First In The 101^ST.

Author: John Fitzgerald.

Col. Robert G. Cole’s Runner.

On June 6^th, during the height of World War II, the largest invasion force ever conceived by man was launched against the shores of Normandy, France. A critical part of the plan was the dropping of sufficient airborne forces behind the beaches to insure the success of the landings. Lt. Colonel Robert G. Cole, commanding the 3^rd Battalion of the 502^nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101^st Airborne Division, received our nations highest award, The Medal of Honor for his actions during this period.

“Lt. Colonel Robert G. Cole, United States Army, for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty on June 11^th, 1944, in France. Lt. Colonel Cole led his Battalion in attack against a strongly defended and heavily fortified enemy position.” This data is extracted from the official records of the United States Government. “With utter disregard for his own safety and completely ignoring the enemy fire, he rose to his feet in front of his Battalion and with drawn pistol shouted for his men to follow him in the assault. His heroic and valiant action resulted in the complete establishment of our bridgehead across the Douve River, enabling a linkup of American Forces moving inland from Omaha and Utah Beaches.” The data concludes. “The cool fearlessness, personal bravery and outstanding leadership displayed by Lt. Colonel Cole reflects great credit upon himself and are worthy of the highest praise in the military service.

It is my belief that the data of history should not lose its “heartbeat” in becoming information. If too much time passes, we will be left with only the record and lose the essence. This is the story of the first paratrooper in the 101^st Airborne Division to be awarded The Medal Of Honor. It is my hope that in telling it, the heartbeat will remain with the history to become part of and add to the Divisions already rich heritage.

In the winter of 1942, I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina with the 502^nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division. I had just returned from three days A.W.O.L. and found myself in deep trouble. The irresistible charms of my new girl friend had proven too much for me. I made the sad mistake of going home for Christmas without the benefit of a pass. Discipline in the airborne units was ironclad at that time. With much browbeating and great amounts of degradation, I was banished from my assignment with the machine gun platoon. On this occasion the only thing missing were the drums. The last thing the lieutenant said as he stood in front of the formation was “Fitzgerald, I doubt if anyone could make a soldier out of you.” This is how I became the only person available when the battalion commander requested a trooper be sent to headquarters to act as his runner for a few days. Little did I realize then that the few days would turn into a few years. Then, Major Robert G. Cole our new battalion commander had graduated from West Point (Class of 1939). He was about six feet tall with rugged features, a ramrod stance and was gifted with a strong commanding voice. I was a high school dropout from New York City and had just passed the physical for airborne training by the skin of my teeth. It would be generous to say we had little in common.

Upon reporting to him the first day, he greeted me with a salutation that would become his hallmark. “Pull in that beer rotted gut dumbjohn, where the hell do you think you are in some ginmill?” I had a twenty-eight inch waist at the time and could not escape the feeling that life would be going down hill from that moment on.

In the early days of the airborne unit, the instructors had little experience and no precedents to guide them. The standing order for all training was, “Run them until they drop, the ones remaining will become good paratroopers.” Twenty and twenty-five mile marches were common. Daily exercise was usually preceded by a five-mile run. The easiest part of airborne training had to be the parachute jumps. It was the only time we ever went anywhere other than by walking or running.

The 101^st Airborne Division by any standard gave an excellent accounting of itself during World War II. A private best summed up their spirit during their darkest hour at Bastogne, Belgium. The 101^st was completely surrounded by elements of seven German divisions. Someone asked a private what he thought of the situations. He replied, “The poor bastards, they have us surrounded.” The roots of the Screaming Eagle’s performance can be traced back to the hills of Tennessee, the bogs of England and the sandy, pine studded training area at Fort Bragg. With each grueling march, with each practice maneuver, officers and enlisted men came to know each other a little better, to trust each other a little more. The hardships, the physical agony, sharing the constant risk involved in airborne training, all combined to form the ancestors of a spirit that was being born.

General William C. Lee, father of the American airborne forces, had given our commanders a single edict. “You can lick any ten men, you are the best. Keep saying it until you truly believe it.” The difficult part was to maintain this spirit in training and somehow keep it out of the local beer halls. Probably the worst job in the army at that time was being a M.P. stationed in Fayettville, North Carolina, a small town located a short distance from Fort Bragg. There were nightly battles between 101^stAirborne, tankers from General George Patton’s Second Armored Division, stationed in the area and the 82^nd Airborne. The local stockades were worked to capacity to insure cooling off periods.

Until today I firmly believe all of our First Sergeants were chosen on the basis of their ability to lick any man in the company. The officers had the more difficult task of leading by example. In my opinion, no one was better at this than Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole. To become an outstanding officer in the 502^nd was not an easy task. Without knowing it at the time, we were to produce a host of future generals, including J.H. Michaelis, Patrick Cassidy and Steve Chappuis to name a few.

Lt. Col. Cole had the rare combination of courage, integrity, a sense of humor and lastly a deep understanding and concern for the men under his command. His concern for his men was probably his strongest attribute. He could push you to just short of the breaking point, and then get a little bit more. When there was nothing left, his sense of humor would take over. During the charge at Carentan, where he received his C.M.H., there had been a foul-up when the attack began. The word to advance had not been passed throughout the companies. He found himself in the middle of an open field with only a few men following. While firing his forty-five-caliber pistol to urge them on, he yelled, “I don’t know who the hell I’m shooting at but I have to do something.” Despite their desperate situation the few men around him broke into laughter.

My primary job was to act as his runner while we were on problems and maneuvers. Some incredible things happened while carrying out this simple assignment. I have rich memories of the time we shared together. At the beginning I was very lucky. We would make a night jump and land in the middle of nowhere. The colonel would send me to locate one of the companies who had not checked into our assembly area. I would pick a direction and run off in the darkness. My plan was to complete a circle. By sheer chance, I would usually make contact about half way around the circle and return to the company.

Some of most important things I’ve learned from him were the intangibles that are so necessary in the making of a good soldier. Discipline, loyalty, fortitude and concern for others. He could have a very short fuse when it came to incompetence, especially when it concerned the officers. One of the less enviable duties I had was acting as his “interpreter”. During the 1943 Tennessee maneuvers we were assigned to take a hill as our objective. The colonel felt one of the companies was not contributing enough to the attack. He yelled to me, “Go tell Captain so and so to stick that mathematical mind of his up his ass and get his machine guns forward.”  I would find the captain and relay the colonel’s message. “Sir the colonel suggests that you move your guns forward to a more favorable position. Perhaps it would be best to do it on the double.”

Although he could read a compass better than anyone I knew, we would still become lost on occasion. He would turn to me with a half grin and say, “Fitzgerald, you are the only soldier I know who could become lost between his barracks and the P.X.”

As considerate as he was about the men under his command, he had no peer in the whole regiment when it came to chewing you out if you had it coming. He always expected a little bit more from people who worked directly with him. During a particular inspection in ranks, I knew he would be the inspecting officer. I spent days preparing. My boots looked like mirrors. All my clothes were perfectly pressed and my rifle was spotless. I did not want him to find anything wrong. When the colonel came to my front, I snapped the rifle bolt open and let go of the piece as fast as possible. It was a perfect handover. He checked the rifle inside and out, looked me over very carefully from top to bottom and returned the rifle. I had it made. Just as he moved to the next man, he said something complimentary to me. I turned my eyes toward him. This was his last shot and I fell for it. Then came the roar like thunder. “Dumbjohn, haven’t you learned yet to keep your eyes to the front at all times while you are at attention.”

One rainy day near Carentan, France, we were checking an area we would soon be moving into. The patches of hedgerows made all the terrain look similar. After scouting the position we ended up in front of our own lines. Realizing our mistake we headed back. As we neared an outpost we came to a sentry and walked up to him. The colonel asked the sentry, “Why didn’t you challenge us?” The private replied, “I knew it was you sir.” Colonel Cole exploded. He stood in the rain for a full five minutes and in no uncertain terms expounded on the importance of challenging everyone out to our front. When he had finished and began to leave, the colonel removed his raincoat and gave it to the private. He instructed him to return it when he came off duty. Somehow he always maintained his ability to swear and to care at the same time.

One of the things I particularly remember about him was that he would back you up whenever possible. One night in England we were engaged in some final maneuvers just prior to D-Day. It was the first time we would be working with tanks. I was to meet the tanks at a road intersection and guide them to an area the colonel had indicated on a map. Without too much trouble I met the tank commander. After finding suitable terrain that the tanks could move on, we started out together into the pitch-black night. With a few educated guesses I managed to find the spot the colonel had shown me on the map. During the time we were together, the tank commander who was a lieutenant had been addressing me as “Sir”. I can only guess that he thought the colonel had sent an officer out to meet him. As time wore on it became too awkward to tell him differently. When dawn started to break, I decided it was a good time to get the hell out of there before he spotted my P.F.C. stripe.  I excused myself and left. Later on during the day, the tank commander showed up at our Command Post. He was reviewing the problem with Colonel Cole.  During their conversation, he mentioned the good job the “Captain” had done in guiding him into his area the night before. Colonel Cole was just about the say “What captain?” when he saw me frantically jabbing my finger at my chest.  He picked it up right away and said to the lieutenant, “Oh him, he’s one of my best men.”

On our jump into Normandy on D-Day I had the number three spot in our plane load. The colonel was first, followed by the battalion surgeon, then myself. Though we jumped together, we became separated on the ground. I spent the next eighteen days with the 82^nd Airborne Division and was carried as “missing in action” by the 101^st. During this period the colonel had received a false report that someone had seen my body. They had reported me dead. I was told later that he was visibly shaken for quite awhile after receiving the news. Because of the confusion resulting from the night drop, men from the 82^nd Airborne were fighting with the 101^st and a number of 101st men were with the 82^nd. This was cleared up after several weeks when all troops were ordered to return to their original outfits. When I finally reached our company and reported to Colonel Cole, he said “Fitzgerald, if I wasn’t so damn glad to see you, I’d shoot you.” In preparation for the jump, one of my responsibilities was to see that all of his equipment was in order. He had asked me to strap some tape around his forty-five pistol holster so that he would not lose the gun while jumping. Evidently I became carried away with my task. Shortly after he landed he had the drop on a couple of Germans. He reached for his forty-five. It took him several minutes to unwind the tape while the Germans made their escape.

Throughout the hundreds of miles we marched together, there would be times when we would be close to exhaustion. During the periods allowed for rest, he would walk up and down the column. He would persuade someone here, joke with another, encourage some and correct others. If it were a twenty mile march, we would cover thirty by the time it ended.

He made it a practice to never take food in the field until everyone was fed, nor would he sleep until he felt all were secure. The day before he was killed in Holland, he shared a can of grapefruit with Robert Doran, his radio operator and myself. He had carried it all the way from England. This and other acts of kindness, were common to his character.

On September 17, 1944, the 101^st Airborne Division made its second combat jump behind enemy lines in Holland. On the first day, it looked like a picnic. Dutch civilians on bicycles and on foot were all around the landing zone.  Many gave us gifts of flowers, apples and other fruits. Later in the evening, we ate a home cooked meal prepared for the Headquarters group by one of the Dutch families. That night we headed for a small town called Best. We were marching in column formation when we came under fire from a group of Germans. A flare went off and everyone hit the ground. Fortunately for us, the Germans did not realize they had a whole battalion spread out on an exposed dike and the firing soon stopped. It was the first indication of things to come.

We arrived in a wooded area near Best at dawn and established our Command Post. Company H of the 3^rd Battalion had as one of its missions the capture of a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal. Before this battle was over, it would take almost the entire division plus the help of some English armored units to capture a bridge that had already been destroyed by the enemy.

September 18, 1944 was one of the darkest days for the 3^rd Battalion of the 502^nd Parachute Infantry Regiment. The battalion had unknowingly come across a very large group of the enemy who were trying to make their escape back to Germany by train. They were part of the armies retreating across Belgium and France. At the town of Best, they were ordered to stop and fight when their commanders became aware of the Allied Airborne landings. The Germans had heavy concentrations of artillery and overwhelming small-arms firepower. The enemy was also using 20mm. anti aircraft cannons to defoliate the section of the woods we were occupying. Fire was so intense that the trees began to burn. Casualties were mounting all around us. Colonel Cole decided that the only option left to him was to call for air support. When our P-47 fighters arrived, all hell broke lose as they started to strafe the area. He was becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of his men. He ordered and supervised the setting off of orange smoke bombs to our front. (Orange smoke indicated to the pilots that friendly troops were near their target area.) As the planes continued their havoc, his concern increased. He decided to go into an open field to lay out a group of orange panels as an additional precaution. Just before he started toward the filed, he sent me to locate a jeep that was a short distance away. It was loaded with ammunition. We had been waiting for it’s arrival, as our supply of ammo was almost out. I was only gone a few minutes. When I returned, I saw a group of men standing near the edge of the field. As I came closer, I saw the colonel’s body on the ground. Kneeling down beside him, I looked up at the Battalion Surgeon and asked, “Why don’t you do something for him?” He replied, “I’m sorry John but there is nothing I can do for him now.” He had been shot by a sniper hidden in a house about a hundred yards from the field. We knew we had lost so much more than a Battalion Commander that day. I remember carrying the message to Major Stopka, second in command, telling him that he was in charge of the battalion. That is almost all I remember of the next several days.

Lt. Col. Cole never knew he was awarded the nation’s highest honor, but even that could not surpass the honor his men gave him. We were to go on to Bastogne and on into history but from that day forward there was an unspoken void throughout the battalion that would never be filled.

As I grow older, I sometimes think back to my days with the 101^st and I remember the machine gun platoon and the lieutenant who said, “Fitzgerald, I doubt if anyone could make a soldier out of you.” Today I know, there was one man who could.