Valleys of Death Read online

  No answer.

  All of a sudden three heads popped out of the second-floor window.

  “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  “It’s Bill,” I said. Neither my brother nor my sisters recognized me.

  All of a sudden a little head popped up between the other three. It was my youngest brother, Tom.

  “It’s our brother Billy, go down and let him in.”

  All four came down and opened the front door. I was shocked by what I saw. I had been their big brother and took care of them, but now two of them were teenagers, Dottie and Jean; John was twelve and almost a teenager.

  Tommy, the youngest, marched out onto the stoop and helped me with my bag. He seemed to remember me more than the others. We sat around the kitchen table and I fixed myself a ham and cheese on rye bread and had a beer. While I was eating, they were talking a mile a minute.

  “How long will you be home?” Dottie asked.

  “Do you have a picture of your girlfriend?” Tommy asked.

  I tried to keep up, but I was in awe of how much they’d changed. Dottie had always been pretty, but she’d grown into a beautiful young lady. Jean too was well on her way to being another beauty. She still had the black curly hair that had earned her the nickname “Mop Top.” When I was home, I used to sing and dance for her while I was getting ready to go out. John had grown into a stocky teenager. He looked like a young Babe Ruth, and Tommy, the de facto spokesman despite being the youngest, seemed more mature than his nine years. While they were talking, I realized how much I had missed them.

  My mother didn’t get home until two-thirty in the morning. She had Frank, her boyfriend, in tow. I could tell they were three sheets to the wind. That was no change. My mother wouldn’t stop saying how surprised she was to see me. When they walked in, I got up from the couch and hugged her. Frank stood nearby and we shook hands.

  “It is good to have you back home, Billy,” my mother said.

  She was surprised at how much I had changed.

  She was forty-three years old, but she always looked ten years younger than she was. My father and mother had been separated for five years. How it lasted as long as it did, I’ll never know. She had been the life of the party for as long as I could remember.

  The next day I called my father. I hadn’t seen him since I’d left four years ago. We made arrangements to meet for lunch on Allegheny Avenue, outside a Horn & Hardhart restaurant. It was a famous self-serve restaurant in Philadelphia where working people could catch a quick lunch. Dad had taken me to this restaurant once or twice when I was a young kid, and I thought it was great, and here we were together and I still thought it was great. I remember I had my favorite dessert, Philadelphia cheesecake.

  As I walked down the street, I saw him coming toward me. He looked a little shorter than I remembered. Before I could react or say anything, he grabbed me and right in the middle of the sidewalk, hugged and kissed me. It embarrassed the hell out of me. We went in and grabbed a table by the window. By the time we got to the Philadelphia cheesecake, we’d caught up. But when we started talking about my mother and siblings, I could see the tears well up in his eyes.

  “Bill, I see Dottie once a month. She meets me on Frank-ford Avenue and I give her the child support money. Most of the time we just hug and cry. It’s hard.”

  I quickly changed the subject.

  “Where are you living now?” I asked.

  “I’m still at Herron’s house.”

  Bill and my dad had been partners since they were kids. They were song-and-dance men who played all the local clubs along the eastern seaboard and on the Friehofer’s radio show. My father played the banjo and Bill Herron—I called him Uncle Bill—played the marimba.

  Entertainment ran in the family.

  My dad’s brother Frank had sung on the stage since he was eight years old. He made it to Hollywood and appeared in nine movies; Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Sunnyside Up and Happy Days, to name a few. In 1932 my dad and Uncle Bill were scheduled to go out to Hollywood when they finished their engagement at Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But before their last show the studio sent a telegram canceling the trip.

  Frank had promised to marry a chorus girl and put it in writing. Of course he was already married, and she threatened to slap him with a million-dollar breach of promise suit. Things had caught up with him, and when it hit the headlines across the nation I had a new aunt. But the scandal stopped any interest Hollywood had in another Richardson. So my father, Bill Herron and Frank continued to play in clubs and theaters along the eastern seaboard.

  In 1944 they went on tour with a show entertaining troops all across the country. In 1945, they went overseas. It was two days before I left for Europe myself. My dad arrived back home from the USO trip in Europe. My mother had her boyfriend move in, and when my dad came home she told him he was no longer welcome. We went out together and it was the first time I saw my father drink. I wanted to cry for him. My heart was breaking. I dropped him off that night at Bill Herron’s house. I spent the night at my mother’s house with my brothers and sisters and felt a million miles away. I loved my mother through it all, but I always felt sorry for my father.

  After lunch, we went downtown to one of my dad’s booking agents, checking to see if they had any shows. Dad was working at Yale & Towne as a tool crib expediter in the daytime and at nights and on weekends playing club dates.

  We walked into the office and said hello to the receptionist. My father introduced me and started a pitch that I would hear with every new face about my tour overseas and how well I was doing in the Army. He was also showing me off. He was very proud of me.

  Back outside, he told me he was seeing a young lady who was divorced with four children.

  “She’s very nice and I think you will like her, we’ll get together soon,” my dad said. “Hey, Bill, suppose we get together tomorrow night, go to dinner and a movie, with Cathy and me?”

  “That’ll be great.”

  The next night we went to a movie at the Earle Theater and to dinner at Bookbinders, one of Philly’s best restaurants.

  The one thing I remember most about Cathy was she loved my dad. I saw how she snuck glances at him and how they tenderly held hands during the movie. At the end of the night, Cathy asked my dad and me if we could come to dinner at her house on Sunday. She wanted me to meet her children.

  On Sunday, I pressed my uniform and met my dad at Cathy’s house in northeast Philly. She had three boys, ages nine to fourteen, and a sixteen-year-old daughter, Claire. Cathy was a good cook, and she laid out a spread of roast beef, mashed potatoes and peas. In between bites, I fielded questions about my travels to Italy, France and Austria. They were Catholic and marveled at my stories about the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

  My dad and I. He had just returned from Europe and I was leaving for Europe the next day. Author’s collection.

  After dinner we all went outside to take some pictures with Cathy’s Kodak Brownie camera. Since Claire and I were the oldest of both families, Cathy and my dad decided we should have our picture taken together. I walked up next to her and smiled. My father told me the pictures turned out good, and it was nice to see him happy. He was the best man I have ever known.

  My dad and I in June 1950, before I departed for Ft. Devens, Massachusetts. Author’s collection.

  The phone on my desk woke me from my daydream. My quiet evening was over.

  “Your company will get about one hundred men in very late tonight from Fort Dix,” the night officer said. “They are recruits. Right out of basic. Early in the morning we’ll also be getting some troops transferred in from other outfits on post. Make sure they have a place to sleep tonight and have a hot meal for breakfast.”

  I hung up and called in the supply sergeant and told him to get in and be prepared to issue bed linens and blankets. Next, I called the mess sergeant and told him to come in. Finally, I requested that he have additional rations brought
to the mess hall as early as possible. I called the company duty officer who was on standby and told him I thought he’d better get in.

  The next few hours, I shepherded the new recruits from the buses to the mess hall, to the supply room, and then to the barracks. I didn’t get a chance to sit down for a second. The next morning, when the company commander showed up to formation, we had 180 men standing in the company street.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FORMING THE BATTALION

  I entered the company headquarters and reported to Captain Filmore McAbee.

  He and First Sergeant Brien sat behind a table. They were interviewing the corporals and sergeants and giving us our assignments. The platoon leaders and platoon sergeants sat in chairs nearby.

  “This is the corporal who was on duty last night, he did a great job,” the first sergeant said.

  McAbee, a well-built man who most likely was an athlete, was a World War II veteran. He looked up from my file and his stoic facial expression never changed.

  “What experience do you have? What can you do?”

  I had been a much better soldier than student. My academic career was cut short in one brief second in my eighth-grade shop class. I was cutting up in the back of the classroom when the teacher tossed a wooden mallet at me and some friends, trying to quiet us down. The mallet hit me in the chest and fell to the floor. I stood there stunned. I didn’t think. I just acted. And it cost me. I picked it up and tossed it back at the teacher. The mallet glanced off his shoulder and cracked the corner of the blackboard.

  The next day, in the principal’s office, it was decided that I was neither studious nor disciplined enough for high school. So I was shipped off to vocational school. World War II was raging and I got a job at a factory that produced safety glass used in bombers. Since it was defense work, we were permitted to leave school at noon to work. I made good money but knew that I didn’t have a future, in school or on the factory floor.

  When I wasn’t working, there was always the possibility of getting into trouble. Walking in the old neighborhood with my brother Tommy while on leave, we passed a building that used to be the Italian-American Club. Seeing the old club brought back memories of how I’d conned some money from Louie, some wannabe wiseguy who wanted us to steal some hubcaps for him.

  We were hanging out down the street when he came out and called me over. He pointed to his car across the street and told me he needed two hubcaps. I went back and told my friends, who wanted to go see a movie. There was a lot of bullshit talk. The truth was nobody was very up to stealing hubcaps, but with the money we could all see a movie.

  I thought it over and grabbed a friend.

  “Let’s look at the other side of his car.”

  I thought there were two hubcaps on his car and figured we could take them off and sell them to him.

  “Goddamn, Bill, he will kill us when he finds out,” my friend said.

  “Yeah, but we’ll all be at the movies by the time he finds out.”

  I popped the hubcaps off and took them across the street to the club. Louie came out, took one look at the hubcaps, and smiled.

  “Well, that’s fast work,” Louie said. “How about you put them on?”

  I hotfooted it across the street, put the hubcaps on and headed to the movies. A few days later, I was walking down the street and Louie grabbed me. Luckily a bunch of guys from the club were there and they were laughing at him and told him to let me go.

  “The kid outsmarted you, let him go.”

  Louie shook me by my collar and then shoved me.

  “You little son of a bitch, get out of here.”

  That summer, I decided I needed to get out of Philadelphia. I was not quite sixteen years old when my uncle pulled some strings and got me into the War Department, with the North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. My mother agreed and I was signed on as a deckhand on a ship berthed out of Wilmington, Delaware. I was on the ship for a year. The war ended and the War Department was reducing its strength. My mother signed a waiver so that I could join the regular Army. A few days later, I was on a train headed south to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for three weeks of training. I loved the military and quickly fell into the routine. The structure and discipline kept me in check, and since I was a good athlete—I’d made the varsity baseball team as a freshman in vocational school—I excelled during the long runs and dozens of push-ups. I learned quickly that keeping my head down, listening and refusing to give up were the secrets to success in the Army.

  I didn’t realize that I had passed my entrance exam high enough that they had me take the Officer Candidate Test. I passed it but wasn’t old enough to be considered. Instead, I finished up my training and shipped out to Italy.

  I had been an instructor for two years at a noncommissioned officers school in Austria and had trained and led a provisional Ranger platoon. I knew unit tactics and every weapon inside and out.

  “Sir, I can do any job in this company.”

  The words shocked me as soon as I spit them out. McAbee smiled and glanced over to the first sergeant. McAbee was an experienced officer from World War II and knew what combat was like and knew he needed experienced sergeants to lead the way.

  “Give me the characteristics of the M-1 rifle.”

  I didn’t hesitate.

  “Thirty-caliber rifle, gas-operated, bolt action, semiautomatic, clip-fed, muzzle velocity twenty-eight hundred feet per second, weight 9.5 pounds. Can be fitted with an M-7 grenade launcher placed into the barrel, with an M-15 sight mounted just forward of the trigger housing.”

  Soon, I was under verbal fire. The faster I answered, the faster the next question came at me.

  “What are the characteristics of the BAR?”

  “Browning automatic rifle, weight twenty pounds, gas-operated, muzzle velocity 2,798 feet per second, effective range one hundred to fifteen hundred yards, max range forty-five hundred to five thousand yards, fed with a twenty-round magazine.”

  It went on and on for ten minutes. They thought I was a smart-ass. Then all of a sudden the first sergeant stopped and looked at Captain McAbee.

  “Goddamn it, I think he’s for real,” Brien said.

  The captain nodded and asked the final question.

  “How well do you know the 57 recoilless rifle?”

  “Sir,” I said, “very well.”

  McAbee knew the road ahead. He had a bunch of raw recruits it was his responsibility to prepare for battle.

  “Well, you’re the 57 section leader, and you have very few days to train men that don’t know the front end of the weapon from the ass end,” McAbee said. “Lieutenant Winn, he’s yours.”

  Winn, the weapons platoon leader, smiled and made a note on his roster. I didn’t see much of Lieutenant Winn after I took over. He was quiet and not very aggressive. I really didn’t know how much he knew about the 57 recoilless rifles or the 60 mortars, so it was easier for him to stay out of the way.

  McAbee dismissed me, and Winn took me out and introduced me to Sergeant First Class Albert Vaillancourt, the weapons platoon sergeant, and Sergeant First Class Gordon Roberts, the mortar section leader. I already knew Roberts. He’d just been married and I’d taken his CQ shift.

  Vaillancourt had seen combat in Burma with Merrill’s Marauders in World War II. He was married and had three children. One of the children was only two months old. Vaillancourt knew what to expect. He’d fought deep in the triple canopy jungles. They had to use machetes to cut through the bush, which was so thick, it would block out the sunlight. It was always hot and humid. It felt like hell, he said. But he heard the landscape in Korea was different. It could be extremely hot all day and then turn bitter cold. A different kind of hell, Vaillancourt told me.

  He was reluctant to talk about combat and I didn’t press him.

  A few nights later the sergeants were scheduled to go on a night compass course. Some of the men in the weapons platoon were headed to town. I told them to wait for me, I wo
uld be back in a couple of hours. This brought a chorus of laughter.

  “You are full of crap, you’ll be out there for four or five hours,” said one of the men.

  I was paired with Roberts. Since we were section leaders, we worked closely together. Roberts had limited World War II experience and wasn’t thrilled about heading off to war again. He knew he would miss his new wife. He wanted to be home right now with a regular life—a house, a good job and a few kids—not struggling through the woods looking for random points in the dark. I wanted to go out. As the other pairs prepared to hustle into the woods, I pulled Roberts aside.

  “Do you want to get home to your wife quickly?”

  “Sure, but how are we going to do that?” he asked.

  ”Get the map out on the ground and cover us with a poncho.”

  We got under the poncho with a flashlight, and I told him we were not going to walk through the woods. We were going to shoot the azimuth on the map, get the distance, see where it intersected with a terrain feature, a road or creek, and take the quickest way to that point. To make this work, you had to know how to figure the change in the magnetic declination on the map.

  I shot the azimuth, made the change and traced it with my finger along the map until I hit a trail or road intersection.

  “There,” I said, getting up and folding the poncho and putting it over my pistol belt.

  We hustled down the road and ducked down a trail and made it to the stake well before the others. We did the same thing at each stake we found. An hour and a half later we made it to the last stake. The captain waiting to certify all the teams was shocked to see us. Some teams were just getting to the first and second point. But we had all the stake numbers correct.

  “I don’t know how the shit you did it, but you are finished.”

  We just smiled and punched each other in the arm. I joined the guys and went to town; Roberts went home.