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The Older Brother of the Band of Brothers: an Interview with Spencer Wurst

Article on Col S Wurst

The Older Brother of the Band of Brothers: an Interview with Spencer Wurst

Author of  Descending from the Clouds:

A Memoir of Combat with the 505 PIR , 82d Airborne Division

(Casemate Publishers, 2005)

 

 

Spencer Wurst, your memoir, Descending from the Clouds, was published by Casemate in February, and was the February main selection of the Military Book Club. That's a pretty auspicious beginning. Why did you decide to write your memoir now, 60 years after the events of World War II?

 

I subscribe to a number of veterans newsletters and magazines, and in every issue I read queries by loved ones and relatives of veterans looking for information because the solder was lost or died before talking to them about the war. I decided early on this would not be the case in my family. And then, I thought that by not talking to my family and friends about my war experiences, I was denying them something of their heritage.

 

A lot of the experiences.  You describe in vivid details the gruelling day-to-day conditions on the front line in Italy, Normandy, and Holland, as well as in the Bulge, where the difficulty of fighting was made so much worse by the freezing weather.

 

Yes. I thought it was important to describe the terrible experiences of a front line combat infantryman, so that future generations would realize the sacrifices that were made just to keep our nation independent and free. I also wanted to emphasize the differences between the experiences of a front line combat soldier and all other soldiers, because I don't believe that the average person realizes the conditions under which a front line soldier fought and lived in World War II. A very disproportionate number of casualties were taken by the front line soldier, compared to the rear echelons which supported him in many ways.

 

Yet it took you almost 60 years to begin. Why was that?

 

Right after the war, there was only one thing those of us who fought in front line infantry units and were fortunate enough to survive could do, and that was to forget all the experiences that we had. There's no way that anyone can understand what a front line soldier goes through. It's impossible to describe what it was really like. The experience is beyond words, and beyond the comprehension of anyone who has not been through the experience.

 

It's a matter of living day in and day out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in conditions where you might be killed any hour, any minute, any second, and it's also the fact that you see so many of your close friends get killed and wounded. In the end, to continue to exist as a human, you just had to put it out of your mind. Towards the end of the war, it got so bad with me that I almost stopped making friends, because,  I could not stand the agony of seeing them being killed or wounded.

 

WWII photo .  Bulge section of Spencer's interview.  It is a rare candid shot, and shows two of his buddies -- his assistant squad leader and good friend, Cpl. Howard Kreuger, and Pfc Robert Beckman, their young bazooka man, on high ground west of Tros Ponts, Belgium. It was taken on Christmas Day, 1944, the day after Spencer was evacuated for medical reasons. Both men were KIA just outside of Arbrefontaine on Jan. 4.

 

 

The beginning of your memoir has a lot of interesting information about the Pennsylvania National Guard and your experience in the 112^th Infantry Regiment of the 28^th Infantry Division. Your first military experience was with the National Guard, where you enlisted in Erie Pennsylvania before the war, in 1940. You were a high school sophomore at the time, only fifteen years old.  By the time you got to jump school, you were already a seasoned soldier, a sergeant in the 112^th Infantry Regiment, 28^th Infantry Division. What motivated you to join the airborne?

 

If I had to soldier, I wanted to soldier in an elite unit. I put in a request for OCS and the parachute troops simultaneously, and said I would take the first one that came in. And the parachute troop transfer came first. At that time, the requirements were quite rigid, physically and mentally. The school would not accept any NCOs as students; we had to take an administrative reduction in grade to private while we completed parachute school, and then we were assigned to a unit where we hoped we could get our rank back. I left Livingston in August 1942, and traveled by an old steam engine that hadn't been improved since the civil war to Fort Benning, Georgia. We began training the 3^rd of September or thereabouts.

 

So what was it like to make your first jump? Were you scared?

 

Yes, I was very scared on my first jump, and I was very scared on my last one. All in all, I made 18 jumps, three of them combat jumps, in Italy, Normandy, and Holland. Actually, the first jump was easier than the others, because by the time we got through jump school, we were acting like robots. I was very, very happy after my first landing.  I can truly say I made a small prayer upon recovery of my chute.

 

One striking thing most people today do not realize is that most troopers in World War II had never been up in a plane before they went to jump school.

 

The first time I was in a real airplane, the first time I flew, was when we got into the C-47s to make our first jump.  In fact, I never landed in a plane until maybe the seventh or eighth time I went up. Thinking about the state of training of the C-47 pilots, maybe it was safer to jump than to make a landing! (Laughs.) We always gave them a bad time about that.

   

 

It must have been a heady experience to have achieved your wings at only age seventeen.

 

They told us in school that we could take on five other men. I was proud, and one thing that made me do it is probably my own ego. I could not afford not to jump, and I could not stand the criticism of my comrades. We were top dogs in the army. I was just as scared on the first as the last, but I really believed all the things they told us about how tough we were.

 

You were briefly in the 507 and the 513^th PIRs, but sought a transfer because you wanted to get overseas as quickly as possible.  As a result, you were eventually assigned to F Company, 505 PIR, where you made three of the regiment's four combat jumps.

 

Yes. I was in a replacement packet that went to North Africa with the 82^nd Airborne. I was in the second replacement packet, so even though I was assigned to the 505 in July 1943, I did not make the jump into Sicily, when they made their first combat jump. My first jump was on the beaches at Salerno, Italy.

 

You talk about coming under heavy fire for the first time in the Battle of Arnone, which was pretty much your baptism into real combat.

 

That is correct. We were tasked to seize three of four bridges over canals on one of the main axes of advance up to the town of Arnone, which sits on the Volturno River. One comical thing I remember was that after it became dark we were cautioned that we couldn't light a match or make any noise. As we moved up the road we saw some fires ahead of us, and wondered what was going on. We discovered that a British Recon outfit had stopped for tea, and they were brewing it over two-gallon cans, and heating their rations. And here we couldn't light a cigarette.

 

Later, we came under very heavy machine gun fire all along the road. There were at least two or three machine guns to our front, to the left and right. That was the first time I was under mass small arms fire. It was terrifying. Traces were zipping maybe two or three feet above us. I was scared, and I think 95 per cent of anyone else who was there would say they were scared, and the other 5 per cent were probably liars.

 

One of the most famous actions of the 505 is freeing Ste. Mère-Eglise, the first town in France to be liberated on June 6^th.  Millions of people have seen the movie version of this, The Longest Day, where F Company members land right in the church square, and John Steele, alias Red Buttons, gets his parachute hung up on the steeple. What are some of your most vivid memories of that day?

 

Actually, the jump itself was the start of a bad day. We were flying much too fast and much too high, and I had a terrible opening shock and lost my musette bag. I was under fire from the second that my chute opened until I hit the ground. Tracers were going through the chute. We dropped at 2,220 feet and we should have been 600 to 800, so I was under fire for a lot longer than I should have been. When I hit the ground, I had a real bad landing. I crawled over to a hedgerow, pulled my pistol out and laid it beside me, and started to get out of my chute.

 

On this particular drop, the 2^nd Battalion 505 undoubtedly had the best battalion drop of either of the two airborne divisions in the US Army. That's one reason we were dropped too high, going too fast. When I hit the ground and looked around me, I saw planes going every which way. They were scattering and there didn't seem to be any organization. I knew that that things had got fouled up already.

 

I got out of my chute and got my 03 rifle ready to go, and started down the hedgerow, and I was fortunate enough to see green star cluster in the sky. This was our battalion assembly signal. Someone in the command group had hit the DZ pretty well on the nose, and they shot the cluster up to orient us.

 

As I moved into the battalion assembly area, one of the first things I saw was Colonel Vandervoort leaning on his rifle, and you could see he was hurting a lot, because he had broken his ankle or a bone in his leg, and the medic had wrapped it pretty tight so he could continue on duty.

 

The glider crashes that morning were among the most tragic events of D-Day. Did you actually witness any of the gliders coming in?

 

This is one of the very hardest memories I have of D-Day morning. You knew that the gliders didn't have enough space to land and stop before they got to the end of the field. There was just a matter of seconds from the time you could hear them coming in--they would swish, swish come down, hit the ground, and seconds later you could hear them crashing into the end of the field, hitting the hedgerows.  It was terrible. There was a high casualty rate. Someone had got mixed up, or the Germans had their LZs under their control. They had to take whatever they had to land in, and in most cases the fields weren't large enough. The airborne troops were weak in anti-tank protection, and at the gliders were to bring in 57s to help the 505 in their defensive positions.

 

I understand that you yourself actually went into Ste. Mere Eglise that morning.

 

As we entered the outskirts, we came upon the frightful sights of our friends hanging in the trees, and the wires and laying in the town square. They had been shot and killed before getting out of their chutes. This was a tragedy that was imposed upon our 2^nd Platoon of F Company 505. One was a friend of mine, Sergeant Big Ray, the mortar squad leader in the 2nd Platoon, and some short distance, underneath his body was a great big typical specimen of a German blond hair, his helmet had fallen off lying dead. It appeared that Ray had got him before he died.

 

My squad was given the defensive position just outside of the large stone wall that formed the back of the cemetery. Very luckily, of all the perimeter defence areas of Ste. Mere Eglise, this was the least active as far as attacks went. We had it much easier in relation to small arms fire than the people defending in the three other directions.

 

As far as the mortar and the artillery fire went, I think we had some of the heaviest fire there that we encountered in the whole war. The Germans knew we held Ste. Mere Eglise.  I'm not saying they used every gun that they had, but they used a lot of their artillery, and they had a known target area. They didn't give us any peace for most of the day and well into the night.

 

I didn't have to order any of the men to dig in. They just did it. As I inspected the foxholes, I would joke with the guys, saying Another six inches, and I'll call it desertion.  (Laughs.) 

 

After we got pretty well organized, I took a patrol out to try to recover some of the bodies that were hanging from the trees and the wires and poles. I was told, don't get into too heavy a fighting to get them, but try to get them down. Seeing them hanging like that affected me--it was a very, very bad sight, and bad on the morale on the rest of the people.

 

How many bodies did you gather up?

 

If my memory serves me correctly, I would say we had at last nine bodies that we laid out in the cemetery, on the ground. We wrapped them in parachutes. We couldn't bury them because they had to be buried officially by the Graves registration Unit.

 

What about yourself?  You earned two Purple Hearts in Normandy. Did either of those occur on D-Day?

 

Yes. It was my own fault. Somewhere around midnight, as we were taking heavy mortar and artillery fire, I heard one coming in, and I misjudged the distance. I didn't get all the way down in my hole, and it exploded closer than what I expected. I got hit in the left shoulder. It spun me around and dropped me in the hole. Right away, I grabbed my shoulder with my right hand. I couldn't feel it! Of course, it was dark. I had seen these big pieces of shrapnel laying around other battlefields, and I wondered if I had been hit and it had taken off my left shoulder.

 

It turned out that a rectangular piece of shrapnel had penetrated, but it didn't go deep. The medic got it out, gave me a shot of morphine, and put some sulfa powder on it and bandaged it. I didn't want to go to the aide station. I went on the other side of the wall, and lay down. As odd as it may seem, with the morphine and the shock, I dropped off to sleep and slept through the artillery barrages for the rest of the hours of darkness. When daylight came, I went back over the wall and got back in my foxhole and continued with my duties.

 

Your next combat jump was Market-Garden, in Holland, where you earned a Silver Star. Youre particularly interested in setting some of the facts straight about the role your battalion played in that mission.

 

It was a matter of preserving history. I especially wanted to portray the battle for the south end of the Highway Bridge in Nijmegen, and make sure that the 2^nd Battalion was recognized for its actions during the terrible days of the 19^th to the 21^st of September 1944. 

 

We had the remnants of two companies, E and F less than 160 men and we made two separate assaults across a wide open boulevard right into the park. We were facing 500 well dug-in, very determined SS, who had an .88 installed at the entrance to the bridge. We took heavy casualties on both assaults, and lost all of our officers. I looked around me and didn't see a British tank on either assault. The 2^nd Battalion cleaned out that park. Yet when you read the history of that battle, it is a matter of the British Armour on the south side, and the 504^th on the river crossing on the north side. Further, I think that the 504^th deserves much more credit than what they have been given for the river crossing they made on the same day to seize the north end of the bridge.

 

The 60^th anniversary of the Bulge corresponds with your 80^th birthday. Two Airborne Divisions, the 101^st and the 82^nd, including the 505, participated in that mission, but were largely used as regular infantry soldiers. At the time you were a squad leader in F Company. What was it like when you got called up for that duty?  

 

The 82^nd and the 101^st had just returned from Holland in November of 44. The 82^nd had been 50 some days on the line, and for the 101^st, it had been a little longer. We had not had any out-of-contact rest for some 50 days, and as you can imagine, we were low on strength and we needed to be refitted.

 

Then we were suddenly called to duty on the 18^th of December. Eisenhower was committing his strategic reserve, which was the two Airborne Divisions. We were all the way back in Reims, and the battle was going to be fought in the Ardennes in Belgium. You can imagine how fast we had to move. By 10:00 that same morning we were on our way to the front. They took us in tractor trailers, with large beds and slats along the sides, and no cover at all. We called them cattle cars. They loaded as many of us as they could into each truck, and off we went. Of course, the weather was terrible, and we had no warm clothing, not even liners for our field jackets. And there was no foot protection, either, just our jump boots and a pair of socks. Anyone who has ever worn jump boots knows they are about the coldest boot you could find. This is why so many of us got frozen feet or trench foot. Those things took a big toll in the Bulge.

 

Most people know that the 101^st fought in the Bulge, partly because they became famous as the Battling Bastards of Bastogne.  But the role of the 82^nd is not nearly as well known.

 

When Eisenhower committed his strategic reserves, it was supposed that the 82^nd would lead, which we did, and the 101^st would follow us. The 82^nd was designated to go into Bastogne, but in route the orders changed. Some of the fiercest battles were being fought around St. Vith, further north, and that was considered more crucial. The 82^nd was sent in that direction, to try and stop the penetration, and the 101^st continued into Bastogne.

 

The 82^nd  were the heroes of the campaign as well as the 101^st, which received much more publicity because they were surrounded and defended Bastogne so valiantly. But the 82^nd was equally as important and valiant in keeping the Germans from penetrating the northern shoulder of the Bulge. This was a very strategic area, because the German plan depended on a quick penetration and a move to the Meuse River, and any delay in the first few days would throw their timetable off. And this is what the 82^nd did. The German brass knew after the first day or so that their offensive was lost.

 

You write of the incredible chaos you witnessed as you approached the combat area. Could you describe what it was like going into that situation?

 

About 10 or 15 miles behind the lines, we encountered a large number of vehicles and people moving toward the rear. We didn't understand this. I'd never seen the army in that condition, or even dreamed it could withdraw like those troops were withdrawing. Of course, that far back, these troops were mostly non-combat people. They weren't used to being overrun, so they were more panicky than the front line soldiers. Some of them were actually hanging onto the backs of vehicles and being dragged, that's how bad they wanted out of there.

 

We didn't have much security out in front of our column, because we wrongly thought we were still sufficiently behind the combat zone. Very luckily, we didn't run into anything as we travelled on those trucks. As we approached the front lines, we began to see the combat units and the debris of the combat units. The road was clogged by withdrawing soldiers, and although I did not see this personally, it was said that people had to be threatened with shooting if they didn't get off the road and let us by. I guess that cleared the road pretty quick. Not only non-combat units, but also higher echelon senior officers were withdrawing, and they were told the same: Get off the road or get shot.  And away we went.

 

As we were proceeding through the combat area, we hollered down to the retreating soldiers, Hey fellows, youre going in the wrong direction  They looked up at us and said, No, soldiers, youre going in the wrong direction.

 

This brings the events up to your 20^th birthday on December 19^th. Could you recount the circumstances of that day, 60 years ago?

 

Going into Trois Ponts, the 2nd Battalion was leading the regiment, with F Company, my company, providing the advance guard. As it so happened, my 3^rd Platoon was the point, and I was the third man on the point. There were two scouts out and myself, and shortly behind me was our platoon leader, Lieutenant Hamula. At first light we started off. We didn't get much rest the night before, because it started snowing. Without any winter coats, you had to stay awake just to keep from freezing.

 

Anyway, we proceeded down the road. I thought to myself, this is a very touchy situation, because the roads followed the valleys, and the terrain to our right and left dropped off quickly, so we couldn't put out any flank security. The company commander had said that quite a large enemy combat team had broken through and was running loose behind our lines. We had lost contact with the friendlies as well as the Germans, and so as we moved down the road that early morning we knew that we were on or own. We also knew that if we contacted the enemy, it would be armoured units, and of course, the one very big weakness of our airborne troops at that time was anti-tank protection. All we had in that area was a 2.36 inch bazooka or grenade launcher and rifle grenades. In most cases the bazooka rocket wouldn't penetrate the German tank armour, and so we tried to disable the tank by hitting it in the track. After that, it became a stationary pillbox in the middle of the road, so we had to deal with it.

 

So these ideas were going through my mind as we approached Trois Ponts, Belgium. This was a very key area behind the former front lines, because it was a road centre and a number of rivers came together there. The name itself, Trois Ponts, means Three Bridges.  As we approached, Col. Vandervoort drove up, and said to hold up because he thought he could make contact with the engineer outfit that was holding the bridges and had made contact with the enemy. This is what we did. Finally, we got the order to continue forward, and we went into a defensive position on the first ridge west of the river.

 

If I remember correctly, at this point you almost got killed.

 

Yes. I'm a lucky man to have survived my 20^th birthday. The ridge we were on was pretty high. We dug in up on the military crest, or maybe on a little forward, along a tree line. I started digging in about 40 feet from our lieutenants runner, John Stratton. He leaned his rifle against a tree, and was digging, too, when we heard a friendly artillery round coming in. It was a very silent night. The round landed out to our front--someone was trying to range in the artillery for pre-planned fires.

 

Our ears were attuned to that fact, and so when the second shell came in, we could tell it was going to be a short round. It actually hit the runners rifle. Thats how close it was. It shook me up, and wounded Stratton. It didn't kill him outright, but he had a large, sucking wound to the chest. You could hear every dying breath that man took in that cold, silent night air.

 

Our lieutenant was down the mountain on a combat patrol when this happened. He and his runner had become very close friends. Stratton had offered to go on the patrol, but the Lieutenant told him to dig in and rest in the company area. When Lieutenant Hamula came back, he truly grieved.... And I lay there in that hole I'd dug that night, thinking to myself, All this, this was done on my 20th birthday.

 

General Gavin was not in Bastogne at the time; he had established his headquarters on the shoulder of the Bulge in the area assigned to the 82^nd. Your book portrays an encounter you had with him that exemplifies his habit of leading from the front.

 

This is one of the most vivid things I remember during the Bulge. I'd got a combat patrol to go into some houses down on the road, a bit to the left of our position on the ridge, where some snipers had been giving us a bad time. I was going to marry up with one or two tanks that would come under my command, and we were going to clean out the houses. It was going to be a tricky proposition, because the only way into these houses was by the road, on a steep bank. I suspected we would take heavy casualties from across the river.

 

I was down on the road on the left flank of F Company, ready to move out. I turned around, and there was General Gavin standing there with a grin on his face. He asked me my mission, and I told him what I was about to do. I remember he was smiling as I gave him my answer. One thing that puzzles me is how Gavin survived. The man was exceedingly lucky, and he was all over the division area. I don't know how he got through the war. Most of the time he was by himself at the very most, he had a jeep driver, maybe one aide. There he was, standing beside me with a M1 rifle on his right shoulder, his pistol in his belt, and a bandoleer across his chest, asking me what I was about to do. He asked me to hold up until he talked to Colonel Vandervoort. As a result, the patrol was cancelled, and I returned from the area.

 

You and your squad occupied those houses for several days. Your memoir describes some of the things you had to do at that time, things which you had never been able to speak of before, although you recognize that they were legitimate acts of war.

 

These things stick in my mind, and I have recalled them many, many times. During the next few days we got into some very touchy situations that resulted in very close combat. This combat was not like the Air Corps dropping bombs at 10,000 feet, not seeing where the bombs hit. This combat was not like the artillerymen firing their 105mm, and killing enemy soldiers at three or four thousand yards out. This was man-to-man close combat. I can't find the words to tell you about this. But for the remainder of my life, I will remember it. This happened during late December 1944. What should be the happiest time of year for a Christian is the Christmas holidays  but in my case, it is the worst time of the year.

 

Yes. From the sound of your voice it is clear that there are wounds which time does not heal, not even after 60 years. You yourself believe you probably survived the Bulge because of a medical evacuation.

 

I was evacuated on Christmas Eve, diagnosed with a bad case of bronchitis going into pneumonia. I will always remember that first collecting station where I was sent that night. The medical staff was beyond exhaustion, working in a barn-like building with no heat. There were only lanterns for light. The room was filled with the sound of moaning and groaning. The staff was forced to practice triage. All around me, people were dying. There were many bad burn cases from armoured outfits where the tanks had caught fire. Almost everyone had blood all over them. It was like a scene from hell.

 

How long were you away from your unit?

 

I was away one day short of a month. I did everything I could to get back as soon as possible this may sound strange to you now, but our units were our homes, and many of us who were wounded or ill could not wait to get back to our buddies.

 

What was it like when you got back?

 

I rejoined Company F on January 25^th, to discover we had suffered heavy losses in the early counter-offences that month. My close friend and assistant squad leader, Corporal Krueger, died of wounds; my platoon sergeant, Bonnie Wright, died of wounds; my platoon leader, Lieutenant Hamula, died of wounds; our bazooka man, Robert Beckman, was KIA. All in all, 15 men from F Company died in the Bulge. This isn't counting the wounded or medical evacuations due to frozen feet or illnesses like my own. The 2^nd Battalion lost its commander, Colonel Vandervoort, a truly great leader, who was seriously wounded in the face on January 7^th. Imagine it, our company was down to platoon size, little more than 40 men. I was promoted to platoon sergeant, replacing Bonnie Wright.

 

Youve just spoken about the roles of the 82^nd and the 101^st in the Bulge. Many people do not know the difference between the two divisions. Could you say a few words about that?

 

When people asked me to compare the two, I would always say, with a grin on my face, Yeah, the 101^st is a damn good unit--considering that it is a new, green outfit, it's pretty good. Their first combat was Normandy, but by then, in the 82^nd the 504 and the 505 had two combat jumps and two campaigns behind them. When the 505 jumped on D-Day, we were very lucky to have had this combat experience. These two missions helped us tremendously in Normandy and in following actions in the war.

 

What most people don't realize is that the combat history of the 82^nd is much longer than that of the 101^st, and that we supplied a lot of the 101^st cadre. I guess you could say that the 82^nd is the older brother of the band of brothers. The 82^nd was the first airborne division to be deployed, and it was committed to combat within one year from its date of activation to combat in Sicily. All during WWII, both divisions got publicity, but after VE-Day, of course the services had to be cut, and someone had decided that there could only be one airborne division on active duty. The first choice was the 101^st, but following that announcement, someone who had a hell of a lot of pull reversed the decision. At the end of the war, the 82^nd Airborne Division made the big Victory Parade in new York, with General Gavin at its head, and it has been kept on active duty ever since.

 

For me, the most important point is that the 82^nd was not broken in as harshly as the 101^st. We learned a lot from the combat we experienced in Sicily and Italy, and it didn't cost us the high casualties that the 101^st took in Normandy. The 504 didn't jump in Normandy, because they stayed in Italy longer than the 505, but they saw a whole lot of fighting in Anzio. I think that the 82^nd's experiences, especially in Italy, helped us better to adapt combat in relation to tactics and to adapt combat to the situation at hand. We didn't have to rely on the school solution as much as the 101^st did.

 

There has historically been a lot of rivalry between the two divisions.

 

Yes. After the war, there were some pretty bitter things said about each other, then someone got the point across that hey were beating up on ourselves here. We cant afford to do this. Were tarnishing the name and the history of the best units in the army. We've got to cut this out. This was happening not only between the 82^nd and the 101^st. The 17^th and the 11^th, the Special Services and the other elite units they were all beating each other up. I don't know who it may have been Don Lassen, who publishes the Static Line can take credit for this truce. All airborne units have a column in this newspaper, so it's a very good place to put your opinion.

 

Why do you think it is, then, that the 101^st is so much more present in the popular imagination today?

 

Along came Stephen Ambrose, who became famous for books that had nothing to do with the airborne, but who also wrote a book about the 101^st, The Band of Brothers. Being a best-selling author, he drew a lot of attention for the 101^st, and revived its reputation, since the book and the documentary were nominated for important prizes. Then the film Saving Private Ryan came out, where the 101^st was mentioned prominently. So I can see why the present generation does not have an understanding of the history of the 82^nd.

 

Even though the publishing history is a little lopsided at this time, in the future the 82^nd will regain some of its luster, and the historical record will be corrected. A big, definitive edition of the 82^nd oral history, All American All the Way, by Phil Nordyke, is coming out for VE-Day, and there are quite a few other books in the works, memoirs by troopers in the 507 and the 508, for example, and even a book on the 82^nd Airborne in Northern Ireland, Passing Through by John McCann, which is coming out for VE-Day too.

 

So what do you think about the Band of Brothers?

 

I think the Band of Brothers is a darn good portrayal of the 101^st. I know that we would have done things a little bit differently than they did, especially in Normandy. After Normandy, I think they wised up a lot, and set up SOPs [Standard Operation Procedures] that were a little different than what they learned in the States. So I give the 101^st credit for going to Normandy as their first mission, and then becoming a better division in Holland and the Bulge.

 

I have to plead some ignorance about the 101^st TO&E [Table of Organization and Equipment]. I was able to find one, though, and it appeared that the 101^st were much more strongly organized than we were. They had hot meals in the Battle of the Bulge, but we never got a hot meal on the line, except in one of our last actions up on the Roer River in March 1945, when we got our first meals brought up by a weasel, and that meant a lot. We had a battalion mess, and we never got fed on the line. The 101^st had three rifle squads and a weapons squad in each platoon, whereas we had two rifle squads and a mortar squad. We had a bazooka team and a machine gun team as part of platoon headquarters. I still think that they did a good job, but because of our experience in Sicily and Italy, I think we made a better combat team.

 

How much of that had to do with the 82^nd leadership, do you think?

 

We had outstanding leaders in the 82^nd, as they did in the 101^st. But I don't think anyone could do better than Gavin and Ekman and Alexander or Vandervoort. In fact, just a few years ago, the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth made a study to decide who may have been the best battalion combat commander in World War II, and Colonel Vandervoort, the
commander of my battalion, the 2^nd Battalion, 505, was nominated and voted as the best. So we were blessed with a lot of good leaders at all levels. So was the 101^st, but we were older and far wiser, and we learned our lesson much easier than the 101^st did. Of course, this is only my take on it.

 

I think that the 82^nd and the 101^st were both two of the best divisions in the ETO. Being in the 82^nd, my unprejudiced opinion is that the 82^nd was the best, no doubt about it. I further think the 504 and the 505 were undoubtedly the best parachute infantry regiments in the US Army. 

 

I want to insist here that it is important to honour and fully record the history and accomplishments of all the airborne units in World War II  just think of the airborne divisions in the Pacific--what the 503^rd did on Corregidor, and the actions of independent units like the 509 and the 517.  All of them performed the same type of combat that we did, but have hardly been given any credit for their actions. This is a crying shame. If I was a guy that jumped on Corregidor, I would be really teed off about the lack of recognition for that jump.

 

You write in your memoir about survivor guilt. Without necessarily going into the details, would you care to talk a little about that now?

 

When I was in the hospital for pneumonia, I was away from my unit for almost a month. One of the things that most affected me when I returned to the Bulge, along with the death of Krueger, was the loss of my good buddy, Red Francisco, a sergeant in the 1^st platoon. F Company had run into strong resistance in a forest near Arbrefontaine. A tank had been attached to the company, but it was sitting there, buttoned up, who knows why. Francisco jumped up under heavy fire and manned the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the outside of the turret. He did a lot of good with that machine gun, but he soon was knocked off the tank. He died of wounds on January 3^rd.

 

And yes, I feel survivor guilt. I did not know that was what it was until a long time after the war. Maybe the term did not exist. Maybe it is egotistical, but I always think,  if I had only been there maybe, maybe I could have prevented some of those deaths.

 

Technological advances, including much better communications, have radically altered the conditions of combat, compared to what you experienced as a front line soldier in World War II. Do you feel that your experience is still relevant to the experience of combat today?

 

I retired from the military in 1975, so I'm a dinosaur, you know?  I'm a dinosaur in relation to military operations and weapons systems and everything else, but I know for sure that some basic things hold true, whether it be in the Civil War, World War II, the Gulf War, or in Iraq today.

 

Most importantly, leadership qualities remain the same. This will always be a relevant. Regardless of the war, you must know your job. You have to be well qualified and have the best answer, regardless of the situation. That has to do with training. You have to know your men, their strong points and their weak points. For each one, you might have to push just a little differently to get the maximum. And your men have to sense that you are very much concerned for their welfare, as well as for accomplishing the mission. Of course, these two things go hand in hand. You must be expert in all the weapons you may use or may call on for support of your operation. What do you have on hand, and how is each of them best suited to every particular situation?

 

And above all, never try to bluff your way, in combat or any other situation. The American soldier is always smart enough to recognize someone whos trying to bluff him through. You've got to tell the truth. These are the qualities of any strong leader in any war at any time.

 

There's so much in your memoir history, drama, emotion, a gripping narrative of front line combat, and also much mature reflection on the events of World War II after your lifetime of military service. Is there any one message or value that you hope your book communicates?

 

I'd have to say there are two most important things.  I wanted to portray the experience of the front line combat soldier, how he lives with life and death issues on a minute by minute, hour by hour, daily, weekly existence, and the horrible things that he has to do to survive, the terrible conditions that he has to go through just to keep alive. This was especially hard in WWII, because there was no real rotation policy. We were on the front lines, and the only way we could get off the front line was by stretcher or a body bag. The feeling of hopelessness that could have enveloped all of us.

 

What kept us going?  I can understand the thinking of a soldier who gave himself a self-inflected wound. I can understand this feeling, although I don't agree with it. It was December '44 before we could even think of the possibility of going home before the war ended, and even then, the rotation policy was very reduced. Up until that time, the only thing we had to look forward to was a million dollar wound, a wound that got you off the front, and hopefully back to the United States, but did not cripple you for the rest of your life. It was either that or a body bag.

 

The second thing I would like the reader to understand is the tremendous sacrifices that front line infantry soldiers made in WWII so our nation could continue being the great nation it is today. Don't misunderstand me--there's a lot wrong with our nation, but it's still the best in the world. I think that the every-day citizens of the U.S. have got to realize that there's more to supporting their country than just paying taxes. I try to impress upon them the sacrifices that were made so that they could enjoy their present status.

 

Spencer Wurst, this has been a very generous interview. Thank you very much for your time and thoughts. I wish you the best of luck with your book.