A BOARDWALK BAND OF BROTHERS

While strolling down a N.J. boardwalk we noticed an elderly couple heading our way. My wife and I had been arguing about the huge beach houses along the boardwalk and whether they were rentals or single-family homes. One behemoth in particular had so many private balconies connected to individual rooms that I thought that surely they would be rented out separately in the summer.
I stopped the couple to ask them if they might know. As it turned out, I was wrong again. The son of a friend of the couple’s owned the biggest house. I said what a waste. The rich always depress me. They have so much serving so few.
I started talking to Rich, the husband, and my wife talked to his wife. The conversations split along gender lines. The women talked about their children and grandchildren, while we talked about war, specifically WWII. Rich had been with the 101st Airborne Division that had landed during the Normandy invasion of Nazi occupied Europe.
It was like having a face to face talk with the Band of Brothers, the past HBO WWII miniseries about Easy Company in the 101st Airborne that landed at Normandy, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, liberated a concentration camp and captured Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat.
There standing beside me was a silver-haired 79-year-old small man who, when he was 19, fought in the seminal war of the 20th century and helped win the war so that we baby boomers could grow up free in the 1950s and enjoy the American way of life.
It may be ancient history now, but at the time it could easily have gone either way.
Rich’s children had taken him to the WWII movie Saving Private Ryan. He had sat through it fine, but upon leaving the theater he broke down crying. Its realism had brought back so many bad memories.
A friend was taping Band of Brothers for him. Since this was about his own division, he was in F Company, and reportedly accurate, I can’t imagine how Rich will react after seeing all 10 episodes.
I’ve seen Band of Brothers and felt that the first few parts were very confusing because so many men were killed, that you hadn’t gotten to know, that you couldn’t keep track. Which was probably how the battles themselves went. But as you got to know the soldiers you ended up amazed at what they went through, when they were basically kids, and what they had accomplished.
As we stood there under the eerie glow of a mist shrouded street lamp along the long lonely boardwalk with the surf pounding the shore, Rich became a young man again reliving his youth, which was WWII. He didn’t talk about the endless death, destruction and danger. He talked about getting frostbite during the Battle of the Bulge in France when the Germans made one final desperate push to break through the allied lines and stop the Normandy invasion
The German attack was a total surprise- swift, savage and it almost worked. Rich said that Hitler was so furious that eight elite Panzer tank divisions couldn’t break through our stretched to the limit line of confused soldiers, that he just kept trying to push through the middle in a rage. If he would have withdrawn, regrouped and swept around our sides to surround us, he could have stopped us dead. His own maniacal pride prevented this, so we went on to Berlin, instead of getting slaughtered in France.
Rich said he changed his wet socks regularly so he wouldn’t get the dreaded trench foot, but got frostbite instead. He was sent back to England in horrible pain for two months to recover. They had fought in snow and ice without their winter uniforms and Rich said he had never been so cold for so long in his life. Maybe that’s why he’s living in sunny California now.
When Rich returned to the front he participated in a practice exercise where they parachuted into a firefight like they would over the Rhine River into Germany. They used real explosives and Rich was hit in the leg by a piece of shrapnel, the size of an arrowhead that threw him thru the air like a rag doll. He was sent back to England to recover again.
He only recently filed for a disability as the shrapnel still lodged in his leg was making him limp. It took over three years of paperwork to get and, at the end; he had to provide an eyewitness account from over 50 years ago. Luckily, an old war buddy came thru and he started getting his WWII pension at age 78.
A strange thing had happened to me soon after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As I walked into a restaurant a lady approached me and ask if I was a veteran. I said, “Yes during Nam, but I only went to England.” She shook my hand and said “Thank you.” I told Rich this and ask if I could shake his hand. He let me and I said “Thank you.” because I looked up to this little old man that I had just met, so much.