My father inlaw is in town for the holiday and I asked him the other night about how his glider landing went on D-day, as he was in the 101st airborne.
He is pretty liberal in his day to day thoughts and voting pattern, but if you bring up certain things like peaceniks he gets pissed and starts venting.
His war lasted four days. He left basic training and went straight over on a Liberty ship as a replacement.
landed successfully in the glider and then they spent several days pushing forward hoping the guys on the beach would catch up.
He said he did a couple of days in the hedge rows and his lt. stood up to check out where they were after crossing a body of water and got his head shot off.
They were getting shelled by 88s for a few days and he got shell shocked. He just stood up and started walking around like there was no war going on.
Somebody grabbed him and they shipped him to medivac area and gave him a "blue beetle". That is a sedative.
It had no effect so they shipped him to a bigger medical area and gave him two more blue beetles.
He slept for 24 hrs. and when he woke up the guy next to him said everytime a shell went off he about jumped out of his bed.
They were going to ship him back to his unit but the senior doc said he would go fully nuts and probably couldn't recognize the difference between friend and foe when the shelling started again and wouldn't be responsible for who he shot. In other words they couldn't be sure he wouldn't shoot the guy next to him so he got shipped back to a supply area.
He said it took 5 years after the war was over to stop being angry all the time.
He also recounted how every night (during his short time in the hedgerows) they kept sending him across to the German side to find out what they were up to. He couldn't figure out how they didn't hear his heart beating he was so close to them.