Jesse (Bud) Evans, (R) B Co. and Lawrence E. Palmer, (L Hq 1st (l) happily pose in a post-war setting.
  Jesse is especially happy as he had been captured twice by the Germans but apparently escaped both times.

Pvt Joseph G. Endress
home on leave, ca. 1943

[courtesy of nephew, Tom Endress]

Augusta Airborne Trooper Puts "Lie" on Nazi Story
   Another lie was given to the Germans  --- this time about the annihilation of the 82nd Airborne Troops --- by a letter from Cpl Jesse B. Evans to his mother, Mrs.. J. B, Evans of 1709 Walton Way.
   He said the 82nd, instead of being annihilated as the Germans claimed "did some rough fighting and wiped out the Germans as we went in. Ask any German about the 82nd and he won't have anything good to say about it."
   Cpl Evans was wounded in the invasion and is now in England recovering from a wound in his arm.  He left two  close buddies, Larry Palmer of the Milledgeville Road here and Bob Bennett from Tennessee, over in Normandy.  Evans who was the 12th paratrooper to leave his ship, didn't see the other two for five days.  
"When we did get together it was like this", he wrote.  "Bob came up and we were standing  talking and worrying about Larry when he came running up.  He had a real heavy

beard and he was really looking rugged.  When he saw Bobby and me, tears ran down his cheeks, I was never so glad to some anybody my life."
   Evans joked about the daily danger they all faced.  He said that his platoon sergeant told him that if the war didn't end soon he (the sergeant) would be taking nerve tonic for the rest of his life.  Evans said the war gets on nerves at first, but doesn't last long. He set out claim to be the champion fox-hole diver.
   "I can dive 100 yards for my foxhole in 1-100th part of a second.  And I can hide behind a blade of grass."
   In another part of his letter Cpl Evans holds out hopes of getting home for Christmas.  "It certainly would be swell if we could have a quiet Christmas together. It would be the very think [sic] I need to settle my nerves."
   Charlie Evans, a brother of Jesse, is also with the American forces overseas, and participated in pushing the Germans out iof Rome.  Both young men are active workers in the Woodlawn Methodist Church.