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
I remember. I'll never forget it.

one guy got hit in the arm
with shrapnel...

...took his arm off above the elbow.

They were taking him out, he said,
"Get my watch off my arm."

Before they took him out.

That always stayed with me.

I mean, calm voice and everything,
"Get my watch off my arm."

on the 3rd of january, we withdrew
back to our former positions...

...there, up the hill from Foy.
And when we got there...

...we could see that the Germans
had zeroed in artillery there.

T rees were knocked down.
There were holes in the ground.

It was right at dusk, and
the Germans had this....

This woods of ours
zeroed in completely.

And as we hit the woods,
this tremendous artillery attack came.

They knew where we were...

...and started shooting,
point-blank, 88s into our area.

They let us have it.
Everything, the kitchen sink...

... mortars, a rocket thing
with a screaming sound.

It scared the hell-- I was scared,
but I think I was petrified then.

I thought the whole world
was shooting at us at once.

I jumped into a foxhole somebody
had started and hadn't finished.

So I was crouched down in that foxhole,
but it wouldn't hold all of me.

From about my nose up
was above the ground.

I could see all these shells hitting.

Sgt. Guarnere
and joe T oye each lost a leg...

...in the same place, right there
on one hill. I remember.

just this certain instance.

Joe got caught not near his hole,
and Bill and I were ahead of him...

...and Bill had not been hit.

He came up out of his hole quickly.
We were still under heavy fire.

Joe said, "Jesus Christ...

...what do I have to do to die?"

He got hit real bad
in the back of his leg.

He's out hollering, "Medic,"
and he can't find a medic.

I went out to see what
I could do for him... I got it too.

I went over to Guarnere.
He was sitting on the ground.

His leg was badly mangled.

He was holding his leg,
and it was jerking like that:

He said, "Lip, they got
old Guarnere this time."

He had been hit before,
but they really got him there.

We got him out of there,
Babe Heffron and I and some others.

And they brought a jeep down,
and we put him on stretchers.

I better not talk about him.

I better not talk about him.

It was terrible.

We had lost some
very good men there.

T oye and Guarnere
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 were glad that he found peace.

We had this...

...assistant squad leader,
name of Mellet.

He was from New York City.

And I overheard him
talking one time...

...this was in Bastogne,
he says:

" I been through...

... Normandy and went
through Holland...

...and to this day, I haven't
got one scratch."

He says, " l'm afraid when I do get it,
l'm really gonna get it."

And he was right.

In this little town of Foy,
he got killed.

I don't think he had any premonition
of it. He just wondered about it.

But I never did wonder.

Never give it much thought.
You just live from day to day.

Keep your fingers crossed,
and that was it.

I have the honor to present the supreme
commander, Gen, Eisenhower,

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 the American Army,

With that tradition will always
be associated the name,,,

,,, of the 101st Airborne Division
and of Bastogne,

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 autobahn...

...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.

Berchtesgaden,
that's the end of the line.

It's the retreat that Hitler
had for himself.

And he built his Eagle's Nest...

... his penthouse on top of the Alp...

...to, l'm sure, relax
and confer with his staff...

... because they all followed
him to Berchtesgaden.

This was their final retreat.

of course, this is where
they had their loot as well.

This was the goal of the French,
who were on our right flank.

This was the goal of the British.

And this is the place to capture.
This is the one everybody wanted.

Hitler's Berchtesgaden 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 gutted rooms,,,

,,,and the great window through which
the fuhrer gazed out on the Alps,

We took Berchtesgaden May the 5th,
no fighting, no shooting.

The only thing I seen
of Berchtesgaden was a couple...

...dead 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 liberated it, you might say.

There was, obviously,
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 post cards
and envelopes addressed to Hitler.

Come to find out, that place
was full of big art...

... Rembrandt and all those people
hanging on the wall.

old soldiers like us, we don't recognize
a painting when we see it.

The 101st Airborne Division uncovers
Hermann Goering 's art collection...

,,,hidden in a subterranean chamber,

Twelve hundred artworks
worth 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.

Wasn't much whiskey.
Those people don't like it.

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.

So we stayed
pretty well oiled for a while.

oh, that champagne was good.
oh, that was good.

I started drinking it one day, and l
drank until about midnight that night.

I went to the back and went to sleep.
I didn't wake up the next day.

I made a two-day thing out of it.

It didn't taste like it would hurt you.
It tasted like ginger ale.

That was the only time I remember,
when I was in service...

...that the company fell out
in their underwear.

We didn't even have
to dress, you know.

Everybody was looped, and so we 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 the looting,
because I came down through Germany.

And I had seen the Holocaust.

And I had seen what the Germans
had done to the jewish race.

And I had seen what they
had done to the displaced persons...

...and what they had done
in their occupation of France.

And what they had done to their
occupation in Holland, Belgium.

So that 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.

Nobody has ever taken their time
to tell you how to handle a surrender.

We'll talk about it when we get there.
Here we are. How do you handle this?

The German army
was a well-disciplined army.

Those prisoners that
come down out of the Alps...

...they came down in formation.
They marched down.

They didn't drag down
or nothing like that.

They came down
as defeated soldiers.

We thought the Germans were
the evilest people in the world...

... but as the war went along, we found
out also, it wasn't the Germans...

... per se, it was the SS
and the 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...

...and it was a Catholic
prayer book for the Mass.

And I realized, " 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.

I've thought we might've been friends.
We might've had a lot in common.

We might've liked to fish. He might've
liked to hunt. You never know.

They did what they were supposed to,
and I did what I was supposed to.

But under different circumstances,
we might've been good friends.

I have a great deal of respect
for them as soldiers.

They were 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,
I 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...

...it wasn't until later, after he gave
me his 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.

That's the way all wars 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 fired.

we didn't come home
and flout ourselves.

I didn't come home and say
I was a war hero.

I came home and went back to it like
we did before war. just go to work...

...and live our life.

I think it was difficult
for most fellows coming back.

They didn't know what they were going
to do when they got out. I didn't.

Went to work for a coal company.

Did some bartendering
and ran a pool hall.

T ook up a course in
ornamental horticulture.

It didn't pay very much,
but I met a lot of nice people.

I went to work where
I was working before the war.

It was Caterpillar T ractor Company.

I became an industrial arts
and social studies teacher.

The spring of '46, I took
a boat to Ketchikan, Alaska.

I went to work for the government,
a letter carrier for 37 years.

I built homes. I was in construction.
I went into hard work, tedious work.

I'd done everything.
You name it, I done it.

I ended up working
on the waterfront.

I went with the ClA
in Washington.

Got my degree in 1948.

After the war, I 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.

Everyone done well,
I done well too, thank God.

I want to welcome you...

...to our banquet tonight to celebrate
the ending of a fine reunion.

Thank you all for coming.

I want to extend the best wishes
to all the men from company E506.

I love you, God bless you all.
Thank you.

The purpose the reunions serve...

...is to give us a chance to get
together and talk to each other.

we relive some
of the Army experiences.

But we have great respect...

...and, you might say,
affection for each other.

The type of affection you get
when you've lived through...

... many dangerous
situations together...

...and have learned that
you can rely on each other.

If you see them today, that bond's
there. The bond you can't explain.

Soon as you see them, you're thinking
of battles, thinking of it to yourself.

The men stand out amongst each other.

There's an intimacy develops and like
nothing that I've ever experienced...

... not in college, not with
any other group of people.

we're a strange bunch of dudes,
as far as I'm concerned.

T o be this close after all these years,
that's the thing that gets me...

...is we're like brothers.

I'm back in my youth now.

When I get to these guys,
I'm back when I went in the service.

It's fantastic.
I'd like to make 20 more reunions.

we had a lot of real
good times in there.

Those are the times
you really remember, you know?

A lot of those is what we kid each
other about at these reunions a lot.

And then you had a lot of bad times.

My family didn't know
anything about it...

...and I just didn't tell them.

I just, you know,
figured it was something...

...that didn't need talking about.
It was done, over with.

We didn't know Shifty the way
the men knew Shifty, you know.

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.

He was another person, and we weren't
aware of the stuff he went through...

...things he had seen.

It didn't even dawn on me
that he had killed people.

I really admire my dad, my daddy.

He's a good guy.
He's a real strong guy.

We travel a lot, and we've been
to France and to that cemetery.

It's incredible. There's crosses
upon crosses lined up perfectly...

...as far as the eye can see, and then
there's a cliff and the ocean.

These weren't
just anonymous statistics.

These were people I knew,
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 opportunity to have satisfaction
in building a life, nothing.

When I went there, I said,
" Dad, my gosh, you were so lucky."

He looked at me and said,
"Yeah, l'm very lucky."

And he started crying.

These guys have been together
in the absolute base experiences...

...of human existence.
They were there with each other...

...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 Sgt. Joe T Oye.

506 PIR 101st Airborne Division.

That's what he wanted on his
tombstone. It meant that much to him.

How it happened that
those various individuals...

...ended 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.

I think about the guys
more than anything.

I think about most
of them every day.

It's something that's etched
in your memory, I guess.

It'll never leave either.

Am I proud of having served
in that outfit? You bet your life.

I wore that eagle
on my right shoulder for 1 8 years.

Probably the proudest thing
in my whole life...

...was having been
in 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 works.

And we thank God we got
back alive. That's all.

How would you like to be a mother
or a father to a son never come back?

The son and the mother and the father
are the heroes of world war ll...

... not the guys that come home.

Let me say this...

... I believe there's very,
very few heroes...

...that came back from the war.
They're still over there.

Do you remember the letter
that Mike Ranney wrote me?

Do you remember how he 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 of heroes.'

Joe T Oye.
oh, there was a big mick.

And we used to have a few beers
at night, and I'd sing.

Guarnere would
come over and sing.

He'd say to Guarnere:

"Guarnere, you're Italian,
you don't know this song."

Guarnere could sing
it better than he did.

"Bridget O'Flynn."

How's it go?

Now, that's the song T Oye liked,
and that's what we sang.

You only needed a sisal of beer.
Two beers you were drunk...

...because you were
in great physical condition.

You were too piqued, you know...

...and two beers you were as high
as Georgia pine, you know.