Joe Shirley
82nd Airborne Division

   I jumped into Normandy with Company C 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment 82nd Airborne Division.
   We landed, organized and then around dawn a glider crashed near us.
   We lay in our foxholes and watched our planes dive-bomb a bridge, strafing it and antiaircraft positions nearby.
   Then the Germans figured out our positions and were about to surround and cut off our detachment. We got the order to pull back.
   Here is some of what I wrote In a letter to my mother at the time:
   "I was just preparing to move out while covering the withdrawal of the others when I got a bullet through the left shoulder which spun me around and sat me down in my hole. Thus I joined the wounded and was taken by the Jerries (Germans) a short time later.
   "I was moved through three hospitals The food was coarse but plentiful and my biggest worry was the equipment I lost when I was taken.
   "I'm still a prisoner-patient but hope to be back in American hands soon as we're cut off from the main German lines and it seems only a matter of time before we are retaken. Of course we don't get any news but rumors fly thick and fast as to how our forces are doing and when we'll be rescued."
   My mother got that letter the same day she received the letter I wrote when the Americans took the place I was being held.
   I rejoined my outfit in time for the next jump in Holland on Sept 17 and was in the Battle of the Bulge from start to finish I didn't get wounded again till February 1945. I was glad President Truman used the A-bomb on Japan as I was on my way with a new unit to parachute into Japan (in the spring of '46) when the war ended.
   Our regiment gets together once or twice a year to rewin the war (not to be confused with Korea, Vietnam and other police actions) I can't believe the embellishments that some of the guys put into the retelling aided by failing memories and a few drinks.
   The first sergeant who won the Medal of Honor tries to keep things from getting out of hand and as the company executive officer, I try to help. But I don't push my luck too far or I'll be reminded that Company C won the war in spite of the officers!

 — Chester, SC