In the summer of 1978, Frank J. Cole was working as a security guard at the Ramada Inn in Gatlinburg, a tourist town at the main entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. I was a desk clerk and general gopher for the same establishment. Frank was in his mid-fifties, but in appearance he could have passed for being a much older man. I was eighteen and had recently moved from Nashville to Gatlinburg with my parents. In the fall I would begin classes 40 miles away at Maryville College, but first would come my introduction to deep mountain culture, which was a considerable change from my city-bred upbringing. I was an outsider to the mountain folk and therefore not easily accepted as a “local” — an important distinction in any tourist town, but even more profound in the historically isolated world of Appalachia. Even so, Frank and I quickly became friends despite the cultural barriers. He was as pure a “mountain” man as one was likely to find in 1978; he was also an individualist with a certain detachment from his native surroundings, a detachment that made him accessible to someone like me.
At the Ramada, Frank was charged mostly with keeping the parking lot free of vagrant tourists and outlaw parkers. Although he was working as a private security guard and did not serve the county in an official capacity beyond the hotel, he wore the full uniform and badge of a deputy sheriff, an appearance greatly enhanced by the oversized revolver that hung from his gun belt. He looked the part of a lawman even as he carried himself more like a 19th century gunslinger — a distinction that has always been a bit blurred in Americana.
One of my first memories of Frank is of him proudly showing a photo of himself posing with some rather beautiful models. The photo had been taken a few months earlier, he said, at a reunion for the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, a unit with which he had served during World War II. The ladies were all dressed alike and were in front of prop scenery. Most likely each attendee of the reunion had the chance to participate in a similarly staged photo-op. Frank made the most of the opportunity, his arms wrapped around two while the third was leaning against his chest with a “naughty” expression accentuated by pouty lips. The carnival-style theatrics aside, there was nothing staged about the big smile on Frank’s face.
Frank didn’t often leave the confines of his native Smokies, but a chance to be with his buddies from the 101st Airborne was something he couldn’t pass up. After all, back in 1943 the U.S. Army took him away from the mountains for the first time. A natural and gifted storyteller, Frank often spoke proudly of his years spent as a paratrooper with the 101st, but he rarely spoke of the actual war. In general his stories were more likely to be about one of two subjects: women or growing up in the mountains. I loved to listen to his yarns, even when I knew he was often embellishing for my benefit (carefully-crafted embellishment being a mark of a good storyteller.)
A favorite story took place in the Sugarlands, the little mountain community where he was born and where his family owned a small plot of land until the federal government made that slice of mountain paradise a part of the newly established national park in 1934. After the forced sale of their property, some residents were allowed to continue living in their homes for a specified period of time — but with new rules. Hunting and fishing were now strictly regulated by the federal government. Mountaineers such as Frank and his family depended heavily on the local game, both for food and sport, and they didn’t easily adhere to the imposition of laws forbidding them to behave in the only manner they understood. The result was that Frank and his younger brother Allen — inseparable companions — quickly became known targets for the federal agents now charged with keeping an eye on the new park land.
Their father, Allen Walter Cole, was told that any infractions, in addition to hefty fines, could lead to his family being forced off the land sooner than the contractually designated time. Known locally as an honest man of great integrity, Walt Cole was a compassionate but stern father whose motto was “I only swing my axe once.” The boys may have made great sport out of eluding the feds, but they knew better than to test their dad.
One afternoon Frank was alone at the family cabin in the Sugarlands with his youngest brother Sherril. Frank was about sixteen, Sherril about eight. Sherril came into the house shouting excitedly, “Frank, there’s a bear eating Dad’s honey.” Frank rushed outdoors to see a big black bear sitting on his haunches, honey dripping down his face and bees flying all around (At this point in the story, Frank, with great effect, would mimic the bear’s face and its paws swatting at the bees). He had already destroyed a couple of hives and was making short work of another one. Honey being a major source of income for the Coles, Frank knew he had to stop the bear, but he also knew it was big trouble to kill a bear on the newly-designated federal property. Pondering the dilemma as he watched the bear dig out more honey, Frank made a decision: “Sherril, go get me Dad’s rifle.”
Carefully preparing the single shot breech-loading rifle, Frank positioned himself behind a small tree, resting the long barrel of the weapon in the “v” between the trunk and a branch. He took careful aim, and when the bear turned its head, squeezed the trigger. The bullet passed through the bear’s head at the temple, exactly where Frank had aimed. The great animal let out a brief roar and then fell over backwards, still covered in bees and honey. Frank quickly reloaded the rifle, saying, “Sherril, take a stick and go poke that bear. If he moves I’ll shoot him again.” Being the youngest brother could be hazardous in the mountains. Sherril did as he was told, but a second shot was unnecessary. Now the worrying began. Had any federal agents heard the shot? And, more importantly, what would Dad say?
Just as the sun was setting, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, middle brother Allen, and daughter Hazel returned from their trip to town. Frank, knowing the bear carcass would be impossible to hide, swallowed hard and forced himself to tell his dad the story. Mr. Cole, a quiet and calm man by nature, didn’t visibly react to the news. He just stared at Frank for what seemed to the youngster to be an eternity, and then said, “Go up to the Carr’s place and tell Jim to bring his knife.” There was no more discussion. The neighbor came down and the two men spent the night skinning the bear and dividing up the meat in an impromptu covert operation that would — if undiscovered by feds — help feed their families through the coming winter.
Years later Frank’s son Gary would recall that his grandfather’s only response to the re-telling of the classic tale was to say, “Frank could’ve chased that bear away. He wanted to shoot it.” But as far as I can remember, Frank never mentioned the possibility of chasing the bear away. No reason to taint a good story.
During the first summer of our friendship, Frank was a self-professed “dry” alcoholic; he did not use the term “recovering.” This would be my first, but far from my last, honest face-to-face look at alcoholism. I was an everyday beer drinker well before my eighteenth birthday and my dad was less than a decade away from dying of bourbon-flavored cirrhosis, but neither of us had yet admitted any definite problem with the stuff (other than difficulties with the strict liquor laws then in effect for most of East Tennessee, which sometimes made it inconvenient to stay well-stocked.) Frank did not shy away from stating his relationship with alcohol. For him, as he often said, “one drink is too many and a hundred ain’t enough.” Sometimes he said a thousand. And he was quick to forewarn me to stay away if I ever saw him on the hooch.
He remained sober that first summer, but the next summer I saw the other side. I was walking down a back street when I found Frank sitting on the curb. His hair was all mussed up, he had cuts and scratches all over his face, and his glasses were nowhere to be seen. “I got drunk and got in a fight,” he sheepishly slurred through a bloody, toothless grin. I helped him up and took him to his parents’ house, which fortunately was just a block away. On the way I naively started lecturing him on how he had told me himself that he couldn’t drink, but he quickly and accurately informed me that there wasn’t anything new I could tell him on the subject. He also asked me if I would be willing to drive him to the Veterans Administration hospital in Johnson City to dry out — when he was ready. I said I would, and then I took his earlier advice and stayed clear of him for a few weeks.
The call for the VA trip came one evening, and the next morning I got behind the wheel of his elderly mother’s car (his father had died the previous winter). Mrs. Cole got in the passenger seat and Frank sat in the back. The trip to the VA involved the sort of shenanigans to be expected when carting around a drunk, but nothing gravely memorable. I did stop along the way to get him something to drink, already intellectually familiar with alcoholism enough to be wary of DTs showing up before we arrived at our destination. Beer, which wasn’t Frank’s idea of booze, was the only available legal option, and I wasn’t about to seek out a bootlegger under the circumstances. In order to get the necessary alcohol content, he chugged each 16-ounce can in succession, draining the six-pack in about fifteen minutes.
We arrived at the VA and, after an entertaining hour or so in the waiting room, managed to get Frank admitted. I then made the two-hour return trip in the company of his mother. She was an impressively silent woman with a slight but very sincere smile and deep, knowing eyes. I was intimidated but not uncomfortable in her presence. Even if I knew very little about her life, I knew she was someone special. I felt it. Years later I would learn more of her story, but on this day we were both focused on the immediate situation.
The up-until-then quiet Mrs. Cole began to speak as we pulled onto the ramp of Interstate 81. “He’s never been the same since he came back from that war.” She said this matter-of-factly, with neither bitterness nor remorse. Then she added, “Just like his daddy after the Great War,” using the original term for World War I. “They don’t sleep right …” As her words trailed off, she turned toward the countryside rolling by outside the car window, her thoughts compressing decades of memories. After a quarter-of-a-mile or so she faced forward and continued. “Every night Frank will go to sleep in his bed, and every night I come in and cover him with a quilt. He’ll be a laying curled up on the floor. Sometimes he looks like he’s a trying to crawl up under the bed, but he don’t fit. He just never has been able to sleep normal-like since he come home.”
Frank had been married and divorced a few times, and in between marriages he always moved back into his parents’ home in Gatlinburg. But I knew she meant when he returned home in 1945. During the silence that followed I thought about the tremendous suffering this woman must have endured through wars and their never-ending aftermath. And then I remembered Allen, the son who didn’t come back from war. Although I would later research Allen’s story, at the time I did not know the details, just that he had been killed by the Japanese. That was all Frank had told me. Mrs. Cole never mentioned Allen in my presence. As an older man I might have ventured a question, asked about her thoughts on her husband and then her sons going to war, but at the time I couldn’t begin to grasp the measure of that sacrifice. In my later years I would realize that such things are only measured by the inexperienced.
Frank Cole certainly was neither aware of nor concerned with the political shape of the world in 1941. While possessing a sharp intuition and quick wit, he was, like many of his fellow Southern highlanders of the era, semi-literate at best, so he had little need for newspapers beyond using them as insulation for the walls of his family’s log home. Radios were a source of outside information, but most mountain families couldn’t afford a radio and, even if they could, only folks who lived in town had access to electricity. But major news did eventually reach them, and as Frank phrased it, “We heard there was some shootin’ goin’ on,” so he enlisted in the U.S. Army without questioning or being overly concerned with the details of the conflict. Just as his father had done some 25 years before, Frank “answered the call.”
During basic training he found the shooting range to be laughable. How could you not hit a target that was straight in front of you, motionless, with absolutely nothing between you and it to hinder the shot? He easily plugged the bull’s-eye with his first couple of efforts and waited for the congratulations. The sergeant overseeing the exercise calmly told him, “Good shooting hillbilly. You keep it up and they’ll stick you in a tree somewhere and leave you there until the Germans shoot you down.” Frank got the message and started veering his shots off slightly to the left or right of the center, thus earning the marksmanship ribbon without being upgraded to sniper status.
He volunteered for the 101st Airborne because it paid more money, and money was something his family needed and he enjoyed. There were plenty of stories about his days in the 101st Airborne. The English scenes prior to D-Day, the jump into Normandy on June 6, the battles in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany — Frank could certainly recite the itinerary like a man who had been there, and he usually made it sound almost fun. But sometimes that veneer cracked a little. For instance, Frank didn’t just refer to himself as a veteran of the 101st; he delighted in calling himself one of “the Battling Bastards of Bastogne.” That phrase was among the rare moments when he hinted at the reality he had faced in 1944.
One winter day I found Frank drinking coffee in a little bar situated on the rooftop of the Ramada. The bar had picture windows facing every direction and the view was magnificent. There was a heavy snow falling, and the white mountain vista was breathtaking. I took a gulp of beer and made a comment about the extraordinary beauty. Frank only grumbled in response. I was somewhat taken aback as I had expected a true mountain man — and Frank was most certainly a child of the mountains — to revel in the natural beauty of the moment. When I remarked as such, he growled, “Phil, I’ve got no use for snow and never have since Bastogne.”
The siege of the Belgian town of Bastogne was a pivotal event in the Battle of the Bulge, a surprise German counteroffensive that began on December 16, 1945. Thinly spread out within the densely wooded forest that encircled the vital crossroads town, the 101st Airborne was surrounded by a German army of superior numbers and weaponry. To compound the situation, the battle took place in the midst of one of the coldest and harshest winters in the known history of the region — and, because of the urgency with which they were rushed to the front, the paratroopers were not equipped with winter clothing. Frank mentioned the weather, but what he didn’t mention were the days spent holding the line in a pine forest, a line that was perfectly sighted by the German artillery. The artillery barrages would not only obliterate soldiers caught out in the open or sheltering in their foxholes, many of the bombs were designed to explode at treetop level, thus turning the beautiful pine trees into horrendous sources of shrapnel. Such experiences defy description.
The defenders of Bastogne repeatedly saw their friends and comrades torn to shreds and decimated during intermittent artillery barrages day and night from December 20 through the 27th. During these moments all they could do was hunker down and wait to see if they would still be in one piece when the shelling finally stopped. When it did stop, they would venture out long enough to help the wounded and, if feasible, identify the dead. In between shelling they stayed as alert as possible in their frozen foxholes, ever ready to repel the inevitable infantry attacks. Despite being desperately low on ammunition, food, and medical supplies, the 101st held the perimeter until the siege was finally broken by the lead elements of General George Patton’s Third Army on the 26th. The main battle itself would continue for another 30 days. The U.S. Army would suffer approximately 100,000 causalities during the engagement, a number that does not include the trauma embedded in those who escaped physical harm.
The above synopsis is a meager sampling of the memories that winter and snow brought to life in the mind of Frank Cole and his fellow survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. I never told Frank what his mother had shared with me about his nightmares, and I never heard Frank blame any of his problems in life on the war. In fact, whenever he mentioned his time in the 101st, it was obvious that the experience was the defining moment of his life and would have remained so no matter what had transpired in the decades he lived after the war’s end. Frank seemed to know — although he never stated it as such — that he had been used up by the war, but he clearly accepted it as an honor, never something to grumble or complain about.
At the beginning of our friendship, I did not spend too much time reflecting on what men such as Frank had gone through. I was a young man with young man concerns in front of me, and I had trouble seeing beyond those concerns. But early on I sensed that there was something special about this grizzled mountaineer, this proud Battling Bastard of Bastogne — drunk or sober.
On my last summer as a college student I saw Frank sitting alone on the rooftop patio of the Ramada late one night. The bar was closed but I had a key and permission from the bartender to help myself. I filled a mug with beer from the tap and strolled out to where Frank was sitting. He slowly turned his head in my direction and said what he always said when he saw me. “Hello friend.” I sat down. On this night something was troubling my buddy. I casually and cautiously asked if he wanted to share what was on his mind. He said no, and then he began telling me anyway.
Near the end of the war he was leading a patrol that surprised and captured a group of German soldiers. Frank was a sergeant and there were no commissioned U.S. officers present, so he was in charge. Using the few German phrases he had been ordered to memorize for such moments, he told the enemy soldiers to drop their weapons. At this point in the war only the most fanatical Nazis were willing to die for the Führer. All of the soldiers complied — except for their commanding officer. He held his luger and spoke in harsh tones in response to Frank’s demands. But the officer only spoke German. Tensions mounted, and, Frank said, “I shot him in the head Phil.” As he told me he kept his face turned toward the darkness in front of us, the same darkness that hid his mountains from our view. “Somebody told me later that the Geneva Convention said that officers didn’t have to surrender their sidearm. That’s probably what he was trying to tell me. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”
After a short silence I suggested he talk to someone, maybe a preacher (there were zero professional “counseling” options locally in those days). He quickly reminded me that he was labelled as a drunk by the church. There were several denominations sprinkled around Gatlinburg and the surrounding area, but for the indigenous townsfolk, “church” meant the Gatlinburg Baptist Church. Then I reminded him that my dad was a preacher (an Episcopal priest, but to non-Episcopalians in the mountains — which meant pretty much all natives — he was a simply called a “preacher.”) Frank knew Dad and liked him. He thought about it.
The next morning there was a knock on the door of the church rectory where my family lived. It was Frank. My dad happened to be home, and they went into the living room and closed the door. About two hours later they came out. Frank never mentioned the talk to me except to say it was the first time since the war he had ever been able to fully speak of the things he had seen and done as a soldier. Dad, of course, never mentioned it to me at all. There was healing in that moment, I’m certain.
During the last years of his life Frank would go on fewer drunken sprees. I moved away from the mountains in 1983, but on my occasional visits I always looked for Frank. When I found out he had died in 1998, I tracked down his family and was told that his last years were spent peacefully sober and that he had been an active (and welcome) member of the church. He had died stretched out in an easy chair, found by a “lady-friend who had come callin’,” as his daughter-in-law explained it. I thanked her, told her how much I loved Frank, and said goodbye. Then I wept.
To most of the locals, Frank was, at best, simply a drunk. That was his identity. To a few of us, he was a good man trying to outdistance the demons he brought home with him in 1945. And, whether sober or drunk, he was my friend. Always.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Frank was — and still is — one of my most profound teachers. At the end of every summer I always made sure to say goodbye to him before returning to college. Every year he’d say the same thing as I was walking away: “Don’t let all those books get in the way of your education.” It was good advice. I’ve yet to read a book that taught me more about life than I learned from my friendship with Frank J. Cole, the Battling Bastard of Bastogne.