The Filthy Thirteen

From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest—The True Story of the 101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers

Richard Killblane, Jake McNiece

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781935149811
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Seconde Guerre mondiale

The true story of the 101st Airborne Division's most notorious squad of combat paratroopers—the inspiration for the classic WWII film, The Dirty Dozen. Since World War II, the American public has learned of the exploits of the 101st Airborne Division, the paratroopers who led the Allied invasions into Nazi-held Europe. But within the ranks of the 101st, one unit attained truly legendary status. Known as the Filthy Thirteen, they were the real-life inspiration for The Dirty Dozen. Primarily products of the Dustbowl and the Depression, the Filthy Thirteen became notorious within the elite Screaming Eagles for their hard drinking and savage fighting skills. From D-Day until the end of the war, the squad's heart and soul—and its toughest member—was a half Native American soldier named Jake McNiece. McNiece made four combat jumps, was in the forefront of every fight in northern Europe, yet somehow never made the rank of PFC. The Filthy Thirteen offers a vivid group portrait of hardscrabble guys whom any respectable person would be loath to meet in a dark alley: a brawling bunch whose saving grace was that they inflicted more damage on the Germans than on MPs, the English countryside, and their own officers.

1

CREATING A LEGEND

ENLISTMENT IN THE PARATROOPS

September 1, 1942

I was never really interested in the war until after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. At that time I had been working as a firefighter for the War Department for quite a while. Then after Pearl Harbor there was a big project at Pine Bluff Perkins about sixty miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas. The Luminous Construction Company was con structing pretty near sixty long, storage arsenal buildings out there.

They would be fined $10 a day if they did not finish on time and they were falling behind. They had about 250 men from Arkansas, Louisiana, and southern Missouri working for them. The contractors could not get any work out of those boys or at least with any regularity. So my brother-in-law, Cam Steele, called me figuring that I could make due progress and asked if I would come out there and be a gang pusher for the project. I said I would.

Once there I kind of worked on the problem and changed the payroll to Wednesdays instead of paying them on Friday night. Before, the men would go out and stay drunk for three or four days and half of them would wind up in jail. Consequently, they would not show back up for work on Monday. After I changed their payroll, when time for a real tight-shoe night¹ came along on Saturday, they were broke. So they just kept coming back to work on time. I worked down there until I completed that project.

I had a total exemption from the draft because I was a fireman but I began to feel uneasy about not offering my services, whatever they might be. So I went back to Ponca City, Oklahoma, to visit my mom and dad for a few days. Then I got into some problems down there at the Blue Moon Tavern on South Avenue.

I was out carousing around one Saturday night doing the town up in good shape and fashion. Of course, I was drunker than nine hundred dollars and looking for trouble. There was one particular individual that I wanted to put the ugly on. Thad Tucker and I had always had lots of difficulties. Well, I wanted to whip him real good one more time, but I knew the minute that I stepped inside his joint he would call the cops. So I got a friend of mine to go down with me in his good clothes. He owed Thad quite a bit of money. Well he went in with a cock-and-bull story that he had just married an Osage squaw and wanted to pay him off.² He asked Thad to come on out to the car a bit. He would give him a big shot of whiskey then pay him.

Well, when Thad came clear out into the driveway, I walked up and went to work on him. I knocked him down and was putting the boots to him in that gravel driveway. I was so drunk that I lost my balance. When I lifted my foot to kick him, I kind of staggered back. He then jumped up and made a run for the front door of his joint. When he did, I scooped up a big rock about the size of a baseball and threw it at him. I was still in good shape and could throw pretty straight. I hit him right in the back of the head and it just peeled his skin. It nearly scalped him. He went down but by then I could already hear sirens blowing all over the place. Squad cars were coming in from every direction. So I thought, “I’ve got to get out of here.” Then I took off and ran across the street.

This was back in 1942 and there were not many dwelling places on the north side of South Avenue. That was where the Hearst brothers had a big corral. So I made it over into that horse lot and tore out across the field. It had been raining. The mud and horse manure were just like soup, about ankle deep all over the place. In the dark I could just see the light-colored horses. While I ran I could miss the bays and the whites and the grays but I hit one of the black ones and tumbled down in that crap. I finally escaped out of there and went on home.

The cops had already pulled up in our driveway and talked to my mother and dad trying to get a fix on me. My parents said they did not know where I was so the cops left. My parents figured something pretty serious was wrong and were still up waiting for me when I got home. I watched them from the window. They were in the living room listening to the radio to see if they could hear any news. So I decided I would just sneak in through the back of the house, get in their bed and retire for the evening.

Well, Dad finally said, “Becky, we might as well go to bed. We might hear something tomorrow.”

I had horse manure and barbecue all over me. One could smell me a quarter of a block away. So they had just come back into the kitchen, next to where their bedroom was, when Dad stopped and said, “Becky, I think Jake is home already.” He smelled me.

The minute I got up the next morning, why I jumped up and beat a hard track straight for Oklahoma City. I knew if I could get signed up in the army, the local cops no longer had any jurisdiction over me, anyway except to detain me.

I had grown up in Maysville, Oklahoma, the home of the famous Indian pilot, Wiley Post, and had seen him make parachute jumps back in the late 1920s. So I wanted to enlist for parachute duty. That was the type of service for me.

It would be close-in, hand-to-hand combat. A paratrooper would look a man eyeball-to-eyeball fighting behind the lines. I did not mind the risk but I just did not want all that hanky-panky; policing up cigarette butts around the area or that close-order drill. I never saw any benefit in it. Well, the longer I live and the more people I talk to who were in the military, I can now understand and see some reason for close-order drill. It taught discipline to a lot of guys who perhaps needed to follow an order without any questions. This kind of discipline has some points that are good and it has some that are bad. In paratroop service, I thought it was absolutely futile and useless, because we were disciplined to act on assignments and orders in the absence of officers. So I never did go for that crap. I just did not want any of it and this would be the source of my problems in the army.

So I told the recruiter, “I don’t want the infantry or tanks or artillery. I want to go straight into paratroop service.”

This sergeant was not very encouraging. He said, “Well now, wait a minute. I want to tell you something. Not an awful lot of people are making it. A thousand men volunteer. We select a hundred out of them who are physically fit and ten become paratroopers. In the event you are not one of the ten, you will go into the infantry.”

I said, “I don’t have any doubts or qualms about being physically able to become a paratrooper, so sign me up.”

He said, “You know they have an age limit on paratroopers. How old are you?”

I said, “Twenty-two.”

He said, “If they catch you lying about your age, they will not accept you. They’ll kick you right out into one of those other branches of service.”

I said, “I’m not lying about my age. I’m twenty-two.”

He said, “They have a limit of twenty-eight.”

At the time I had already lost a lot of hair and had all these scars on my face and head. He said, “You may be twenty-two but your head looks like it has been used as a live hand grenade court and has used up three bodies already.”

I told him that was the only deal I would accept.

So that is how I volunteered into the parachute service back in September 1942. It just kind of appealed to me. This was the kind of fighting that I preferred. I would not have to walk a hundred miles to get started. I would fly first class in a C-47 and jump right in the middle of them. It was more or less individual ability whether I was a success or a failure.

It was not like some of these ground troops that moved up. The higher headquarters would bring a division or regiment up about ten miles behind the lines. They would hold them there for a few days where they would see a few graveyards. They would then move them up another two or three miles where they would start seeing the live wounded and the hospital and the operating table. Then they would gradually work them up to see the shock of combat. This would kind of climatize them. In the meantime they would still be ten miles behind the lines when some Kraut threw an eighty-eight shell right there in the middle of them. There was no defense against an eighty-eight dropping in your shorts. The Germans would locate them bunched up in a group that size and then bomb and strafe them. Those infantry guys were pretty defenseless. I felt that if a guy wanted to kill me, I wanted to look him in the eye. That is why I enlisted in the paratroopers. I would be right there with them—eyeball-to-eyeball.

It is actually crazy to believe but paratroopers really had the advantage right there in the middle of the enemy. The Krauts could employ only so much back in the rear. If I was going to kill more Germans, it would be with the paratroopers. Anywhere a paratrooper looked he would have targets. If the Germans tried to pursue a paratrooper they would pursue him right past another little old squad or section of paratroopers. So really and truly we had the advantage. It was our personal ability pitched against that of the Krauts. We would not get bombed from ten thousand feet or gas thrown on us. So that is why I wanted it.

I signed up down there and the recruiters gave me twenty-four hours to report back in before we left for Fort Sill. So I came on back home.

CAMP TOCCOA, GEORGIA—BASIC TRAINING

Manual Cockeral and I were sent to Fort Sill in 1942. He was from Tulsa, Oklahoma. When we got down there to process in, they sent in these officers from different special forces. They addressed the whole auditorium full of enlisted and drafted people to give them their sales pitch about the advantages of the Rangers and airborne. Manual and I had talked some out there in camp and I told him that I was going into the airborne. Well, we talked back and forth and he said, “That sounds interesting. I believe I’ll go in too.” So he also volunteered for it.

We had to wait there a total of six days until we had seven volunteers for the airborne. Two or three of the boys were from up in northern Oklahoma. Because of my age they put me in charge and gave me meal and train tickets and all the stuff that goes with transportation. I saw that we were going to have a short stopover in Tulsa so I asked Manual if he wanted to see his family one last time. He said yes and I told him to call them and have them waiting at the terminal at the time on the tickets. When we got there they were waiting for us with lots of food and cakes. We were well treated.

We then took off for Toccoa, Georgia.³ When we arrived, they put Manual in Regimental Headquarters Company, I think in the communications platoon. He goofed up in some way and they transferred him down to F Company. I did not see him again until the night we jumped into Normandy. We would remain at Toccoa for six months of basic training.

THE DIRTY FIVE AND THE WARSAW SEVEN

I went straight into the demolition platoon of Regimental Headquarters Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the day that I arrived. A demolition platoon had three sections, each assigned to support a battalion during training or a mission. They made me the acting staff sergeant for the 1st Battalion Section. Jim Davidson was the sergeant of the 3rd Battalion Section. Second Lieutenant William H. Leach was assigned as the officer of my section and First Lieutenant Gene Brown was our platoon leader.

They had regular army NCOs scattered over the regiment filling the top positions. Our first sergeant was Albert H. Miller. “Top Kick” Miller was one of the finest men that I have ever met. He had been in the regular army for twelve years. Times had been tough all over during the Depression and an awful lot of those Southern boys went into the army just to have a job. That is what Top Kick had done. He was real Georgia Cracker. He had a...