Brothers in arms

By Patrick Markey

"Saving Private Ryan" deals with a crack U.S. Ranger unit sent into enemy territory in France to bring back a young soldier whose brothers have been killed in action. Unlike Spielberg’s fictional Ryan family, the four Higgins brothers, from Brooklyn, all made it safely home.

But the brothers never really talked much about their separate experiences, and did not give much thought to all four leaving to fight a war.

"I didn’t really think about it. Everyone was eager beaver to go," Thomas said.

Hugh, the oldest, was based in the Pacific with the Air Force. Michael, 78, a lieutenant in the 337th Infantry, was wounded by shell shrapnel during front-line fighting in the Italian mountains.

Thomas, now 73, was based in Italy flying bombing missions over Germany. On his second mission the first plane in formation turned too sharply and caught his plane’s wing tip, sending them into a flat spin at 30,000 feet over Vienna.

"I could see the escape hatch a few feet away, but I couldn’t move," he said.

The aircraft fell apart and Higgins parachuted right into enemy hands. Thomas spent the last four months of the war as a POW — often being forced marched to different locations as the Allied troops drew closer — before being freed by Patton’s troops at a camp near Munich.

Joseph, 76, was in the 85th infantry division, moving on the German defensive lines in 1944. After brief time facing treacherous weather, he was evacuated with frozen feet, spending more than six months recovering in hospital.

While in hospital in Belgium, the Germans started sending Buzz bombs overhead trying to knock out the supply lines in preparation for the Battle of the Bulge. "We could hear them coming. We never knew when one would hit us," he said.

A year after the war ended, the brothers were sitting at home in Brooklyn, around the dinner table when their mother served them creamed beef, a meal the army chefs had butchered.

"I don’t know what the army did with it, but my mother made it very good. When she served it, we all looked at each other and started laughing," Thomas said.