About
"I have thought about this, the putting down on paper of my wartime years, for more than thirty years and I'm still sure I have not forgotten. Always when I start, "Who cares?" seems to pop into my mind. Now with my age at fifty-three years, it doesn't seem to matter anymore. However, it would seem a shame not to capture for future G.I.'s, views from one like myself who has something to say. For several reasons I've made up my mind this year, June 1975, to begin my story."
The above quote, taken from the "Foreword" written some thirty-one years after the D-Day Invasion, describes how Layton Black Jr. began writing the memoirs of his participation in World War II as a "Screaming Eagles" paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division.
A Glimpse into the Story
The Paratroopers of World War II were the epitome of the term "the process of elimination". They were all volunteers to a new form of warfare called "airborne". In the U. S. they formed four great airborne division units--the 82nd, the 101st, the 11th and the 17th.
Layton Black's story is about the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment from the 101st Airborne Division, especially Company 'C' of this regiment. He shares his day-to-day, foxhole-to-foxhole experiences with the 2nd Platoon of his company. Jumping into Normandy on D-Day as Pfc., Black climbs through the ranks by "the process of elimination" all the way to the end of the war in Austria, where he becomes the last First Sergeant of his company. The book took fifty years to write, and will take you back to those wonderful GIs of the 1940's.
This book does not dwell on the gore or heroism in war. It does not speak for the acclaim of high rank or military achievements. The author makes the point that the front line soldier won the war; everybody else helped. Fifty of Black's 'C' Company troopers gave their lives; he knew them all. Not one hesitated in his duty. "Every trooper who jumped behind the enemy-infested lines and lived or died," Black writes, "served his country to the hilt."
In chapter after chapter the emotion of the combat soldiers shows up in all its forms. Even the game the two Squad Sergeants play at survival has meaning in the scheme of war. You learn that some orders are unfair and hard to obey. But these men are well trained.
Sadness and joy march step for step with front line soldiers as the author brings them through the war. His ability to find the humorous in war serves to frame the tragedies that happen throughout. Yet nothing softens the blow of a dead friend. His writing makes these paratroopers so real that in the end you will swear you knew them.
The author does not leave out the details that make him look foolish. All was part of a combat trooper's life in a far-off land.
(from the Foreword of The Last First Sergeant)
The Homefront
50 Years Later
Thoughts fifty years later.
. . . Then there was a tune that had great private meaning, helping to sustain me, a lonely soldier, when times were grim. "When they begin the Beguine, let them play till the stars return above you." She was the love of my life. Oh, to dance so close. To hear those lines over and over in my mind was to remember why I must come back.
Layton and Jeanne leaving their wedding reception January 13, 1946.
What have I done since the war? Married that girl, raised two boys, enjoyed two grandkids, farmed for fifty years, worked in the lumber (retail) business twenty years and somewhere in there broadcast high school football and basketball over the radio. Hell, all of that was easy after what I had been through. And it was fun.
Please, God, tell all those wonderful men who missed out on the last fifty years that I have never forgotten them.
Airborne all the way. Layton Black, Jr.
(from the Epilogue of The First Last Sergeant)