By Mike Takeuchi(Reprinted Article)
Little did 12-year-old Hubert Wolfe know that when his father caught him trying to jump out of a three-story building with an umbrella, Dad was only delaying the inevitable.
Before long, Mr. Wolfe was fighting with the 82nd "All American" Airborne Division at Anzio in Italy, in Operation Market Garden in Holland, and later, the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during World War II.
Earlier this week, inside his Lompoc home with his wife Pat, and his son Robert -- a historian of the famed division who was sitting nearby -- the 85-year-old told the story of being a member of B Company in the 504th Paratroop Infantry Unit of the 82nd. Called the "Devils in Baggy Pants" in a dead German soldier's diary, the elite division spent most of their time dropping behind enemy lines to strike and later hold their ground.
"I was a very small part of a very special group," Mr. Wolfe recalled.
Growing up in Pasadena, Mr. Wolfe chuckled that he always had an itch to try and jump out of things since the day his dad Lee Roy stopped him, and later, when he and his friend David Waters -- who also later joined the 82nd -- jumped off the roof of a house while each held two corners of a blanket.
After the war broke out, he had to wait to come of age.
"Of course we were all itching to do our part," Mr. Wolfe said. "But I had to wait because my parents wouldn't sign the form that would let me go in early. And when I finally could, I knew I wanted to be in the airborne. "
Basic training at Camp Roberts (near Paso Robles) was followed by jump school at Fort Benning in Georgia (the division's permanent home at Fort Bragg, N.C., was established later) and then to North Africa for more training before their first combat assignment as part of Operation Shingle in Anzio at the end of January 1944.
Despite being trained to jump out of airplanes, his regiment entered the Italian seaport area in a landing craft where they were greeted not by enemy soldiers, but by the strafing of the Messerschmitts of the German Luftwaffe. With the craft to his right taking a direct hit, Mr. Wolfe and his unit scrambled out.
"When I saw the boat next to us take a hit, I was thinking let's get off this damn thing," Mr. Wolfe said. "But the water was still deep, I had to help hold my corporal above the water because he was so short."
At Anzio, Mr. Wolfe saw much action as B Company completed several patrols in an area called the Mussolini Canal.
Although the enemy suffered 10 times the amount of casualties as his division, the 504th was decimated to the point that it couldn't participate in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day.
The Allied command had other plans for them, however. In an attempt to end the war by 1944, the group jumped behind enemy lines into Holland in September as part of the ultimately failed Operation Market Garden -- the largest airborne operation ever that was made famous by the movie "A Bridge Too Far."
While the main body of the 82nd was famously trying to cross the Waal River from Nijmegen in canvas boats, Mr. Wolfe suffered what he thought was an ankle sprain upon landing en route to an attempt to capture the Heuman Lock Bridge.
After four days of heavy fighting, a local gave him a cane and when the pain was too severe, another resident put him on the handlebars of his bike and rode the injured soldier to an aid station.
When Mr. Wolfe took off his boot, his ankle swelled to twice its size. He had fought for days without being aware that he had actually suffered from a broken a bone in his foot.
"Everyone had some kind of wound or another, it was actually rarer if someone didn't get killed or hurt," Mr. Wolfe said.
The Purple Heart recipient admitted he was one of the lucky ones. At the end of fighting, the 82nd lost nearly 1,700 men at Market Garden, including his buddies Capt. Bob Petit, Fred Granger, Robert Stern, Lawrence Blazina, Jerry Murphy and Maurice Marcus, a former weightlifter who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Mr. Wolfe said.
"It was hard losing your friends, but you had to move on to survive," Mr. Wolfe said. "I tried not to think about it too much."
After a short recovery, he and the newly replenished 82nd entered the Ardennes Forest area in November in what would later famously become the Battle of the Bulge. Here, on Dec. 20, near a town called Cheneux, Mr. Wolfe was pinned down from heavy fire and was struck in the back of the head by shrapnel from a large German machine gun.
Rendered partially paralyzed on his left side, the private dragged himself out of his trench to try and reach medical treatment. From out of nowhere he said, an unknown guardian angel grabbed him and carried the severely injured soldier back to the aid station where a Bronze Star, another Purple Heart, and a five-month hospital stay that included the insertion of a steel plate in the back of his head, awaited.
"I never knew the guy's name," Mr. Wolfe said.
It would be nearly 38 years until his savior was finally revealed. When Pat Wolfe overheard a conversation between two members at an 82nd reunion in Philadelphia in 1982, she began asking questions and became immediately excited when she learned that the man standing before her, Ian "Red" McKee, was her husband's very rescuer.
"I just hugged him for the longest time, and the first thing he said was, 'He's not going to want to hug me too is he?' " Pat Wolfe laughed.
Now, years later, and after another different but special reunion in Holland in 1982 (alas, his helpers there remain unknown), Hubert Wolfe said that despite what he had gone through, it was a rewarding yet difficult experience to be a part of.
"Whenever I wear my 82nd cap, people come up than thank me, which sometimes is overwhelming," Mr. Wolfe said choking back tears. "Because they can appreciate how difficult it was seeing and doing what I did. But I don't dwell on it. I am proud of what I did, but not particularly proud of taking lives."
Photos provided courtesy of Hubert Wolfe
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