Well what happened at the bridge.  They had it all wired to be blown, and they never got the job done.  We took, knocked them out before they got the job done to blow the bridge.  Fortunately, because it saved us a lot of problems.  Because to that time the British force was north of the town in Arnhem and they were just getting the living hell beaten out of them.  Seriously.  See this shows our group here, you see, Fox hill.  This was probably one of the worst times I spent in the entire war was right here on Fox hill.  What happened was it was raining like the devil, rained for 3 or 4 days.  Just mud holes.  German artillery beat on us for 24 hours, absolutely beat on us for 24 hours.  We were down in these rat holes.  We had to, we found some wood that we put down in the bottom like stakes, but a couple boards on top of the water, and you had to sleep in there.  That maybe the worse time I had all the time I was there.  But once again you are young, you can survive those things.  This is the regimental command here.  See where it says the 3, that’s regimental.  We were here, outside of Fox hill, E Company was here, and this was D Company.  Now, we never did get into Zenheewhen, this was the Germans coming this way, this was the German line.  We didn’t get into the Wylen, but we got into Beek.  A little different map over here.  Most of ours were patrols, now see here’s Wylen, and this here, right here around Berg en Dal.  Until  we decided we were going to go from here into the bridge, and that’s the bridge over the Waal river.  We finally ended up north of here, and from here to there is when I got hit last time, so I did not get into this area.  And those poor guys, did you ever hear the story about the British paratroopers in Arnhem?  They went in with 10,000 came out with 2,000 less than 2,000.

supposed to do, he stopped short.  Patton said, I want to run right through you is what I want to do, and Eisenhower wouldn’t let him do it.  He would like to, but he didn’t.  But they moved out and got out of that situation and got over around Arnhem and when the British dropped in there, just massacred those guys.

  Yeah, there were two crack SS tank units there, as well as elite German paratroops and the worst place you could have gone into. 

 Like going into a hornet’s nest.  Anyway, Nijmegen was really no more than say the Battle of the Bulge or Normandy or whatever.  None of it changes or is any different.  Lot of rain up there.  Bad because of the rain, conditions weren’t always great.  We did what we had to do.  We just tried to survive, but I came out of there around that time.

But the drop itself into the area was…

 It was pretty calm, it really was, we had more trouble before we got there from the flak, it was heavy flak.  It was supposed to be one of those most concentrated flak areas on the whole continent, and we lost a few planes.  Once we got through the flak and got into the drop zone we didn’t have any flak, all the flak was back towards the coast.  But that line of aircraft, if you had seen that, was absolutely amazing.  Look up at these planes, and I couldn’t see the end of them, they just kept coming for hours.  That’s really amazing.

When you were hit, it was again Shrapnel?  88?

I have no idea, can’t tell you what it was.  I have no idea.

What did you think of, well you guys were always out on the point, what did you think of the medical treatment you received?

We had two guys who were medical men, and they were about as good as you could find.  And they had a lot of guts number one.  You got to have a lot of guts to do that first of all. And very well trained.  If it were me I would give both these guys, particular guys a congressional medal for what they did.  They went places you just don’t go.  I’m serious.  The average infantryman wouldn’t even take a chance going to the places they went. 

Give me an example.

Well, we were in the woods one day and…

This is Holland?

No this is in Normandy.  And we’re on patrol and we ran into a company or a battalion.  We just started through the woods, just got into the woods to the other side, might have been a hundred yards away and the artillery opened up and all the small arms fire, and we know we’re outnumbered to beat all hell and back so we got back out of there, and we lost a couple, 3 guys in the woods, so we got back to the other side of the woods and Chaney come running down through there, the medic, and says, “What’s going on?”  I told him what happened, he said, well I’m going down to see what I can do, why don’t you wait a bit.  I said, “No I’m going down now.”  He took off right down the damn woods, with all this firing going on you understand.  All the artillery place to take care of these people.  And I really admired the guy for it.  Not one caution for his life whatsoever.

Was he able to find the guys?

Yep, and a guy name Zeke Zuchaler, who was just every bit the same kind of guy, oh he found them all right.  Where it was really wasn’t all that big, it might have been a 100 yards wide at the widest point and probably 2 or 300 yards long, but he knew where we came out of and all he had to do was go into the woods and there they are.  But that went on for several hours.  First few hours were pretty heavy, and then they would just intermittently drop shells in there, he’s still standing in there working on these guys.  Tree bursts were terrible.  They set off a shell, what they call tree bursts, hit above the top of the trees and came down, made it very difficult.  Killed a lot of cows like that too.  We found cows all over that peninsula.  Anyway, Holland wasn’t really the same type of drop.  It was tough enough, but the much easier drop than Normandy was.  We had a chance to get together and organize immediately.  We were organized within a matter of 45 minutes we were all together.  Normandy was a different situation.

In Holland you were trying to get your way up to the bridge to control it.

Right.  Just re-organize and get ourselves set up.  We had assigned everything.  We were supposed to take Berg en Dal, which we did.  And the step by step was all planned out for us.  Now the main highway that ran from Nijmegen on south, and the 101 dropped down here, and they were going to work their way north. 

Eindhoven?  Didn’t they drop at Eindhoven?

Uh-huh, and they were working their way back north.  And the British dropped here about 12 to 14 miles north at Arnhem.  I’m trying to think of what I was going to say to you.

I was just curious, and I don’t know if this was really an accurate description of what it was like, the patrols that you would go on or the contact with the Germans, if it was just a running fight or…