D-Day

[robby]

My Dad entered Europe in the US 80th Division from Utah beach, but a few weeks after D-Day. He remembers walking off the beach, on up the long road over that coastal bluff.

He didn't have a good opinion of the French, as when they liberated a French town, they would often see able-bodied civilian Frenchmen standing around, smoking cigarettes.

He didn't care for General Patton, because when the Germans started shelling a town, Patton would pull the tanks back to safety. Patton used to say he could always get more infantry, but not more tanks.

They could pick up any weapon they wanted, as extras were stacked at the aid stations, taken from the dead and wounded. He liked the submachine gun known as a "grease gun". One soldier in their unit wasn't permitted to take captured German prisoners back to the collection point. It seems he was caught walking them back, just out of sight, and then killing them. The other GI's didn't like that.

During the winter, they wore white bed sheets, to give them some camouflage in the snow. In December 1944, he was badly wounded when an artillery shell hit a house he was in. He spent the rest of the war in hospital, missing the famous and bloody "Battle OF The Bulge" by a few weeks.

After the war, he was an MP for a time at Army Headquarters in occupied Germany. Even after the war, it was very dangerous for Gi's in occupied Germany. There were lots of homicidal Germans, and he himself was shot at once by a sniper, but wasn't hit.