What was the importance of Hill 30?  Was it just a hill?

High ground, had clear control of the territory.  High ground makes a difference.  Better to be shooting down at somebody than shooting up.  But that was right out of Chef-Dupont.  And from there is where we went into Beuzeville-la-Bastille. 

You mentioned something earlier, before we started the tape about elite troops, and the 82^nd airborne were certainly elite troops.  They established a real espirt de corp.  Can you comment on that?

It never ceases to amaze me, now when we were in the service we were proud to be where we were at.  I was proud to be an American, proud to be an American soldier, proud to be an airborne man.  But as the war was over, I was even more proud because I knew all these great guys.  I really did.  My very best friend got killed at Gamtree.  But anyways…after the war was over a guy from California formed a 508 association.  Tried to get a hold of the guys.  This was probably 1971 or 72.  And this guy knew this guy and this guy knew this guy and all at once we tried to get together so at 1974 we had our second reunion. First was in Chicago in ’73 I guess, no ’72, and they had another one in ’74 I found out about it.  So joined in ’74 went to Camp McCall, North Carolina, no I'm sorry Fayetteville, North Carolina.  And at that time we had about 400 guys contacted.  Since that time were up to, this didn’t just include the original guys, this included everybody that joined the outfit that was over there at that time, so we were up around 11, 12, 1400 guys.  When we have conventions, regimental conventions, more guys comes to the 508 convention than go to the 82^nd Convention.  But I don’t care, in most cases, it’s a real brotherhood.  I don’t care where you at, I got a list of these guys and if I was in trouble in a town someplace, had a breakdown or something, I call one of these guys and they would say, “I’ll be right out, pal.”  Seriously.  There’s a real camaraderie.

  You had to depend on them then and you can still depend on them.

  We had a trial, a false run, I don’t remember the name of the town we were supposed to go into, but we got to the airport all ready and it was cancelled, went back to the base.  That was some time early part of September, maybe the 4^th or 5^th of September.  And that was called off.  And later time we made the jump into Holland was the 17^th of September and we were out at the air base like 2 or 3 or 4 days in advance.  We still went to Salty.  That was probably the most magnificent thing I ever saw in my life because the trail of planes, by the time the first plane got to the drop zone, the last one had not left England.  Amazing.  We’re standing on the ground, you know we’re on the ground, and the planes just came forever, seemed like they were coming forever and ever and ever.

That was the largest airborne drop in history.

Yep, it was.  And then the gliders came in.  Course they had a better time there, because there were wide-open fields, so it wasn’t like Normandy.  Normandy had short fields, a lot of them crashed.  A lot of guys didn’t have a chance, the gliders in Normandy were not the real thing to do, they really weren’t.  But you know, when you are a commanding general, and over my lifetime I’ve tried to put myself in their situation, you know this is a job…. We were going to have problems then, but it didn’t happen that way.  It was good for 3 or 4 days so it worked out fine.  But that was a tough decision on his part.  But all my life I put myself in his situation, what would I have done if would have had to make that decision.  Well you have to, sure a few lives are expendable, but it boils down to the bottom line, when our outfit came out of there, and I don’t know about any other outfit, we came out of there we had less then half of the people that went in.  When the regiment came back, it was less than half of the original guys that went in there.  These are due to being captured, or wounded or killed, whatever.  I can give you some examples, David.  In the back of the book it will tell you some of the figures.  When you got a chance you should run through these.  We got all kinds of citations and no one really cared.  All those citations don’t mean much to you.  These are combat awards.  Killed in action in Normandy, 307, died of wounds, 26, died of injuries, 3, wounded in action, 487, injured in action, 173, missing in action, 165, a total by the campaign was 1161.

This was just your regiment.

That’s just our regiment.  We only had 2046 guys I think it was.  In Holland, the losses weren’t as great in Holland, 131 killed in action, 15 died of wounds, wounded in action, 389, injured in action, 80, and missing in action was a total of about 681 in Holland, compared to 1161 in Normandy.  In the Ardennes we lost 118, 128, for a total of 2670.  Which was pretty heavy, but it gives you all that little information here.  You know the guy I told you about, my best friend of mine, here’s the man  right here.  Him and I were the best of friends, like brothers really.  You didn’t want to get that way with anybody, but that’s just the way it happened.  Ever had a chemistry between a person that you just hit it off?  I didn’t find him, he didn’t find me.  So one day he decided he is going to take, he’s an artist, he is going to draw a picture of the guys that made the jump, and the plane had engine trouble and he couldn’t get out of the airplane.  It crashed and cracked his skull open.  Bernard Levin, right here.  See it says right there Bernard Levin?  But that’s wrong, that date is wrong.  When was he (David) killed?  He died in the fall of ’44.  Before the Battle of the Bulge. 

There are several here that are March 14^th. 

  I understand that, but you see I don’t care, that’s the wrong date.  And I’ll tell you the reason I know this for a fact…

  Looks like they were all on the same plane or something.

That’s correct, but somebody got the wrong date.  For the simple reason that we came back from Holland, we went into, we went back from Holland, we came back to Nottingham.  We got arranged for the drop in Normandy, from Normandy we went into Holland.  When we came out of Holland you understand, we went to Sissone, France.  And he was killed in Sissone, and that was the first time we had ever been there, and the first time we were there, the outfit got back there in November of 1944.  I got back just 10 days before they got out of the hospital.  And this was like, this had to be some time in November, latter part of November, or the first of December that he died.  If that’s the case, and these are the guys on the airplane, that was the first of December or last of November 1944.  But nobody else is going to know the difference anyways.

What was it like going into Holland because that was a daytime jump?

  Compared to Normandy, it was a very easy jump.  We didn’t have much contact.  The reason there wasn’t much contact, we ran across a lot of flak, the fields we landed in were pretty wide open, had a pretty easy drop, made a little contact with the enemy, wasn’t much.  One of the companies on the right of us made a little contact with a patch of a bunch of Germans, which they took care of pretty quick.  We assembled pretty quickly and from that time on we didn’t really make any heavy contact probably for 3 days.

  What was your objective?

The bridge at Nijmegen.  We spent most of our time between Berg en Dal and a town called Beek, now Beek is in Germany, it is just across the line in Germany.  Holland and Belgium run side to side, little town of Beek is just across the creek, I call it a creek but it was a river.  The 504, once again told you the guys that crossed the river at Nijmegen.  But we had a lot to do with the taking of the bridge.  In fact we had one of our squads, probably as an important part as anybody in the whole organization.  But it was just kind of door to door, knock down, drag out, the same situation, but this is in a town rather than being out in the countryside.  We did a lot of stuff in the countryside, then we finally moved into towns.  About that time when I got hit again.  I think I was in there 23 or 24 days.  Maybe a little longer.  Anyway, we finally moved, we took the bridge, we moved across the bridge, a little town.  And I got hit by shrapnel again. 

What was it like taking that bridge?  It was a good-sized bridge.