Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe

Houston Chronicle - Oct. 3, 2001

Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe: Band Of Brothers in the News: Houston Chronicle - Oct. 3, 2001

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By Chrisdfw (Chrisdfw) (209.245.239.248 - 209.245.239.248) on Monday, October 08, 2001 - 06:38 pm:

HoustonChronicle.com
Oct. 3, 2001

Texas vets tell the stories behind TV series

By CLAUDIA FELDMAN

J.B. Stokes spent more than 50 years trying to forget his combat experience in World War II.

It didn't work. In fact, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne has been on his mind now more than ever.

In these fear-filled days full of talk of war, Stokes worries how that might translate to blood spilled and lives ruined.

"I think we should take action against the terrorists," says the old, decorated paratrooper from the Fort Worth area. "But we shouldn't get carried away and do something now we'll regret later. We have to go slow and go deliberate so we can finish."

Old war memories also have been kicked up by Band of Brothers, first a much-acclaimed book by World War II historian Stephen Ambrose, now a 10-part HBO miniseries brought to life by Hollywood artists Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

In the book, Ambrose explained what life really was like for the men of E Company. HBO invested $120 million to do the same, producing a TV series that is stunning in its dedication to accuracy and detail.

Only one quibble, say Stokes and Ralph Spina, another surviving Texan from E Company.

"We're not the heroes," says Spina, now of Fort Worth. "The heroes are in the cemeteries. J.B. and I, we were in the company of heroes."

Stokes, 79, lives in the small town of Reno. He was drafted when he was 20 and hoping for a military career that was short and safe. Just as he finished basic training, however, a sergeant came through the barracks looking for men to join a paratroopers' unit.

"There were about nine of us," Stokes says, "and we just ran him out. We said we didn't want any part of it. Then, when he was gone, we got to calling each other chicken."

In no time, they were running after the sergeant and putting their names on the list.

The training was rough, Stokes remembers. Of the nine friends who went to jump school with him, only four graduated.

"It does take a lot," Stokes says mildly, "to jump out of a plane."

In August 1943, Stokes went on a blind date with a pretty woman with long brown hair, and he had such a good time he asked her out for the next night. He never showed, though. Instead, he and his buddies in E Company were on their way to France and the invasion of Normandy.

The paratroopers wove back and forth from France to England to Holland, back to France, then on to Belgium, Germany and Austria. Along the way, they drew some of the most dangerous assignments handed out by America's military.

"We took Hitler's whole home base," Stokes says with satisfaction.

Toward the very end, in Austria, Stokes remembers talking with a group of adolescent schoolboys who were taken away from their parents when they were kindergarten-age and trained for Hitler's secret service.

"The boys were taught that if Americans ever came, they'd take all their food. But what really happened, when we came in, was that we brought food and fed everybody. The boys couldn't understand why they had been lied to."

Or, the vet says, that it was just one lie of many.

Stokes went home Dec. 1, 1945, and straight into the arms of the girl he'd met on the blind date. Two weeks later, Dec. 15, they were married. Today, he and Ola Mae have four children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Since the war, Stokes has worked as a water superintendent and a director of public works. "But my main priority has been raising my family and taking care of them. Just think, last Mother's Day we had 21 of us here in Reno. That's hard to beat."

Stokes enjoys all the hoopla surrounding the book and the HBO miniseries, though he is not mentioned by name in either.

In 1992, when Ambrose first attended an E Company reunion and interviewed the men, Stokes felt poorly and stayed in his hotel room.

He found out several months later, after coronary bypass surgery, that night in New Orleans he probably had a mild heart attack.

Spina, whose timing was a little better, is portrayed in the sixth installment of Band of Brothers, if briefly.

"There were so many of us boys," says Spina, 81. "Each one of us can't be on the screen for 20 minutes."

Spina, an E Company medic from south Philadelphia, was in California, married and a father-to-be when he got word he was drafted. It was 1942. He was 22.

"I didn't want to be regular infantry," he says, explaining why he volunteered to jump out of airplanes and serve as a combat medic instead. "Paratroopers stick together. Maybe that's why Ambrose wrote the book about us."

E Company also was famous for its accomplishments: They parachuted into France on D-Day, led the counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge and captured Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

One of their most miserable stops was Bastogne, Belgium, where it was so cold the company resembled George Washington's army at Valley Forge. The difference, as Ambrose wrote, was they were getting fired upon, had no huts, and warming fires were out of the question.

It was there that Spina went on a hike with a buddy, Pvt. Ed "Babe" Heffron, to pick up much needed medical supplies from a nearby aid station. On the way back, they took a shortcut in the dark, Heffron fell into a German foxhole, and the next thing either of them heard was a voice calling, "Hinkle, Hinkle, ist das du?"

Heffron came tearing out of the hole and yelled as he ran in the opposite direction, "Hinkle your ass!"

As E Company moved into Germany, they passed a concentration camp, part of the Dachau complex, full of starved, dazed prisoners. The men slept in wooden bunks, four, five and six to a bunk, many of them so weak they couldn't even stand.

"It was the most pitiful sight I ever saw," says Spina, who still hates to think back on it. "If we had any food, we gave it to them, but we didn't spend too much time there. We just freed the prisoners, took the guards and got rid of them, and moved on. There were troops behind us who were going to provide more help. We had to get on with the war."

E Company's final stop was Austria. "They were going to send us to Japan," Spina says, "but thank God, the war ended."

Spina traveled first to Philadelphia to see his father, then to Los Angeles for a reunion with his wife, Agnes, and 2-year-old daughter, Carol Ann.

The paratrooper remembers the toddler wouldn't have much to do with him at first. "But after a day or two, we were pretty chummy."

Spina went back to his life's work -- he's an amusement park consultant. These days, he says, he's only part-time.

Meeting Hanks, Spielberg and Ambrose, all determined that the nation pay proper homage to the vets, has been wonderful, Spina says. "I have pictures of them. They're just regular guys. I love them."

What really puts pep in his step, however, are the annual E Company reunions. Spina says they give him a chance to razz his old buddy, Heffron.

"How's Hinkle?" Spina never forgets to ask. "Hinkle, ist das du?"

By bqicgjmi (123.125.156.138) on Friday, March 12, 2010 - 10:16 am: