WWII History
We spotlight the significant battles and crucial moments that defined the war for First Sergeant Layton Black, Jr. Dive into a collection of these true stories from the book: The Last First Sergeant.
D-Day
​We race down the runway. At the last second we are airborne. We climb and climb and climb. Then we bank into huge turns. At last we circle into "V" formations. We meet up with other C-47 planes, and then other planes meet up with us. The sky is full of planes. I look out the open door. We are still over England, and all I can say is, "What a sight! What a sight!" It has been said that we flew nine planes abreast and that we reached back for two hundred miles. We are told that four hundred ninety C-47 planes carried six thousand, six hundred paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division alone. Besides our division, the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division and the British 6th Airborne Division were in the air that night. The total number of paratroopers to come down from the sky over Normandy some five hours before the start of D-day will be eighteen thousand, three hundred. The ships under us in the English channel were five thousand strong. Then there were fighter and bomber planes above us. It was a sight that man will never see again. To live to tell about it is a marvelous thing . . . Nothing was said or done by any of the men in the plane on that flight to Normandy. Once I sat back in my seat after looking out the door, I did not get up again. I did not sleep as some men did-or appeared to do. I did not talk to anyone, nor did anyone else talk. No one got sick, either. It was an uneventful flight. I remember saying a prayer to my God and asking Him to bless all of my people. I asked God to forgive me for what I was about to do to the Germans. And I was gracious enough to ask Him to have mercy on them, for I felt the average German did not know what he had done . . . (from chapter 3, Normandy!) Learn more through this CBS Sunday Morning video: D-Day: Eisenhower and the paratroopers who were key to success: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CK1j6UAzy/
Normandy
Behind the lines . . . As for my rapid descent, it ended with a bang. For the first time in eleven jumps I landed right on my ass. I fell on my back and lay there as my green camouflage parachute settled around me. It did not cover me, so I was able to see all around. "Man, I sure hit the ground hard," I thought to myself. "That was a fast trip to the ground!" My first moves were reflex actions based on many hours of hard training. Self-preservation is the key word in the first minutes of a combat jump. I reached down to my right jump boot for my dagger-like trench knife, just in case I would have to fight from here, on my back, even before I could get out of my harness. Then I got ready to use my weapon. Mine was around my neck and stashed under my reserve chute, across my chest . . . My weapon was not going to be usable quickly enough to suit me. My next best tool was a hand grenade. I found one on me someplace and held onto it with one hand. I put my trench knife between my teeth, I guess to hold it so I could get to it if I needed it. I was still not out of my chute, nor was I ready to get up off my back. I could hear small-arms fire coming from all directions. I thought I'd better see if anybody was nearby. Without standing up, I moved my head from side to side. Nothing came into view, but I could not see behind me because I didn't want to make undue movements that might give away my position until I was out of my harness and had my weapon to fight with. Seeing no one moving toward me, I laid my hand grenade on my chest and unsnapped my leg harness, then both chest snaps. All of these were difficult and seemed to take too much time. Free from my harness at last, I felt safe. Because of this feeling and because the opportunity presented itself, I took a foolish chance. Call it young stupidity, youthful boldness or whatever. I decided I needed a personal souvenir from this jump. My paratrooper friend from back home, Junior Dreisbach, who was also making this same D-day jump but with the 507th Parachute Regiment, told me not to forget to bring back my rip cord from my reserve chute. It was a metal ring-like gadget with a cord tied to it. When pulled off the chute, it ripped the cord away, and the chute would spill open. Thus the name "rip cord" . . . (above text taken from Chapter 3, "Normandy")
Attack Underway
The 101st fight to take the city of Carentan, France. The day was Friday, and our First Battalion was ordered to "stand in place," a military term for a unit that is on line but in "reserve" of another unit that is on the attack. Attacking for our Regiment was the 3rd Battalion. The order came down the day before, D plus 2, for "the 101st to take the city of Carentan, France." With a population of about 4,000 people, Carentan was the second largest city in the Cherbourg Peninsula, located about eight miles from the sea on the Douver River. A canal running into the city made it possible for small boats to enter from the sea. A set of locks built into the canal controls the flow of the ocean's tide. North of the city is marshland, mostly below sea level. It would be easy to flood the entire area. The worst thing for us was the fact that there wasn't any cover. The Allies needed to capture the city of Carentan so that we could link up all the beaches. Only then could we think of breaking out. To the Germans, Carentan had great strategic importance. To Field Marshall Rommel and General Dollmann, the Commanding Officer of the 7th Army, losing Carentan would mean the loss of the main road, and only a short time until the whole peninsula would be cut in two at its base. The loss of the main seaport city of Cherboug would then be inevitable. Helping the German officers decide on the importance of Carentan was their discovery the day before of an Allied operational order revealing our intentions . . . (from Chapter 7--"Attack Underway")
Holland
"The Corridor Fight" In England, sometime in August of 1944, the prospects of a second "big jump" reached a fever pitch. To those of us who had made the first jump, the waiting wasn't easy. How could we prepare mentally for this second combat jump? Would the next jump be even worse than the one at Normandy? These were great years for me. I was in my early twenties, and these were history-making times. Above all, I was a part of the action. A paratrooper! A 502nd paratrooper! A 101st Airborne paratrooper! That's about the best there is! I had been prepared well for my twenties by my mother, by her religious teachings, and by my dad with his common-sense approach to everything, regardless of its danger. So I walked right through those days of August and September, looking straight ahead and never back, right out the door and over Holland. It was Sunday, 1300 hours (1 p.m.), on September 17, 1944. The sun was glorious all the way from Welford Airfield just northwest of London to our drop zone in big open fields in the center of a triangle with borders from Best to Zon to St. Odenrode, Holland . . . . (from chapter 12--"The Corridor Fight")
Bastogne
How I Heard about the German Breakthrough: As a boy on the farm I'd spent untold hours passing a football back and forth through an old rubber tire hanging from a huge limb of a giant elm tree in the farmyard. It hung from a heavy rope, about shoulder high, from the time I was a sixth grader until long after I was out of high school; even after I came home from the war. I think that the great elm died before we cut that tire down. Those were the poor years down on the farm, and small rural school districts likewise were poor. Our small country high school couldn't afford to field a football team, so I grew up without any experience of playing in a real football game. Now here I was in Nancy, France, getting ready to play in my first real football game on the strength of my ability to pass the ball. It was more than just a thrill for me to be on our "Regimental Team" made up of lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and other military officers as well as rank-and-file soldiers. I don't remember all of them by name anymore. I do remember a player from Duke University who was in our line; Sergeant Flores from 'A' Company. Also a Lieutenant Clark from Texas, who had been all Southwest Conference, played. Another officer on our team had played at Clemson University. But the real star of our team was a young man from the University of Nebraska--a Lieutenant Metheeny from "I' Company. He had been the sophomore sensation in 1941 for Nebraska in the Rose Bowl. He was a halfback, and a good one to be sure! I played my heart out, and the game was going fast and furiously when suddenly the loudspeaker system we were using for our game would blast out a call for "Major so-and-so," "Captain so-and-so," "Lieutenant this," and "Corporal that," saying, "You are to report to your squadron at once. On the double!" Looking across the line from us we saw four of their first-line players walk away from the game. Four substitute players ran onto the field, and we continued to play. Several plays later, "Colonel this," "Major that," plus two captains and two more lieutenants were called out of the game. As before, "You are to report to your squadrons at once, on the double!" Two of those officers were on the field when they were called, and two subs ran into the game to take their place. "What the hell is up over at headquarters?" I heard the players on the other side ask the subs. They didn't seem to know, and the game went on. After a few more plays we could hear the roaring of one after another P-47 plane soaring into the sky. More names were called out, and player after player left the game as the P-47 divebombers flew out in a steady stream and the evening went on. Something big was up. That was easy to see. Finally the word came out into the field that there was a big push on and that our side had called for air support. We knew who was doing the pushing-General Patton! The news didn't stop the game, and we kept playing to the end. Sometime late in the game, maybe half way through the fourth quarter, I came out of the game. Captain (now Coach) Swanson called me over to him so he could tell me something. I knelt on one knee next to the coach, who was squatting along by the sideline on our side of the field. He started to show me something on his clipboard when suddenly the lights went out for me! I heard a noise like thundering hooves and then nothing. I vaguely remember seeing Captain Swanson stand up and a surge of humanity moving backwards. The next thing I remember was the faint sound of my name being called. (That same kind of "calling" sound coming from way off in the deep, darkness of an early morning sleep back home on the farm. That was Dad "calling" me before daybreak to get up and do my chores.) I heard that call a long time before I could see. And when I could see, the only thing I could make sense of was the blue, blue sky above and a lot of people's legs in front of me. And then I made it. "Where in the Sam hill have you been, Sergeant Black?" Captain Swanson said to me. "What the devil happened to you anyway? Medic! Someone get the medic over here." Both teams simply had run a play right over me. I can't even recall who had the ball at the time. It goes without saying that the game was over for me. I ended up in the dressing room ahead of everybody else, and for the life of me I don't even remember the score of the game, or much that happened for quite sometime after. My face was covered with blood, my nose was broken and cut pretty bad. My cheek and forehead had the signs of a pretty good raspberry on them. To be perfectly honest, I looked like hell and felt worse. I had had my helmet off and I must have caught someone's shoulder pad straight in the face as he was going full tilt down the side of the field. I was slammed several rows back in behind the big crowd of standing Air Force soldiers. So ended my football playing days. I was patched up, but I didn't get a chance to have my broken nose set at the field hospital. "Someone back at the camp hospital will have to do that," our medic said. By the time all of this started to ring clear, the celebration had gotten underway. The Air Force was wining and dining us paratroopers in their style, which was tops for any of the services, by far-even after having beaten them on the gridiron! I can't remember what we had for chow that Sunday night of December 17, 1944. But I can tell you we ate off of clean white tablecloths and used regular table silverware, plus white china cups for our coffee. We had cake and ice cream as well. Then it was off to the service clubs for beer and dancing. The Air Force even furnished the girls; local French ladies from Nancy. By 8 o'clock my nose didn't hurt any more. As a matter of fact, this was turning into the best day I'd ever spent in this man's army, in spite of the broken nose. Just before I fell asleep I heard loud talking downstairs in the club. I could hear the on duty Air Force troops going around putting the base on alert. Their words were clear. "There has been a breakthrough, and paratroopers have been dropped." "Hey down there!" I yelled. "What's going on? Anything we ought to know about up here?" I woke up everyone. "Who in hell are those guys upstairs?" I heard someone say. "They are those football players from the 101st Airborne, our paratroopers," someone said. "Paratroopers? 101st Airborne? They have been put on alert. Haven't they left yet? Go wake them up! They have got to get back to their camp!" That's how I heard about the German breakthrough . . . (from the openning of Chapter 21--"How I Heard about the German Breakthrough")
Christmas, 1944
"They won't fight on Christmas Eve, will they?" My fifth day in the "Bulge" began at 0200 hours (2 a.m.) when I took my turn on a two-hour hitch of guard duty along the tree line. While on guard we stood outside our foxholes, making sure that the guard next to you, on both sides, can hear you. It was very dark, so we talked to keep posted. "OK here in the second position, " I said. Both men answered me. As I stood out in the open position, away from the tree branches, something brushed against my face. A paratrooper's heavy jump suit plus the big steel helmet keeps the weather at bay, and I was concentrating on my duty at hand, so it was a little while before I realized what it was. It was cold, but we were used to living like this and didn't notice the cold that much. Not yet anyway. No one said anything for a long time about the fact that it was snowing. It was the second time for most of us in our whole army experience that we had seen snow. About 0300 hours (3 a.m.) it came to me that the snow was really putting down. We could actually hear snowflakes falling! I started the word that kept up until daylight. "Everything OK! Snowing up here in 2nd Platoon." All over the hillside could be heard a guard's call ending with, "Snowing here, too!" What a beautiful sight was waiting for us when we woke up in the morning! We just stood around and gazed in awe. There must have been four or five inches of wet snow hanging on everything. Everywhere you looked it was white. The whole First Battalion began marching off the hill, through the valley, winding slowly off in the distance heading for the far hill. It was black on white, with the battalion moving in single file. I was the last trooper to leave the hill, so I had time to sit and watch. Three companies of paratroopers--at least 500 of us--all moving in single file as if playing a game of follow-the-leader. 'C' Company moved into a wooded area on a hillside along a main road two miles east of Champs. My Second Squad and Holly's First Squad went to the far high side of this little woods and dug in as the outer defense for the night. Just as it was growing dark in the Grosse Hez woods, we heard chow call from our company mess people. It was our first hot chow since landing in the Bulge five days earlier. We sat on the edges of our foxhole eating our hot chow in this beautiful snow-draped woodland. We ate in silence as we listened to the Germans pound away at Bastogne from four sides. I think it was Rennie Howard who said, "I don't know what you guys think, but I have a damned funny feeling we're stuck in here!" "What the hell do you mean by that shit?" snorted Milligan. "Damn it, can't you hear those 88's? said Howard. "Hell yes! I can hear the sons-of-bitches! And I'm getting damned tired of it," Milligan shot back. "Hear that?" Howard pointed his GI spoon toward the east. "Hear that? And that?" He moved his spoon to the north and then to the west. Then he pointed to the south as if queuing in the Germans. He waited, spoon in the air. No sound of guns in the south. Then we heard them. "There!" he said. "What did I tell you? Hell, men! We're surrounded!" Nobody said a word after that. We all got up and checked foxholes. We had a long lonely night in a pitch dark woods to think about what Howard had said. As we tried to sleep we could hear the guns pounding away. In the morning we were told to pack up our gear and prepare to move out as the Division's reserves. We moved without breakfast, not even a K-ration, to a place called Hemroulle about two miles west of Bastogne . . . . . (above text taken from Chapter 21, "How I Heard about the German Breakthrough") Since it had become bitter cold for the first time in the Bulge, Sergeant Dewitt moved the 2nd Platoon into an old barn with a hayloft. We bedded down with the darkness, except for those who were on guard. We crawled up into the hayloft, got into our sleeping bags and covered ourselves with loose hay. I was never that warm again in the Bulge. Bastogne was surrounded, and we sensed that trouble was about to break out here at Hemroulle. We knew that 'C' Company was overdue for action on the front lines. We lay there in the dark in the rickety barn, nobody asleep, just thinking. Someone from that soft hayloft bed called out, "Sergeant Black! Are you asleep yet?" "No, not yet!" "When do you think we're going up?" "Maybe tonight. Better get some sleep." I tried to sound calm. "Sergeant Bird," somebody else called out. "Are you asleep yet? They won't fight on Christmas Eve, will they?" I don't remember Bird's answer. I thought about home, about Christmas in the states, about Mom and Dad, about my best girl, my three brothers and my sister. Also, I thought about the very first Christmas, the barn, the hayloft, in a far-off time. What did it all mean? One thing I didn't think about was of the 101st ever giving up, of losing here in Bastogne. Maybe it was 2000 hours (8 p.m.) when someone came into the barn, yelled, "Santa Claus is here!" and passed out a box of cookies to each of us. They just might have been the best cookies I ever ate. Sometime after that I fell asleep. What woke me up was the terrible shaking of our old barn and the noise of German bombs falling nearby. Some men went outside to have a look. Our guards told us that the Germans had bombed Bastogne at midnight and that fires could be seen from outside our hayloft. We fell back asleep only to be awakened at 0330 hours (3:30 a.m.). This time there were orders: "Get ready to move up and back up our Regiment's front lines." Our 'C' Company was in a real dog fight with Jerry, and it looked like they needed help for sure. We got ready in a hurry with few words. Everyone knew it was coming--the fighting. What upset me most was that Jerry wasn't going to take Christmas off! We moved out onto the road out of Hemroulle at 0400 hours (4 a.m.). Our 'B' Company, which was also in reserve still and not yet on line, had moved ahead of us into the lead. They had been ordered to go to the very edge of Champs and await daylight before moving in to help 'A' Company hold the line. By now Jerry had broken through on the east side of them in the area of our second Battalion. Our 'C' Company moved about halfway up the road. My 2nd Platoon, in close-order marching formation, held up on the road next to the farm house that was the command post of the 327th Glider Regiment. It had taken us three hours, until 7 a.m., to move half a mile up the road. There we were halted and stood in full battle dress, loaded down with heavy ammo, machine guns, mortars and bazookas. We had our heavy overcoats on but still had not received winter boots, sweaters, hoods and other winter clothing. It was cold, and everything was covered with snow. We were jumpy. While I was standing there with my fellow troopers, not seeing or knowing the meaning of what was going on, a dogfight took place in the black sky above. A German plane shot down one of our big planes. I saw it go down in flames just behind German lines. No one got out. But maybe it was dark, and I just couldn't see them jump. Damn the Germans! I'm cold! Let's move off this road! It's colder than hell! Start a fire. It's getting daylight anyway. Damn those Germans! I hope those bastards do see us and come on the run. 'C' Company hasn't fired a shot yet. We moved off the road and into the courtyard of the farmhouse. About thirty troopers, the whole platoon at this point, moved in and started a fire to warm up by. Somebody started to heat up coffee. I took my time setting up my squad's machine gun at the corner of the courtyard gate. I faced it due west with a line of fire to the open field on top of a hill some eight hundred yards away. I told a gunner to keep an eye open and to take turns with the other gunners coming over to the fire. It was just starting to get daylight when we moved off the road. I remarked to "Big" Holly that it was going to be a foggy Christmas morning. I realized my whole 2nd Platoon was standing around a fire in the center of someone else's command post. This battalion command post was leaving. We hadn't started the fire. They had; to burn maps and papers. I saw the colonel. He was leaving on foot for somewhere else. At the command post of the 327th Glider Regiment's 3rd Battalion, the cry, "German tanks!" rang out. All hell broke loose. The first thing you do when you're being fired at in battle is to look for the biggest gun you have. But as "Big" Holly and I reached the gate, my 30-caliber machine gun was flying though the air in pieces. The first round from a German tank had caught that gun as we stood on the cold road near Hemroulle. Enemy tanks have a way of freezing men in their tracks. Eighteen of them topping the hill ahead was a devastating sight . . . . . (And so begins "Christmas In Bastogne" for Layton Black and the men of the 2nd Platoon )