MOUNTAIN EMPIRE COMMUNITY COLLEGE - The tall, distinguished older man strode quietly into the Goodloe Center auditorium and was immediately surrounded by admirers waiting to hear him speak. His face was a mass of creases, his hands battered by decades of wresting with machinery. But Darrell "Shifty" Powers could still wear a paratrooper's jump suit and boots with the authority of the warrior he had been 60 years earlier. His hard, steady gaze could still lock on with the intensity of an expert rifleman finding his target. Audience members stood up to shake his hand, to get his autograph, to stand close to a man whose story became the stuff of prime time television legend.
They already knew a lot about Powers before he spoke the first word into the microphone at the podium.


They knew he and his comrades-in-arms had helped drive German forces off the Normandy coast on D-Day, beginning the 1944 Allied liberation of Europe. They knew Powers and his buddies had fought their way from France to Adolf Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat, the Eagle's Nest. They knew Powers and millions of men like him had helped save the world from tyranny 60 years ago.

Audience members knew Powers before they met him, having seen an actor portray the Clinchco man in Tom Hanks' and Steven Spielberg's acclaimed 2001 HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers."

But the target of such hero worship never felt comfortable with the recognition. For him, the heroes are the men who didn't get to come home. For him, war stories were never meant to be told around the family dinner table.

For him, World War II wasn't a path to glory. It was a job that had to be done by ordinary Americans - on the battlefield and on the home front.

"My name's Darrell 'Shifty' Powers," he said to the audience, simply and quietly, before telling his story in his own words.


BECOMING A SOLDIER


Like most veterans, Powers didn't spout a string of colorfully dramatic battle tales for his audience. He simply began with the beginning.

Powers was 18 and a machinist trainee in Norfolk when he enlisted in the Army in 1942 during the war's early days.

He was assigned to the newly formed 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment and began training at Camp Toccoa, Ga. There, the new regiment earned its nickname, "Currahee," a Cherokee word meaning "stand alone."

Each day, their training officer, Herbert Sobel, forced the recruits to run six miles up and down Currahee Mountain. Trainees would hike 20 miles without water. Sobel would nitpick the young men constantly, gradually transforming them into one of the Army's toughest fighting units.

After four months, the 506th's 2nd Battalion marched 116 miles from northeast Georgia to Atlanta, then boarded trains for parachute school at Ft. Benning, Powers said.

In their third week at Ft. Benning, the soldiers learned how to pack their own parachutes, he explained. "I'd lie awake at night, wondering if I'd done it right."

Trainees were required to complete four daylight parachute jumps and one night jump to qualify for their parachutist badge, Powers said. Soon, they began practicing night combat jumps with a rifle, grenades, a helmet, an entrenching tool, a canteen and three days of rations.

It takes three things to survive in combat, Powers said - a helmet to protect your head, a rifle to fight back and an entrenching tool to dig a hole where you can withstand enemy mortar attacks.

"You can go without food and water for a long time," he said. "We tried it."

In mid-1943, the 506th was attached to the 101st Airborne Division. Three months later, the troops boarded ships for the 12-day cruise to England, where they would spend a year preparing to invade the European continent.

Powers remembered seeing residents of a nearby town practice their own brand of warfare. They would conduct defensive drills, grabbing rakes, hoes, anything close at hand with which they could pummel invading German troops.

D-DAY

At about 1 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Powers and other members of his unit, Easy Company, rode a plane across the Normandy coastline and prepared to parachute into German fortified positions.

"I could hear bullets and shrapnel hitting the plane," he said. "As I jumped out the door, I could see that the left motor was on fire."

Powers landed in a pasture under a full moon, then hid with two other men in the giant hedgerows which divided French farmers' lands. They soon realized they were a day's walk away from their intended drop zone.

Powers and other men spent the night at an 82nd Airborne Division roadblock, then tried to extract a jeep from a crash-landed glider on the beach to speed their trip to rejoin Easy Company. The jeep was stuck. They tried to blast it free with explosives, but all the wreckage caught fire. "We kept on walking."

Airborne troops spent almost a week fighting at Carentan and battling German troops just a few feet away from them on the other side of hedgerows, Powers said. Then the 506th was sent back to England to prepare for an invasion of Holland.

THE DOOR TO GERMANY

On a beautiful, sunny day in mid-September, 1944, the 506th parachuted into Holland with elements of the 82nd and Polish and English divisions. They were to secure a road for tanks and supply shipments, preparing for a push across the Rhine River into Germany. But the plan didn't work, Powers said.


The English troops landed in the midst of a German tank division. "They were slaughtered," he said.

Easy Company spent three months fighting for control of the same road, Powers explained, laying low during the day and moving at night.

One night, he was on patrol, with orders to shoot anyone he saw. He froze at the sound of a person moving in the darkness, but figured the noise wasn't big enough for German troops.

Bracing to shoot if necessary, Powers said a password, "thunder," and got the correct reply, "flash." The intruder turned out to be his buddy Bill King, who had been wounded but left the hospital without authorization to rejoin the unit.


HITLER COUNTERATTACKS

From late November until a few days before Christmas, Easy Company rested and resupplied in France.

On Dec. 18, the unit was awaiting dinner when they learned that German troops had counterattacked the long, thin line of Allied defenders on the front in Belgium's Ardennes forest. The 506th was sent to defend the town of Bastogne with little food and no winter clothing.

For nearly a week, the troops fought off a much larger, encircling German force. Clouds prevented the air corps from dropping in fresh supplies.

"I can't describe how miserable it was," Powers said. "It was the worst battle we had. The wind would cut you in two. The warmest place you had was your foxhole."

Hungry troops once managed to find a stash of brown beans, Powers said. "They were seasoned real good. They had worms in them."

Nowadays, when snow covers the ground in Clinchco, Powers said he often sits in front of a fire and finds himself thinking, "Man, I'm glad I'm not in Bastogne."

Easy Company lost 24 men during the Normandy invasion and lost another nine in Holland, he said. But that week of fighting at Bastogne cost the company 16 men.

Hitler's forces were finally pushed back by mid-January. Slightly more than a month later, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower met the 101st Airborne in France and awarded it the Distinguished Unit Citation for holding Bastogne.


THE ENDGAME

The last days of the war were relatively quiet for Easy Company, as allied forces rapidly pushed the Germans backward across their own homeland in retreat. In early May 1945, the 506th got its final combat assignment of the war - capturing Hitler's Eagle's Nest - but they knew by then that their victory was all but official.

Powers didn't go to the Eagle's Nest. "I was too busy celebrating," he joked.

Soon, he had earned enough combat points to rotate off the front lines and come home.

Powers had emerged relatively unscathed from nearly a year of fighting, but he was lucky to survive the trip out of combat.

He was riding in a truck that collided head-on with another Army truck, killing one soldier. Powers was badly skinned up, with broken bones. He woke up in a hospital, feeling sorry for himself.

"Then I looked around the room and saw another guy. He was in a full body cast, head to toe, with only a couple little eye holes. That cured me."

After the war, Powers worked as a machinist in California for a few years, then worked for Clinchfield Coal Co. for 33 years.

He had boxed up his memories of combat. Powers didn't discuss the war with his family or acquaintances until Hanks and Spielberg immortalized Easy Company on the television screen.

Even during his Oct. 9 public speaking engagement at MECC, Powers refrained from telling the worst of it - the smell of decaying bodies, the knowledge that your bullet killed the man lying in front of you, the grief of watching friends die.

But an audience member summed up Powers' experience from her own perspective.

Jacqueline Havaux Bowers, the wife of retired Big Stone Gap minister Hugh Bowers, stood up. She explained that she was a little Belgian girl living under Nazi occupation near Bastogne during the war, and followed the progress of the battle on her father's map. "I was one of those kids who would ask GIs for cigarettes and chocolate."

Bowers came to the podium to hug Powers.


"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for us," she said. "I wouldn't be here at all, my family wouldn't be here at all, if it wasn't for him."


Link to article with picture.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=128...5&PAG=461&rfi=9

Great story.

Having that Belgian woman around added a great perspective, too.

Great article. Thanks for posting that Sue.

Vee

Wow, I have to print that off for my husband to read. It's just great! And it sure sounds like the Shifty we've all come to love, doesn't it? What a great man! Thanks for sharing that, Sue. Made my day.

Outdamnstanding, Sue! Like many here, I'm a big Shifty fan. And his personality just pours out of this story. Great, great stuff.

And the Belgian woman in the audience is the perfect coda.

Sue, thank you ma'am. y.o.s., Doug

Sue,

Thanks for posting a big Footnote to a large Chapter in history. How fortunate we are to still have Shifty Powers and the rest of the Easy men around to tell it like it was.

LongJohn

I'm with everyone else. Thanks, Sue. The cap of the Belgian woman, outstanding.

Paul

Awesome article Sue, we don't get to hear much about Shifty and his take on the battles. All of these Vets are amazing. I'm so glad we are still able to hear their stories.

Vanessa

Great story. The Belgian woman at the end got me in the heart.
thanks for sharing.
--J.

Thanks for that story Sue. As the author stated he still wears the uniform with authority.

Wow! Thanks for posting that one Sue...

gold

Awesome, thanks for finding and posting this! I always liked Shifty!

Paige

Great article and I'm sure Morgy would love to read this.

Morgy where you at?

Thanks for sharing,

John

That was a great article. I think that is the first time I've heard the story of Shifty's landing in Normandy.

Doug and I would be in the same raft----I think Shifty is a tremendous role model, sort of an Alvin York in certain perspectives. I did a little surfing and found a local newspaper that had featured the article which included a tremendous photograph of him with some great Fall foliage in the background. I think the newspaper said that you could purchase copies.

Alan, after meeting Shifty, I described him as a sort of cross of Alvin York, Jed Clampett, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. And I stand by that.

And I second that, since I met him too. He's full of stories, good humor, and down-to-earthness(?), and an all-around great man to know.

Nice job, Sue - as usual.

Paul

Humility. The quality nobody admires yet every "great man" claims to inherit. I'd like to sit with Shifty on a porch swing on a summer evening.

Outstanding find, Sue. Thanks!

After I met Shifty last year, I spent some time finding the right words to describe my sense of him -- a unique character. Some of you have seen it, but I wrote this at the time (slightly abridged):

Shifty has always been one of my favorites from my first reading of the book in ’93. He epitomizes, along with Earl McClung and Popeye Wynn, those “country” boys who never hesitated to join up when they were needed. Shifty told me the story of his and Popeye’s being in machinist’s school in a shipyard on the Virginia coast, sitting pretty with appropriate deferments, when they decided to join the paratroopers together. Popeye wanted to make a bet that if either backed out, he’d pay the other $50. Fifty-eight years later the two of them were being interviewed for the documentary and telling that story again and after all the laughing over young fellas’ antics, Popeye said, “Y’know, Shifty. I shoulda just paid you that 50 bucks!” Can’t you just hear that conversation? And aren’t we lucky to have Popeye on tape to hear just how that would sound?

I complimented Shifty on his way with a yarn and he told me just so matter-of-factly, “You know? Those boys who came to film us called me ‘Mack, the Mike’!” And then he chuckled at the memory. See, Shifty thinks he’s just telling what happened. Makes me wonder how many of those stories he, Popeye and Earl recalled are on a tape someplace. Must have been something to be in the room for those conversations. It’s Earl and Shifty who are side by side chuckling, relating the V-E Day celebrations and how it was the only time the whole company ever fell out in their underwear. And what we saw is exactly what you get. Shifty can talk to you about tactics and placement and weapons and sightings and anything else, for that matter, and it’ll be completely without guile or boasting or anything but the plain unvarnished truth. Ten minutes with Shifty will restore your faith in whatever you have that needs it.

And THAT's unique! If you ever have the chance to meet him, get there. BK

That's a great tribute to Shifty BK.

Vee

You know what I'm going to say - "Shifty" isn't in the WWII Memorial Registry yet. (At least Tennessee Ernie Ford is honored).

DANGIT SUE!! Now I have to clean the...uh...sweat (That's it, sweat!) off my glasses....**sniff sniff**

I LOST IT when the Belguim lady entered the picture.................

BK, just so. Very, very well said.

And Paul, Tonia, BigJohn and I can attest to it affresh. We just spent a delightful afternoon with the Guths and the Shifty clan.

Before I get around to describing it, I just want to go back and read your testament again.

Just so. Thanks very much, BK. y.o.s., Doug

Man, man. I'm watching the series again tonight, as much of it as I can. In the other thread, "favorite scene...". I could list every one of them, as I said. But another would have to be Shifty's goodbye to Winters, and his simple question - what would he tell folks back home?

I'm glad he still continues to do so. Good god, these men. Doug, you're a lucky man.

I'm afraid I'm with Bowfin at the moment, even rethinking the article and what Shifty's (and his comrades') work meant to so many.

Paul

Paul, I am, and I've laid out just how lucky in the Reunions thread.

Here's a favorite Shifty story from the 2002 Reunion.

Some will remember that for the 2002 Emmies, Major Winters was in the auditorium for the telecast, while other E Company men were in a hotel lobby, and were ultimately combined with Major Winters by split-screen for the celebratory scene.

Shifty tells it this way. "We was in this hotel room the day before the awards, practicing with the film boys. And I starts to thinking, y'know, I'd like those hillbillies back home to see that I'm really here on TV in Hollywood. So I asks the boy in charge if I can move my chair up. He says that's OK.

But then I get up on the front row, and that boy behind the camera is swinging the camera over only so far. It doesn't look to me like he's gonna get me on camera.

So I goes up to him and I says 'Son, if you don't swing that camera far enough over to get me on, well, I'm gonna shoot you. Right here [tapping his forehead right between the eyes.]' His eyes got SOOOO big! And he nods, and I says 'fine then.'

The next day, before we goes on the air, I takes my seat. And I looks over at that boy. And I just does this [taps forehead right between the eyes].

And I got on camera. Hee hee.

. . . I just LOVE telling that story."

And I just loved hearing it. And retelling it.

So today, when I got in line to see Shifty, I greeted him by just tapping my forehead between the eyes. First, his son got it. And then Shifty got it. And he brightened right up. He STILL loves that story.

Priceless, Doug

That's hilarious, Doug. Truly priceless. Shifty is one of a kind.

Sue

Sue, I was there to witness the tapping, it's like some unspoken language between Shifty and Doug and anyone else 'in the know'. They were laughing and I had no idea what was funny

We had an excellent time talking with Shifty on Saturday. I'll defer to Doug for the rundown, as he is much more eloquent.


Paul

Paul, I've done a rundown labelled "Virginia Museum of Military Vehicles," and would be glad for your corrections and additions.

Extraordinary and moving story! Thanks for taking the time to get it posted. And thanks, BK, for the addition - great photo and complement to the man.

-tc

Wonderful story!!

Thanks for posting it!

*bumping*

Just 'cause Tonia reminded me of those times with Shifty.

First, thanks to Sue for posting the article about Shifty's speech at the college. I too was very moved by the way it was descirbed. I'm a fairly sensitive person, and reading the bit about the Belgian woman who thanked Shifty in the end - dammit - I got all verklempt.

Secondly - yet not the least importantly - thanks to Paul for sharing his experiences at the museum, and the story of Shifty at the Emmy Awards. Wonderful, wonderful stories.

I feel so lucky to have found this website. I enjoy hearing the many stories from you all describing your experiences and feelings. It's like having a family, although it may be construed as abstract. Some years ago, I joined up on a website called www.outsports.com, because I wanted to honor that part of me that I had somehow neglected in my ever-evolving identity as a man - particularly as a gay man who enjoys sports. Somewhere along the way, I assumed that gay men didn't like sports, or that I was excluded from the company of "real men" because I was oriented to have an attraction for men. Outsports.com is a terrific website, and I got alot out of my interactions with these fellas. While I still visit the site, it's not the first place I go anymore.

Now, having become interested in WWII history, and particularly the men of Easy company, I feel the grownth more markedly. These are the kind of men I can model myself after - take the lead to finding my own self, and be a better person for it.

Thanks for everything, I look forward to more of this kind of goodness.

Thanks Sue for your post about Shifty. Deserves to be read again
Cindy

Please pray for Shifty.His health has severly deteriorated and hs wife is in very poor health too.

Ugh, When I saw you bump this topic up I had a bad feeling. Saying my prayers an holding good thoughts for Shifty and his wife.

Lisa Marie

I heard a couple of months ago that Shifty was not doing very well, but was asked to remain silent, and I did until I saw it posted here. Let us pray for a peaceful, painless passing. We know Shifty will be brave as he faces the final jump.
Blessings to his ailing wife and their family.

Shelia B.

*Bump* There's some good stuff about Shifty in this thread.

Mr. Powers, my deep respects;

RIP, Shifty!

Currahee and God bless....