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Oh no need to apologize. I knew about Bradly being the problem with Cobra screw up. I just wasn’t going to argue with the guy who was there.

He passed in February at the age of 94 and I actually got to hear some of his accounts of the war which were fascinating. As a teenager I was reading the History of the US Navy in WWII by SE Morison and he was visiting and sitting on the couch next to me and I was in a section with pictures and he glanced over and said I know that ship. I said which one and handed the book to him and he pointed out immediately the USS Texas. He said him and his buddy went by her on the first wave in a landing craft and actually waved to someone on the ship taking pictures. He said when she cut loose the roar was tremendous and that she was fairly close it seemed to him.

When he got on shore his demeanor telling the story changed, you could see him reliving the battle and at times he would stop and tear up, compose himself and then go on. He mentioned that he watched five of his fellow soldiers just vanish, hit by a mortar or artillery shell, there one second, gone the next, that really tore him him telling it.

Up in years he would tell about the Bulge and then how deep they went into Austria or Czechoslovakia, I can’t remember which it was. He said they had went into this town and stayed the night and his unit was saddling up to move out the next morning and out of the woods behind them came a Tiger tank and about 300 Germans all at once. Their captain listened to his intell and thought there were few Germans around and didn’t prepare.

He said he thought for sure they were goners because the ammo truck was at the end of the column next to the Tiger and one round would have killed a lot of men. He said they started scattering to cover and out came the little white hankies in the Krauts hands. They had got the word already that the war was over and his unit hadn’t known Ike had signed the surrender papers. Whew was his response!