June 6th

Just for the fun of it I checked the newspaper to see if June 6th, 1944 popped up. There was a brief recognition of one who was in the invasion and nothing else. Maybe next year there will be a bit more recognition since it will be 70 years after the event.

 

Taz, I grew up with Armistice Day and then Veterans Day and year by year its importance grows less and less. I guess that I understand it because it fades with time and the new generations have no connection to it regardless of the great impact that it had on their lives.

 

I'm not getting into P&R. I'm simply remarking on how things have changed over the years. I think about Gettysburg every year because my grandfather fought there on Culp's Hill with the 29th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

 

I think that what I was getting at is that there isn't much emphasis on American history being taught in the schools anymore.

 

I went to college with an ex-BAR man, 9th Div. who went ashore at St. Lo and walked from there to Germany where he received his FORTH and final Purple heart when his leg was almost torn off by shrapnel from an 88. Before that, his forehead was creased , his cheek sustained a bullet wound, his shoulder was shot through, he was hit in the back, and he took a large piece of shrapnel through his thigh that finally sent him home. He had not had a furlough since he went ashore in France and he said that the only time he rode anywhere was to go back to get fixed up. Those days at school were full of war "stories" but when he finally opened up a little bit and brought his regimental history back from a visit home, it backed up his short comments about his " travels", as he called it.

 

I should have said, " FOURTH and final wound" since he wasn't awarded the purple heart for all of his injuries. To give you an idea of a grunt's life. When he was on patrol in the Hurtgen Forest his small group was at single file when the kid in front of him grunted and went down. Bill dove for the dirt and as he was going down to a prone position he sprayed the area above and in front of him with his BAR. He then had " snow" falling around him and couldn't figure out how that could possibly happen. Then he realized that he had taken a round through the right trapezius (muscle that goes from the neck to the top of the shoulder) and then figured out the " snow". The German's bullet had gone through the combat pack and exploded a pack of hard biscuits. It also severed the shoulder strap. He was attended to on the spot by a medic who sprinkled the wound with sulfa power and then threaded a piece gauze through the hole and tied it in place with a knot on top of his shoulder . The gauze probably had been sprinkled with a sulfa solution. Bill went back on the line after having orders to report back to the medic in two days to have the gauze removed. Bill was assigned someone to carry his pack and ammo and he went back into action. He found out later that he had nailed the sniper.