|
By Al Zdon
When the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was in training in North Carolina in 1943, Joe Doughty and his wife lived with three other couples in a large, rented
house. They became close friends.
The men were all officers in the 506th, part of the 101st Airborne.
Within a few hours of the parachute drop into Normandy on D-Day, 1944, Doughty was the only one
alive.
"There were so many casualties in Normandy in those first days. So when somebody was killed, you just got kind of numb. You wondered who would be next."
oooooooooo
Joseph Bayne Doughty was born and raised in St. Louis, growing up during the Great Depression.
"I was quite athletic in those days, and I ended up getting a scholarship to John
Burroughs High School. My last three years were there, and I lettered in four sports."
He used that athletic prowess to get a football scholarship to the University of Missouri, and he studied and
played there for a year. "But then I signed a contract as a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. That was the end of my amateur status."
He stayed in the Cardinals farm system for a couple of years.
"Baseball was kind of a lark for me, and after a couple of years, they released me."
One of the highlights of his sojourn with the Cardinals, though, was going to spring training in 1939. "Remember,
this was the Gashouse Gang with Pepper Martin and Johnny Mize, the whole group. We trained in St. Petersburg, and that's where the Yankees trained. That was Lou Gehrig's last year.
"I might have
played longer, but I never took baseball that seriously."
In 1941, Doughty went down to enlist. He was 21 years old, and the government had instituted the draft. "But the guy just told me that I
should go home, and I'd be called pretty soon. I was. Two months later I was in the Army."
By June of 1941, Doughty was at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and during that summer he was recommended for
officer training school.
In early December, he was at home on leave. "My bunkmate, Buddy Smilanich of Brainerd, and I were in St. Louis when Pearl Harbor happened. We were immediately called back to
Fort Leonard Wood, and right after that I was off to officer's training school."
"Why did I want to become an officer? Well, we had a lot of ROTC officers in those days, and I thought they were very
inefficient. I thought, 'Oh, hell, I can do better than that.'"
After getting his commission, Lt. Doughty joined a newly formed division at Fort Meade in Maryland. "I wasn't too impressed with the
division. Our general was too old and should have been behind a desk.
"But I was working my butt off to train my men, and it was hot there. One day I was leading my platoon back when a command car
came by and stopped. A lieutenant colonel called me over and said, 'Lieutenant, you are out of uniform.' I didn't even know what he was talking about. It made me so mad that I went to headquarters and
said I wanted to get out of that outfit. I told them to send me anywhere -- ski patrol, paratroopers -- it didn't matter."
The transfer came rapidly. Doughty was to report to Camp Toccoa to a new
parachute infantry regiment just being formed.
"Initially, we only stayed there for a short time. Col. Bob Sink, the commanding officer, wanted his officers to get their jump training at Taccoa. We
had an old C-47 that we were using for jumps, but one day it ended up in a cornfield. After that we had to do our jump training at Fort Benning."
In November, 1942, Doughty got his parachute wings and
began training others on the rigors of being in a parachute outfit. "It was fun to be with a group that was really in good physical shape. In the other division, that wasn't the case. We'd lose half the
guys just going through the obstacle course. But at Taccoa, we did a lot of running. These were really young guys, and we ran all the time. Remember Mount Currahee, three miles up and three miles
down."
After a considerable amount of training and maneuvers, the 506th was loaded on the SS Samaria and shipped to England, arriving in mid-September of 1943. The regiment was stationed at
Aldbourne.
Doughty was assigned to G Company in the 506th's Third Battalion, and the men continued their training, waiting for the invasion of France. "We had these sand tables to look at. They were
very intricate, and had our objective mapped out. Every man in the company knew our objective and what it looked like. The sand tables were constructed from photos taken by P-38s that flew unarmed over
our drop zone again and again."
"It's strange, but I can remember the later battles like in Holland and at Bastogne clearly, but D-Day, well, my memory just left me."
It may have to do with the
trauma.
"Your future depended on where you landed that night. You might survive if you didn't land in a spot that was full of the enemy. As it turned out, the Third Battalion landed right on top of a
German division. The division must have moved in since the last photos were taken."
Within minutes, the battalion commander was killed, the executive officer was killed, the intelligence officer was
killed, three company commanders were killed — including the commander of Doughty's Company G.
All of these were close friends and workmates of Doughty. "I was the only one around at that time.
I was the ranking officer — of what was left."
"It was such a melee. There were people all over the place. The biggest problem was to get organized in order to be a valuable asset to the
campaign. Three-fourths of our outfit was scattered all over hell."
Doughty's objective that night was to find and secure a certain bridge over the Douve River. He did his best to assemble his company
of 200 for that task, and was able to come up with 11 men. He took his small crew, and with the help of the lay of the land he learned from the sand tables, he located the bridge.
"We stayed on one
side of that bridge for three days. We never were able to take the other side. The war was on, and it was pretty miserable. We were pummeled by the Germans. They had mortars, artillery, and machine guns.
But we were able to send some patrols out, and we even captured a few prisoners."
In the end, his little force was pulled back from the bridge and moved to the attack on the city of Carentan.
Doughty's band was reunited with others in their company and with the rest of the 506th.
"I remember it was damned rough."
The 506th helped capture Carentan and then moved beyond to a defensive
position in a deep, rugged valley. The unit fended off a brutal assault by the Germans. The action was known as Bloody Gully.
The 506th was finally relieved. "We were the last ones out of Bloody
Gully. I was carrying a soldier over my shoulder who had been shot in the chest."
As he emerged from the hedgerow, Doughty saw one of his friends, the commander of another company, emerge at the same
time. The two looked at each other and just broke into laughter. It was a reaction to what they had just been through. "It's one of those moments that sticks in your mind."
After 33 days, the 101st
was pulled back to England. The division of 2,000 men had lost nearly 50 percent as casualties. "We weren't supposed to be there as long as we were. But they needed the troops, and we stayed. We didn't
have any support like a regular division. We had our K-rations in our pockets, and we killed some cattle along the way. We ate a lot of apples and pears."
On the way back to England, Doughty went
aboard a Navy ship and was greeted by a naval officer he knew from high school. "He gave me his bunk for the trip to England. We had been living in holes for weeks, and now I was sleeping on those white
sheets. I loved it. It was great."
The 101st had two missions scrubbed in the next few months as the American forces took the objectives before the paratroopers could get there. The next action was
Operation Market Garden, the ambitious plan for American and British forces to capture a series of towns and bridges along the Rhine and then cross into northern Germany.
The 506th's role was to seize
the city of Eindhoven and the bridges there. "The big picture? I knew somewhat what the plan was as a company commander, but I didn't know what the regimental commander knew."
The jump was on Sept.
17, 1944. "It wasn't that bad. The Germans were defending the city, but not like Carentan."
After the capture of the city and four bridges nearby, Doughty's company and others were ordered up the
highway. "The Germans kept cutting the road, and then we'd have to move out. The German artillery was absolutely unbelievable in Holland."
Company G ended up in place called "the island," a stretch of
land between the Rhine and Waal rivers that contained the final part of the highway necessary to reach Arnhem, made famous in the book and movie, "A Bridge Too Far."
Doughty's company relieved a
British unit controlling a town along the Rhine. "I'll never forget what that British major said to me when we relieved his troops. He said, 'Good luck, captain. You won't hear a shot fired in anger in
this town."
That was not to be the case. Doughty got his troops into a defensive position, and took over a schoolhouse as his command post. It was quiet for a couple of days.
"On the 5th of
October, we were the target of the biggest artillery bombardment I've ever heard of. The Germans held all the high ground on the opposite side of the river, and they had time to zero us in pretty
good."
One of the shells hit the command post and blew it up. "I was hit with a piece of shrapnel that just missed my left eye."
Doughty was taken to a field hospital in Nijmegen and stayed there
for five days. He earned a Purple Heart.
He returned to his company, but the situation had grown worse. "It was a hell of a battle, but we just couldn't hold it." The 506th moved back to a defensive
position. The companies would take turns on the front line, one week on and one week off.
"You couldn't move during the day. There was mortar and artillery shelling all the time. And you couldn't dig
a proper fox hole. You'd dig down a little ways, and it would fill with water. We used to say that even the dogs and cats in that area got combat fatigue from the shelling."
In November, 1944, the
regiment was relieved and moved back to France. Doughty was able to bring his company into Paris one time for a 48-hour vacation. "It was just a lot of guys drinking champagne or whatever they could
find. It was a lovely time. In the end, I had to bust a couple of sergeants who took too long in coming home."
The rest and recreation were all too short. On the evening of Dec. 15, Doughty was told
to have his troops ready to move out by 4 p.m. the following day. "We had a company commanders' meeting and we were told that we were going to a Belgian town named Bastogne. We just weren't ready. We
were wearing different uniforms. We had replacements that we hadn't trained. Some of our guns were still packed in cosmoline.
"Then they loaded us in cattle trucks. I think we had to stand up most of
the way. We left at 4 in the afternoon and got there in the morning.
"The First Battalion had preceded us and they were near a place called Noville. They were taking a hell of a beating. They were in
big trouble. We got them out of there. The war was on. There was shooting all the way up and back."
G Company moved back to the perimeter around Bastogne near a village named Recogn. "We were told to
take the town, which we did, but we couldn't hold it. The Germans just had too many tanks at the part of the line. I moved the troops back into the woods. It would have been a blood bath in the
town."
Doughty recalls "all kinds of shooting matches" as the days went on. "At one point the Germans did night tank attacks. They had sheets tied around their tanks."
He recalls one famous line
uttered by an American paratrooper during the siege. "The poor bastards have got us surrounded."
During the battle, Doughty recalls being called back to headquarters at one point. "At that point, my
command post was a hole in the ground surrounded by snow. All of a sudden, here comes a Jeep and a guy gets out. He said, 'I've been sent by Col. Sink to get you.'
"So we drove into Bastogne. Now I
hadn't been in a building since we got there, and we pulled up to this house. We went up the stairs, and there was Col. Sink sitting at a desk smoking a cigarette.
"He said, 'Hi, Joe.' And we just
chatted for a while. Then he said, 'Reach under that couch over there.' I did, and found a bottle of cognac. 'It's just a little present for you.'
"I took it back to our position, and we passed it
around. It was mighty good. But that's just the kind of field commander Bob Sink was. He was that kind of guy. Some people say he drank too much, but I don't know about that. I do know that our company
parties were something. He was one hell of a competent officer."
The German seige ended at Christmastime when Patton's Third Army broke through the encirclement. "We were mighty happy to see those
tanks."
But the fighting wasn't over by a long shot. The 506th now went on the offensive as the Germans began to withdraw. At one point, Company G found itself on high ground on one side of a town and
the Germans were on the high ground on the other side.
"They had these self-propelled .88s. They had us zeroed in. They were doing tree bursts all around us. They were killing us."
During this
onslaught, Doughty was visited by his battalion commander. "He said to me, 'Joe, we've got to take that town down there.' I looked, and it was 300 yards of open ground that we would have to cross."
Doughty was dreading and preparing for the attack when a new set of orders came through. "They told us to pull back and we were relieved."
"We moved to the north, but it was miserable. There was
snow everywhere. It was cold. I was so sick with laryngitis that I couldn't say a word. An officer isn't very effective if he can't talk."
Doughty was sent to field hospital while the rest of the
506th was finally relieved of combat duty. After a period of time in a hospital in France, he rejoined his unit that had once again been moved to an R&R location.
Doughty was bumped up the ladder
after the Bulge, and was made the Battlion S-3, the officer in charge of operations. "After all those battles together, I had to leave my men."
As the war wound down, the 506th moved through Germany
and into Austria, finally ending up at Berchtesgaden, the famous "Eagle's Nest" mountain retreat of the Third Reich.
There Doughty became involved in an incident that is recounted in at least
one book about the war. Three of his men found a fire engine in a German village, and wanted to have some fun with it. They were searching for oil to get the machine running, when they were
captured.
The men somehow convinced their captors that it would be a good idea for them to surrender, and one of the three was allowed to go get Doughty to formalize the surrender.
"They found me
sleeping and told me what had happened. We got in a Jeep and headed out. I brought along the S-2 (intelligence officer) because he spoke some German. We went up in the mountains and met with the German
general.
"But he was expecting a little more brass to surrender to than a couple of captains. So we had to go back and get Col. Sink."
Sink accepted the surrender.
Part of Doughty's duty was
the transportation of prisoners, and he was assigned to escort Field Marshall Heinz Guderian. "He was the general in charge of their tanks. He was sort of the German Patton. I had to take him to
Berchtesgaden where they were quartering all the German high command.
"While I was there, I was going up a stairs and a door opens and Kesselring (Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, the commander of
all the German forces on the Western front) came out. And he saluted me. I'll never forget that."
The stay for the German generals at the plush castle didn't last long. "Ike heard about it and said,
'Get those people out of there. Those are prisoners, not celebrities.'"
Doughty was asked to stay in the Army, but he was tired of the military bureaucracy. "I had enough points, and I went
home."
He worked in sales for a time, and finally ended up running a container company in Minneapolis for many years. He and his wife, Martha, live in Hopkins. They have one son, Bayne.
Doughty
said he has only seen a little bit of Band of Brothers, the HBO series that made celebrities out of Easy Company of the 506th. He said he didn't know Capt. Richard Winters well, but he knew his
reputation.
"He was one hell of an officer, and he deserves every bit of acclaim that he got after the war. We would see each other around, but he wasn't much of a social guy. He was a Quaker. He
didn't mix too well at the parties because he didn't drink like the rest of us."
Doughty has been to several reunions, including one in Holland where, as the senior officer, he got to lead the parade
down the main street of a Dutch city.
|
