Ed Buss: Band of Brothers

By Ron Bracken

By the time Ed Buss joined their unit as a replacement officer, the Band of Brothers was close to disbanding.

It was April 1945 and the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division had already crossed the Rhine River. The bloody trail it had followed from Toccoa, Ga., to Normandy, through Holland and Bastogne, was near its end when Buss arrived.

He remembers seeing the men of E Company, the Band of Brothers made famous by Stephen Ambrose's book and the HBO series.

"I saw some of the survivors there, the men who had been with the unit since Currahee," he recalled. "They just wanted to go home. Those guys never talked about what they'd been through. They never told us anything. I always felt so badly that I didn't get to talk with any of them.

"I did get to talk with some of them at a reunion in Norfolk, Va., last October, when there was more time to visit with them. One of the things they said over and over was how cold it was at Bastogne.

"I marvel at how they accepted the circumstances without any thought of giving up. They were so well-trained. I think one of the best statements ever made was that there was never a paratrooper who turned his back. They stayed there and did their job.''

Buss, who had graduated from Officer Candidate School in the summer of 1942, graduated from Kansas State in January 1943 and was assigned to Camp Roberts, Calif., as a training officer.

"I had the best of all graduations,'' he said. "You walked into the registrar's office, gave him your name, picked up your diploma and walked out. A week later, I was in Fort Leavenworth.''

From there he was assigned to Camp Roberts, where he did his job -- training the new draftees and enlisted men for combat -- so well it worked against him.

"One day, the executive officer came to me and said I had been assigned to permanent duty at Camp Roberts," said Buss, who retired from the College of Agriculture at Penn State and still lives in State College. "Others were angling for positions to keep from having to go overseas, and I was of the mindset that I wanted to be first over, first back. I wanted to go over there, take care of business and come home.

"It was the same mindset Dick Winters (an officer in the Band of Brothers) had: I'd do my part but I wanted others to do the same.''

So Buss was stuck in California, running training exercises, giving lectures to an audience that included the stray rattlesnake or tarantula, until one day he learned the Airborne Infantry was looking for volunteers.

"I applied immediately," Buss said. "I had no idea about getting extra pay or special uniforms. I just wanted to go overseas.''

The road there led through Fort Benning, Ga., where the paratroopers were trained. Once again, Buss got in his own way.

"I graduated from jump school in June of 1944," he remembered. "I thought I was on my way. Then the same thing happened to me that happened at Camp Roberts. A colonel said that three of us would be cadre officers and we would not be going overseas.

"I can remember sitting in a bar with some other guys on the morning they jumped into France (D-Day) and we were pounding our fists on the table, saying how we should be there. The same thing happened when they jumped into Holland (Operation Market-Garden, in September). But someone had to train those men to be replacements."

Finally, Buss was ordered to Europe and sailed from New York in March 1945, arriving in Le Havre, France, then catching up to the 506th not long before it took Berchtesgaden, Adolf Hitler's private retreat in the Alps, on May 8.

As a replacement, Buss was an outsider to most of the men who had been through months, or years, of combat and training together. Once the Germans had surrendered, Buss and his unit were sent to Zell Am See, a lakeside resort in Austria.

"That was one beautiful lake," he said. "We were right across from where (scientist Werner) von Braun was and from Hermann Goering's castle where he had his art collection. We were looking for SS troops. We were supposed to find them and take them back to Germany.''

Once that assignment was completed, the 101st was sent to Joigny, France, where it began training for eventual shipment to the Pacific. During that time, Buss was detached to a unit south of Nancy where he was given an assignment to travel throughout the area where the 7th Army had fought, looking for discarded or forgotten ammunition and ordnance.

"I had two German officers with me," Buss said. "We'd locate the ammo, then have the troops go pick it up. We'd put shaped charges on it and blow it up. If the weather was right, we could rattle the windows in Nancy.

"The one thing we wouldn't touch was the German hand grenade. Even the German officers wouldn't touch those. They were so unstable we'd just blow them in place.''

During that assignment, Buss was struck by the attitude of the French civilians in the various towns and villages.

"They had so much antagonism toward us,'' he said. "That was quite an experience for me." In December, Buss was shipped home as part of the 82nd Airborne Division since the 101st had been deactivated. During that time, another officer suggested Buss remain in the Army.

"I told him I wasn't interested," Buss said. "The military was not for me. I needed to have more elbow room. I got out on Aug. 16, 1946."

He had been spared the horrors of intense combat, had not suffered through the bitter winter in the Ardennes. But he had seen enough to shape his views on war.

"When I came home I had developed such a dislike for war,'' he said. "I saw all of the destruction, the tremendous loss of life, including quite a few of my classmates, and I just had a feeling there had to be another way.

"I'm anti-war now."

Ron Bracken can be reached at 235-4641.