Category: This great Nation & Its People
The man lived on his rural farm on the outskirts of his tiny Mississippi town. His yard was meticulously maintained, and Old Glory fluttered quietly in the breeze from an imposing flagpole set in concrete. The flag didn’t stay out overnight…ever. It had been raised and lowered every day on this pole for more than half a century.
He was the very image of a good Christian man of character. He had served as a deacon in his church and teased a modest living out of the farmland that surrounded his modest three-bedroom home. He had raised his kids well and selflessly helped his neighbors. Now well into his eighties, he had agreed to spend an afternoon with me and my young son.
The man was soft-spoken as we nursed our iced tea and soaked up every word. He looked off into nothing as his mind wandered back to very different times. Though we sat in peace, security, and comfort, his memory took him somewhere else.
This unassuming man described being a 19-year-old Infantryman heading ashore in a Higgins boat on June 6, 1944. His destination was Omaha beach. It was about 1400 in the afternoon.
He charged terrified down the open ramp into the very bowels of hell. Wrecked equipment and shredded bodies littered the sand, surf, and shale. The smell of cordite, dirty smoke, ruptured bowels, and death pervaded everything. German mortar and artillery fire still slammed into the beach as well as the advances inland.
A Steep Learning Curve
The man survived the Longest Day to advance with the Allied vanguard. A product of the Mississippi backwoods and a survivor of the Great Depression, this tough teenager found that he had a knack for soldiering. When his company needed intelligence he and a fellow Southern redneck boy would slip off into the night looking for trouble. Sometimes they came back with a prisoner. Sometimes not. The man told me he got comfortable with a knife in the dark.
By late August the man and his buddies had taken the full measure of the enemy. The hard fighting through the bocage hedgerows had brought him face to face with the Nazi superman. He found the German Wehrmacht to be a hardened professional fighting force.
He called the Waffen SS “those Gestapo men.” Decades later his hatred for these fanatical racist lunatics modulated the timbre of his conversation. He told me unapologetically, “We didn’t take many of those Gestapo men prisoner.”
He explained that the SS frequently left a couple of snipers behind when the Germans finally abandoned a position of strategic importance. The carnage they inflicted made little difference in the grand scheme. They just dealt death whenever they could.
Kill or Be Killed
My buddy’s unit was tasked to seize Orly airport outside Paris. The Luftwaffe had used Orly as a fighter and bomber base throughout the occupation of France, and the Allied air forces had pounded it into rubble as a result. In August of 1944, however, the wrecked aerodrome was deceptively quiet.
The company commander called a tactical halt. My friend and his battle buddy crept around the periphery of the wrecked airport before ascending one of the taller structures for a proper vantage. Taking cover such that they could just peer over the edge of the roof they finally saw the two German snipers. Tucked into a pile of debris on the roof of a nearby structure the two SS sharpshooters were well-camouflaged and fixated on the approaches to the aerodrome. The two Germans had no idea that they had only moments to live.
Speaking in hushed whispers my buddy and his comrade estimated the range to their targets and adjusted the rear sights on their heavy M1 rifles to compensate. My friend called the man on the left and his counterpart oriented on the one on the right. On the soft count of three, both men squeezed their triggers.
Both rifles rolled back in recoil as their 152-grain M2 ball rounds covered the distance to the pair of German snipers at 2,800 feet per second. Both of the American grunts had grown up with guns, and they knew how to shoot. Each GI center-punched the coal-scuttle helmet of his respective SS target, killing them both instantly.
The Guns
In 1936 the United States military was woefully behind those of most other major powers. The Great Depression had ravaged the American economy, and a lack of attention to military readiness had taken a horrible toll on such stuff as tanks and combat aircraft. The gleaming exception was the M1 rifle. American troops entered WW2 with what General George Patton described as, “the finest battle implement ever devised.”
Designed by a Canadian-American inventor named John Cantius Garand (properly pronounced, I’m reliably told, so as to rhyme with “errand.”), the M1 was a .30-caliber, gas-operated, 8-shot, clip-fed, semiautomatic rifle. The weapon weighed 9.5 pounds and was 43.6 inches long. By the time the M1 reached US Army troops in 1937, production at Springfield Armory was ten rifles per day. Two years later output languished at 100 per day. By the end of the weapon’s massive production run, however, some 5.4 million had been made by four major manufacturers.
By modern standards, the M1 was heavy, cumbersome, and grossly overpowered. However, at the outset of the Second World War, the M1 was a wonder weapon. Ammunition was supplied in spring steel 8-round en-bloc clips that were pressed in place from above with the bolt locked to the rear.
En bloc simply means that the ammunition clip became part of the weapon’s action during firing. When loading the rifle, the operator pressed the clip down from above and snatched his thumb clear as the bolt automatically flew home. The clip was ejected out of the top of the action after the last round fired.
An M1 rifle cost Uncle Sam about $85 during the war. That’s about $1260 today. The M1 was rugged, accurate, and powerful. I have never spoken with a combat veteran who carried one who had anything but unvarnished praise for the piece.
The Rest of the Story
There was a still a great deal of fighting left to be done after my friend and his comrades cleared Orly airport. There is no telling how many lives these two young warriors saved just in this one exchange. However, the worst was yet to come.
The Ardennes Offensive has become known as the Battle of the Bulge from the vantage of comfortable hindsight. My buddy said at the time it was pure unfiltered chaos. German Army Group B led by Joachim Peiper and the 1st SS Panzer Division slashed deep into Allied territory, shredding American defenses and scattering combat units randomly among the detritus. The US response devolved into tiny packets of troops fighting for their lives. My pal found himself leading a handful of bedraggled survivors deep behind the German spearheads.
Otto Skorzeny’s Operation Greif involved the insertion of English-speaking Germans in American uniforms to sow confusion in Allied rear areas. The effect that had on the Allied defense was outsized beyond their pure numbers. Suddenly nobody trusted anybody they didn’t already know well, and jumpy sentries shot first and asked questions later.
After a protracted escape and evasion, my buddy’s motley band finally made it back to friendly lines exhausted and spent. The first sentry they encountered covered them with a BAR and demanded to know who won the World Series in a particular year. My buddy not so gently explained that he had no idea. He expounded that while the Yankees were comfortably enjoying their baseball he was out hunting opossums in the Mississippi swamps to keep his family from starving. The sentry let them pass.
My buddy rendered his professional opinion on all of the major US small arms. He explained that there was always only one M1. The M1 Carbine was simply the Carbine, and the M1A1 Thompson was always the Thompson. Nobody used the term Garand. The standard US Infantry rifle was always just called the M1.
He said for an entire year some part of his skin was touching that rifle. Awake, asleep, shaving, eating, or defecating, that weapon was always at arm’s reach. He said that the Carbine was an effective and handy combat tool, but that it did frequently require several shots to take a German soldier out of the fight. By contrast, he said that so long as you caught him center of mass, the M1 would put an enemy soldier down instantly every single time.
We went back to the man’s barn neatly populated with tractor components and the sundry detritus of a working farm. The open building smelled like motor oil, horse manure, and dirt. Hanging obscurely in the corner was a dusty German helmet, the faded SS runes still visible. There was a .30-caliber hole running cleanly in and out both sides. How do we make such men as these?
This is the first Campfires Tales article and it was published in the GUNS Magazine September 2001 issue.
Once upon a time in this country, young men looked up to certain individuals with great admiration. These were not sports stars, Hollywood celebrities or musicians putting on a façade of respectability.
These were people who had faced real danger or adversity and triumphed through the strength of their character and moral conviction. These people were called heroes.
I believe in heroes, role models, whatever you choose to call them. Who is your hero?
For me, that person is the father I never knew. My dad was killed before I was 1 year old, and I have always wondered why. Coincidentally, his own father had been killed just before he was born, so he never saw his father either. What might my life have been like if this had not happened? Would it have been the same or totally different? It would be wonderful to be able to talk to him. But that is only wishful thinking.
My dad would have been a hero — or at least I like to think so. At the time he was killed, he owned a deer rifle, a shotgun, a .22 rifle and several fishing poles, so he must have been an all-right guy. His older brothers and sisters always told me what a grand man he was. But I will never know.
My step-dad was a hero too, although I did not realize it until much later. Mom remarried in 1942 and my new dad was too old to be drafted so he enlisted, went off to war, was wounded in action and spent 18 months as a prisoner of war. He had no education, dropping out of school at the age of 10 to go to work with his father in the coal mines. In spite of his lack of skills, he always had a job and he always took good care of me.
He was not a hunter or shooter, but he took me fishing every chance he got. Most importantly, he taught me how to work. I did not really appreciate him until I was out on my own with a family to support. He was part of the “Greatest Generation.” His last wish on this earth was to live out his remaining days in the Veterans’ Home.
My older cousins were also my heroes. They did not have to worry about being drafted either. They were too young so they dropped out of school, lied about their ages and enlisted in the Navy. They, too, were part of the “Greatest Generation.”
I’ve had various other heroes in my life. I was 8 years old when I first saw John Wayne as gunfighter Quirt Evans in “The Angel and the Badman.” He became my hero then and remained so to me in one capacity or another for the rest of his life.
When I used silver dollars from my piggy bank to buy that first edition of “Sixguns by Keith,” I discovered a new hero. He would have a profound effect on my life — he certainly had much to do with my life-long love of big-bore sixguns.
But between John Wayne and Elmer Keith, my all-time hero emerged. I was in grade school at the time, and fortunately had a teacher who forced us to read biographies.
I went through all the easy-reading books on Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill and Davy Crockett, but when I got to Theodore Roosevelt, I found my real hero reading “The Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt” by Hermann Hagedorn. The copy of this book which I now own was discarded by the local high school in 1970. Discarded! And it is in great shape. I guess no one reads it anymore. I’m saving it for my oldest grandson, and I keep hoping it will be reprinted so the other two boys can have a copy.
As I first read about Roosevelt’s life I was not too impressed. After all, he came from New York, he was sickly as a boy, and the story seemed to be going nowhere. Then I came to the part where “the doctor told him he had heart trouble, that he must choose a profession with no violent exertion, that he must take no vigorous exercise, that he must not even run upstairs.”
So what did Roosevelt do? He went to Europe and climbed the Matterhorn! This was a man! For the rest of his time on earth, he stressed the strenuous life. While other boys in my high school class were reading “I The Jury,” “Blackboard Jungle” and “Hot Rod magazine,” I was reading Roosevelt’s “African Game Trails” and “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.”
At a time when I needed a real hero, Roosevelt filled the bill quite nicely. Even today I sub-scribe to the Theodore Roosevelt Classics Library, getting a new volume every month. They, too, will go to the grandsons some day.
Where are the Theodore Roosevelts today? I cannot think of anyone on the national scene who I consider a hero or role model. Yes there are many unknown local heroes that we may look to, but nationally?
Making millions of dollars for the ability to throw, pass, kick or shoot a ball does not make a “sports hero” — whatever that is — although there are sports figures who do a lot of good away from the playing field.
I was relieved when my middle grandson reached the age of 10 and decided the celebrities of the WWF were not really heroes, role models, nor even worth watching anymore. “Celebrity” has become nearly synonymous with “hero” in the minds of millions of people who don’t realize how far apart those two concepts really are.
I can’t be John Wayne, or Elmer Keith, or Theodore Roosevelt. None of us can. But I can be a real hero where it really counts: with my kids and grandkids. So can you.
We have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers to what today could easily be labeled as the Fatherless Generation. Society is paying a large price for the lack of heroes today and the overabundance of poor role models. Somehow this must be changed.
If shooting and hunting are to survive —more importantly if society as we know it, what is left of it, is to survive — we desperately need role models for kids, and especially for boys.
We need teachers that will be real role models for kids who have none. We need men who will serve as substitute fathers and grandfathers where there are none.
A century from now the words I’ve written, where I lived, how much money I made, even the sixguns I shot and enjoyed, will not make one bit of difference. But the time I spend with kids may very well make a great deal of difference. The most important thing a man can do is to be a father and grandfather worthy of admiration.
That is the job of a real hero.
During 1942 and 1943, as German U-Boats lurked off the east coast of the United States, the Florida Straits proved a particularly fertile hunting ground for Nazi submarines.
As America was unprepared when war arrived in December 1941, there were few resources available to defend America’s eastern seaboard and the valuable merchant shipping that hugged the coast. In those dangerous early days of the war at sea, one of America’s prime defenders was the normally docile “blimp”.
The Solution?
In 1939, the U.S. Navy developed the K-Craft airship, or blimp, which would become a workhorse during WWII used to patrol for Nazi U-boats and provide important cover for Allied convoys. The blimps were equipped with the ASG-type radar, featuring a detection range of 90 miles and magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) equipment.
The K-ships carried four Mk-47 depth bombs (with two in a bomb bay and two on external pylons), as well as a .50 cal Browning M2 machine gun in the front of the control car. A crew of 10 was standard on K-ships, made up of a commander/pilot, a navigator/pilot, two co-pilots, an airship rigger, an ordnance chief, two aircraft mechanics, and two radio operators.
The K-Ships could remain aloft for about 24 hours, making them ideal for anti-submarine warfare as well as search and rescue missions. Blimp patrols were generally long and uneventful, but one remarkable incident involving a Navy blimp made for one of the most amazing stories of World War II.
The Duel
On the night of July 18, 1943, the U.S. Navy blimp K-74 (from Blimp Squadron ZP-21 based at NAS Richmond, Florida) was engaged in convoy escort duties over the Florida Straits.
During this flight, K-74’s onboard radar located a German submarine running on the surface. As no American units were available to engage the enemy and as the U-Boat was proceeding directly towards the convoy, K-74’s commander decided to attack with everything they had.
There is some confusion if K-74’s depth bombs failed to release during the attack, but damage below the sub’s waterline would indicate that at least one depth bomb did explode nearby. K-74’s crew engaged the sub with the .50-caliber MG mounted in the nose of the gondola, as well as their personal weapons — including a Thompson SMG and M1911 pistols.
Return fire from the U-Boat’s 20mm AA guns knocked out one of K-74’s engines, punctured the gasbag in several places and wounded one crewman.
In return, K-74’s fire damaged the submarine, the hammering from the big .50-caliber rounds damaged the sub’s hull, rendering it unable to submerge. U-134 left the area, limping back to its base in France on the surface. She never made it home. U-134 was sunk with all hands aboard on August 27, 1943, in the Bay of Biscay, by the British frigate HMS Rother.
As for K-74, the damaged blimp crashed into the sea. While the crew was in the water waiting to be rescued by the U.S. Navy destroyer Dahlgren, tragedy struck when the wounded crewman was attacked by sharks and disappeared.
The rest of the crew was rescued. Thus ended the only known gun battle involving a U.S. Navy blimp, and the only loss of an airship crewman due to enemy action.
Before withdrawing from the area, crewmen from U-134 boarded K-74’s floating gondola and photographed parts of the wreck. These images were passed to another U-boat along with the description of the battle with K-74. The U.S. Navy did not know of their existence until they were discovered in West Germany in 1957.
Additional Firepower
About 15 years ago, I found a handful of photos in the U.S. Navy collection at the U.S. National Archives — the images showed an experimental mounting of a Browning Automatic Rifle in the gondola of a Navy K-ship blimp.
Although the photos were dated “October 1943”, there is no way to know for sure if the experimental BAR mount was initially conceived before or after K-74’s gunfight with U-134, but testing of additional armament for the K-Ships was accelerated after the blimp’s combat with the sub.
No doubt that the accurate and hard-hitting BAR would have been a tremendous help to the K-74 crew in their gunfight with U-134. As far as is known, no BARs were ever mounted on K-ships on active duty.
Conclusion
So there you have it — what must be one of the most bizarre battles of World War II, fought off the coast of the United States by two extremely unlikely opponents. One was a blimp never truly intended for battle, but one that did in fact manage to wound its deadly opponent and seal its ultimate fate.
He led a reconnaissance team during a mission near Phú Lộc, Vietnam, in 1967. During the engagement, Capers sustained multiple wounds while directing his men and coordinating their evacuation under intense enemy fire. His actions were instrumental in saving the lives of every member of his team.
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Pity it took so long to get it to him! (Almost 60 years!!) But that’s the problem with the Blue Max. In that sometimes you get it ASAP & other times it’s almost too late. I say that it’s just pure BS and a few officers need a blow torch pointed at them. Grumpy
His name is Vincent Speranza. Like other members of the Greatest Generation, he was full of grit. He joined the Army after graduating from high school in 1943. As an inexperienced 19-year-old, he was assigned to H Company, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne. Shortly after completing training, Vince was shipped out to Bastogne, Belgium, as a machine gunner.
Here, he shortly found himself in the thick of battle, in a foxhole, during the dead of winter. He and his unit were freezing, hungry, scared and short on supplies and ammunition. To top it all off, they were surrounded by German troops. What could be worse?
“The first eight days we got pounded by German artillery,” Speranza recalled. “But this was the 101st. They could not get past [us]. They never set one foot in Bastogne.” On the second day, his friend Joe Willis was wounded, taking shrapnel in both legs. He was pulled back to a makeshift combat hospital inside a mostly destroyed church. Vince tracked him down and asked if there was anything he could do for his friend.
The answer was simple — Joe wanted a beer. Vince told him he was crazy! It would be impossible to get beer anywhere, as the city was destroyed and the 101st was surrounded by Germans. The supply chain was shut down, and they were constantly taking artillery fire nonstop.
What remained of the town was bombarded. But Joe wanted a beer. He needed a beer to take his mind off the war.
Members of the 101st marching in Bastogne.
Beer Run Bravery
If ever there were a medal for most courageous beer run, Speranza would have earned it! Moving through town in the cover of darkness, Vince went from blown-out tavern to blown-out tavern, searching until he found a working tap.
At the third tavern, Vince pulled on a tap and beer came flowing out. What would he use to transport his found treasure? Speranza filled his helmet — the same one used as a makeshift shovel and porta-potty in the foxhole — with all the beer he could handle and returned to the hospital.
Mission accomplished! Vince triumphantly poured beer from his helmet for Joe and the other wounded men around him. When the beer ran out, they asked him to go for more. So, what did Vince do? He made a second dangerous beer run. Surely, he was deserving of a second medal for such heroic actions.
The streets of Bastogne as they appeared in 1945,
when Speranza made his beer run.
Dangers of War
As he returned to the hospital the second time, Vince was confronted by a Major demanding to know what he was doing. Vince sheepishly said, “Giving aid and comfort to the wounded” was the paratrooper’s simple answer. A truer statement never uttered!
After an ass chewing about the dangers of giving beer to men with gut and chest wounds, Vince put his helmet back on, beer pouring down his uniform, and headed out. While that could have been the end of the story, the story continued for 65 years when Vince returned to Bastogne for an anniversary celebration.
Vince Speranza in front of the namesake beer he inspired.
Vince Speranza showing where he was in Bastogne during a visit.
Airborne Beer
When Vince returned 65 years later for an anniversary, tour guides asked him what unit he was with. When he told them the 501, the guides knew exactly where to take Vince. “You would have been dug in right here.” Vince looked around, acknowledged them, and looked at the filled-in trench. It was very emotional for Vince, as you can imagine.
Wanting to forget the ravages of war he experienced, he started telling other stories to lighten his mood. He eventually got to his beer run story, and the tour guides were shocked and stunned. “You’re the Guy?! We thought that was a made-up story! You’re famous!” At this point, the tour guides called the waiter over!
“Waiter, 4 Airborne beers, please!” Imagine Vince’s surprise when the waiter appears, with four bottles of beer on his tray, with a label of an American paratrooper carrying his helmet full of beer. And to top it off, the bottles of beer were served with ceramic cups shaped like an American GI’s helmet.
Airborne beer is brewed by Brasserie de Bouillon in Bastogne, Belgium. Now you know the rest of the story. Vince Speranza died August 2nd, 2023, at the ripe old age of 98. You can be sure he arrived in heaven with a helmet full of beer for all his Army buddies.