The sun awakened three hungry soldiers. We saw smoke coming from a nearby chimney. "One of us should go over there and get some food," I suggested. They both stared at me, so I volunteered. I collected their invasion money and counted about $40 worth of invasion francs. I had to crawl over to the house because we were about 1000 yards from the German lines and could easily be seen with binoculars. When a man came out of the house, I asked him in my broken French where the Germans were. He answered by holding up his index finger, gesturing that a whole finger was one kilometer. The positioned another finger to show half a kilometer. I knew he was being truthful so I asked where the Americans were. He held up his finger again and indicated a short segment, so I knew we were very close. He gave me three large pancakes and I gave him a wad of francs. Only after I got back to the guys, did I realize how expensive those pancakes were! We devoured them.
Eddie suggested, "Laddie, I know you don't like us to move during daylight, but it might prove fatal if we try to cross American lines at night." He was right of course, so we headed in the direction the Frenchman had told us to go. We walked slowly down a path between two apple orchards. All three of us saw a steel-helmeted soldier at the end of the lane and jumped into the ditch bordering the path. We agreed the helmet was black which meant he was a German, or a G.I. who'd been cooking in his tin hat. We looked at each other and I told them to stay in the ditch. I slung the Chemise over my shoulder, swinging it to the back, and walked slowly. I walked fifty yards, keeping my hands in plain sight. An American soldier halted me, asking who I was, what state I was from and other questions. When he was finally satisfied, he directed me to summon my buddies out of the ditch. He'd had his 50caliber machine gun trained on us from the time we entered the lane.
After they fed us, I traded my Chemise for a Garand and a canteen. I told the C.O. that if he loaned me their artillery spotter, I could show him where we had been for three days among the Germans. I took the artillery officer to a vantage point, and showed him the pillbox, their machine gun and mortar positions. I suggested we attack them. He felt they would open fire immediately but I assured him they stayed deep in their holes, only coming out to dig after the moon went in.
We went to sleep then and woke up to the sound of American Howitzers' firing. It was 2AM.
The next day, we were jeeped to our respective regiments. I arrived in time to take charge of half of what was left of Company B. All of B Company's officers were dead, wounded, or captured. We borrowed Lt. Willie Paul McCarty from A Company. Lt. Mac put Sergeant George B. Gillen in charge of the other half of B Company.
That night, we attacked a large chateau located across a small river. It was being used as a German command headquarters. My group laid down a line of fire while Gillen's group attacked first. When Gillen started to go across the river, the Germans opened up with machine guns, mortars and artillery. Being new to the area, I dove into the first slit trench I saw. To my disgust, it had recently been used as a latrine. Luckily, I had gloves on. I bounded out of the trench, shaking my hands and cursing, almost oblivious to the machine gun fire! I had had enough of this, so I led my group across the river. We killed the rest of the Germans who hadn't fled. I missed Guscott. I found him in the chateau's basement, sitting next to a 500-hundred gallon cask of cider and a ten-gallon keg of Calvados. He was drawing from both with his canteen cup. He refused to leave so I broke the end out of the larger cask and he accused me of trying to drown him…but he moved.
Several days went by without losing any men. We pulled up to a town called Pretot and stayed on the outskirts. Our platoon was placed on outpost. It got boring and we sneaked into town, despite being ordered not to. Two paratroopers had been killed there the day before. I took Richard Guscott, Pappy Clark and Andy Susi with me. At the edge of town, an elderly Frenchman invited us into his home to have wine. He seemed overly friendly and I wondered if he had been instrumental in the death of the two troopers. I thought I should kill him, but abstained. We left against his objections and went deeper into Pretot. We entered one of the nicer houses. I moved a picture and exposed a wall safe. I carefully hung a Gammon grenade on its handle and pulled the pin. Any movement could cause the grenade to explode. I went into an adjoining room and fired. The anti-tank grenade blew the safe through its wall, across a room, through a second wall and landed it against the wall in a third room. When we opened the safe, almost everything was shredded, but I did find a French World War I bond. We also found a bottle of cherry brandy. Not much of a take for all that effort!
Andy Susi had left us to go check up on the platoon. As we walked out the driveway, Guscott pushed me aside and killed a German who was aiming his rifle at me. Then machine gun fire came from behind us. It was like being in a movie. Its bullets made a pattern in the sandy driveway. Yelling at Pappy and Gus to go back into the house, I fired at the machine gun crew, forcing them to stop firing. They retreated behind the house. I ran into the house to see Guscott looking through the French doors that faced the street. He was looking at a German kneeling in a doorway across the street. I snapped the safety off my Garand and Gus warned that it would give away our position. I countered, "If the Krauts don't know where we are, they will now!" I fired at him, but he didn't move from the kneeling position. He was about thirty feet away so I knew I'd hit him in the chest. I nailed him again. He tumbled out into the street and I saw two red patches visible about the level of his kidneys.
When the machine gun had opened up on us in the driveway, Pappy dropped his Luger pistol. I gave him my trench knife and told the two of them to go upstairs while I covered them. When it was my turn to go upstairs, I ran toward the stairs, located next to an exterior open doorway. At the very same time, a big German was running toward the same

Shellfire started coming in heavily, so we ran down the stairs and out the front door. We retreated to our outpost to discover that it had been hastily vacated. When we reached our front lines, Major Pearson met us. He threatened to court martial me for disobeying orders and going into town. Gus told Pearson, "Sir, we killed two of them. I killed one and Laddie got the other." Pearson's attitude changed. He smiled, suggested I not do that again. As he departed, he turned to say, "At least you avenged the deaths of those two paratroopers."
Andy Susi related they had learned that Pretot was going to be shelled and our platoon was ordered to withdraw. He had started to come in to warn us when the shelling began.
After a few days, we went to Cherbourg, then back to Nottingham. We arrived there at 1:00AM, and although it was supposed to be a secret, the whole city turned out to welcome us. Sheila Purdue was there with her friend, who asked where Lou Francis was. She left crying when I told her that machine gun fire killed him. He was one of the 65% of our regiment we lost in the 28 days in Normandy.
After a brief stay in Nottingham, we moved to Tidworth Barracks in southern England. We were reassigned from the 82nd to the 17th Airborne Division. The 513th Parachute Regiment was already a part of the 17th A.D. The COs bragged about the athletic prowess of their respective regiments. We'd already beaten the 513th in a few events so their CO said, "It's a shame you don't have a football team, ours is excellent." Our CO ordered Pappy Schwartzwalder to form a football team. We possessed only twenty-four uniforms. After only one scrimmage, we beat them 21 - 0. Then we beat another team 21-1. It was ice cold and raining heavily during the next game that we won 20-0. However, I hurt my ankle and came out of the game four minutes before halftime. Coach Schwartzwalder asked me if I could play the second half. I did. After the game, he picked me up and put me in his jeep to take me to the hospital. He chewed my ass out the whole way. "21-0. 21-0. 20-0? That's unsatisfactory!" Only after the X-ray showed a broken ankle, did he let up on me.
Hospitalization caused me to miss the fourth game that we won 43-0. My understudy, Perry, an Indian, who later played at Oklahoma, was bigger but not as fast as I. In those four games, we'd scored 105 points to our opponents' 0. Pappy, when he retired from Syracuse, told me, "I don't think you guys realized how good you were. Nobody passed your 35 yard line." My teammates had played for big teams like Maryland, UCLA, Rice, and Texas. Several had played in Bowl games. One was an All-American. The men were mostly officers; I was one of the few enlisted men. At the time, it didn't seem strange to have officers and enlisted men on the same team.
I was out of the hospital and going to play the Air Force team on Christmas day, 1944. They were European Theatre Champions for four years. We intended to break their winning streak, with the game to be played at White City Stadium in London. It held over 100,000 spectators. The winners would be feted with turkey, the losers with red beans and rice. One of our linemen, who'd played in the Rose Bowl, threatened to tell Pappy not to let me start, or to even play. He joked that I might try to lose the game, just to eat red beans! I wasn't worried because there were only 23 of us and we needed every man. In those days we played both offense and defense.
Unfortunately, Eisenhower committed us to the Bulge and our Christmas dinner was a half can of frozen mackerel and one slice of bread. We thawed the mackerel by sticking it inside our field jackets. It was only slightly warmer there than the zero degrees outdoor temperature. Two feet of snow on the ground didn't make the experience any more pleasant… this was no way to treat a New Orleans boy.
The Bulge was the most miserable two months of my life. Ill-fed and poorly clothed, most of us suffered with diarrhea from eating melted snow. At times we had neither food nor water. I shed thirty pounds, losing down to 175.
We took a position along the Meuse River. Occupying the high ground, I placed the mortar squad behind a hill on which stood a trapper's shack. It was so cold I told them to go inside to warm up, but not to linger. The shack would be the first target for artillery in case of attack. I assigned the biggest guy, Theodore Dome, to the mortar squad because he could carry the most mortar rounds. However, Dome occupied the shack, locked up, and went to sleep. I trudged through the snow and yelled, "Dome." When he opened the door and stepped out, I nailed him on the chin. [A few years ago, I got a long distance call. The voice said, "Laddie, I bet you can't guess who this is. Ted Dome, the guy you knocked on his ass in the bulge." He told me had had been part of the 82nd Honor Guard in Berlin. (I knew they picked big handsome guys.) He also said that he was the 82nd Airborne heavyweight champ. I told him, "You big bastard. Why didn't you tell me you could fight? I wouldn't have hit you!" I was so glad he called because we'd heard that he'd died about two years later.]
After the Bulge we lived in tents. In the middle of the first night, 1st Sergeant Jeep Gillen awakened me with his groaning. He said he had a bellyache. When I touched the right side of his abdomen, he almost leaped out of bed. Figuring he had appendicitis, I set out searching for a jeep to take him to the hospital. I couldn't find an officer with one, so I had to "steal" one from the motor pool. We drove around searching for a hospital, finding it just in time for an emergency appendectomy.

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