Reader's Digest Soldier Stories Read online

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  WORLD WAR I

  Unforgettable Eddie Rickenbacker

  WORLD WAR II

  The Invasion

  Sergeant Erwin and the Blazing Bomb

  No Medals for Joe

  Hero of Sugar Loaf Hill

  On a Wing and a Prayer

  Those Navy Boys Changed My Life

  THE KOREAN WAR

  1000 Men and a Baby

  Veterans of a Forgotten Victory

  The Long Way Home

  THE VIETNAM WAR

  The Courage of Sam Bird

  Submarines to the Rescue!

  Beyond the Call of Duty in Vietnam

  A Hero Comes Home

  THE BOSNIAN WAR

  Pilot Down: The Rescue of Scott O’Grady

  THE GULF WAR

  They Went to War

  THE WAR ON TERROR

  One Man Bomb Squad

  The Men He Left Behind

  Miracle Mission

  Most Valuable Player

  You Own Every Bullet

  A Soldier’s Last Bedtime Story

  An Army of Two

  Credits and Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  War affects us all. The violence. The destruction. The death of heroes, and the incredible stories of determination and survival. The fearless men and women who go forth to serve our country and fight for our freedom willingly accept their mission. They are part of an army of thousands, and each has a story to tell.

  Reader’s Digest has been chronicling the deeply moving and complex saga of America in conflict since World War I, and now we have sifted through these real-life stories to provide you with a retrospective of the most extraordinary tales of camaraderie, sacrifice, and heroics all under one cover. These stories are not about the wonder of our Stealth aircraft, nuclear-powered attack subs, and armored battle tanks; these are stories about people—their motivations, their fears, and their triumphs.

  These stories illuminate the multifaceted nature of our military history and offer inspiration to all Americans. The brave men and women profiled here are ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary things: They have mastered fear, challenged adversity, and pushed themselves beyond their own personal limits. Their experiences not only provide us with a unique perspective into their world but also inspire us to imagine the impossible and overcome the unimaginable.

  WORLD WAR I

  Unforgettable Eddie Rickenbacker

  BY LOWELL THOMAS

  On February 27, 1941, I delivered my nightly newscast over CBS radio with a heavy heart. For the lead item was that Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, the famed flier and a good friend of mine, had been critically injured in an airliner crash near Atlanta. The odds seemed stacked against him. Still, I remember thinking: In any fight for life, you’ve got to bet on Eddie. He’s won so many of them.

  Pinned for hours against the dead body of a steward before rescuers could get to him, Eddie had a crushed pelvis, a smashed hip, a crushed elbow, a broken knee, several broken ribs, and one eyeball was lying on his cheek. “He’s more dead than alive,” an intern said when he was brought to a hospital. “Let’s take care of the live ones.” That intern didn’t know Eddie Rickenbacker.

  “It’s going to be painful,” one of the doctors warned. “We can’t give you an anesthetic.”

  “Go ahead,” Eddie said grimly. “I can take it.”

  So, marveling at his courage, they put his eyeball back in its socket and sewed the eyelid shut to keep it there. Then they encased him in a plaster cast from chin to toes.

  Eddie’s condition worsened, and his wife, Adelaide, and two sons were called to his bedside. But he clung stubbornly to life. He woke up groggily one evening in an oxygen tent, the radio near his bed turned to Walter Winchell. “Flash! Eddie Rickenbacker is dying. He is not expected to live another hour.” With that, Eddie stuck his one good arm out of the oxygen tent, grabbed a water pitcher and heaved it at the radio. Both tumbled to the floor, smashed. And then he proceeded to recover, although it took four months of almost constant pain.

  Eddie once told me he’d had brushes with death 134 times—in aerial combat, auto races, and accidents. He was flirting with death the first time I saw him. I was a student at Valparaiso College in Indiana and went to the road races at Elgin, Illinois.

  Afterward, I sought out Rickenbacker, and was astonished to discover that this daredevil was only a year older than myself. He was tall (six-foot-two) and thin, coated with dust, goggles hanging around his neck. I complimented him on his driving. “It isn’t all just shut your eyes and grit your teeth,” he said. “You gotta know how to take the turns and baby your engine.”

  • • •

  Eddie was born in Columbus, Ohio, one of eight children of a construction worker. The family was poor. “A lot of kids had hand-me-downs from their older brothers,” he once told me, “but I had to wear my older sister’s shoes.” He dropped out of seventh grade and went to work at age 13 when his father was killed in an accident. Excited by a ride in the town’s first Ford runabout, Eddie got a job in an automobile company by offering to work free as a janitor. Impressed by his eagerness, the head of the company, Lee Frayer, promoted him to mechanic. Eddie proved to be a whiz.

  When Frayer drove one of his own cars in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup races, Eddie rode alongside him as mechanic. Before long, the youngster himself was competing against the best drivers of the time. He entered the famed Indianapolis 500 four times. He set a world record of 134 m.p.h. at Daytona Beach, Florida, in a Blitzen-Benz, and in 1916 won 7 of 13 major races, clearing $60,000. He had numerous wrecks, but seemed to have a charmed life. “My angel’s wings were always hovering over me,” he said.

  Then came World War I. When the United States declared war on Germany, Eddie—having recently had his first plane flight—set his heart on becoming an aviator. Over the age limit for pilot training, and lacking the required college degree, he joined the Army and got to Paris as a staff driver for Col. Billy Mitchell, head of the infant Army Air Corps. Eddie finally pestered Mitchell into transferring him to the flying school at Issoudun, France, as head mechanic. There our paths crossed again; I was covering the war as a correspondent. Eddie had learned to fly and had been commissioned, but because of his mechanical experience was assigned to servicing the planes flown by others. “I don’t like it one damned bit,” he grumbled.

  • • •

  Shortly, however, Eddie was allowed to join the famous “Hat-in-the-Ring” 94th Aero Pursuit Squadron. This blunt-spoken, grease-stained ex-mechanic soon made believers of his fellow pilots. On one of his first combat missions in April 1918, Eddie shot down a German Pfalz fighter. He brought down four more enemy planes in May, and won the French Croix de guerre.

  He survived innumerable close calls. In one dogfight, half his propeller was shot off. Another time, the fabric covering his upper right wing ripped off in a dive, and he had to nurse the plane home at treetop level, muttering prayers as bullets zinged around him. Many of his battles were with the famed “Flying Circus” of Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron.”

  He was made squadron commander. “I want no saluting, no unnecessary deference to rank,” he said. “We’re going to work together as equals, pilots and mechanics alike, every man doing his job.” On his first day as commander he downed two planes to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. And his manner inspired confidence in others. His old friend John Wheeler said that before one mission some of his pilots seemed jittery. “I expect to live to be 90 and then be arrested for rape,” Eddie told them. During October, he bagged 14 enemy aircraft, bringing his total to 26. When the war ended, his squa
dron had shot down 69 German planes, more than any other American unit. And he was the “Ace of Aces.”

  Eddie came home as one of the country’s most acclaimed heroes. Swamped with offers, he chose something he knew—the automobile business. He liked to say that America’s greatest freedom was the freedom to go broke, and he found out the hard way. Backed by a group of financiers, he designed and manufactured a sporty car called the Rickenbacker, which introduced four-wheel brakes. But, unable to buck the big automotive companies, he wound up $250,000 in debt.

  It didn’t daunt him. “Failure is the greatest word in the English language,” he declared. “If you have the determination, you can come back from failure and succeed.”

  He proved it. He not only paid off his debt but raised $700,000 more to buy the Indianapolis Speedway. There, amid the zoom of speeding cars and the rough camaraderie of the drivers, he was in his element. His parties on the eve of each Memorial Day race raged until dawn, with Eddie presiding by pounding on a table with a baseball bat.

  • • •

  In 1934 General Motors persuaded Eddie to take over Eastern Airlines, a money-losing subsidiary. Within a year the penny-pinching Eddie had it in the black. And when GM decided to sell the airline, Rickenbacker scrounged up $3.5 million and bought it. Captain Eddie, as the employees called him, ran the airline as he had run his fighter squadron, with all-out effort. He did everything from changing tires to selling tickets.

  One time Eastern had a rash of passenger complaints about luggage going astray. So when the airline’s management personnel came to Miami for a meeting, they were told their baggage would be delivered to their hotel rooms—but Eddie had it locked up overnight. The men turned up for the meeting the next morning unshaved, teeth unbrushed, wearing dirty shirts. “Now you guys know how the customer feels when you mishandle his luggage,” declared Rickenbacker.

  Despite his rough-and-tumble methods, Eddie had a deep regard for his employees. He installed the first airline 40-hour week, the first pension fund, group insurance and a stock-option plan. He pioneered in hiring war-veteran amputees.

  His grasp of detail was amazing. Once, on a visit to Eastern’s Miami shops, he found an overhaul crew trying to figure what was wrong with a disassembled engine. Eddie spotted a gear about the size of a saucer that didn’t look right. “How many teeth is this thing supposed to have?” he asked. “Forty-five,” the crew boss said, checking the blueprint. “Then here’s your trouble,” said Eddie, handing him the gear. “It’s got 46.” He was right.

  • • •

  Eddie took time off from his Eastern job only during World War II, when he journeyed the globe to report on the Allied air situation to world leaders. At one point he was asked to deliver a top-secret message to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then directing the Pacific fighting from Port Moresby, New Guinea. With a crew of seven, Eddie took off from Honolulu on October 21, 1942.

  On my newscast the next night, I again had the heart-wrenching task of broadcasting ominous news of Eddie. His plane had failed to reach its first scheduled stop, Canton Island, a speck of land in the vast South Pacific. Days turned into weeks as the Navy continued to search for the missing plane. Despite dwindling hopes, I still had faith in the special destiny of my indestructible friend. Yet I could scarcely believe it myself when the news came chattering over the teleprinter wires that Eddie and six of his seven companions had been rescued, more dead than alive, after floating in three life rafts for 24 days.

  Eventually Eddie told me the full story of the incredible ordeal. Their plane missed tiny Canton Island in the darkness, ran out of fuel and had to ditch at sea. Several of the men were hurt in the splashdown, and rations and water were lost in their scramble out of the sinking plane. “All we had were four small oranges,” Eddie said. Although he was the only civilian, his tough personality made him the leader. To make the four oranges last, he divided one into eight small parts only every other day.

  Roped together, the three rafts bobbed on the ocean swells day after weary day, the men sprawled together, some groaning from their injuries. Eddie, wearing a business suit and an old fedora, sat hunkered down scanning the endless expanse of ocean. Scorched by the tropical sun, and chilled at night by flying spray, all developed running sores. Sharks bumped against the rafts. “Salt water will kill you,” Eddie warned. “No matter how thirsty you get, don’t touch a drop.” After they had been afloat eight days, it rained and Eddie divided up the rain they caught.

  When a sea gull landed on his head, Eddie deftly grabbed it and they ate it—a seeming miracle that buoyed their hopes. But as days dragged by, the men neared the end of their endurance. One man died. Abrasively, Eddie taunted the others to stay alive. Some were determined to live, just for the pleasure of seeing him die. Finally a patrolling plane sighted them. Eddie had shrunk from 180 pounds to 126. But he resumed his journey and delivered the message to General MacArthur in person, if a bit late.

  • • •

  After the war, Rickenbacker returned to running Eastern Airlines with his same old vigor. For 25 consecutive years under his direction the airline showed a profit, a record unequaled in that business. At the age of 73 he stepped down, to devote his remaining years to spreading the gospel of patriotism and rugged individualism. Eddie believed emphatically in the old-fashioned virtues: thrift, hard work, love of country, and belief in God. Morning and night, he got down on his knees to pray.

  Because he spoke his mind, and had little regard for people who straddled issues or compromised, Eddie struck some people as a crusty curmudgeon. Yet he was a kindly and generous man. Paid $25,000 for his account of his ordeal in the Pacific, he donated the check to the Air Force Aid Society. And he gave his 2700-acre ranch in Texas to the Boy Scouts.

  As he grew older, all that his tough body had endured inevitably took its toll. Appropriately, his last public appearance was in a parade in Miami last July 4, when he was 82.

  I saw him shortly afterward. His hair was thin and white, and he walked with a cane, but he brushed aside attempts to help. I congratulated him on recovering from a recent critical illness and surgery. “I’ve cheated the grim reaper more times than anyone I know,” he said with a laugh. “That was number 135.”

  A few days later word came from Switzerland, where he had taken his beloved Adelaide for medical treatment, that Eddie was ill himself. Then in Zurich, not far from the little farms where his parents were born, his great heart was stilled at last.

  When I think of him now, inevitably there comes to mind his favorite Psalm, read at prayer meetings he held on the raft in the Pacific. The words define his deep faith in God and in his own remarkable destiny: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.”

  An excellent writer known for his strong, deep voice and love of far-flung places, Lowell Thomas was one of the very first to enter the field of radio and television broadcasting. Fearless, he brought back eyewitness accounts from the battlefields in World War I and during World War II often reported from a mobile truck behind the front lines. His radio program, Lowell Thomas and the News, ran for 46 years, the longest in U.S. history.

  WORLD WAR II

  The Invasion

  From Eisenhower’s hidden headquarters, tense nerve center of it all; from the flagship of the mighty armada that performed the miracle of reaching the coasts of France undetected; from the bloody beach, shoulder to shoulder with the GIs, three Reader’s Digest correspondents eyewitness the unfolding of the tremendous drama of the invasion.

  I. The Great Decision

  Behind the Scenes with Eisenhower

  BY ALLAN A. MICHIE

  Roving Editor of The Reader’s Digest, accredited to General Eisenhower’s headquarters

  Four years ago, before the last British soldier was taken off the beach at Dunkirk, Prime Minister Churchill assigned a small group of officers to the specific task of planning the return to t
he Continent. Then and for a long time afterward, it seemed a mere academic exercise. But by the time of the Casablanca conference in early 1943, the project no longer looked fantastic and the plans for D Day filled four huge volumes, each the size of a New York telephone book.

  The place where the invasion would strike was decided over a year ago. Roosevelt, Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved the decision in August 1943 at Quebec.

  That it would start between the end of May and the middle of June 1944 was decided at least eight months in advance. In November 1943 at Teheran, President Roosevelt so informed Marshal Stalin. The exact day was to be left to Eisenhower. Marshal Stalin expressed his complete satisfaction.

  When General Eisenhower arrived in London in January, he checked over the forecasts of the men and equipment he could expect, and on what dates. Satisfied, he set invasion week to be between June 3 and 10.

  But the selection of the precise day was a last-minute drama.

  Four or five weeks before D Day, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) departed from London and moved into battle headquarters conveniently near the loading ports and the “hards”—stretches of English beach paved with blocks onto which landing craft come at high tide.

  In a big, stodgy old house that has seen better days, standing in a rolling, wooded private park was the nerve center of the entire invasion operation.

  Vital pieces of information poured into this quiet woodland hideout—photographs taken by suicide pilots at zero feet above Normandy beaches showing five main types of mines and underwater obstacles to impede our landings, photographs of vital bridges and railway yards bombed to uselessness. The preparatory air attacks began eight weeks before D Day and by June 6, 82 strategic railway centers behind the Atlantic wall had been put out of action and most rail and road bridges leading to the Cherbourg Peninsula had been broken, forcing Germans to move up supplies and reinforcements by long detours. The air policy was to drop two bombs elsewhere, as on Pas de Calais, to one on the real invasion objective, to divert German suspicion.