101st Airborne Medic recalls Op. Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge Medic Al Mampre treated Easy Company’s wounded during Market Garden and later for the 101st Airborne Division’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment at the Battle of the Bulge. By Kevin M. Hymel “You’re crazy to go out there!” a paratrooper shouted to medic Al Mampre as he bolted from a trench outside of the Dutch town of Eindhoven. But Mampre had his mission, and he knew what needed to be done. When he reached Lieutenant Bob Brewer, who was sprawled out in a field, he sat down next to him. “I’ll take care of you,” he told the wounded officer. A sniper’s bullet had gone through Brewer’s neck below his chin. He was unresponsive and jaundiced. Despite the severity of the wound, it did not bleed much. Mampre sprinkled sulfa powder on the wound and covered it with a bandage. After struggling to find a good vein in Brewer’s arm, he injected a plasma needle and held the IV bottle aloft. Another medic sprinted out to join Mampre. Then shots rang out. The German sniper, occupying one of four houses across the field, had targeted the three Americans. Mampre heard what sounded like a bottle breaking and looked up at the IV, but it was still whole. Then another bullet clipped the other medic’s heel, and he took off for the safety of the trench. Bullets kicked up dust around Mampre and Brewer. Three other paratroopers dropped around them, victims of the sniper’s aim. Staff Sergeant Al Mampre, of Oak Park, Illinois, joined Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, when it first formed in 1942, and was promoted to battalion medic before he shipped out to Europe. Then Mampre felt like a mule had kicked him in his left leg. “My leg was opened up like a roast beef,” he said, but, like Brewer’s neck, his leg did not bleed badly. “I could see the bone.” Mampre gave himself a shot of morphine and then lay down next to Brewer and in his best bedside manner asked, “Lieutenant, are you dead? ‘Cause if you’re dead, I’m leaving.” “No,” Brewer whispered, “but I don’t know why not.” As bullets stitched the ground, Mampre told Brewer he would stay with him. The two men were in desperate straits. It was their second day of combat in the Netherlands. They had parachuted into the area the day before, September 17, 1944, as part of Operation Market Garden, the Allied attempt to cross the Rhine River with a combined armored and airborne force. Mampre had once been a part of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, but had been promoted to battalion medic before departing for Europe. Now, on his second day in combat, he found himself a casualty treating another casualty. The war started for 19-year-old Mampre when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, while he was listening to the Redskins-Giants football game on the radio. “I didn’t really realize the impact,” he said. Mampre, from Oak Park, Illinois, was a ministerial student at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. A few days later, his church minister told him his studies would prevent him from being drafted. “That didn’t sound right to me,” he said. In the spring of 1942, Mampre enlisted in the U.S. Army in Dallas but soon discovered he was not a rule follower. He liked wearing his overseas cap straight on his head. When his drill sergeant would shout, “Tilt that hat sideways!” Mampre did so, but straightened it out when the sergeant walked away. He often found himself scrubbing pots or handing out ice cream. This was not the Army he imagined. “I want to do something,” he told himself. “I want to be a paratrooper.” So he volunteered for the paratroopers and soon found himself on a train headed to Toccoa, Georgia. Mampre joined the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which had just been formed. Its commander, Colonel Robert Sink, proved to be a no nonsense soldier who wanted his regiment to be the best in the Army. When Mampre scored in one of the regiment’s top three on a test, Sink told Mampre his standing, but added, “I have other news for you: you’re not going to leave this outfit until you die.” On his first day at camp, Mampre and fellow private Edwin Pepping came across a 35-foot jump tower. They decided to test their skills, so they climbed the tower and threw themselves off. Both landed unhurt despite hard landings. Just then a lieutenant walked up and explained that the tower still needed the cables for paratroopers to slide down safely because the tower was designed for practicing door exits, not landings. “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” said Mampre about the jump. “I thought they got handed all the dumbest guys, and they put them in the same regiment.” Hopeful paratroopers leap over a water obstacle at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. Mampre and the other medics had to run an additional mile up Currahee Mountain since the medical barracks was a half mile from the base of the mountain. Mampre was soon assigned to Captain Herbert Sobel’s Easy Company. Sobel, like Sink, wanted his company to be the best in the regiment. To achieve that goal, Sobel trained his men constantly, even when other company commanders gave their men time off. “The only trouble with Sobel,” said Mampre, “was he couldn’t read a map and couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.” Mampre took to the hard training immediately. Paratrooper candidates were required to run a three-mile route up Currahee Mountain and back. The first time Mampre did it, he went up with 90 other soldiers and came back with just six. At 5-6 and a wiry 122 pounds, he considered himself a tough son of a gun. “You don’t worry about the little guys,” he liked to say. Mampre’s training included tear gas drills, target practices, and foot marches. On one march, Sobel ordered the men to crawl over pig entrails. “We slept in that stuff that night,” he said. One day at the firing range, Mampre bet another private a candy bar he couldn’t hit the target. The soldier took aim with his rifle and hit it. Mampre made the same offer, and he again hit the target. They kept going. “I figured sooner or later he’d miss,” said Mampre. He didn’t. By the end, Mampre owed the soldier eight candy bars. The soldier turned out to be Private Darrell “Shifty” Powers, considered by many to be the best shot in the company. When the regiment formed a medical detachment, Colonel Sink asked Mampre if he would like to be a medic. Mampre said yes and joined with Pepping. The two developed a knack for obtaining anything they needed without going through proper channels, calling themselves the “Band-Aid Bandits.” Both men considered medical training similar to what they learned in the Boy Scouts. The main difference: the medic candidates practiced giving shots to oranges. “I never ran into an orange in combat,” Mampre mused. After Mampre and Pepping received their medical certifications, the regiment assigned a new lieutenant to toughen up the medics. He started off by teaching them to properly salute. In retaliation for the senseless exercise, Mampre lit a can of photo film on fire in his barracks. As smoke filled the room, Mampre ran outside to the lieutenant, shouting, “They’re trying to kill us!” The lieutenant went into the barrack and threw the burning can outside, telling Mampre, “I don’t think you’re gonna get killed.” The next day the lieutenant asked Mampre what the paratroopers did. Mampre told him, “Run the mountain.” The lieutenant agreed and joined the medics for the seven-mile run (it was a half mile to the base of the mountain). Mampre was charging up the slope when he noticed the lieutenant running out of steam. “Check the rear!” the lieutenant ordered. “Don’t need to!” Mampre shot back. The lieutenant decided he would. “See you at the obstacle course,” said Mampre, hinting at more exercise later. Eventually, the lieutenant made it up Currahee. “He turned out to be very nice,” Mampre recalled. Paratroopers from Major Robert Strayer’s 2nd Battalion march 115 miles from Toccoa to Atlanta in December of 1943. Mampre treated sore feet and other mild ailments during the march, then did it again when Major Oliver Horton’s 3rd Battalion made the same march. While the training honed the men’s physical skills, it stimulated voracious appetites. One day, Mampre and his fellow medics caught the smell of fresh muffins wafting from the cook house. They found the tray of muffins and grabbed it, but not before the cooks grabbed the other end. The tug of war ended when the Military Police showed up and took down everyone’s names. “One guy said his name was ‘John Smith,’” explained Mampre, “another said ‘Terpin Hydrate,’ which means cough syrup.” Later, Mampre and his comrades snatched a line of milk bottles laid out for the battalion’s officers. “We were growing boys,” he defended, “we needed them.” The medics drank more than milk. They often drove to local watering holes in an ambulance. Mampre would sit up front with the driver and Captain Samuel “Shifty” Feiler, the dentist, between them.