Am now sitting in the Grand Central Hotel In Belfast and having a wonderful time. It is hard .to believe that just a few days ago I was living in slit trenches, etc., filthy, dirty, tired and sick of the same rations day after day. Little did I realize that this could be possible because I feel I'm one of the luckiest fallows in the world to come out without a scratch. Many of my friends wrote and told me they were praying for me every day. Evidently one of those persons had a lot of pull with the good Lord, because those prayers pulled me out of plenty of rough spots. Myself, I prayed more in those 37 days than I had in a lifetime.
I was a platoon leader and had a platoon that I believe was as fine a platoon as you could find in the army. We had trained together for almost 20 months, some of the men had never been under another officer. I was very proud of the men and they were proud of themselves. We had a team worked out that clicked like clock work, I knew that when we were thrown into combat we would do a wonderful job.
Just before we left Ireland we had a platoon party for our S/Sgt. Joe Bundy. It was a birthday party and was mighty nice. I arranged to get some sugar and cocoa and the lady at the hotel made a fine birthday cake for Joe, I wish we could have had a picture taken that night, because it would have been nice to have had. It is hard to realize that so many of those men are now gone.
When leaving our base camp in England we moved to an airport that was gammed with C-47's and Gliders, We had very good food and a movie each night. In daytime we went out to the planes and loaded the bomb racks, etc. Practiced getting into our chute and adjusting equipment. Much time was spent in briefing the men and the maps, etc. were very elaborate. We had aerial photos that were taken just a couple of days before we jumped. The picture that was given to us looked mighty nice on paper, too bad it didn’t work out as planned.
We carried a lot of ammunition and equipment and I believe the men would weigh somewhere between 350 and 400 lbs. with all of their equipment on.
The platoon had 3 planes. One was a C-53 and that was Sgt. Bundy’s plane. The doors on a C-53 are very small and I was afraid the men would have trouble getting out. Four men did get stuck in the door but made it o.k.
We were alerted on the 4th and the weather closed in so it was postponed. The night of the 5th of June we loaded up and got ready to go. I was surprised the way the men reacted. They were very calm and most of them went to sleep after the take off. It was quite a sight to see all of the planes in the air, the night was clear and you could see the ground very easily. As soon as we hit water I knew it wouldn't be long until we would hit the coast of France. We flew between two little islands coming in, the Isles of Gernsey
[sic]and Jersey.
That is where we encountered our first flak. At that time I was standing in the door and it seemed as if the flak was coming right up to .us. Very soon after, we hit the mainland. I mean to tell you they knew we was coming. It looked as if we were going through one immense 4th of July celebration. At times I ducked away from the door because it came so close. Puffer was right behind me and he kept his hand over: the red light to keep it from showing, Lt. Quaid's planes were in a hot spot due to the fact the tabs had blown off the bundle lights and they had come on. That left the plane a target in the sky and everything was zeroing in on him. I thought sure they were going to get hit
We circled over Etinville 3 times and I knew the planes were lost. You can imagine how anxious we were to jump because I knew we couldn't fly around much longer without getting hit. The flak and machine gun fire was worse and it is hard to realize how those planes can fly through it. I was watching Quaid's plane and saw some men jump. At that time .I drew my head back in and saw the green light was on. At that moment I hollered, “Let’s Go and Hit the Silk." The plane was going a little too fast but I had a nice easy opening. The flak and machine gun fire was so heavy. I believe you could have walked down on it. It was too bad some men were hit and never got a chance to get out of their chutes. Others had their canopies on fire due to fire of tracer bullets.
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