Those Devils In Baggy Pants

Ross S. Carter

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786257468
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"THE GLORY AND SHAME OF WAR, VIVIDLY PORTRAYED IN A BOOK THAT IS 'ONE OF THE VERY BEST'"—F. Van Wyck MasonSuicide SquadRoss Carter was one of three men who survived the suicide stands of his platoon of paratroopers. They had a three-way destiny—to be wounded, killed, or captured. But bound together by deep comradeship and extraordinary daring, the twelve men in his unit set incredible records of heroism.Here are the unvarnished stories of ordinary men faced with the reality of death at any moment. They beef, get drunk, quarrel violently, take their women where they find them, and yet achieve an epic grandeur in their deeds."Every level of society had its representation among us. Senators' sons rubbed shoulders with ex-cowboys. Steel workers chummed up with tough guys from city slums. Farm boys, millionaires' spoiled brats, white-collar men, factory workers, ex-convicts, jailbirds, and hoboes joined for the thrill and adventure of parachute jumping. And so the army's largest collection of adventurous men congregated in the parachute troops."From their first jumps in Africa through the Battle of the Bulge, this is their story—a story filled with breathtaking suspense and inspiring gallantry.

 

1. A BEER FOR DUQUESNE

At retreat one afternoon, the captain bellowed, “Men, tomorrow we are going to jump out in Andy’s field, and after we assemble and get our chutes rolled up, we are going on a maneuver and storm Old Cooly Conch Hill again. The problem is strictly tactical, and there will be no goofing off on the job.” Then the top kick beat his gums and told us that reveille would be at eight o’clock and that he didn’t give a damn where we went or what we did just so we were at reveille.

We got passes for town, which for us was the Town Pump in Fayetteville, where we drank quite a few beers in honor of the jump to be made next day. Each of us had butterflies in his stomach. We always did before a jump. We toasted each other for luck, hoping that the chutes would open and that nobody’s hurt would be more than strawberries, that is, skinned places on the neck, which we often get as the chute opens. We drank the Town Pump dry, and most of us went home early, not wanting to have a bad hang-over which makes it much harder to go out the door.

Just the same next morning many had fuzzy beer heads and furry beer mouths. Duquesne, “Duke,” as we called the gray-haired old lumberjack, army age twenty-seven, real age forty-three, was not at reveille. We concluded that he must have had one drink too many. He was about to be turned in missing, when all of a sudden we saw him lone-rangering toward us on an old bicycle.

He streamed up bareheaded, his gray hair sticking to his rugged brown face. When he turned his head to look at us, his bike charged a telephone pole and ricocheted him on his chin, belly and knees to his place in the ranks. We rolled in the dirt laughing, tickled to death at him, because he was a lovable guy, always in his cups, and full of fun. He had an awful hang-over.

Those of us in my plane got together and decided that we would all yell after our chute opened “A beer for Duquesne” in honor of his Lone Ranger stunt.

We went to our planes, our bellies tickling with the old familiar butterfly feeling. On the way Losyk, a lean, happy-go-lucky Polack, kept ribbing Duquesne, who for once was in no mood for horseplay. The Polack was a good guy. Other than overeating, oversleeping or counting his money—he never spent a nickel spontaneously—he had no observable weaknesses.

The tension mounted as the moment to jump approached. Our nerves were as vibrating as wind-strummed telephone wires. Suddenly we began leaving the plane. As the line moved fast toward the door I sealed my mind with blankness. My chute opened fast. Happy, contented, thrilled, knowing that I was in the best outfit in the army, I yelled “A beer for Duquesne,” and floated down like a giant snowflake. I landed unhurt, rolled up my chute, and walked over to join Carlton, a tall, gray-eyed Texan. His face was ashen and drawn.

“What is wrong?”

His mouth worked out a whisper.

“I was second man out. My chute opened, and I was starting to yell ‘A beer for Duquesne,’ when something bulleted past me uttering horrible screams. It was Losyk falling like a rock with his chute stringing out above him. I saw him hit, bounce several feet and lay quiet.”

Officers soon broke up the group of enlisted men clustered around Losyk and screened him from us until the ambulance carried him away. I will not tell you here what an 800-foot fall will do to a man. Let your imagination figure it out. We felt very bad in our hearts and in our stomachs as we worked out the tactical problem of storming Old Cooly Conch. Our minds and feeling of comradeship were back there on the jump field with Losyk. It could have been one of us—but wasn’t.

We learned that he was the only man in the battalion who did not have insurance. Nobody would sleep in his empty bunk, so we moved it out and brought in a new one. The new man never knew who had slept in that spot.

My platoon furnished him a guard of honor at the morgue. The army put him in a fine casket, but we never got to look at him again, nor did we want to, preferring to remember him alive. Next day we had a military funeral. Our company, serving as Official Mourners, followed him about a half mile to the church where he was given the Catholic burial service. The army band played sad, wailing music that cut our hearts. After the Catholic service was over, three Polacks from his town formed the guard of honor on the train to his home. Thus passed the first member of the Legion.

After the funeral we all sat around glumly, each juggling his own bleak thoughts, concreted in his own private little Hell. Finally a poker game and a crap game got going, but nobody gave a damn whether he won or lost.

That night we formed a group in a corner of the Post Exchange to drink beer and ended up singing the Paratrooper’s Song of Death, “Cause He Ain’t Gonna Jump No More,” sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It is a very moving song, lugubrious like an Indian death chant. But no man thought of getting out of the outfit because Losyk got his. We were bound to it by forces bigger than ourselves.

 

2. THE KANGAROO RAT WENT TO SPANISH MOROCCO

We were bivouacked in the desert about two miles from Oujda, in French Morocco, a hellhole if there ever was one. Five hundred of us were living in pup tents out on the level desert. The sun rose in the morning, hung in the sky like a glaring copper ball, and set looking the same. The desert was hard as a rock, our water supply scanty—about a quart of drinking water per day if you got there in time to get your ration. Although we tried at first we couldn’t keep clean, so finally gave up, said to hell with it, and stayed dirty most of the time. The wind blew sand into our mess kits and into our food. Millions of flies densely specked the air. We all got dysentery, known in the army as the GI’s—and other plainer terms.

We would scoot about the desert all night, and then go to bed before daylight. As soon as the sun came up we roasted inside our tents; so we rarely got any sleep. About eight o’clock some chicken supply sergeant would fall us out to draw some trifling piece of equipment, and again before lunch, and once more before supper. Between times some officer would lecture us on military courtesy and discipline. We sat in a daze hoping he would fall dead or have his guts eaten out by dysentery or some other minor ailment. Then about sunset we would go out into the desert again and play war games all night, get stuck full of cactus thorns, lose our tempers, and fill our guns up with dirt so we would have something to do next day.

One morning we were sitting about doing nothing just as we always did. Some guys had on only their boots, others no more than their boots and a cap, or boots and a shirt, or boots and shorts, or boots and helmet. I just couldn’t spot a pair of pants on anybody. So five hundred boys stood around in nearly nothing panting like lizards, all bored with no place to go and nothing to do or read. We had even gotten tired of talking about women, and that is a bad sign in the army.

Well, that was the picture up to the moment when some joker, wearing only boots and a helmet, while strolling about the desert a short distance from the tents, stirred up a peculiar little creature known to zoology as a kangaroo rat. The rat was about the size of a gray squirrel, with hind legs as big as the rest of him. His forefeet were small and weak. His long, mousy nose, inset with beady eyes resembling a pair of pushed-black spectacles, gave him one hell of a funny look. The tail was long and bushy and waved like a red fox’s as he bounced in volleys of ten-foot leaps.

So the rat took off with the lunkhead who stirred him up yelping after him like a foxhound. Five hundred men jumped up, five hundred men yelped joyously, five hundred nude men tore off into the desert. The little rat peered over his shoulder, saw with horror the mighty stampede, and really began to get the hell out of there. He would take four or five big jumps, then hit and run a few steps. I don’t know what he thought, but I know he didn’t like it. When he looked back, which was often, he could see five hundred men coming like a herd of stampeding buffaloes, tearing the sandy air with wild yells and kicking up a vast cloud of choking dust. With good sense, therefore, the little rat headed straight for Spanish Morocco; maybe he knew that Spain was “neutral.”

The battalion commander, a little sawed-off guy about twenty-nine, was sitting in his tent catching up on his paper work when he heard the bedlam break out. He ran out of his tent, and there a quarter of a mile away saw his command, apparently gone crazy, heading for a “neutral” country, maybe to be interned for the duration. He didn’t waste any time peeling off after his men, all still running hard and some of them even gaining on the rat, which apparently hadn’t gotten his second wind yet. There leaped the rat out in front, and then came the battalion breathing hard and beginning to string out like race horses in the last lap, and after the battalion came the little colonel, who didn’t know the score but, afraid that he was losing his command, was running hell-bent to get it back. The rat at last got his second wind, or maybe his third, for, suddenly convinced that he was in real jeopardy, he put on a burst of speed that left the stampede behind as if marking time. Finally he disappeared in the distance, still headed for Spanish Morocco, and there he probably is today, unless the chase shortened his life or unless, homesick, he went back to rejoin his family, if he had one.

The men, wind-blown and tired, feeling foolish for raising so much hell over a rat, turned around and started back with the colonel ahead of them, shaking his head from side to side and mumbling to himself.

Up to that time Berlin Betty, who broadcast to us in English and seemed to know all about us, had called us “Colonel ——’s Glamour Boys” because we were paratroopers. When she got wind of the rat episode she began calling us “Colonel ——’s Desert Rats.” We “Desert Rats” would listen to her and think what dam’ fools we were.

3. THE CACTI GROW TALL ROUND KAIROUAN

The big shots must have decided that we were tough enough and mad enough for any assignment after living on the desert like sidewinders for two long months. At any rate, one day the first sergeant stepped into the street, blew a big brass whistle, hollered to get us up to him, and then told us to get ready to ride a train for about five days. We tore down our pup tents, threw away the junk we’d stolen and bought from the Arabs, made our bedrolls and got our packs in order. When I picked up my mattress cover to empty the straw, a big rat ran out on a gang of little rats. I felt like a heel for breaking up their home.

We finally loaded onto the famous Forty and Eights, 40 Hommes et 8 Chevaux, stowed away our gear and tried to find room to sit down, but we had too much baggage to all sit down at once. There were thirty-four men to a car plus water, C rations, our baggage and guns. After only a day’s delay we pulled out, making maybe ten miles per hour when going downhill. The sun beat down on the steel cars and fried our brains; the metal was red-hot, but we had to stay with it, or desert into the desert; so we stayed with it, ate C rations which the sun heated for us, drank the hot water from the cans, and hoped that we would get to sleep one hour out of twenty-four, which we never did.

So we rolled along, cheating the Arabs and getting cheated, playing poker, telling lies, eating C rations, drinking hot water, and cussing the brass hats that had got us in such a dam’ mess.

About an hour before dark on the third day we rolled into a siding in some little Arab town in Algeria. Pretty soon a train thirty cars long filled with rations for the British backed in from somewhere. We looked at and understood one another without having to talk about it; our officers looked at the train, at us, and then all disappeared, knowing that we knew they didn’t like C rations either and that we wouldn’t forget them.

A Tommy with an Enfield rifle guarding the train was enough for the Arabs, but not enough for us and he knew it. He looked at us uneasily, then stood up so that he could see all of the train.

A paratrooper started for the train, which was on the track next to us. The Tommy waved him back with his rifle. The frontal tactics of Ajax having failed, one of the Ulysses’ of the outfit, Sergeant Winters, resorted to guile and craftiness to achieve our gastronomic ends. Winters gave me the wink, went up to the Tommy, who looked at us suspiciously, and began to speak honeyed words, praising the British Eighth Army, asking about Tobruk, El Alamein, General Montgomery, and Tommy’s family. Tommy, proud of his army, unsurpassed in his opinion by any, thawed out, praised its mighty deeds and triumphs over the Germans. We agreed. Winters gave him a Lucky Strike. Then we climbed up on the car, Winters on one side of him, I on the other, and a swarm of troopers engulfing us. The Tommy glowed with good fellowship, we glowed with good fellowship; and I know that Anglo-American ties were never more binding than at that moment.

The Tommy, his vision obstructed by the eager listeners, unable to see the other cars, forgot about them. In the meantime our boys were not idle. Understanding the urgency for speed, in perfect harmony they worked like a gang of beavers to transfer the British rations to our cars. Lined up, passing the stuff from one to another, they soon had our quarters stacked to the roof with crates of Lend-Lease grapefruit, orange and grapefruit juice, tomatoes, bacon, corned beef, condensed milk, roast beef, flour, sugar, pickled cabbage, English plums, beans, crackers and tins of tea. Tommy finally remembering that he was on guard stood up and looked. His face paled. He grabbed his rifle, cursed and hollered. The boys looked at the helpless Tommy in innocent wonder. He beamed concentrated hate and gruesome murder at Winters and me, but he could not do a thing about it. Anglo-American ties were never less taut than at that moment.

Darkness came. We wanted to get moving with our loot, but the train stayed welded to the rails. Finally the officers in charge of our car came up, said that somebody had stolen some stuff from the British, and that he had orders to look for it. Had we seen any of it? We told him that we were not the kind of people who would do that to our ally. The officer struck a match and peered inside, pushing his nose within four inches of a crate of beans. We gave him a can and he went away.

The car was so full of rations that we had to ride on top and on the sides but we didn’t mind. We ate like kings the remainder of the trip, and then carried the rations with us into the desert at Kairouan.

The cacti grew in hedges so thick and tall around Kairouan that a Sherman tank would have had difficulty crashing through. We used them to shade our tents, but it was a cruel shade because of the dead needles which covered the ground. They penetrated the sides of our boots and worked through our clothes. We spent our spare time picking them out or worrying about getting stuck by them. The tips seemed to be poisonous. An infection often started where they pierced the skin. We kept sulfa powders on hand to combat it.

Bob Hope came to us there and gave a show. Everybody liked him. But we never would have forgotten that night in any case, because two of the new boys making parachute jumps landed in giant cacti trees which held them suspended and screaming from the terrible agony of being made into human pincushions. They died an awful death before we could get to them. The spines being too numerous to pull out, they were buried with them sticking in their bodies.

No one wanted to jump in Africa because of the cacti and the hard and rocky desert. One morning 180 men out of a battalion were carried to the hospital seriously or slightly crippled. After that, all further practice jumps in Africa were canceled.

Meanwhile the Legion learn...