What was D-Day, what was most of that, were you trying to get to Hill 30, during that time?

No, we trying just to get assembled.  We had a lot of small skirmishes.  Run across a little pocket of Germans here and run across a machine gun nest, we knocked out that machine gun nest.

Describe knocking out the machine gun nest, do you remember?

Well, the guy with the machine gun was on the other side of this hedgerow.  And he was raising hell with our guys coming down.  But I landed on this side, like this was a hedgerow here and a hedgerow here.  I landed here, and the machine gun was over here.  Our guys were coming down and he was shooting his machine gun this way.  I picked up the two guys I was with in the same field.

This was right after you dropped?

This was right after we dropped, this guy here, he can't see us because of this hedgerow.  Well we hear him firing out of this hedgerow.  Well all I did was took a hand grenade and lobbed it over the top of the hedgerow, which was maybe 10 or 12 feet high, and dropped it on the machine gun position.  So we knocked out that machine gun situation.  We gathered these 2 guys, and I think it was 5 more guys that we found.  We landed right near a country road, see this was a, there was a barn here and a little country road running down through here.  So we didn’t walk down the road, we walked in the field by the fence line.  And it just happened that Shanley is down in this area.  We just picked the right direction to go to find Shanley.  We could have been the other way just as well.  Then we found, it wasn’t long after, we were walking to find Shanley, we found the guy that landed in the glider that had the D2 in the back.  Picked up 4 or 5 other guys on the way after that and we finally found Shanley’s group.  

So when you were coming down the Germans were shooting at you?

Yes, they sure were. 

That’s the kind of detail I’m looking for.  I hope you don’t mind talking about it.

No, no you could see the tracer, I don’t know how many shots they used per tracer, might have been every 8th or 10^th shot or whatever it happened to be, but you would see tracer bullets all over the place.  You just keep your fingers crossed that they weren’t looking right at you.  Maybe he just didn’t see you.  Anyway I landed right near the tree, thought I was going to land in the tree, in this apple tree, I assume it was apple, probably was.  Got out of my chute, at that time you don’t worry about your chute.  All I did was cut a piece out of it, about as much as I could cut with my knife, I roll up a small ball and stuck it in my pack.  We used to use those to sleep in.  Like a blanket, and believe me it worked.  But when it was windy you know, or cold, even if they were made out of silk it made a hell of a difference.  We found them all over,  guys cut a hole, you cut our 2 or 3 panels is what you did.  But after we got assembled on Hill 30 we stayed there until I think it was the 12^th.  At the time we were short of food, when we went in we only had one box of K rations, we had 3 or 4 D-bars.  Do you know what a D-Bar is?

A chocolate bar?

Yeah, they were cut this big, I’m telling you they were terrible.

Hard as a rock?

Harder than hell, but you know, something to eat.  We were out of food, so there was a farmhouse right down at the bottom of the hill.  I took a very bad chance at doing this, I told Smitty, one of my guys, I said, “I’m going to go down to see if I can get some food, somehow.”  So I snuck down through the trees and he’s right behind me, kind of watching over me as I was going down and he would stop and look around and see if something was coming.  I snuck down and got up to the farmhouse.  Knocked on the door and this Frenchman answered the door.  And I didn’t speak French, so I made him understand I was hungry.  He must not of had much food, but what he did, he gave me a piece of bread, harder than brick.  Gave me another little bag with butter in it, about that much butter.  And a bag of old potatoes.  They were turned black, seriously.  We ate every bite of it.  I’m serious, ate every one of them.  Anyway we got back to the area and around the 11^th, night of the 11^th or 12^th, I’m not sure which, I think it was the 12^th.  Lieutenant Pollette was assigned to get together a group of guys, a squad to go down to the Douve River, to see where was the best place to cross.  One of the groups already tried it and their boat sank on them, but he wanted to find a different place and we made arrangement with the engineers to get some boats to take us across the creek.  So F Company was assigned to go over and take the little town of Beuzeville-la-Bastille.  Now, I’ll describe it in this manner to you.  This was water, and we’re over here, and this is probably about 700 yards across there.  The Ville of Bastille was set here, and there was a causeway running across here.  We crossed here and got into a field, this is the right hand side of town, west of the town, and there was a road that came right along here, like this, going into the town.  As we cross here and got up on the bank up here, an artillery barrage was supposed to open for us, and for the next 15 minutes they were going to beat the shit out of that town.  And they did.  But the truth is, the angle was a little different then that, it had to be here, because we were getting a few short rounds in the field we were in, and we’re sitting in the field and the shells were landing here, and we’re up against this fence at the edge of that road.  And our own shells were landing in that field.

Behind you?

Yeah, right behind us.  And I said, “You know, I know this son of a bitch is over with soon in a couple minutes because I can’t take much more of this crap.”  Anyway they were firing like this and were coming up short.  Anyway they beat the hell out of this town and they keep talking about the books about how bad the battle was for Beuzeville-la-Bastille, but the only thing that had happened was two tanks came down this road.  We knocked out both of those tanks and that’s really all there was to that battle.  I read the books and I’m like, “You got to be shitting me, it didn’t happen that way.”  I’m serious.

How did you knock out the tank?

A bazooka and a rifle grenade.  Now they weren’t Tigers.  You don’t knock out a Tiger tank out with bazookas necessarily.  Especially at the front end.  But the passes they were coming down the highway didn’t know we were there.  One guy got one with the bazooka the other got the guy with the rifle grenade.  Got them in the track in the side.  A 3^rd one was back here, he turned and ran.  By the time this was all over and the barrage was all over and we go down here, the outfit had crossed the causeway when the barrage was over.  And we get into town and we’re sitting right here you understand, we get into town, we walk into the little center of town, there’s like a farm building, it’s not much of a town, just a farm town.  And all the buildings were stone, the house was stone, the barn was stone, everything was stone.  A wall running around the place was stone about 5 or 6 feet high.  And the causeway ran right by.  For example this is the farm here,  The causeway came right to the house.  This is the road, turned into the road here, then the fence was here.  Well, when we came from the water, from this road here. We walked into a farmhouse there, and we’re standing talking there for maybe two minutes and who walked in the door but General Gavin and Ridgeway, both of them.  Now this is not two minutes after the barrage quit that we’re in that town, they’re not two minutes behind us.