The next time I awakened, Father Connelly was
bending over me praying. I remember telling him that I was not a catholic.
He told me to just be quiet and that he was taking care of things. When I
came to again, the nurse came to me, looked at my dog tags, and said your
dog tags only say you are a Christian, but you are a catholic now for
Father Connelly just gave you the last rites. I remember my stay in the
field hospital. I was hooked up with tubing in just about all my orifices
until the fifth day, at which time, 34 days after floating into Normandy
on a parachute in the dark of night, I was put on a stretcher, carried by
ambulance to a British hospital ship which crossed the channel to
Portsmouth, England. There, I was loaded onto a hospital train, which
carried me to a base hospital in central England. I was confined there for
about 40 days before being transferred to a recuperative hospital facility
near Portsmouth where I stayed until about September 20th. AFTERMATH
On September 12th the hospital commander
called me to his office and said that General Gavin, who was now the
Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division, had called and wanted to
know if I could be released for duty with the Division. He said he had a
job for me wherein I would work only about an hour a day. The hospital
commander said that he didn't believe him and that I needed more time to
heal.
On September 18th, I learned that my 82nd Airborne Division and two
other airborne divisions had invaded Holland the day before. My division
had dropped near Nijmegen, the 101st at Eindhoven, the British 6th
Airborne Division at Arnhem, and a Polish Brigade between Arnhem and
Nijmegen. The story of this invasion was written up in "A Bridge too Far.”
The three airborne divisions and the Polish Brigade were to open and hold
a corridor whereby the British armor could make a fast and deep
penetration to Arnhem and cross the Rhine River.
General Montgomery and the British had underestimated the problem
in carrying out such a deep penetration on a very narrow front and the
British armor was stopped cold about two miles beyond Nijmegen. Our 82nd
Division people were very upset because they had lost heavily in the Waal
River crossing in canvas boats and in securing the city of Nijmegen so
that the British armor could advance toward Arnhem. After crossing on the
bridge, secured primarily by American forces, the British armored division
stopped to brew a cup of tea, and the British were roundly cursed by our
82nd men of the 504th Regiment, as they had lost 46 KIA and 50 or more
wounded in crossing the Waal River in their canvas boats under heavy fire
from the Germans. The 505th had had heavy losses in securing the near end
of the bridge.
The previous action had been completed just prior to my arrival in
Nijmegen. I was told by the Chief of Staff, Colonel Wienecke, that the
82nd Division was to be relieved and pulled back to Reims, France in 30
days and go into reserve for replacements, re-equipment, etc. Also,
inasmuch as I was not fully recovered from my chest wound, I was to
proceed and go as camp commander for Camp Sissonne, France. I was to
organize the old French training base to receive and accommodate the 82nd
Airborne Division in 30 days. This was near Reims, France. The Division
eventually returned to Camp Sissonne in late October. I stayed on as camp
commander until January 20, 1945. At that time, not having fully recovered
from the lung wound, I was ZI'd1 and returned to the states as
Director of Training at the Parachute School, Fort Benning, Georgia.
During most of my time at Benning we carried on with intensive
training fully expecting to be sent to the Pacific Theater to carry on
with the fighting against the Japanese. When the atomic bombs were
dropped, the war came to an end and those who intended to stay in the army
started scrambling for the best assignments. I had applied for regular
army and passed the written exams but about 30 days later the Surgeon
General turned me down because of the lung wound and the piece of shrapnel
still lodged in my left lung. Discharged from active duty in November
1945, I applied for and was assigned in a reserve officer administrative
capacity. Later, I was assigned as a mobilization designee at the Command
and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1959, I developed a
malignant tumor and had to drop out of the reserves thus ending my
military service. Mark Alexander passed away in May 2004.
- - - - - END - -
- - -
1 The term “ZI” was a
mnemonic for “Zone of Interior”, meaning the United States. Being “ZI’d”
meant you were going home.
|