Walter Scott Gordon, Jnr.

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gordon_%28veteran%29 Wikipedia], the free encyclopedia

Walter Scott "Smokey" Gordon Jr. (15 April 1920 – 19 April 1997)[1] was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He enrolled at Millsaps College around 1940, attending there for 2 years.[2]

Due to color blindness and flat feet, the Marines and the Navy had rejected him, so he joined the Army.[3] Gordon enlisted on 10 August 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[2] as his father told him that 'if you enlist down south, you will train up north and vice versa'.[3] He faked his way through the eye test and successfully enlisted.[3]

Gordon was a non-commissioned officer with Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army during World War II and was portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers by Ben Caplan. He was featured in the 2010 book A Company of Heroes: Personal Memories about the Real Band of Brothers and the Legacy They Left Us.

Gordon later moved to Lafayette, Louisiana,[6] where he became employed as an independent oil and gas lease broker.[6] In 1946, he and others began organizing Easy Company reunions.[14] In 1951, he married Elizabeth Ball Ludeau and the couple had five children including one son and 4 daughters.[6] Gordon was a faithful Episcopalian, but stopped being so after his beloved twin sister Cleta died in her early thirties of breast cancer.[15]

Gordon died in Pass Christian, Mississippi after suffering a stroke in his sleep.[6] He is survived by his own five children and his 5 grandchildren among them.[6]

At first light on Christmas Eve morning, Winters inspected his MLR. He walked past Corporal Gordon, "his head wrapped up in a big towel, with his helmet sitting on top. Walter sat on the edge of his foxhole behind his light machine-gun. He looked like he was frozen stiff, staring blankly straight ahead at the woods. I stopped and looked back at him, and it suddenly struck me, 'Damn! Gordon's matured! He's a man!' " A half hour later, at 0830, Gordon brewed himself a cup of coffee. He kept coffee grounds in his hand grenade canister, "and I'd melted the snow with my little gas stove, and I'd brewed up this lovely cup of coffee." As he started to sip it, the outposts came in with word that a German force was attempting to infiltrate Easy's lines. His squad leader, Sgt. Buck Taylor, told him to "get on that machine-gun." Gordon brushed snow from his weapon and the ammo box adjacent to the gun, telling his assistant, Pvt. Stephen Grodzki, to look sharp, pay attention to detail. A shot from a German rifleman rang out. The bullet hit Gordon in the left shoulder and exited from the right shoulder. It had brushed his spinal column; he was paralyzed from the neck down. He slid to the bottom of his foxhole. "The canteen cup followed me and the hot liquid spilled in my lap. I can see the steam rising upward to this very day." Taylor and Earl McClung went looking for the sniper who had shot Gordon. They found and killed him. Shifty Powers was in the next foxhole. As Shames had hoped would happen, he had recovered completely. Shifty was from Virginia, a mountain man, part Indian. He had spent countless hours as a youth hunting squirrels. He could sense the least little movement in a woods. He spotted a German in a tree, raised his M-l, and killed the man. Paul Rogers, Gordon's best friend, Jim Alley and another member of the 3rd platoon rushed over to Gordon. They hauled him out of the hole and dragged him back into the woods, in Gordon's words "as a gladiator was dragged from the arena." In a sheltered area, they stretched him out to examine him. Medic Roe came up, took a quick look, and declared that it was serious. Roe gave Gordon morphine and prepared to give plasma. Sergeant Lipton came over to see what he could do. "Walter's face was ashen and his eyes closed," Lipton recalled. "He looked more dead than alive." In the extreme cold, it seemed to Lipton that the plasma was flowing too slowly, so he took the bottle from Roe and put it under his arm inside his clothes to warm it up. "As I looked down at Walter's face he suddenly opened his eyes. 'Walter, how do you feel?' I asked. 'Lipton,' he said in a surprisingly strong voice, 'you're standing on my hand.' I jumped back, looking down, and he was right. I had been standing on his hand." A jeep, summoned by radio, came up and evacuated Gordon to the aid station.

from BAND OF BROTHERS by Stephen E. Ambrose

• Residence: Hinds, Mississippi, USA
  • Reference: [object Object]] - [http://www.geni.com/projects/SmartCopy/18783 SmartCopy: Aug 16 2019, 10:03:42 UTC