INDCJournal: Lose Yourself

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May 28, 2004

Lose Yourself

Posted by Bill

... in this wonderful interactive feature that highlights the harrowing stories of WWII veterans.

I then joined in charging the farmhouses, only to find that they had been hastily abandoned.
Bringing up the rear as we passed the last farmhouse, I heard noises coming from a cellar. Convinced that some of the enemy were hiding there, I lifted the slanted, wooden cellar door cautiously and was about to toss in a grenade when I remembered my mother's plea: "Be merciful!" Instead, I shouted down for the Germans to surrender and come out with their hands up. There was silence.

My second shout brought stirring.

The first to come up was an elderly grandmother. Then another woman appeared, followed by four or five little children, until 14 women and children stood before me. I shuddered at the thought of what I might have done, and the burden it would have placed on my life, had I not received my blessed mother's letter.

Or this ...

A few seconds later, we were attacked by a swarm of ME 109s. We shot down a couple, but they kept coming. A 20mm shell went through our vertical stabilizer, setting up a vibration throughout the entire tail assembly.

We could not hold airspeed and fell behind the formation. As we approached the southern coast of France, we were about five miles behind the formation - sitting ducks for the four or five German FW-190s that came up from Lorient. It was an unfair fight, but we managed to shoot one down while tried to make ourselves a more difficult target.

When the entire tail broke off, I jumped out of my seat, put on my parachute pack and dived head first out of the lower escape hatch. Upon landing safely, I tried to get away from the area as quickly as possible, walking for three days in an attempt to reach Spain. I was picked up by the French resistance on the third day and spent 70 days in their care while they made contact with British intelligence, who arranged for a small gunboat to pick us up on the northern coast of France.

Heroes. Real, live, action heroes. And they're in DC this weekend!

UPDATE: Some of these stories are really amazing. I could read stuff like this for days ...

Some more:

I was looking over the side and saw some of the LCIs under fire: ships being hit and men being killed. I wasn't really nervous-I was just seasick. I just wanted to get to that beach!

I was loaded down with hand grenades, maps, a rifle, and Bangalore torpedoes.
I was supposed to blow up barbed wire with that! As I was getting off the LCI, I felt a sting in my foot. It was very hot! Then I knew I was shot in the left foot. As I was wading in the water toward the beach, the pain was creeping from my foot up my leg. I got onto the beach and started to crawl up toward the cliff, there was a small arms fire. They started to fire down on us! I started to crawl towards a wall; there was a whole bunch of guys there, moaning and hollering. They were all wounded.

I tried to take care of my wound. Some GIs helped me fix my foot. All the medics were shot; most were killed. I also helped a few GIs that were wounded and bandaged them up as best I could. I lay against a cliff and watched them come in, wave after wave.

Later some medics made it. They came over and asked us if there was anybody really hurt. About 20 guys said, "Yeah, me." So the medics said, "Okay, one at a time. The worst will get attention first." I said, "I'm all right, get to me later." I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for helping the wounded while still under fire and being wounded. I was wounded three more times after that, and I made all five campaigns in Europe. At the end of the there only three of us left from my company that landed on D-Day.

Posted by Bill at May 28, 2004 10:31 AM | TrackBack (4)

Comments

Thanks Bill. Excellent post.

Posted by: Val Prieto at May 28, 2004 01:24 PM

To quote from the last story:

"Later some medics made it. They came over and asked us if there was anybody really hurt. About 20 guys said, "Yeah, me." So the medics said, "Okay, one at a time. The worst will get attention first." I said, "I'm all right, get to me later." I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for helping the wounded while still under fire and being wounded. I was wounded three more times after that, and I made all five campaigns in Europe. At the end of the there only three of us left from my company that landed on D-Day."

And meanwhile, John Kerry gets "wounded" three times, with at least one of them being no worse than a minor bee sting, and hightails it out of Vietnam shortly after he got there.

And try as I might, I can't picture a shot-in-the-foot John Kerry telling someone else he can go before him to the medic.

Posted by: John Tant at May 28, 2004 03:48 PM