The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice (9 page)

Private Bob Sales of Company B was typical of the young Virginians in the 116th Infantry who saved their wages and then headed for Piccadilly Circus at every opportunity, hell-bent on painting the town red, white, and blue. As soon as they arrived in London, they hopped on a “tube” to Soho, army-issue rubbers and crisp “quid” notes stuffing their wallets. In Gerard Street, Sales and his fellow Virginians then bartered with “cheeky tarts” sitting on stoops, mascara lines drawn on their calves to resemble stockings, calling out their price: “Half a pound, occasionally a pound if she was real good looking. It was just unreal when it came to that. . . . There was also a Red Cross hostel where we’d spend the night for nothing. A bunch of girls from Spain worked as maids there. They’d sing, carry on, and laugh as they made our beds. When you were screwing one of them, the others would sing so the supervisor wouldn’t catch on. It was the darndest thing you ever seen. Then you’d slip them two shillings.”

The nice girls were to be found in Covent Garden: “Churchill had Covent Garden opera house converted into the biggest dance hall you ever saw in your life. They had two bands there. One would play for a while then the stage would rotate and another would start up. If you were dancing with a girl you didn’t like, you waltzed over to the stag line and got another. Wrens, Wacs, always two hundred standing waiting to dance. They loved to dance, those English girls. Man, it was as close to heaven as you could get.”
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Bedford boy Earl Parker also visited London but did not enjoy it quite so much as Sales. He couldn’t stop thinking about his new family. Back in Bedford, Viola had given birth. He had been convinced the baby would be a boy, and had agreed on a name with Viola: Danny. A few weeks later, a letter reached Earl. Viola had named the girl Danny. Earl pulled out a photograph to show his buddies. She was every bit as beautiful as her mother.

I
N J
ULY
1943, THE 29TH Division received a new commander. General Charles H. Gerhardt, forty-eight, replaced Major General Leonard Gerow, who had been promoted to command V Corps. It was said that Gerhardt was another polo-playing West Point prima donna hell-bent on knocking even more sense into the apparently slovenly National Guard.
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Gerhardt immediately confirmed the rumors by appearing before the men dressed like a northern dandy in shiny cavalry boots and wearing “a polished leather holster and belts, and decorative neckerchief.”
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But the division’s new chief martinet surprised everyone and ordered an end to the relentless training schedule and gave all the men seventy-two hours off. Suddenly, Gerhardt was affectionately being called “Uncle Charlie” throughout the division.

Gerhardt also devised a new battle cry—“29, Let’s Go!”—and insisted it be used in every drill and even had it emblazoned on signposts. And he ordered as much weapons practice as possible: The men enjoyed firing guns; it made them feel like true soldiers. Typically, he led by example, terrifying locals by pulling out his Colt .45 and blazing away at rabbits or any other convenient target from his spotless jeep, the Vixen Tor, as his driver roared along narrow country lanes. Before long, many 29ers had become particularly adept at letting loose salvos at signs and gateposts as British cars approached. But Gerhardt didn’t stop at impromptu fusillades. He was especially fond of dropping hand grenades from Piper Cub spotting planes as he watched his men practice maneuvers on the moors.

The honeymoon lasted a few weeks. Then Gerhardt began to crack down on officers and noncoms alike. Whether a colonel or a buck private, every man under Gerhardt was ordered to look immaculate at all times and keep helmets strapped under the chin. Equipment and vehicles were to be polished and as spotless as the men’s uniforms. Stubble was forbidden, a cold-water shave mandatory every morning. And officers were to keep their distance when conferring with “Uncle Charlie.” If they didn’t, he would quickly bark: “That’s far enough!”

Although soon detested by many officers, Gerhardt didn’t appear to care. He had waited twenty years, rising through the ranks to command an infantry division. Besides, there was good reason for driving his officers and men harder than his predecessor. Gerhardt had been briefed on plans for a massive Allied invasion of France, codenamed “Overlord.” If they proved up to the challenge, the 29ers could be selected for the most audacious and risky amphibious operation in U.S. military history. Gerhardt’s time had come.

Overlord had been the goal of the U.S. Army and President Roosevelt since the beginning of the war. If successful, it would, as Churchill said, mark the “beginning of the end” of World War II in Europe. In January 1943, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and the Allies’ Combined Chiefs of Staff had met at Casablanca and decided to set up an Anglo-American headquarters in London that would investigate possible locations for the invasion. The planning team, soon known as COSSAC, would be responsible for the details of Overlord. The invasion the team planned was set to take place as early as possible in 1944.

Overlord would entail landing three divisions of thirty thousand men on beaches and dropping two airborne divisions nearby. The Allies had succeeded in two previous amphibious invasions—in Sicily and North Africa—but had yet to attack a fortified coastline defended by seasoned troops. Overlord would be the greatest military gamble of the war. Its failure could deal a catastrophic blow to Allied unity, doom the Jewish race in Europe to probable extinction, and leave Europe under Nazi control. Success would depend on absolute surprise, superlative teamwork, the weather, secrecy, a vast armada’s effective deployment, air superiority, and then a full frontal assault by tens of thousands of young men who had never experienced combat.

In early September 1943, Lieutenant Ray Nance returned from a special intelligence training program in Derbyshire. Captain Fellers told him that the 116th Infantry could possibly be chosen to spearhead a 29th Division assault on Europe. There were no specifics about where or when. That was far too sensitive information. But from now on they were to train to land on a heavily defended beach and seize it. “We knew we had a very important job to do,” recalled Nance. “That’s when the real work began.”

COSSAC had, in fact, decided in August at a conference in Quebec on the section of French coastline where the invasion would take place. Instead of the obvious stretch of beaches along the Pas de Calais, closest to Britain, COSSAC opted for those of Normandy, southwest of the port of Le Havre, between the mouths of the Orne and Vire rivers.

This stretch of the Atlantic Wall, as Hitler had called beach defenses from southern France all the way to Holland, was not as well defended as the Pas de Calais. If bridges across the Seine could be destroyed, and the Wehrmacht’s response to the invasion thereby impeded, the Allies would have a greater chance of landing enough men and armament to enable an attack directly into the heart of Nazi Europe.

The Bedford boys were soon climbing cargo nets hung from thirty-foot beams, scaling cliffs, digging shapes in the peat moors to resemble landing craft, and storming banks of heather that doubled as imaginary shores. Every man, from Gerhardt down to the lowliest private, had to take swimming lessons. And there was no warm indoor pool to hand. Whatever the weather, the men had to swim in nearby ponds and across rivers.

That autumn, the increasingly chilly swimming lessons were forgotten for a few days as the entire division focused on baseball. Three men from Bedford played for the “116 Yankees” in the Allied Armed Forces Inter-Army championship finals in London in late September: Elmere Wright, Frank Draper, and Robert “Tony” Marsico.

The son of Bedford’s deputy sheriff, Wright had pitched for the Bedford High School team and then for a St. Louis Browns farm team in Texas. The summer before Pearl Harbor, several scouts from the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs had watched Wright and been impressed. Of all the Bedford men, his future seemed most promising. “Before the war, wine, women and song had got to him,” recalled Roy Stevens. “But in England he settled down and did real good. He was very tricky with the ball. I tried to hit [his pitched ball] one time, and man, the catcher got the ball before I even started to swing. Everyone knew he’d be in the majors after the war.”
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Another outstanding player in the 116 Yankees from Bedford was twenty-three-year-old Sergeant Frank Draper Jr., who had played for his tough neighborhood’s “Mud Alley” baseball team and then for the Hampton Looms factory team. He had also been a star in high school basketball, football, and track.

Frank’s two younger brothers, Gamiel and David, had also played for Hampton Looms. “We were one, two, three in the batting order,” recalled David. “My mother and father hadn’t wanted us to play because they didn’t want us to get hurt. But we did anyway. I was nicknamed ‘Hammerhead’ because of playing football. We called Frank ‘Piggy’ because when we were real young he would jump on the back of pigs and ride them like they were a horse. He was happy-go-lucky, sang in the choir, never drank, or smoked when he was back home.”

By 1943, Frank had matured into a superbly consistent outfielder and powerful hitter. “He could do everything,” insisted David. “He could hit, run, field. He had a good arm. He could have made it in the big leagues.”
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Draper was as capable a soldier as he was an athlete: resourceful, calm and decisive under pressure, and highly organized. Alone among the Bedford boys, he kept a diary—a black notebook in which he would mostly jot a few quick reminders of his duties the next day.

Thirty-four-year-old Staff Sergeant Tony Marsico was the oldest Bedford boy by five years and a gifted catcher. One of ten children, Marsico had grown up in Roanoke, Bob Slaughter’s hometown, where he had worked for a time at the Blue Hills golf course. His father, John, had come to Virginia from Italy in the 1890s.
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That fall, the 116 Yankees faced twenty teams drawn from all the services in the European Theatre of Operations, and played four games over four days at the Eighth Air Force Headquarters, Bushy Park, in London. The knock-out competition began in late September. Each team was allowed to field fifteen enlisted men and one officer. “They let those guys play ball because they wanted to keep them busy,” explained Verona Lipford, Frank Draper’s sister. “It was to get their minds off what was going to happen.”
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The services newspaper
Stars and Stripes
contained the following report on the final between the 116 Yankees and the Fighter Command Thunderbolts:

Led by their peppery captain, Corporal Douglas Gillette, of Springfield, Mass., who came from behind the plate in the fourth to hurl his way into the hearts of the spectators, the field force Yankees copped the ETO World Series by defeating the Fighter Command Thunderbolts, 6–3, in the final played here this afternoon. The Thunderbolts’ stickmen got to Elmer Wright, of Bedford, Va., for a single in the second and third innings, but without success. . . . The winners took the lead in the sixth when two men were safe on errors and scored when a batted ball got past the second baseman and went into right field. They rallied again in the seventh, Sergeant Frank Draper, of Bedford, Va., getting his second triple of the game, but was out at the plate trying to score when Private First Class Joe Gubernot, of Shamokin, Pa., hit to second. Gubernot came home on an error at first for the final tally of the game. Wright allowed four hits and struck out five, while Gillette, who worked on the batters all the way, was touched for three blows and fanned five.
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Within eight months, three of the winning team’s players would be dead, and another 116 Yankees player, “Chubby” Proffit, would be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry.

Soon after the final game, Wright wrote to the St. Louis Browns. The club’s vice president, William O. DeWitt, replied: “We are mighty glad to know your curve ball and your control are better. I think you will be ready for some high class baseball when you get back.”
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Back in America, on October 11 the New York Yankees had defeated the St. Louis Cardinals four games to one in a classic World Series final. It was sweet revenge for the Yankees, who had been humiliated by the Cardinals in 1942 and had lost three of their best players in the 1943 season— Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and Red Ruffing—to military service.

As winter returned, the Bedford boys’ impatience to “get the job done and get home”
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grew with every bitter frost and gale. “If you want to know any thing about England,” wrote a thoroughly dejected Grant Yopp to his sister, Anna Mae, “you will have to wait until the war is over and come and see for yourself. This is one part of my life I am aiming to forget.”
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Yopp and his buddies had now been in England for fourteen months without home leave. They were the best-trained men in the U.S. Army, but also among the most resentful. They had had enough of waiting and many felt that the 29th Division had become guinea pigs, endlessly being tested and ordered to try out new techniques in training and weapon use and to comply with every new addition to the army’s regulation book. “Everybody was always complaining, ‘Get it over with. We’ve been here long enough!’” recalled Bedford boy Allen Huddleston, “but a few didn’t mind. I remember Earl Parker saying he’d stay another five years if he didn’t have to hit a beach.”
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When an American evangelist erected a sign in Ivybridge asking “where will you spend eternity?” someone scrawled “in England” across it.
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If the exact location of the Bedford boys’ afterlife was in question, one thing was not: If the 116th Infantry didn’t get out of Britain and into action soon, its hard-won unity and resilience might crumble. After three years in the regular army, there was one thing every man agreed with: Gerhardt’s intuitive war cry—“29, Let’s Go!”

There was, however, one morale booster—Gerhardt’s assistant, forty-eight- year-old Brigadier General Norman “Dutch” Cota. Tall and rangy, quiet and unassuming in private, from dawn to dusk Cota could be found up to his knees in mud, clutching an old walking stick as if it were a baton, and chomping on an unlit cigar. His resonant voice could be heard even amid heavy explosions as he yelled encouragement and charged across banks of heather fifty yards from artillery units he had instructed to open fire to simulate the sound of war. A specialist in infantry tactics and particularly amphibious assault, Cota would be the division’s highest-ranking officer in actual front-line combat. “He was a plain, sound man,” recalled Lieutenant Ray Nance. “You believed in him.”
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Captain Fellers would often watch Cota and the far shorter Gerhardt confer: “Uncle Charlie,” all swagger, barking orders at “Dutch,” who stood at the appropriate distance with his chin strap hanging loose. Cota was the only man in the 29th Division allowed to do so.
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Yet again, another Christmas away from home approached. On December 3, a friend of Captain Fellers sent news from the homefront: “Things are moving along fairly well, we have our difficulties such as strikes and complaints yet considering everything, these are at a minimum. Nearly all staple items are now rationed, but they are rationed so generously that if a person uses any judgment at all there is no reason for complaining. There is plenty to buy. The streets are full of Christmas shoppers.”
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