Posted on 12/11/2019 7:44:05 AM PST by NEMDF
“He came out of the war...with some mental trauma”
I’m sure that’s a big understatement.
“The “soldier” turned out to be a kid, maybe ten years old, who started crying. My friend was always grateful he didn’t shoot the kid.”
yeah, there was a scene like that in “Band of Brothers” ... only the kid got shot to death ...
Understand your uncle's feelings.
Went to see Patton with my Dad. He got up and left after seeing the aftermath of Kasserine Pass. His entire division was either killed or captured there. He was in sick bay with knee inflammation from doing his commander's orders to do duckwalks while in transit to North Africa.
At 6'5" and 230 pounds his designation as cavalry tried to put him into a Sherman tank. Didn't work. Entered the service as an infantry 1st Lt. A friend of his from college at LSU got him into the MP's.
He then was CO of the MP's assigned to SHAEF security. He shared a lot of recollections of that service.
My grandfather’s unit arrived at the end of the Battle of the Bulge. Out of 20 men..12 were killed in the first hour.
Thank you!
https://www.instagram.com/therifle_/?igshid=uvmukr14roat
This is Andy’s twitter account; has more pictures and some very new video from Luxembourg.
Marker
My soon to be wife’s grandfather was in the 82nd Airborne, 508th, and he was in the Battle of the Bulge. I really wanted to try and get him back to Normandy earlier this year for the 75th anniversary. He’s 94 and was just recovering from the flu which nearly killed him and his wife. They were both in the hospital for a week and half. I wish I had known about this, I would have contacted the organizer to see if he could take one more from Oregon. If anyone out there knows how to get a hold of Clint Eastwood, his life’s story is one for a Clint Hollywood screenplay.
He was born in Paris, and at 14 came to Boston to visit his sister in 1939. WWII broke out and he couldn’t make it back home. He learned English, went to HS here, and then moved to NY City by himself at age 17 and then joined the Army in 1940 and became a citizen a few months later. He volunteered for the Airborne and landed in the 82nd. He told me that one of the reasons why he joined the Airborne was because they got an extra $50 a month in pay. After training, it was back the NY and then on a boat for Ireland and then eventually to Nottingham England.
He jumped into Normandy on D-Day, the Netherlands for Market Garden, and then fought through the Battle of the Bulge. And after that was over, he received a 48 hour pass that allowed him to go back to Paris and finally see his parents again after 6 years. Quite a long journey home.
After the war, he came back to the States and worked for the Air Force and DOD for 30+ years and then retired. He spent like 7 years in Morocco, and just about as long in Spain working at SAC air bases during the cold war. It would make an epic book. Clint, if you’re listening, get a hold of me. :)
Just finished a book, “One Damned Island After Another” written in ‘46 about the early island hopping and very long distance missions of the 7th AF. There were many of these support squadrons and AF construction groups that built airfields in places I had to go to the map to find. Tiny islands very far from the Japs.
I have been looking for books written just after the war because the perspective is first hand not historical.
The soldiers who built and operated these forward air fields were essential to victory and provided much appreciated support to the front line grunts. None of the were Audie Murphy, but the point is that we needed everyone of them to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese.
Awe, the brutal duck walks! Had to do those while holding our M14 over our heads in basic at Fort Benning, Georgia in the hot July and August of 1966. Blame those Duck Crawls for my two total knee replacements. They were brutal.
I think you can contact Andy Biggio on the website for the Boston Wounded Vets run (which he also organizes and runs).
He might be interested in meeting with your fiancée’s grandfather, and have him sign the Rifle. ?
He has written or is writing a book, The Rifle, and has personally gone to visit with many elderly veterans to capture their stories.
Andy has taken groups earlier this year to Normandy and also to Amsterdam.
No argument from me on that statement.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
“And don’t forget The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest, the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought, just before the Battle of the Bulge.”
MLB Hall-of-Fame pitcher Warren Spahn was a combat engineer in both the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He received a Purple Heart after being ht by a piece of shrapnel as the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen collapsed, having been weakened by prior attempts by the Germans to destroy it.
One problem that arose in the US Army during WWII was that the commanders had to rely heavily on groups like Airborne and Rangers as regular units were held up; a lot of average people simply lacked the aggression required (and I’d probably be one of them).
I’ve done a terrain walk there and it was nightmarish. The US soldiers were asked to fight uphill on loose wet shale against German fortifications on the mountaintops, while artillery came down in the dense pine forest tree tops above them, raining down deadly splinters. Their daily advance was measured in inches.
In Belgium, there is still war garbage laying about. Just off a road I found a tank tread and road wheel, and radio batteries all over the place. You could still see where the foxholes had been dug.
One of the most brutal of battles was on a football field sized area. A US antitank company was dug in and a sergeant was visiting a foxhole when he heard something, so went into the dense fog to investigate. He met up with a German infantryman, who seeing him, just laughed, and said there was a battalion of tanks behind him.
The US soldier took off running back to his side, jumped into the foxhole and told the soldiers “tanks coming!”, then jumped out the other side to run to the company HQ. They called for every bit of support they could get, and when the fight started, the Germans called for heavy support as well.
The result was almost 48 hours of hand to hand combat with zero visibility other than when a tank was burning, but neither side could use it to illuminate because it might blow up.
Incredible - and only recognized for it in 1981...
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