Had he been shot?

Yeah, he had been shot.  He was hanging in a tree, couldn’t get out of his chute.  Then later on, at a later time, they came out with these, they started using these British quick release.  Where you push a button and the straps just fall off. 

Well after you got the glider pilot out of the glider, where did you go from there?

We got him out of there, and at that point we were trying to locate Shanley.  We weren’t too sure where we were at, but we had a compass, and we’re just trying to get reckoned as to where we were and where he should be.  For the next 30 minutes, half an hour we found him.  He set up an assembly area in a drainage ditch.  About 6 or 7 feet deep.  And he got the headquarters set up right on the edge of this orchard.  So at that time we had maybe 20 guys, I really can’t remember, but I’m going to guess 20.  When we get there the Lieutenant Albright was with him.  And when I got there he decided he wanted to send a patrol out, so he sent Albright and myself and this Tom Clevenger, a guy we called Dink Clevenger, and we went on patrol to see if we could locate any other guys.  If we went due east of the area we were at, we would walk right through a little orchard, and it was an apple orchard.  And the road running through that apple orchard, you know it’s a dirt road with ruts and drain ditch on both side, and the trees are probably 10, 12, 15 feet high, for apple trees.  As we walked down towards the end of the lane, we probably, I guess maybe 150 yards from the assembly area, maybe 200.  And I heard a noise, and Dink heard it at the same time and at the same time we all hit the deck.  And we could see a farm gate at the end of the road, which was maybe 100 feet in front of us.  And there was a German machine gun over there.  And I don’t know if anybody saw us or not, he just started firing, right over the top of our heads.  So I roll over into the ditch and in the meantime I had, the bayonet was attached to my rifle.  And I told Dink, and was in the lead, and Dink was behind and the lieutenant behind him, I rolled over into the drainage ditch and I said, “Dink,” I whisper at him you know I said, “go on, get back over that ridge.”  So I heard him move ahead and he in turn passed it to Albright.  So we passed it, went over the top of the ridge, and he wasn’t moving fast enough and I slinging that rifle ahead of me like this, and I jabbed him right in the ass.  And anyway he sat straight up in the air and he called me everything he could think of.  Anyway I had to get on top of him, get him down on the ground.  Anyway, we crawled on out of there, and he’s bleeding like a stuck ox.  We finally get back to the assembly area.  The medics passed him up, he never did forgive me for that.  In fact I talked to him, I guess 10 days ago, I call every once in a while, and but it took me a long time to find him, to look where he was at.  When I first found him, where he was at, he answered the phone and I aid, “Is this Tom Clevenger?”  He said, “Yeah, who in the hell is this?”  I said, “I’m the guy that jabbed you in the ass with a bayonet.”  And I hadn’t seen him at that time, probably 30, 35 years.

What was his reaction?

He said, "You red headed son of a bitch, where are you at?" He knew right away who it was. I said, "I got you a purple heart, anyway didn't I?" He was a good man too, really was.

So what was the rest of the night like?  You were one of the first allied troops in there.

You were pretty widely scattered.

Yeah, we were scattered.  Anyway, can I use that paper?  This is a ditch coming through here, there’s a row of trees over here, hedges.  There were some trees, a row of trees through here.  Coming down this way, and right down there was an apple orchard here, like this.  This is the lane we went down in, Shanley’s assembled right here.  Well down at the end of the field sits a glider, not the one we had you understand.  And the hedgerows were so high at that point…

Anyway we got to Hill 30, we set up on Hill 30. 

Where were you taking a beating from?  Germans?  Regular infantry?

Yeah, they were hitting us from 3 sides, in fact we had to make a counter attack to take the roadblock back you understand.

  So this is on your way to Hill 30?

No, no this is after we got on Hill 30.  The Germans were attacking us from 3 sides.  We were really short of people, we were short of ammunition, we had no blood plasma.  In the next few days we had to find a way to get plasma so we sent a patrol out to find another unit that had the blood plasma to bring some in for some of our guys.

Did you get to Hill 30 on D-Day?

No, the next morning.  Early the next morning.

When you landed on D-Day morning and you were setting up the RADAR beacons and all that.

After we dropped in, me and 2 other guys we never did get with the pathfinder group, we were separated completely.  We had to find out own way to the assembly area.  We finally found Shanley, he didn’t even have a light.  It was really such a mess.  I really don’t blame the guys flying the airplanes.  They want to get the hell out of there, to get back home as safely as they could.

But that’s why you were scattered so much, the high speed of the aircraft.

The high speed of the aircraft, and in most cases, this guy didn’t even raise the tail of the plane.  When you go out of the airplane he’s supposed to raise the tail so you don’t tear your head off when you go out.  And when you’re going that fast you are not able to do that.  Anyway, that’s part of the reason we were spread so far apart.  But the other reason is because we just missed the drop zone by too far.  One outfit in fact was like 8 or 9 miles from where they were supposed to be, and that’s a long way away.  It was days before they joined up with us again you understand.  Consider that, consider how many were in there, it was really chaos, like dusting salt and pepper, it was really spread out.  Anyway we finally got to Hill 30, and went from hills, we said that would be on the 7^th, we actually got there.