Kent, I knew your uncle Floyd, not only as an excellent I Company platoon leader, but also earlier as a student at the University of Iowa. He was in the National Guard while I was in advanced ROTC. The 34th Red Bull Division was federalized before we graduated, so he was in the Army before I was. In the Spring of 1942, I referred to the fact that Floyd had left the campus with the Guard in a debate. I corresponded with Floyd’s sister (probably your mother) who mentioned Floyd’s love for music and dancing.
As lieutenants in a young parachute outfit whose CO assured us that, "Men of 517th, you shall see combat", your uncle and I were busy. We ran with the troops before breakfast; we hit the field all day in training; and at night we hit the field manuals to prepare for the next day’s classes and training. So, we didn’t have much time for chit chat. Then every once in a while all the hurrying and scurrying came to a stop. We had hurried and now we waited. This occurred when we were ready to ship out to Patrick Henry and overseas. Floyd and I made good use of the wait and I recorded it in a journal I kept as follows: "May 6. Prepared to leave for Camp Patrick Henry, Va. It rained a couple of days before, but now the sun was out. Leaving Mackall was quite an experience, as it was there that I joined my first outfit and got all the training with a unit. Airborne Stott and I sat on the rails and talked about things in general until the train pulled in." All of us called Floyd "Airborne Stott".
There is another sobering entry in the journal later on: "Manhay was our objective. Two battalions had been kicked out a couple of days before and two reinforced battalions had failed to take it the day before. We had two companies, G company being at Corps headquarters. Artillery was to lift at 0225 Dec. 27. I company was the lead company. We were in position ready to go at 0200. The artillery let up at 0225. I Company started to move in. Then someone goofed off on the big guns and started firing again. It got Stott and 11 more of his men. 20 some others were wounded. I Company went on regardless and soon H Company was in the town behind them. Here we met Hitler’s best SS troops. We drove them out of basements with W.P. grenades and rounded up about 40. It was only then and later that we learned the importance of the attack. The Germans had planned on using Manhay as a fanning out point for a tank attack. The road net there was ideal for it. We took and held the town and the attack never came."
Actually, there were several counter attacks after we took Manhay. We held in the face of those counter attacks. The massive tank attack did not materialize because we held Manhay.
Richard Henry was Floyd’s radio operator. He wrote his mother a letter about Floyd from the hospital dated February 16, 1945. Matty Benoit, Rene’s wife, sent me a copy and I used it for an article in Static Line. I will send you a copy of the article and the letter if you send me your snail mail address.
We are fortunate to have a media like Mail Call to put us together. We are also fortunate to have young people like you, Kent, who are interested in what their relatives did during the War. We were a band of brothers. We were bound together then and the survivors still are entwined with the same strong bonds of friendship and loyalty. Lud Gibbons was executive officer of I Company from Col de Braus on and undoubtedly can add some detail about Floyd Stott.
We appreciate your interest and trust that you will keep in touch.
PS Ben: The computer rejected Kent's address, so I hope he gets it through Mail Call. HH
Howard Hensleigh
Toni Bucynski
Ben
I took the liberty of sending your message to Ben. He and his son Bob may be able to assist you in the use of the website. It contains a lot of information. You have found some of it. It is not infrequent that accounts of an operation by different people don’t exactly coincide. I will stick to my account because it was written shortly after the operation when all of the times were coordinated with synchronized watches and fresh in my mind. The Odyssey writers did a good job many years later after pouring over after action documents. As the writers of the Odyssey point out, the 3rd Bn. followed the artillery very closely. The Odyssey indicates that Lt. Col. Paxton may have wanted us to follow the artillery too closely and ordered the advance to begin too soon. I don’t think so. The barrage that killed Floyd and his men was both late and short. It hit us several hundred yards from the edge of the village of Manhay. The whole battalion ran on through the dead and dying on their way to the town, leaving the wounded for the medics to care for. I also stick by my account of the numbers of men killed by the barrage.
The 34th Division is the Iowa, Nebraska National Guard. Its shoulder patch is the Red Bull. It was the first Guard unit called to active service in WWII. I am not sure exactly whether this was before or after Pearl Harbor. Floyd must have lived in a dormitory or co-op house while he attended Iowa U. He would have "drilled" with his Guard unit in Iowa City one night a week. He would have received one day’s pay for each drill. That wasn’t much, but money was scarce in the late thirties and early forties. ROTC was required of male students as a college course at Iowa for the first two years, because we were a land grand university. Advanced ROTC was elective, but if you finished the course you were commissioned a 2nd Lt. upon graduation. During the war they didn’t hand out commissions on graduation, but you were given the opportunity to go to OCS, for the infantry at Ft. Benning.
I am sending you by snail mail a copy of the Static Line article. Richard Henry definitely indicates that Stott realized the dangers to be faced by his platoon leading the attack into Manhay. Henry thought Stott shielded him from that danger and had a premonition of what would happen. Patrick Henry was the camp in which we staged for overseas shipment from Newport News, Va. on the Santa Rosa with a contingent of 500WACS. Col de Braus is a wide spot in the road on the way to Sospel, France. Captain Fastia who commanded I Co. from the beginning was relieved there for failing to carry out an attack order. Jim Birder was given command of the company and Lud Gibbons, who was previously a platoon leader in H Co., was made Birder’s executive officer. That meant that Lud was second in command of I Co. from then on. This ranked Gibbons over the rest of those lieutenants in the company, but we had a saying that rank among lieutenants is like virtue among "ladies of the street". We had one work for it in those days.
I was born in Blanchard, Page County, Iowa and lived in Texas, Missouri and Kansas before returning to Hamburg, Iowa, where I entered the 6th grade. I graduated from Hamburg High School in 1939 and attended the University in Iowa City from ‘39 ‘till the spring of ‘43 when my OCS class shipped out to Ft. Benning for OCS.
This is quite a long squib for you to read. I will shoot a copy to Ben. It has too much Hensleigh in it for Mail Call, but he may use it if he can wade through it.
It is a pleasure for us, in the twilight of our lives, to pass on to younger people details of the lives of men like your uncle, Floyd Stott. He was a prince with a droll sense of humor that smoothed a lot of troubled waters.
Our airborne best to you and your family. May those Packers do well next fall. The Patriots can’t win them all.
Sincerely, Howard Hensleigh
Howard Hensleigh
Ben: Its a good picture of you and Lud. I think Kent will appreciate it if you can get it through to him. It shows the honor you paid Stott. Floyd was reserved and always had something humorous to say. Lud must have had a lot of direct contact with him from Col de Braus to Manhay. Lud was a good officer. I always enjoyed him and we had some escapades together in Paris. Apparently we are reaching Kent by sending things through Mail Call. His address on my message is Kfihome46@aol.com. Thanks for your media, Howard H.