The Road to Victory - Essay Example

The Road to Victory Chic had a funny but serious story during his brief stay in England to rest, a little over a month after D-Day. One day, as he and his best friend Tucker were walking in downtown London, they saw girls standing at street corners who were tempting them to do something more than just helping them cross the street. Tucker, who had gotten married in Georgia just before they left the States, had told him then, "Chic, I am going to be a good honest married man just like you" But this time, as two girls approached them, Tucker could not resist. "Chic, let's go pick up a girl" Chic was caught by surprise and just said, "It's up to you" So Tucker grabbed this big tall girl with a dark complexion while the shorter blonde-haired girl grabbed Chic by the arm and they started walking. Unbelievably, what was in Chic's mind at the time was economics. "Gee, the price had gone upwe used to pay only 20 bucksmust be all those Army officers and staff who paid a higher price" As these thoughts went around Chic's head, the girl's voice hit him in the gut: "You sure you got the moneyyou got any money" As his stomach turned, he thought of a way to stay clean and get out of this situation. "Just a minute, I'll go get a cab!" Asking the girl to wait, Chic rounded the corner and just kept on walking all the way to the Red Cross office where he knew Tucker would go to get what they called "prophylactic things" they had to use to avoid getting sick with VD. Sure enough, a few minutes after Chic sat at the Red Cross lounge, Tucker came running upstairs. Chic really razzed him, "I pulled one on you, Tucker. I stayed clean!" Their stay in England was not all rest as they continued training and practicing their jumps. Twice, they were about to fly out but, twice, their mission was cancelled. The reason, Chic found out, was General Patton whose tanks were overrunning German positions so fast that there was no need for the paratroopers to be dropped behind enemy lines. Chic and the troops were not complaining because they enjoyed eating oranges and turkey and good food, "being fattened for the kill" so they said. And then Patton hit a dead end as the Germans found a way to stop his tanks close to the border of Belgium and Holland. Paratroopers were needed to drop behind the enemy lines and open a 75-mile highway for Patton's tanks to pass through (The War). Chic still remembers the day they flew out of England. It was a bright and cloudy Sunday, September 17, 1994, when their plane took off as part of what they called the First Allied Airborne Army. Their mission was to land inside enemy territory, attacking the Germans from behind. Aside from the 506th, the 502nd where George was, and the 501st, there were also brigades of British and Polish paratroopers. There were three different landing points, so to decide who gets which, the commanders just flipped coins after a long argument. Chic and the 506th got Eindhoven in Holland, which was closest to the Germans and which they thought was the worst place to be while the British got the farthest point up north in the upper part of Holland (Ambrose). There was a German police dog with Chic and the troops in the plane. The dog was their mascot and had its own parachute, and all throughout the flight, the dog kept on going towards the plane's door until it heard the flack from German anti-aircraft guns exploding around the plane. The dog backed up because the sound of exploding flack is like a dog's bark, "Woof!" Just before he jumped, Chic looked out of the plane and could clearly see everything below: the huge bomb craters along the forest floor, rows of P-38 Lighting fighter planes flying all over to give them air cover during the jump, and even some Germans coming out of the church with their girlfriends. When the Germans saw the planes, they started firing their rifles. That was the time Chic was told to jump, so he threw the dog whose chute popped open automatically ahead of him. Chic wanted to take a picture of the dog landing on the ground, but the dog beat him to it, landing first and safely at that. As soon as he hit the ground, Chic started taking pictures since it was part of his job. He had a close call with a glider that landed with a jeep inside, missing Chic by a few inches because he was able to jump into a ditch. The jeep crashed through the glider's canopy and pushed the co-pilot halfway through the Plexiglas. Chic took photos of the accident and sent these to the Division HQ, which is why when the co-pilot saw him some months later in England and asked for those photos, Chic couldn't give any to him. Their first objective was to cross a bridge that the Germans had already blown up. They had to put some planks across the bridge as German soldiers hidden behind a haystack were firing at them. To get their job done, some American soldiers used red hot tracer bullets, shot at the haystack, and set it on fire. That got rid of the Germans and they were able to get across and march into town. The town was huge, and people were lined up on each side of the road like watching a parade and giving the soldiers some beer. Chic enjoyed the beer, more so because they took the beautiful town without causing any damage. There were German tanks positioned at one end of the town and when darkness fell, German planes flew over and started bombing the place. Chic had to spend the night under a cement pipe on the road, and when he opened his eyes the next morning he almost cried because the town was totally flattened. He never imagined the bombs had caused so much damage. The next day, they marched north to Nijmegen, Holland where a major battle was being fought over a big bridge. The Germans threw everything at the bridge but engineers were able to fix it quickly and Chic and the troops were able to cross. They had to blow up a railroad bridge to prevent the Germans from using it for their retreat or to get reinforcements. They stayed at Millingen, a small island where the Rhine River forked, one way to Nijmegen and the other to Arnhem, where the British troops were having a tough time holding their bridge from German troops that had them surrounded. Chic met some 40 to 50 British soldiers who were able to escape, hungry after not having eaten in 3-4 days. The best Chic and the others could do was to stay there, defend the place, and give help where it was needed. As the soldiers were running short of food, Chic was given permission to shoot a cow to feed the troops. As Chic was a meat cutter, he did not know how to choose a good cow, one that was not too old and that would be a fairly decent meal, so he had to ask a soldier, a farmer from Idaho, to do the choosing. They found one grazing in an apple orchard and, despite being fired at by the enemy Chic used his gun to kill the cow, which turned out to be pregnant. Chic razzed the farmer before he expertly cut the cow into steaks. When the officers heard about it, they asked for 30-40 cuts, but Chic gave them the toughest portions and reserved the best ones for his buddies. The British ate a lot of beef, ox tail stuff, but soon the American soldiers got tired of it. Another day, Chic found good coffee while rummaging in one of the houses, and he even found a jar with lots of Dutch coins. One day, an officer asked Chic to go Nijmegen to do some interpreting. When he got back, the troops had moved into a barn. He had just asked Charles Acker about his bag when Chic turned around and fell through a trap door; his left arm got stuck and snapped out of its socket. Chic hung there until he was rescued and rushed to the hospital where they put him to sleep so they could put his arm back. His arm socket was fractured so they had to operate on him and put his arm on a sling. With his injury, Chic was sent to England to recover. This is how, by a lucky accident, Chic missed the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne in November-December 1944 where the 101st Airborne suffered heavy casualties. Chic stayed in London until after the holidays, meeting up with one of his officers who broke his pelvis after his jeep turned over. The officer was going back to the States and asked Chic if he wanted to send something over. Chic sent his army issue Global watch for his mother and his 35 mm camera to his wife. Chic could have stayed in England. He even learned to drive the ambulance, but he wanted to get back to his friends in the regiment, so in early 1945, he flew back to France. It was snowing and cold and Chic and the others did nothing but watch movies those first two weeks. He finally reported back to his outfit. As soon as Chic reached the camp, the Colonel, with his hands on his hips, asked him, "Well, Chicoine, have you got the camera" "No Sir," he answered, "You know the Air Force. When I got off the plane I lost my bag and everything I owned in it." "Good!" The Colonel had just won 25 bucks from a bet he had with another officer that Chic would return without his camera. In the spring, around February 1495, Chic was in Limoges () in central France, a town beside the Vienne River when he had another close call with the Germans. They were on one side of the river, swollen deep with the spring run off, while the Germans were in a house across the river. An officer assigned Chic and 6 or 7 other men to cross the river and capture the Germans and get information. Shortly before midnight, they took off as the other American soldiers provided covering fire. Using a rubber boat, they crossed the river but there were too many of them in the boat that it flipped halfway across the river and dunked everyone into the water, sending them to the other side. This happened twice until they got a rope across and finished the job, capturing some Germans whom they interrogated, which made Chic feel sick because some of the soldiers who were asking questions insulted the prisoners by sticking stamps with Hitler's face on their foreheads. Chic never felt good about treating prisoners this way. Soon, Chic and the troops entered Germany and he was involved in a similar operation along the Rhine close to Dsseldorf. He had to help bring a team across the river so they could lay some mines but the Germans came and fired at them. Several were wounded and Chic barely escaped. He was sent back the following night and finished the job, accompanied by a Major who was so nervous he could barely stand up because it was his first time to see action behind enemy lines. They did this several times, and one night when it was Chic's night off, the team was "ambushed." Among those who died were the Major, who got so excited after that first mission that he volunteered for every mission afterwards, and Robert Watts from Sebring, NH with whom Chic had just been playing cards a few hours earlier. Unfortunately, they were "ambushed" by another American patrol who was not informed that another patrol was going out on the river by boat. Tucker was hit in the hand and Chic was able to talk to him shortly before he was shipped to the hospital. That was the last time the two friends saw each other. The Colonel chewed Chic out for allowing the Major to the patrol. Watts was found two months later after his body drifted along the Rhine River into Holland. Chic's last mission was the capture of Berchtesgaden, the German Army's HQ up in the Bavarian Alps. They had to fight German soldiers and officers who were making their last stand. Most of the action, however, was escorting hundreds of German soldiers who were just surrendering, sick and tired of the war, Chic thought, and happy that they were being captured by the Americans instead of by Russians. They reached Berchtesgaden and in early May 1945, shortly before his birthday, the war in Europe ended. Chic saw the surrender of General Kesselring and was present at the capture of Field Marshal Gring, the head of the German Air Force. Chic thought Gring looked like a playboy type, a husky fat slob. After the Germans surrendered, Chic got some of Hitler's writing paper and wrote a letter to his wife and another letter to his friend in Rutland. One night, Chic and Acker remembered that they vowed to get drunk when the war ended so they gulped down champagne like it was beer. All Chic could remember was seeing some greasy-haired German girl prisoners singing and dancing with the American troops. The sight made Chic's sick in the stomach so he went to bed. The terrible hangover the day made him hate champagne. They heard news they would be sent to Japan, but then the Japanese surrendered. The war was over. While waiting in Austria to be shipped back home, they ate pancakes 42 days in a row, which gave Chic such a vitamin deficiency that he had rashes on his neck that made him suffer more than bullets did. Works Cited Ambrose, Stephen E. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Chicoine, Jules M. Interview with the Author. November 3, 2007. "The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment: Unit History." The 101st Airborne. November 13, 2007 The War. Vol. 4: Pride of Our Nation. Dir. Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Perf. Keith David & Tom Hanks. Florentine Films & WETA Washington D.C., 2007. Read More