Ask our host to give you my email address and I will get with you off line. It will be fun and an honor to research for you.

geo6

You’re right of course. I can remember my father coming into the room during those war movies of the ’50′s I’d be watching in B&W on the TV and I can remember him saying on several occasions : “Just think of all those individuals stories being made by every one of those folks”..and then he’d walk out. I wish I had asked more questions then.

GE06,

508 PIR. Don’t know which batt/comp he was in. I have his 214 (did my sister has it now) and it shows he mustered out late Jun 1946 at Ft Bragg from 18 AB hdqtrs so he could start college on GI bill. Rifleman badge, ETO, Bronze Star and some other things I can’t remember. No writeups. I have gone back to VA group years ago and more recently online but his service record stuff was destroyed in a fire back in the early seventies.

Sorta funny. I’m looking across the room right now and I’m looking at his picture in uniform on the wall. Airborne piss cutter on his head has a patch of a parachute, a khaki tie-khaki shirt under a 3/4 zipped up collared jacket with a patch over the left breast that says “United States Paratrooper”. At the 12 o’clock position are his jump wings. Awful young- if you saw it you’d see me 35 years ago. He was bigger, stronger and 500% tougher though.

When I was little my father wore those boots quite a bit on Saturdays and of course my brothers and I all got paratrooper boots, too! I can succinctly remember my Uncle Mike (Army Ranger ETO) always making fun of ‘em. Years ago when I was a kid we had all kinds of stuff lying around from the war that was brought home, even stuff my great Uncles and grandfather got in WWI..I used a lot of it as we played Army in the neighborhood in those days- seems funny now (no guns though!). All I have left are a Nazi Flag from a tank (I think thats what he said) locked in a plastic bag I haven’t seen in years and a Nazi SS knife with black handle w/ inset Nazi symbol in a black sheath. I would never sell ‘em because I would hate to see some skinhead or some other nut wearing it.

Where I came from calling someone a Nazi was instant fightin’ words.

I’ve been to the big 82nd AB Museum at Bragg but didn’t spend nearly the time needed to research. Plus those big unit pictures- it’s impossible to pick anybody out. I know if I give the 211 and all the info we have to the folks from St. Louis they’ll figure it out too. Something I need to do in the future I guess.

b2

This is a good week to honor heroes like your father. Midway in ’42 and Normandy in ’44 (also Saipan. Marines and soldiers landed on Saipan on 15 June, 1944, but because of the distances involved the invasion force sailed from Hawaii on the same day as the Normandy invasion. A three division attack, 2nd and 4th Marine divisions and 27th infantry division, halfway around the world from where your father was doing his all.)

The scale of it. Difficult to fathom these days. I thank god for men like your father. (19 years old!)
Somehow we always seem, in every generation to scrape up a few, enough, of those guys.

Back to Normandy: I read today S.L.A Marshall’s essay “First Wave At Omaha.” He paints a scene with Lt. Walter Taylor of the 29th infantry Division.

‘The village is quiet when Pearce joins him. Pearce says: “Williams is shot up back there and can’t move.”

Says Taylor: “I guess that makes me company commander.”

Answers Pearce: “This is probably all of Baker Company.” Pearce takes a head count; they number twenty-eight, including Taylor.

Says Taylor: “That ought to be enough. Follow me!”‘

In a movie, that dialogue would be a yawn. But think of real men saying those words under those
real circumstances.

Bless them and their memory.

82nd. 19 years old. Pvt. Rifleman. Got out a Pvt in ’46. Died in ’73. Thanks for asking. Slipped out above due to the date. Very proud.

That generation of All-Americans was sure something and so are today’s generation of paratroopers- Thank G for ‘em.

b2

(glad it didn’t stifle any dissenting views)